I haven't updated regularly lately because I am working on something that will be announced on here this week. Stay tuned for exciting news that will involve each and every one of you readers!

Know what this Dodgeball story says to me? Google just made a huge mistake.

Well, MySpace announced today that they are getting into the community-edited news business like Digg. I guess it's a smart move for MySpace, it integrates Fox's news division with their MySpace property and lends a fresh new feature to MySpace.

However with all of these community-edited news sites allowing the news audience to decide the top stories of the day, comes an enormous responsibility for us to read an enormous amount of news. Without the news media as our "gatekeeper" so to speak, we have no filter but a real-time climate of nonstop news to sift thru from a growing number of sources. I have to wonder when we, the audience, will tire of of this huge responsibility?

I also suspect that what will happen is that it will become a small group of news' devotee's (with a lot of time on their hands) who will control what rises to the top of sites like Digg and as marketers catch on, their outsourced hired-voting guns will control community-edited news sites just as PR began to infiltrate broadcast and print in the 90's.

And then we will all probably become fed up and go back to the model of traditional media as gatekeeper.

As the World Turns....

I remember after the September 11th attacks, after the dust settled in Manhattan (for the most part), the steaming rubble still smoking and we were fairly certain that 6 remaining friends and classmates that I knew who were still missing were not going to be found alive, I would receive prayer vigil emails and powerpoints in my email from people or associates who didn't know that I had lost friends. Those emails would infuriate me.

Tragedy and senseless loss of life can spark a fury in people who are trying to process the events and grieve. You want to get angry, because you are angry, and something as simple as a prayer vigil sent with good intentions can trigger an explosion. It can ignite a mourner because the mourner is already frustrated and the person they want to punish, isn't around to face punishment. They are forever robbed of that. Their grief is compounded in its' public status: captured on TV and in stills or audio from now until forever. The deaths of their loved ones, something that should be so private, is public. They will forever be reminded of their loss by history.

With that acknowledgment, I'm going to embed a video here that was created to honor the victims of the VA Tech Shooter. If you are someone who is directly affected by this event, note that it is a tribute and not something you may want to watch right now. (I recommend skipping thru the upfront news images and just viewing the slides of schools showing support)

I'm embedding the video for two reasons: 1)Because I'm impressed by how quickly students of other schools who are users of social media like Facebook responded to the tragedy and stepped up the plate using social media tools to show VA Tech students, victims and their families that the rest of the university world stands behind them with love and support regardless of sporting and academic competitions; and 2) because I want to join that support network.

I'm a hokie now too.

Wow. Applications for social media evolve as needed. This evolution can sometimes provide an enormous service; in this case, I wish they had never been needed.

I am a terrible, slug of an individual. My Blogher pal, Lori, was true to her word and sent me a MAGNO! orginal, lickety-split after we met in NYC two weeks ago. I ripped open the envelope and put the beautiful stone necklace on right away at work. I took a shot of it, which I didn't particularly care for, and before I had a chance to apply some makeup, fix my hair and stage a real photo shoot, I was called into a meeting.

Here I am, two weeks later, still haven't taken another photo. So here it is. Don't look at ME, silly, look at my Magno, baby.



It's a Magno and it's all mine! Get your own!

There's just so much wrong with this that I think it may make it....right?



I'm going to go wash myself off with Belle & Sebastian now.