online communities

This interesting article by Byron Calame, the independent Public Editor of the New York Times, discusses interactive features that the Times introduced on its website in 2006 and how users "are using it to question, criticize” and, yes, praise” the news staff to a degree never seen in the print paper."Direct interaction between readers, reporters and editors is a major change from the mostly one-way communication model under which the paper has operated since 1851. will affect the way the paper and other major news organizations operate. 

http://www.revver.com

Revver is a video hosting website. Unlike sites like YouTube, Revver allows users to retain ownership rights for the media they upload and share the advertising revenue created when viewers click the unobtrusive image ads automatically appended to the end of each video. Of course, Revver offers html snippets for easy, seamless integration into other blogs and websites. Revver is the primary host for video on www.ezra-g.com.

http://www.last.fm

The "favorite music" field of an online user profile may now be obsolete.

I just discovered this site a few days ago and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites. While I'm not completely familiar with it yet, the gist is this:

Install their small, open-source program on your computer. The program keeps track of each song you listen to and records it to your online profile. This process is called 'scrobbling.' Last.fm takes that information, puts it in a database and "goes to town" with it, offering an array of charts and other information about your listening habits including which artists and songs you listen to and with what frequency. It does this for each of the site's users (there are approximatley 10 million scrobbles per day) and gives you access to that sum of information. You can see who else likes a particular artist or even a particular song and add those people as your friend.

Their standalone program allows you to listen to a personalized "Neighbors" station which plays songs by artists that your friends enjoy. You can free-tag a song while listening to it and perhaps the most innovative feature is that you can enter a list of tags, and the Last.fm will stream a personalized radio station which plays songs with matching user-entered tags.

Of course, they also provide a nifty API so that developers can play with all of the information they record. More casual users can easily add html snippets to their blog or website displaying various types of information about their listening habits.