Organizational blogs are more conversational than web sites

Blogs are a good place to speak candidly with a conversational style (e.g., "invite people to a conversation"), and this conversational style may be an important part of the process of building and maintaining computer-mediated relationships for organizations, conclude Tom Kelleher and Barbara M Miller in their paper “Organizational Blogs and the Human Voice: Relational Strategies and Relational Outcomes", published in the latest issue of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

Some of the most important findings of their study, where the hypotheses of the potential advantages of organizational blogs over traditional Web sites were tested, are

• blogs were perceived as more conversational than organizational Web sites
• this conversational human voice correlated positively with other previously-identified relationship outcomes. The perceived personal nature of organizational blogs, in this case, is related to relationship indicators.

However, the authors note, "blogs allow people representing organizations to speak candidly, blogs may not be the best venue for "PR" messages intended to talk up an organization's commitment to its public relationships."

U2 on audience and performance

I got my hands on a two months old Rolling Stone magazine featuring an in-depth interview with Bono, written by Jann S. Wenner. Interestingly, Bono states that very little has been written about performers' psychology. Performers usually try to fill a hole, that's obvious, Bono says and continues: "What's less obvious is that through this insecurity we develop a kind of a third eye or a sort of reptilian sense of what's going on in the room.".

I experienced one of those moments when you realize that what you just read, you've always wanted to know, it's just that you haven't been aware of it until then. The question on what goes on inside a singer's head when performing in front of a crowd of thousands of fans really caught my interest, for some subconscious reason. Perhaps because I sense a paradox when it comes to performing music. On one hand, music has a way of completely absorbing you once you start playing or singing. You can really lose yourself in producing sound and the surroundings basically disapperar. But on the other hand, there are great performers who read their audience brilliantly, artists with great stage presence who are completely aware of what's going on in the back rows of the arena. Robbie Williams is one of them. After a quick search for academic writing on this delicate balance between complete absorbation and complete connectedness with every individual in the arena, I'm no smarter. If anyone can point me to resources, readings or blog postings about this, I'd be grateful!

Further down the article, Bono answers Wenner's question "What are you trying to do with the audience?" like this:

"To lose my own sense of self, self-consciousness - and theirs."

There's an excerpt from the article here (RS 986, November 3, 2005), though not containing the citations above.

New survey on set-top boxes

IT viikko reports on the major reason to Finns not getting a set-top box: many feel it is still unnecessary. This is particularly the case in cable households, according to a telephone survey ordered by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority. The survey also concludes that respondents owning a set-top box are in general satisfied with the purchase and taking it in use didn't cause any problems for the majority. The usability of the STB:s was lauded by many users.

Eyes on iTV site up and running

Me and my colleagues at MediaCity are currently organizing a conference about iTV. The event will take place in September 27-28th 2006 here in Vasa. The outline is to shed light on the development and production of interactive television programs and the broadcasting of them. Naturally, the focus of the conference also turns to audience testing of iTV (that's what I'm currently working with at the iDTV Lab). For more information, sign up for the news letter at the conference web site.

I'm in good company

About a year now, I've been actively involving my left hand (I'm originally right handed) in everyday tasks, such as writing and using the mouse. The reason to why I started this endevour was an ever increasing pain in my right hand wrist when writing, cooking and so forth. ALong the way, I realized that it is surprisingly easy to transmit the tasks of the right hand to the left one. And it's quite efficiant too being ambidextrous; when I'm scrolling up and down a web page with my left hand, my right one takes notes. The same scenario a couple of years ago would have had my left hand resting all along while my right one did all the working.

Anyhows, since I may be someday a full-fledged ambidextrous I decided to look up the phenomenon and I realized I'm in good company! Kurt Cobain, Leonardo da Vinci and Harry Truman among others were all ambidextrous. According to the wiki site, playing the piano has an impact on this interesting ability. Now there's a benefit of playing my piano I've never come across before!

Tip of the day: loads of short films available on the net to watch at the Sundance Film Festival's site.

EuroITV registration

The early registration is now available for the EuroITV 2006 conference.

Moblogging

There's a moblog about the conference Mediespråk 2006 I'm currently attending.

Found: a form of studying that works (for me)

Finally, a weekend spent merely at home. It feels like I've been running around like a blind herd of sheep again, both due to private and leisure matters and to working more or less, like the weekend course in Biological Psychology I attended (as I run tests with psycho fysiological measuring at work, I consider it to be work related, al though I've always been fascinated by the human brain).

The creative result of the weekend is portrayed in the picture, one pillow and 6 christmas cards for relatives (hope they're not reading this blog, otherwise, the surprise will be spoilt for them!). And while sitting with my feet on the desk, cross-stiching and sewing, I decided to listen to some of the podcasts I subsribe to. I decided not to go with the more entertaining ones but rather scientific ones, like Vetenskapsradion (science radio) and Forskning och framsteg (research and progress). Et voilà, I discovered a great way to learn new things. The combination of listening to a story on what current computer and programming trends a Head of Research at Microsoft sinks and systematic cross-stiching was brilliant for me. There's no point in simply listening to pod casts as I get way too restless to be able to follow the discussions. I've tried to work at the same time, but that's too distracting. Working steals my attention away from what's being said. But this, creative handicraft work combined with analysis and reviews of research conducted around the world, is a winning combination for me.

Do we overestimate our genes?

“As if our destiny is written in our genes. It’s a remarkable idea, but its continuous strong existence in our society and in debates on different issues is interesting."

