"I thought i could organise freedom, how scandinavian of me"
(from the Homogenic album, "Hunter")

..."just" doing research requires a lot of self-discipline....
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:37 (0) comments

The Mobile Phone & Society Web Site looks like a really good ressource website with bibliographies, articles etc on Mobile Phones and Society.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:21 (0) comments

Her er de slides, jeg lovede at linke til, fra mit foredrag idag om web 2.0 og kulturinstitutioner ved Kulturnet Danmarks Temadag om Web 2.0. Pdf.fil på ca 7 MB

Det var spændende at høre om hvad Struer Museum (Byskriveren) og Arken (Arkcast) arbejder med. Det rykker også i DK!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 20:56 (0) comments

Benny Baagø, journalist at Computerworld.dk, has embarked on an interesting project which aims at studying the current state of affairs of the Danish Politicians' homepages. So far, he is posting about his findings in Computerworld's Usability Blog.

Benny made an interview with me yesterday about what it looks like on the "blog front", since in 2005 a research assistant and I made a survey of how many of the people running for parliament blogged (findings here), so I'm credited for being someone who knows about this part of the blogosphere (hmmh). In order to give him some qualified answers, I thought it could be fun to update our survey, i.e. see how many of the people who blogged then (february 2005) still blogs.

The result is quite interesting. In February 2005, 53 politicians ran a blog or had engaged in a blog-like activity during the election campaign (which ran for only 20 days) - in fact, only 52, since one of the "blogs" turned out to be just one post consisting of a transcription of an election diary he had written for a newspaper).

What is the state of these blogs today? In October 2006, 14 of these candidates (of whom several were in fact elected for parliament) are still blogging in some form. In addition, one person is running a small temporary blog about the restoration of a pond so I discount this, since this blog is quite new. 14 out of 52 is roughly 27% - in other words, less than 1/3 have continued their activities. But perhaps a ratio of almost 1/3 still blogging after more than a year is actually a pretty good track record? It should be noted that of the 14 blogs,
- 10 are dedicated blogs focusing on politics and opinions related to a "political" topic
- 2 focus on private life and experiences (not really related to politics),
- 1 was last updated in March (so is she still blogging? - however it still features on her website)
- 1 is basically a "calendar diary" (describing in short facts what the politician did on a particular day, but with no reflection and discussion of political subjects).
I havent had time to look closely into it, but my intuition is that several of the people blogging now, also blogged before the election campaign started, i.e. they have been used to blogging for a long time, and have, as a starting point, not been dependant on the election campaign to find material to write about. Oh, and very few of them use the comment function.

Several of the politicians who do not blog anymore have removed the blog completely from their website. A few have no webpresence at all anymore. In this context, it should be noted that we looked at all the people who ran for a seat in parliament and several of these have a completely different dayjob and are not professional politicians. Hence some of them might by now have withdrawn completely from the political scene. However, others still engaged in politics have left the election campaign blog online, and some of them also ran a election campaign blog for the municipalities election last fall (november 2005).

So, all in all, considered that maintaining a blog requires time and engagement, the state of things could be worse (none of the people who blogged then could be blogging now). But the fact that so many of the politicians whose blogs we looked at, do not blog anymore indicates that it will take some time before the blog as a communicative political genre takes foothold in Denmark. As is, 89% of the politicians' who responded to our online survey in February-March 2005 (roughly 50% of the bloggers) said that they would blog again during the next election campaign. We have still to see if this will happen.

Fyi, I haven't looked at how many of the politicians, who have a seat in parliament, blog. However, Benny, who has looked at the websites of all of them, when I talked to him, confirmed that it is a precious few. Niels Helveg Petersen is one of them. This is the official list of the members of parliament, so feel free to go check out for yourself.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:23 (0) comments

Optimnem Blog is the blog of Daniel Tammet, the "savant" who is able to cite Pi with more than 22.000 decimals, and who learnt to speak Islandic in a week. I recently saw the Channel 5 feature about him, and were like many others, I suspect, fascinated by his abilities. What's extra special about Daniel Tammet is his ability to verbalise his inner experiences with numbers and forms, and therefore his blog (which was initiated in July 2006, when his autobiography were published in the UK) might turn out to be another interesting way of "getting to know" how a person with his abilities experiences being in the world. I do believe that one of the strengths of the blog as a publishing format and genre, is that it allows people who perceive the world differently from most of us in one way or the other, such as also Pilgrim, that I have written about before, to voice their world.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:58 (0) comments

Athaltadefinizione.deagostini.it, you can find a large italian fresco that has been photographed in a 8,6 gpx resolution. You can click on details on the image, and get as close as a 1,71 cm section of the fresco. It's fun to play around with, if you like paintings and one would think that there would be some potential in teaching children about art using technology like this.

