BlogTogether

Despite our fearless leader not being able to attend, we met at our new meeting location, 3 Cups Coffee Bar in the West End courtyard off West Franklin Street. We meet here the second and fourth Thursday of each month at 7 pm. (We now have wireless coverage through much of the facility) In attendance: Brian Russell, Will Raymond, Jackson Fox, Corey Reece, Adam Vandenberg, and Rob Zelt. I had a great chat before the meeting about the upcoming local elections with Will Raymond. Will’s running, check out this site:Will Raymond Without Anton present to guide or conversations, we were a little less structured than normal which had our conversations to wandering all over the place. Brian started our round the table introductions by talking about his role in the upcoming Duke Pod Casting Symposium, that is apparently full. We than spent some time talking about the live coverage of the Jet Blue emergency landing, and what it would have been like to watch live coverage of yourself and such a life and death situation. The airplane was equipped with satellite televisions and the passengers were allowed to watch all but the last 4 minutes of their ordeal. We went on to discuss how live “Live TV” really is and wondered what if any sort of tape delay was in place in case something terrible were to happen. Jackson mentioned noticing Six Apart’s announcement of “Project Comet” which “will launch in early 2006 and will combine the publishing power of TypePad, the community aspects of LiveJournal and the years of insight garnered from Movable Type.” According to the sixapart.com We went on to discuss the relevance of news organizations presenting on what the blogs are saying such as the News and Observer’s Tar Heel Blog Watch and similar segments that the network tv news shows are doing. Is this of benefit to us, ir is it simply the media trying to understand? Cory discussed his election map site created using Google maps as well as other uses for attaching map visualizations other information sources. Having just recently returned from Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference where much attention was given to RSS and it’s usage beyond blogging, I ask the group for some comments on things like Microsoft’s proposed simple list extensions for RSS and Apples iTunes RSS extensions. Reactions were mixed. Some definitely felt that the spirit of RSS was being damaged by extending it, while others realized the potential uses of such extensions. The unanswered question was “When does RSS stop being RSS and become and application specific web service?” I still want to know what the difference between “Audio Blogging” and “Podcasting” is, and when a news organization takes exisiting audio and puts them in an RSS feed, what do we call that? In all it was a great meeting. Hope to see you next time!

The Duke University Podcasting Symposium is Sept 27 & 28. Looks like a good collection of brains and voices.

Jim Melo, symposium editor of the Journal of Law and Technology, is looking for journalists or bloggers who are discussing the legal ramifications of blogging or have perhaps been embroiled in their own legal battles who could be excellent for a conference next year.

Meetup this week (remember, we meet the second and fourth Thursdays of the month) is Thursday, 7 p.m., at 3 CUPS coffee bar in the West End Courtyard off West Franklin Street. Grab a pot of coffee (or a beer in the adjacent Sandwhich shop), and pull up for a chat about whatever. Rob Zelt will be the host and discussion leader this week (Anton’s out of town on business), and if all goes well, THERE WILL BE WIFI.

Like Duke Hospitals, UNC Hospitals sent volunteer docs to help in the Hurricane Katrina response. Read their blog.

Google Blog Search is live.

Duke University Medical Center has its first blog: the Hurricane Relief Team Blog. I spoke with the news department at DUMC a few months back about ways they might incorporate blogging. Glad to see they found a way.

New time, new location, new vigor — our first meetup of the Season II of the Chapel Hill Bloggers Meetup went quite well last night. (We’ll be meeting on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month at 7 p.m. t 3 CUPS coffee bar in the West End Courtyard off West Franklin Street.) In attendance: Rob Gluck, Adam Vandenberg, Jackson Fox, Rob Zelt, Martin Johnson, Mike Habib, Corey Reece, Drew Lomax, Bret Dougherty, Henry Copeland, Brian Russell, Ruby Sinreich and Anton Zuiker. We did the usual, going around the table to introduce ourselves and mention something about our recent blogging. Martin mentioned he’d recently attended the blogging summit in Virginia showed off his new Canon Powershot SD400 and got us talking about Flickr and social software. Drew and Bret asked about the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. Henry reported on the blogads logo competition. Then, I asked about natural disaster blogging. A few of us had blogged about Hurricane Katrina, and the Asia tsunami back in December. Brian created a podcast PSA for hurricane relief. Some of us posted political statements about the woeful lack of governmental response to Katrina’s devastation. Yet, many of us agreed that, when national or international events have the blogosphere screaming, we don’t feel we have anything to add, and so we stay silent. Which led me to ask, “But don’t bloggers have a responsibility to use their platforms to share news, links and resources?” Ruby answered that she was but one voice, but when added with all the others, the media would take notice and make an issue of the topic. That’s how political or societal change will happen, she suggested. Your thoughts on the question? Post them to the comments, please, or write on your blog and post a link in the comments. A few other items from the meeting: * Chapel Hill bloggers wanting to attend the ConvergeSouth bloggercon Oct 7 & 8 can carpool in Anton’s van. If you’re interested in the ride (and can contribute $5 for gas), see the previous post and put your name in the comments. * Henry suggested we hold a party sometime this fall, and birdwatcher Rob asked about another teach-in. If you’re willing to help plan either event, please contact Anton. * About wifi: while 3 CUPS has a no-wifi policy (part of their slow food, long conversations philosophy), they’ll provide Internet access to us during our meetings. Rob Zelt has donated a wireless router. At our future meetings, we’ll be able to have presentations and demonstrations and liveblogging. See you next on September 22 at 7 p.m.

Is anybody planning on joining me at the Chapel Hill Bloggers Meetup Thursday, September 8 at 7 p.m. at 3 CUPS coffee bar in the West End Courtyard off West Franklin Street? If so, RSVP in the comments so I know how many bloggers to expect.

I’ve changed the location of the BlogTogether webcal. Please find the new link in the navigation list at left.

Jump on this: for $399, you’ll get hosting with Textdrive for the life of the company. Details here.

Brian’s posted a PSA about getting involved in hurricane relief efforts. If you have a podcast, please include the PSA today.