I want to apologize for not posting in the past couple of weeks. It seems that my life as a retail superstar has interfered with my ability to act as any type of academic, let alone a public academic. So, I might as well attempt to write something before the end of the year. As my relatives are enjoying another college bowl game or a game of cards, I guess this would be as good a time as any to try to put together some thoughts on the year that was and what I see happening next year.

1. Microblogging will continue to 
evolve: One of the biggest stories of the past month has been the 
Denver plane crash and how one of the passengers Twittered during 
the crash. This lead to a series of headlines punning of either 
Twitter or crashes. I don't believe Twitter will survive at the end 
of 2009 unless the Twitter crew can find some way to monetize the 
system. However, thanks to systems like the Laconica microblogging 
software and the Bootcamp initiative, there will be communities of 
microblogs connected by a superstructure of the universal profile 
supported by OpenID.
2. Cybereducation and cyberliteracy 
will begin to connect the levels of the American education system: 
With Margaret Spellings leaving and Arne Duncan becoming the 
Secretary of Education, I got to believe that there will be a long, 
hard look at (and possible elimination of) No Child Left Behind. I 
also believe that Duncan represents a future in cybereducation 
either in the form of more distance higher education to areas 
under-served by the current higher education/digital divide issues 
or through a reorganization of the primary/secondary/post-secondary 
education system in the United States.
3. There will continue to be 
questions in the binary levels of the Internet: Many of the 
academics that I listen to talk about binary issues, which are the 
differences between private life/public identity, online/offline, 
high-tech/lo-tech, public service/private utility and 
connected/unconnected. I realize as more of the issues emerge in the 
world of the Internet, there will continue to be a struggle to 
define our existence in this arena and what will be the methods used 
to help deal with the changes caused by the development in this 
environment.
4. This year was defined by the 
ability to connect with others, being able to clearly deliver a 
coherent thought and trying to persuade others with your message: I 
wish I could add more to this point. I'll simply say that there have 
been a great deal of worldwide mediated platform that people could 
connect and express themselves in front of a worldwide audience. The 
channels of communication were use to clarify points that were left 
out for the media's presentation of events (U.S. Presendental 
Election, Prop 8 Protests, Olympics, et al.)

Well, this should be the last post for 
this year. I wish you and yours a happy rest of the year. I gotta 
stop now, it's my turn to play cards.

As a grad student, it is very common to have a ton of books spread out throughout three to six locations. I can never remember where they are and I always have a tough time organizing them. Therefore, when I heard about Library from Delicious Monster, it seemed that I could finally have some scene of control over the amount of information that I was forced to process. I even managed to buy a small portable barcode scanner to take with me to keep organized. Delicious has revolutionized computer programming in general. Many of the new class of programmers represent the "Delicious Generation" with their approach towards coding, graphical design and user interaction controls. Users also now expect an easier time interact with their program and the computer as a whole. This leads to a deep point of Delicious representing a new cyber organizational structure. It is at this point that it seems fair to mention that Delicious Library is only available for Mac users. While there are several clones available for PC, those clones lack the elements that makes Delicious Library a unique experience (the clones are not simple, multi-functional nor elegant). It would be fair to point out the Delicious Library represents the ethos of "Web 2.0" and has good design standards that makes any program easy for the user to use. It would seem that Delicious Library allows the user to have control of any asset present it his or her library regardless of their current location. There are already several services that allow the user to control digital assets from any location. But, Delicious Library (with the additional services from Amazon) allows a user to have access to any real world asset that is in their Delicious Library digital workflow storehouse and have it available in a digital, virtual environment. The real question that come from this is "can this be used to turn atoms into digital bits?"

It was hard for me to start writing this week. Suffering from a combination of writer's block and a series of allergies made it really tough to put words on the screen. However, there came from the Internet a great amount of chatter that the writer's block or sickness didn't matter anymore. The discussion among those focused on 
microblogging and all of its derivates was centered around two major 
selloffs. First, Powers of N was purchased by the Twitter group. 
Powers of N made a handy little program called "I Want Sandy," which was a cloud computing reference system. The user could email the time of the meeting to those who needed to attend and cc the 
email to Sandy. Sandy would then translate the message of the email 
and format it to any calendar program. Sandy could also recall any 
information sent to her by the user. "I Want Sandy"and the rest of the cloud programs supported by Power of N will be turned off before the end of the month. Sandy was a very important example of 
the Internet being used as a "public memory" and it will be 
missed.