Zooming in to discover new details also reminds me of the golden olden days when I was zooming in on fractals, however the colour palette has been somewhat refined since then, thank God...Via Berlingske.dk.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:33 (0) comments

Torill Mortensen, a good colleague and my fearless and dedicated guild leader has been interviewed for Norwegian Televison (NRK1) Schrödingers katt - Spillforskere i felten about her research in WoW. The interview includes some brief scenes from a guild meeting, the guild of which Im also (a currently rather passive :( ) member. Unfortunately, I couldnt be there the evening they filmed the guild, an absence for which my character Miredam has constantly been blaming me since - she would so have loved to show off one of her dresses on public television...

Guild fame potential aside, Torill says some very sensible things about the need to do research in-world if you want to understand what MMOG's are all about. It's puzzling how journalists still keep joking about how we as game researchers "have to play games" as part of our research ("høh, høh"), they never joke about film researchers having to watch films, or literary scholars having to read novels: "høh, høh, so you're actually being paid by the government to read books to do your research". The media scepticism towards the playing part of games research demonstrate that there are still some bridges to cross before games are fully acknowledged as a cultural phenomena on equal footing with films and novels.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:58 (0) comments

It was published a week ago, so I'm late, but Peter Svarre's column: Først med ikke at være de sidste (On being the first not being the last) is a poignant perspective on the reception and integration of new media movements in Denmark.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:41 (1) comments

MitKlip [mycut] is another recent attempt to offer a YouTube-like experience in Danish, which I came by in the press. However, already at a first glance the webpage is pestered by so many basic spelling mistakes, that it makes my skin crawl ("fremhævet videoer", "kommentare", "farvoritter"..etc). If you look at the "producer", it looks like a very small private company in an apartment in Odense, and there is something about the look and feel of the site, that makes me suspect that it is a youngster, rather than a business professional, who is running it. Please - if you want to make this a remotely successful website, consult a grown-up who can spell, will you?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:02 (0) comments

The Danish online magazine Ugebrevet A4 has carried out an investigation of which jobs are most prestigous in Denmark, the first investigation of its kind since the 1950's. There is an article presenting and discussing the findings on their website, and the top-99 job list is linked from there. An easier scannable list is here.

To be a researcher in a private company (!) ranks no 5, to be an associate professor at an university ranks no 6. Being a pilot gives you the most job prestige, but if you're an actor or an IT consultant, your job will be considered as pretty prestigous too. Basically, jobs that earn you media attention, require degrees, are difficult to get, pay a good salary and/or gives you influence and power are the most popular. Probably not surprising, apart from the fact that media attention in itself means so much this century. I still prefer to believe that being a researcher is prestigous because we're considered to be smart ;), not because as so-called professional "experts" we are also quite often media darlings. But who knows?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:56 (0) comments

At Micro Persuasion, you can see some of the main findings of the Edelman Technorati study of the European blogosphere including links to the much talked about Top 10 lists of German, French and Italian blogs. The nice thing about the study is that Edelman/Technorati are developing tools to better track what's going on in the European blogosphere, this is, as far as I understand, just a pilot study.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:52 (0) comments

Got to admit that driving around in a Honda in a wacky cartoonish world, having weird conversations with animals is quite fun, both above and below ground: The Element and Friends Web Site - 2006 Honda Element. They even did a myspace profile for the crab...
The advertising campaign won the American MIXX awards, ie award for best online advertising.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:33 (0) comments

If you ever wondered what a Laptop Deathmatch is all about, now you know. Via the Creating Passionate Users blog.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:13 (0) comments

Bønder slæber største danske vinhøst i hus
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:43 (0) comments

It's actually news from last week, but I finally found the article in Financial Times where the story "broke" (I think): Web use overtakes newspapers. A survey of 5000 Europeans from different countries show that people now spend as much time online, if not more, as they spend reading newspapers and "consuming print". It should be noted that (I cite FT): By far most of the time Europeans spent online was devoted to e-mail and search activities. Entertainment content such as music and video still accounted for only 22 per cent of online activity. Which could be interpreted in this way: though people spend more time online, they still spend more time offline (or in front of the tv) consuming news!

