Lights and Wires in a Blog

"This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts."

These are Edward R. Murrow's lines from his speech at the RTNDA Convention Chicago, Illinois October 15, 1958. As I read the speech a thought pounced on me: 'If Murrow were around today would CBS have offered him space in the blogosphere?' Would they let him have an RSS feed titled 'Blog It Now'?

So what does a corporate blog do for a company? Is it about capitalizing on the opportunity for employees to speak directly to the customer or is it about appearing higher in search engine rankings, personalizing the company and giving it a human face?

If corporate blogs are about keeping an ear to the ground and hearing what's going on in the blogosphere. Does censorship find place in the corporate blog? Mark Jen nods his head violently on hearing that line. (Mark lost his job at Google for something he wrote on his blog.) Technorati executives have asked their employees to have their weblog posts reviewed by staff members before posting. To suppress blog posts from employees and having grass-root corporate conversations vetted through a marketing mouthpiece is more than likely to discourage bloggers from writing.

Blogs allow for some soul-baring and straight talking. They are fun to read because the writing has a gossipy flavor. You can make blasphemous prophecies and get away with it. When a boardroom blogger tries blogging that's like when your grandmother starts saying "O-Snap!"

Does having corporate guidelines, securities and disclosure rules, and prominently displaying disclaimers on blogs make this new found internal communication strategy more trouble than its worth. Or will more companies jump on this bandwagon since its interactive and cheap to deploy.

How does the public sector and not-for-profit sector deploy this technology in enhancing their operations? Will we ever get to hear what makes the public servant blogger’s blood boil and what upsets them? Will actual voices ever be heard from behind the corporate wind bagging and mechanical PR? How will criticisms and rumors be dealt with? Does our charter of rights and freedoms guarantee blogging as one of the freedoms?

In the words of Edward R. Murrow, “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.”

This weapon of blogs could be useful.

Cultural Learnings of Dawson for Make Benefit Glorious College of Mohawk

“Dzień Dobry! Jak się masz? My name is a Borat, when I is go college in Montreal I is execute not the educate.”

Borat's description of the recent "blockbusterings" in the province of Quebec shouldn’t be mistaken for an episode of "Colombine Idol", "C.S.I.:Montreal" or “"This CEGEP has 22 strenchcoats!"”

The fatal shootings at Dawson College in Montreal, leaves many unanswered questions. This is likely to take a while for all of us to come to terms with. The reality of why such an atrocity was ever committed.

Pointing fingers at the goth culture, listening to heavy music and violent video games is a sad exercise in stereotyping and ample proof that people even in this day and age associate rebellious youth behavior to criminal behavior. Who has a minute to understand what really went on in Kimveer Gill's life?

I am sure he was giving out warning signs. His cries for help probably went unaddressed and reinforced his homicidal urges. If only one of his college counselors provided him with ‘Emotional Counseling'. It could possibly have helped the 25-year-old loner Kimveer Gill.

Unfortunately, if the HPRAC (Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council) get their recommendations to be considered ‘Emotional Counseling' might be the thing of the past. Ontario college students' can kiss their access to counseling and psychotherapeutic services goodbye. Human Service Graduates' trained in emotionally supportive counseling skills may never get to practice their craft.

Colleges will have to stop providing students with access to counseling services and close shop. Human/Social Service programs will be sucked dry of content if the restrictive regulation goes through.

The crux of the existence of community colleges happen to be - 'access' and 'diversity'. This new regulation would jeopardize those very core values.

So I ask the Hon. Minister Smitherman, Ontario's Minister of Health and Long-Term Care do you think regulatory practices that exclude competent professionals from providing affordable and accessible services to CAAT students across Ontario is going to be well accepted?

Dziękuję!

Broadcast Engineering: Challenges for the Next Decade

"Video Killed the Radio Star" sing 'The Buggles' nostalgically of the golden age of radio. The song tells of a singer whose career is cut short by television. Looking back broadcast automation was the 'most unkindest cut of all' to the thousands of radio station employees who lost their jobs to computerized automation systems that could smoothly and professionally run less personalized shows in a consolidated industry.

As today's broadcast engineers battle with static, hiss, pops and fades caused by multipath, noise and interference. A new paradigm gains momentum in the form of IBOC – In-Band On-Channel digital audio broadcasting and the IBOC-based HD Radio technology. HD Radio technology enables AM and FM radio stations to broadcast their programs digitally – a tremendous technological leap from the analog broadcasts of the past.

As broadcasters transition out of analog broadcasts and begin to offer HD Radio a robust digital architecture will have to be in place, for enhanced services such as increased data capacity, surround sound or other multicasting solutions to be made available across unused bandwidth.

To feed the consumers insatiable demand for higher-definition wide-screen pictures iconoclastic broadcast engineers will have to negotiate the balance between terrestrial, satellite and cable networks. Increased variety of digital programming available to the consumer will call for revisiting how broadcasts are to be delivered and receivers are engineered.

Broadcasting solutions for the digital domain are scarce, such as digital rights management (DRM) for digital broadcasting based on home servers (DBHS) using receivers with large-capacity storage devices.

Video-On-Demand systems require broadcast, multicast and unicast transmission technologies to be developed to select the appropriate delivery channel and quality of service for each customer.

Efficient networking distribution, efficient spectrum usage and dynamic sharing of the maximum data rate among several applications will be challenges broadcasters have to face with the ongoing evolution of software-defined compression, modulation formats and receivers. Obstacles for future communications architecture will be employing bandwidth management policies and using available broadcast bandwidth for effective multimedia information delivery.

New business models will dictate how file-based audio-video content is broadcast to consumers in today’s fringe markets such as wireless network operators and internet service providers. Tomorrow’s broadcast network services will be carrying interactive data services with both high data rate and high mobility.