contentious.com

"I like independent music, but I’m not one to go out there and seek it out. It has to be brought to my attention. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on Vimeo. Vimeo, for those who don’t know, is a video site for amateur film makers. Unlike Youtube, where everyone seems to be idiots, Vimeo is a supportive community for people who create videos. There are a lot of pretty stunning videos with great music on there. These films are turning me onto up and coming artists that I may have otherwise never heard of if not for the movies they were attached to. For example, I discovered the Octopus Project, and Voicst there, and wouldn’t have found them otherwise."

From their FAQ: "Instant audio podcast: Your RSS feed at http://yournamehere.posterous.com/rss doubles as an iTunes-ready podcast feed. Just attach an mp3 to an email and you're good to go. Link to itpc://yournamehere.posterous.com/rss and let your friends subscribe in iTunes directly."

"Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views." Includes map of where your followers are

Generates a realtime interactive map of tweets from the people I follow on Twitter. Would be nice if there was a widget for this!

The full audio comment I submitted to Future Tense. Jon Gordon excerpted this into his Jan 2 show. I posted this audio to Posterous.com, which apparently doesn't yet offer an embeddable player. (hope they do that soon! If so, this could become like a YouTube for audio!)

CrossOver Chromium is a Mac and Linux port of Google's open source Chrome web browser (currently officially available only for Windows). CrossOver Chromium is available for download from CodeWeavers, free of charge.

Fabulous list of 2009 conferences on digital media and related topics. (Thanks, Susan!)

"One of the great weaknesses of the No on 8 campaign is that it did not take advantage of the opportunities for grassroots/netroots organizing. Also, the campaign made a big strategic error by hiding the faces of gay people.

"…The Web has changed organizing; it will never work top-down again. EqualityCamp is a pilot event to bring Web 2.0 geeks who know the lessons of the Web well together with activists for marriage equality and equal rights for gays.

"EqualityCamp on January 3 in San Francisco, is a “BarCamp” style event that will bring together netroots, grassroots, and technologists to help coordinate efforts to repeal Prop 8 and support marriage equality. The people with the most power aren’t the people in a few organizations. We all have power. That means you, too. We’re organizing a way for you to exercise it easily. At EqualityCamp you set the agenda. We discover what we want and we teach each other what we need to know."

"There’s a new threat to a brand’s integrity on the web: Twitter squatters. These are people who register an account on Twitter, a popular service for sending short messages, with the name of a company. For better or for worse, these people become the public face of the firm on this highly popular social network.

"Tim Hortons has been squatted on Twitter. So has Coca-Cola, Sears and many others. Luckily for these brands, however, their respective squatters have done little besides registering the account and leaving it idle. Others may not be as lucky, social media observers say."

Intriguing Facebook app: "Lexicon is a tool to follow language trends across Facebook. Specifically, Lexicon looks at the usage of words and phrases on profile, group and event Walls. For example, you can enter "love, hate" (without quotations) to compare the usage of these two words on Facebook Walls. You may enter up to five terms, where each term can be a word or two-word phrase consisting of letters and numbers."

"Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

"For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).

"The percentage of people younger than 30 citing television as a main news source has declined from 68% in September 2007 to 59% currently."

"The founder and president of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, put Consumerist on sale in mid-November, the same day he announced that he was closing Valleywag, a site focused on technology in Silicon Valley.

"In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Denton said he was also in talks to sell Defamer, a show business gossip site, but he said he had no plans to sell other sites, which include the media sites Gawker and Jezebel.

"Mr. Denton said the troublesome advertising market had led to the sale of Consumerist. In November, he posted a prediction that online advertising — which is how he supports his sites — would decline sharply next year. “I think people have generally been too optimistic” about online ads, he said Tuesday.

"In buying Consumerist, Consumers Union is seeking to attract younger readers, with the hope of eventually selling them online or print subscriptions to Consumer Reports."

"Consumers Union, the independent publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, has purchased Consumerist.com from Gawker Media. The popular consumer watchdog blog will operate independently of Consumer Reports publications and be the first property housed under a new non-profit entity called Consumer Media LLC. The change in ownership will be in effect as of January 1, 2009."

12 pennies + cardboard = the year in binary. No kidding. I might do this! Good mental exercise….

Ill-informed, poorly supported anti-blogger tirade by Paul Mulshine published recently in the WSJ.

"Paul Mulshine's whole WSJ column is essentially a rewrite of the hundreds [of anti-blogger diatribes] that came before and would not be worth noting except the hear-say quote is from a blogger who actually [provides original reporting and analysis]

"The quoted but un-named blogger used to reinforce his points is none other than me–JD Johannes.

"Most recently I produced, shot and edited video reports for TIME Magazine's website and my video was aired on WCBS-TV New York, KWTV-TV Oklahoma City and KOTV-TV Tulsa. I've made TV shows, dozens of customized "sweeps pieces" for local TV and produced five documentaries.

"I do not know why Mr. Mulshine did not give my name. If he had, it would undercut many of his statements. (Or perhaps he did google me and for some reason thought I was not the type to read the Wall Street Journal.) Mr. Mulshine's use of a misleading hear-say quote explains well the demise of his beloved newspaper.

Document management software for mac: iTunes for pdfs. Cool. I might try this.

"The makers describe Papers software as iTunes for .pdf files, and that’s broadly right. The idea is that, when you download an article, it goes into your Papers library. The bibliographic information immediately appears; so does, if you’re lucky, the “metadata” — like the abstract and the list of subjects that the authors thought their article touches on. (I say “if you’re lucky” because this doesn’t always happen automatically.) The document itself gets neatly filed in a folder on your hard drive, and renamed by authors and year.

"Not only can you read the papers, annotate them, find them and create folders of papers on related subjects, you can also use the software to search the big scientific databases like PubMed and the Web of Science. It doesn’t (yet) replace bibliographic software such as Endnote; but it can be used with it quite neatly."

"We have an incredible opportunity, now we have to figure out what to make of it. I hope to begin a conversation about what we want to accomplish with BarCamp NewsInnovation.

"The plan so far is to hold regional BarCamps in Chicago, Portland and Washington, D.C. sometime in January. I have proposed other sites but have not had volunteers step forward just yet and roll with it. If you are interested contact me.

"I also am proposing we hold national BarCamp NewsInnovation in Philadelphia, spearheaded by ideas floated by Sean Blanda, sometime in April."