I'd love to get my hands on the original report on this, written by the commercial company Jupiter Research which also did the survey. But of course Jupiter Research charges an exuberant amount of money for that (well at least 750.00 of an unknown currency!). And even though Jupiter do some very interesting "research" on media habits, they could surely need a good information architect; IMO their website is a mess and it is quite impossible to find the presentation of the survey in question anyway near the "frontpage". Turns out the numbers are hidden in the report titled "The New Demographics of Online News". And here is the "to-die-for" chart on media use and age that only paying members (read: companies) get to see.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:39 (0) comments

Via Thorbjørn's blog: Ghost Town is a sms novella designed with the intention of making US teens aware of the fact that some teens are homeless. They call it "the first interactive text novella" and the website provides polls, character blogs and back stories to support the universe of the story. Too bad, that you can only subscribe to it in the US.

The story is the outcome of a collaboration between YouthNoise (a civic engagement org for youth around the world) and Virgin Mobile, and as such an interesting example of an industry partner that participates in a pro bono "new media" activity. However, boosting your "ethical profile" can also be seen as branding.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:54 (0) comments

Today at 5pm Danish time, the Mobile Content Laboratory (Det Mobile Indholdslaboratorium - MIL) of which I have been a part for almost 2 years, officially unleashes 26 mobile content concepts, to have and to hold for whomever wants to play around with them. The concepts are licensed under Creative Commons, which means that you can "take" the ideas and run with them, as long as you explicitly remember to credit the students who came up with the original idea.

The concepts can all be found on MIL's homepage. MIL is a co-operative project, including the IT University of Copenhagen, The Danish School of Design Cph, Film & Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, DR (the national broadcast company) and TDC (the largest Danish teleservice provider). It has involved researchers, students and various members of staff at the two industry partners.

Fyi, the launch event at 5 takes place as part of the New Media Days festival, at the PH cafe near Halmtorvet.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:59 (0) comments

I know it has been written about before, but just wanted to share with you, that after my post yesterday, I got a mail from ThisCompany who offers bloggers small amounts of money, such as $10, if they blog about for instance a dinner at McDonalds.. "Service" includes a little widget that in the post links to other bloggers blogging about the same "brand experience". Very nifty, indeed. And it makes me wonder whether bloggers in the future will be needing explicit disclaimers telling their readers "that I DONT blog for money"....
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:55 (0) comments

This is what a car commercial looks like these days on myspace: www.myspace.com/anythingbutcute. Cute animals South Park style and something about a Dodge, as an animated series.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:13 (0) comments

(nogle) Mænd og deres fucking ideale fordringer....Suk.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:04 (0) comments

The discussion on how to define and present the weblog as a phenomena in a Danish context(see previous post), reminds me that I'm still working on my own "perfect" definition of the weblog (every new media researcher needs one such ;)), which will likely be needed in the book, that Ida and I are working on. The weblog is such a fuzzy thing, that it is indeed quite difficult to come up with a truthful definition. Technology and -feature-driven definitions of the weblog are IMHO very tricky, because blog-applications change all the time. The first blogs I read and my own first version of the blog did not have any comments, because they weren't integrated in the system, and a hardly existent feature in the early 2000's. If you argue that comments (allowing "conversations") are an essential part of the weblog identity, were those blogs then, per definition, not blogs?

One of the things, I learnt from Pia's and my political weblog project was, that Danish politicians used the "blog" term very casually, and if you wanted to discuss what they were doing under one hat (which made and makes a lot of sense to do), you couldn't base the discussion on the use of for instance certain platform technologies or publishing formats. What (most of them) had in common, was the experience of communicating in a new way to and with their readers - or the belief, that if they coined their writing activities online a "blog", the writing would automatically be considered being of a certain nature.

Another aspect of the weblog as a phenomena that really interests me, is that you can't say that the weblog is "just" a online diary or "just" a new form of socialising online. It is a way of socialising that it is grounded in the individual, and in a particular personal profile situated one PLACE (the blog) that other bloggers and readers relate to. But it is also a form of identity building that relies heavily on an understanding of identity which implicit sees the individual as someone who is only somebody by virtue of the people this individual lists and attracts attention from. Thus, through the blog you "brand" yourself as an individual through your social network and the way, you interact with - and expand it.