Veikko Launis, Finland’s first and only Professor of Medical Ethics, on the general opinion that increased knowledge about our genes will not only liberate us from diseases but also reveal who we are and where we came from as human beings. He’s interviewed in the news paper Åbo Underrättelser today.

Squirrel mobile phone

Here's a cool project. MIT Media Laboratory graduate student Stefan Marti has built a Cellular Squirrel, a cellphone embodied in a small portable animatronic, Bluetoothenabled device.

Use your illusion

"Use your illusion" Guns' N' Roses urged us, twice even, in 1991. You can start using it here.

New Kent ep

Just got hold of the new ep from Kent, "The hjärta and smärta ep". Beautiful (and self bibliographical it seems) as always, especially the track Vi mot världen (We against the world). The lyrics go "Mina tankar är så klara nu, ni kan släppa den där bomben nu" which roughly means "My thoughts are so clear now, you can drop that bomb now.", sounds promising. It's a shame I don't have time to really listen to it until late tonight.

An adventure blog

My colleague Tommy at iDTV Lab is off to New Zealand for a month next Saturday. He and his team mates blog about their adventure here. Be sure to enjoy your stay down there!

First snow has arrived!

I had earmarked Sunday - today that is - for sitting by the computer. I planned on finally paying this blog some attention, and play Sims 2 and WoW. I still have some wild boars to take care of before my mission is done. But I woke up this morning by an sms chanting "Oh look it's snowing, oh look it's snowing". Indeed it is and that's great! This, and the fact that the temperature is -0.2 degrees celsius, means that I'll replace the blogging and game playing with changing the tyres of the car to winter ones and getting my car ready for winter.

Susanno?

In many of the Swedish blogs I read, one theme of discussion lately has been blind men and the always attentive women. The question why men don’t see that the trash needs to be taken out, or that the laundry needs to be done while the female part of the household drudges on as a martyr without any help has been pondered.

I’m not sure whether I should be affended, as the above description of the Man suits me perfectly. I rarely see and thus attend to the layers of dust on the shelves; neither do I realize that the flowers need watering until all that’s left in the pot are beige straws (happened last night to my pot of chives… I’ll try some first aid after writing this.). To prevent this, I figured I’d have my pda calendar notify me for instance every Sunday night that the green lives in our household could do with some attention. I wonder if that would help.

The answer of one female blogger to why men don’t see things as well as women do, is that way back, men hunted and women nested. Our ways of thinking are fundamentally different, strictly biologically. This is pretty much saying that I, since I’m obviously blind when it comes to householding matters, am not a woman but rather a femalish man. That does not match my own view.

I guess these bloggers write in a provocative or light, entertaining manner, and the only thing proven here is that I absolutely lack a sense of humor. But still, wondering why men as a group don’t see things that need to be done in a household (and thereby why women as a group do see them) is a bit single-tracked.

Research results on iTV

The press conference we had yesterday regarding our 77-pages long report on the first digital interactive tv-format in Finland, Enigma, caught gladly enough attention. Our results are cited in many papers and radio news broadcasts. I hope to get the time to translate the summary into English some time soon, as I believe the results could interest many. I noticed there's an ongoing discussion about the future of mobile iTV on the aoir-mailing list. I'll definitely write an article about the study of iTV and the results I got to the EuroITV conference in Athens next spring.

News

We were in the news last night, regarding the drama series NDA that was shot here in our tv-studio at MediaCity. The first episode aired last night on YLE, the public service broadcaster in Finland. The news clip is found here (in Finnish only). As a note, I'll mention that YLE is not airing any radio or tv-shows between 2 pm and midnight today. The staff is protesting against the plans on dismissing about 200 workers.

While I'm at it, I'll point you to a blog by the company DirectNIC. The blog's become known as "The survival of New Orleans blog", according to the author Michael Barnett, writing from New Orleans.

Nokia report on mobile tv released today

The results from the mobile TV pilots conducted in Helsinki this spring is out today. There's a press release at Nokia's website here.

Pilates and science

I just had a few delicious bruchetta sandwiches and mozzarella salad. Exercising really gets you hungry. A new class for the season started at my gym today, fitness pilates. Starting us off, the instructor gave us a word of warning: "This may come as a surpise, but the less you've exercised fitness pilates, the easier will it be." Thus, the more you work out, the harder will it be, which is not the case with regular work out. I think I can handle it though, as so is science. The less you know, the easier everything seems. The more you know, the more complicated the world and the structures in it seem and the questions you ask are more complex.

Reiki

I'm off to a Reiki session now. A colleague at work convinced me to join him and try out this controversal method of gaining energy. I must admit, I'm pretty curious to see how it will affect me, beyond the placebo effect...

Up date: When heading home after the session, I saw a woman, walking in the sidewalk, whose posture suggested fatigue and dejection. You could tell that she wasn't about to rank this one as one of her best days ever. Up til that moment, I had had a hard time defining my state, labelling what I had experienced, as I felt almost nothing during the Reiki. But then I realised that "light" was the best word to describe the condition. I felt light. Not healed, not cured, not energetic, not decompressed, just "light". I didn't feel spirited either, al though I had high spirits. That was probably a herd of endorfins dancing around in my cells and molecules due to the skin contact and the resting.

But what about the Reiki session itself? my colleagues ask. The word that comes to mind is the musical term "largo", which means that you play in a very slow tempo. Too slow for me.