The second bit of bad news came from Pownce as they were 
bought out by Six Apart. Pownce was microblogging service that 
incorporated the ability to post video and other mediated sources in 
a very fluid datastream. Pownce really never had the audience of 
Twitter and Pownce was lost in the shadow of Twitter and other social 
media service. Six Apart is also shutting down Pownce before the end 
of the year. I guess that this leads to two points 
that I want to address. The first, shorter point is that the closing 
of Pownce makes it more important to use services such as ping.fm as 
a way a keeping the public discourse from dying if one of the 
microblogging/social media services decides to shut their doors. The 
second point to take from this how the economy is affecting the tech 
industry, and by extension the virtual economy of the Internet, in a 
more distinct way when compared to the dotcom bubble burst of the 
early part of the decade. As described by other tech writers, there 
were a great amount of turnover in the tech industry in the first 
half of the decade, which lead to a higher level of innovation and 
the rebirth of the "garage corporation." Facebook, Twitter and 
other "Web 2.0" products were created during the downturn. It 
would seem that we are on the verge of the next "cottage industry" moment of the industry. However, the question that must be addressed 
before the tech sector can advance to "Web 3.0" is the impact of 
funding. That is, with the economy being affected across the board 
instead of merely the tech sector, where will funding come from that 
will help fuel innovation?

I just wanted to use this post to highlight some of the key points from the first day/day zero of the National Communication Assoication 94th Annual Convention in San Diego. 1.) Follow the Boy Scout rule, "Be Prepared": I had every intention of keep a hard core Twitter stream with the little tidbits of wisdom I picked up from the conference. However, there were three times when one of the presenters were not prepared and failed to have the correct dongle for their MacBook. So, my computer was used as a presentation computer. I am not mad at those who borrowed my computer. I was more the happy to help out those who needed the equipment. However, I would encourage all of the people who are presenting for the first time at a major conference to have the correct adapters to power your compute and hook up to a VCA cord or and HDMI cord. 2.) Planners are the key to any conference: I found out exactly the role of the planner as I will be one next year. I salute those who came before me and dread the work I have to do. 3.) The virtual representation of the self/community/point of interest will be a key topic for the next couple of years: Many of the panels that I went to during the first day really had this common thread interwoven into their respective papers/roundtables. Guerilla marketing, cyberterrorism, citizen journalism, nonverbal communication, future mapping and the interdisciplinary model of education all dealt with some level of virtual representation online. I was very impressed with the scholars I heard from today and look forward to reading their work in the future. 4. "Communication and the Future" is a wide open playground: I am also very excited at the level of scholarship that was brought into the field this year and hope this trend continue. I was hoping to have more issues dealing with truly cyberstudies as opposed to the metaissues I was dealing with today. But, I am way too tired to write any more and I'm got an early morning tomorrow. Good night.

I went back home after teaching on 
Monday. My wife looked angry. This is never a good sign. We had some 
small talk. Then, she asks me a question that shocked me...  "why are you listed as single on Facebook?" Huh?!? I rush to my laptop to check my status 
and sure enough I was listed as single. My birthday changed to 
January 1st and I was no longer assign a sex. So, I was 
asexual? I know what my wife was thinking. In virtual cheating, one 
of the signs always listed is the non-relationship status on a 
social networking site. The only item I changed on my status was my 
political views and it seemed to reset all of the rest of my 
biographical data. In essence, I lost all of the signifiers that 
separate myself from other users on Facebook. Sure, I had my degrees 
and I had class (rank) listed. But, all of the other significant 
information was removed from my profile. I spent five minutes retyping in the 
information and tried to assure my wife that it was a glitch in the 
system. Her birthday also changed to January 1st, but she 
didn't lose any other data on her profile. A single glitch can mean 
more than a lost of a string of data. It can also represent the 
temporary lost of identity in the virtual realm or serious trouble in 
the real world.