Hence, my attempt at a weblog definition these days would be something like this:
1) The weblog is a discursive practice on the www which allows the writer(s) to communicate in a particular way (often associated with terms like "personal", "informal", "dialogic" etc)
2) As a phenomena, the weblog is interesting because it can be situated in the intersection between personal expression ("me-writing", branding) and social networking ("we-writing", interpersonal interaction)

Hmmh.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:54 (0) comments

Thomas Madsen-Mygdal og Trine-Maria Kristensen are writing a book about weblogs, with the Danish industry and organisations as the main target group. Great to see a book on weblogs for the Danish market, written by two very qualified people. They have now published the first chapter, and invites readersto read the draft and comment on it. An interesting discussion is already going on in the comment-field. If you can understand and write Danish and/or another Scandinavian language, go join!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:52 (0) comments

The audience were instructed to let their cellphones ring during a newly minted Cellphone and Symphony Orchestra concerto. Now there's an interesting spin on user involvement!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:15 (0) comments

The Include 2007 conference in London next Spring could be an interesting new conference venue to explore. The submission deadline is October 31st, unfortunately they are asking for full papers, as far as I can read from the slightly cryptic call for papers page.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:01 (0) comments

Surfing the web for blogs and material about the blogforum I attended today, I came across this page with the nominees for the Jury's Special Prize at the upcoming New Media Days Festival .On this list, according to the jury, are some of the movers and shakers of new media in Denmark. I'm happy to see Trine-Maria Kristensen on the list - she has done a lot to promote weblogs amongst Danish organisations and corporations. But also the other nominees have done a lot to the Danish New Media Scene, as far as I know.

Unfortunately, I wont be going to the New Media Festival - the registration fee is simply too high (since at my new job, I dont have a travel and conference account, there is a lot of fun stuff I have to skip :(). Though, as MIL project partner, I might pay a "surprise" visit at the outskirts of the festival, look at the program to discover when.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 21:15 (0) comments

Blogging briefly from the second gathering of Danish bloggers: Blogforum 2.0. It is the ever prolific Thomas Madsen-Mygdal who initiated it, and now we are around 60+ Danish bloggers (mainly from the Copenhagen area) gathered at Island Brygge's Kulturhus, spending an entire day discussing...blogs. Right now, we are group of people discussing how to make a survey of Danish blog-readers. And it's all in the wiki.

Fyi, Stefan of Overskrift.dk estimates that there is now around 15.000 Danish blogs (update: an interesting discussion about this number is evolving over at Hovedet på Bloggen. Perhaps the number is much higher!). After a long period of slow, but steady growth, the number of blogs have really exploded in 2006, a likely reason (cf Stefan and Kim Elmose) is that a lot of the media corporations have started to offer their readers blog services (f.i. Urbanblogs, Ekstrabladet's blogs, Xtra-blogs etc). A likely reason why we still DONT have a massive amount of blogs in Denmark Kim suggests, is that Denmark is such a small country, that you can easily get through to the ("old") media and make your voice heard, if you want to. That could definitely be part of the reason. Perhaps it is also a cultural thing - in my experience, Scandinavians prefer to keep rather quiet in public, and share intimate thoughts with only a select few. "Standing up" and speaking with confidence in public is not something we are trained to do, in comparison with for instance US citizens. But that's just pure guesswork.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:27 (0) comments

Nice interview w Hilde and Jill on our WoW researcher's guild and the MMOG class taught at UiB.Har verdens største rollespill som pensum.And there's a weird rumour quote from Hilde about WoW and classes at ITU, which Im sure is completely untrue ;).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:33 (2) comments

In the online mag for user-experience professionals UX Matters, I just discovered a short, but interesting article titled: Brand Experience in User Experience Design. It's interesting because it discusses the importance of incorporating brand values and brand identity into the design (process) of a website AND provides some concrete examples of websites that do this succesfully and some that do it less succesfully (including Apple and Panasonic). Students at ITU often came to me wanting to do some form of branding project and it has not been easy to find relevant design literature on this subject. Also points to a few more potential interesting articles at the end.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:44 (0) comments

I wouldn't exactly call this website amazing, since its design is rather conventional, but it is a fine example of a website that really complements and expands the universe of a novel: The Amazing Website of Kavalier & Clay. Michael Chabon does take his presence at this booksite seriously and it is a very web 2.0-like (..?!..) feature that for instance he invites artists and photographers who have graphically worked with his universe and characters to submit pictures to him to be published on the website.

Update: anonymous commentar points out that the website, I discuss, is not Michael Chabon's personal website - he resides at www.michaelchabon.com. The more impressive that he also maintains a presence on the book site. Changed above post a bit to make this clear.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:27 (1) comments