Sacramento Loaves & Fishes – I plan on stopping by here while I am in town. If you are concerned about the children profiled in Oprah’s piece on the tent cities in Sacramento, check out this local charitable organization. The Mustard Seed is their school for homeless children and right now they need uniforms, socks and other basic supplies.

Using Twitter To Help Students – Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, plans to launch a campaign to attract Twitter followers, while benefiting DonorsChoose.org in the process. He will donate $3 to DonorsChoose.org for every new person who follows him on Twitter (aka his “Tweet to Beat”). The goal is to directly help 25,000 U.S. public school students in low-income and high-need classrooms in two weeks.

DonorsChoose.org‘s founder, Charles Best, recently spoke at a meeting for my work. He said that as a young teacher, he wanted to create a way for people to donate directly to classrooms in need. He originally created interest by secretly funding teacher requests with his own pay until others found the site and began to donate. His efforts and subsequent success thanks to collaborators like Tim Ferris reminded me of The Tipping Point.

New York Times Goes Hyper-Local – Since the NYTimes’ The Local launched earlier this month, I’ve observed the way contributors have been interacting with Fort Greene, Clinton hill and New Jersey residents to create newsworthy and relevant topics. If it’s true that The Times is indeed trialing these sites to build a software platform for local bloggers, I think this is a great idea – in theory. They are potentially going to offer CMS tools and tech support (for a price), with built in ad models. My question is, aside from being under the banner of the New York Times, what does a blogger have to gain by using their platform?

Hyper-local blogs already exist and many don’t make much money or any at all – it’s not the point. A lot of blogs are collectively run and many do it for free, because they care about their community. Organized hyper-local community sites such as BushwickBK.com unearth the quirky and subversive while providing real value to local residents – an events calendar, property listings, restaurant reviews and more. What would they gain from affiliating themselves with The NYTimes?

Perhaps The NYTimes sees a market in local bloggers with ambitious ideas about a niche hyper-local blog who want to get started right away, with very little web/tech ability. They would definitely benefit from all those resources, including access to major advertisers, something “old school” bloggers have had to earn after a period of time and by proving they can draw an audience. If someone can make a living working full time as a hyper-local niche blogger who only writes reviews of local street art, more power to them.

More power to the NYTimes as well, they need to do what they can to stay relevant and in business through this recession. I visit the NYTimes website every morning; they are my primary source for news. As someone who appreciates hyper-local coverage, I am hoping that they are mindful of incorporating quality hyper-local blogger content into their editorial plan – the opportunity to be featured on the New York Times website would be a huge motivating factor for people to sign up for the service. The ability to also seamlessly integrate an existing blog into their platform would, of course, be essential.

iWant: Sennheiser Evolution G2 Series Basic Kit - As soon as I am able to scrape up the money in the next few weeks, I am investing in this puppy. Along with an extra lav set and some other assorted goodies, these are production purchases that I need to fulfill some creative goals of mine this summer. Stay tuned for details on those, coming very soon…

OK, Daniela. Before you ruin any chance of sleep by visiting Hulu.com, step away from your computer. You don’t want to look like a zombie when you see the fam.

I rarely indulge in dorky fan spazz-outs so, deal with it.

Click the pic to watch Matt’s footage!

“The Sistas in Denver on April 17, 2007, at the Fillmore Auditorium, opening for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I have no idea what song this was, it’s not on their album, but oh my god did it rock. Sorry about the sound quality, it was taken by a small camera. Incidentally, I have permission from the band to post this. ” – Matt Bentley

Thanks for posting your video comment, Matt! Set up a flickr account and let me know when all your pics are up!

Besides moving, there are a lot of other things going on in my life over the next few days so I can’t guarantee I will be blogging. I invite you to stop visiting this page until Monday, and enjoy the sunshine.

Links to Peruse

* Poptopus – via mashable
A MySpace compatible music widget that pays every time a song is played, instead of only when it’s purchased.

* Added to the Lair’s Feed: Format Magazine

* I enjoy reading these blog entries by aspiring journalists/soon to be grads.

* Brandon Fletcher’s new “we met online” series Date: Unknown

I don’t think the people he is following are particularly interesting. It’s actually pretty cringe inducing for me to watch, but some people are into that. What I do find interesting is that he’s visually documenting something that has been happening for quite some time (people hooking up through MySpace) and using the same medium to promote/distribute/find sponsorships.

* Branding yourself through Social Networks – via quicksprout

QuickSprout’s steps to branding success are (to put it nicely) no-brainers. However, for those who are aspiring artists/filmmakers/new media moguls with limited knowledge of the vast world social networking, the pointers are useful. It could even help those who claim to be experts. It amuses me how the most “honkin’-their-own-2.0-horn” sites still don’t seem to get what being Sticky actually means.

5 Signs that You Aren’t Sticky

by Daniela

1. Your site has a blog, but it is rarely updated.

2. You offer video on your site, but limited options of how that video can be shared (no RSS)

3. You have to login to view content on your site (lame)

4. Your website is as visually appetizing as petmeds

5. No one ever comments

Linkage

1.  Zooomr – Better than Flickr? Hm. Tell me, I’m to lazy to find out (yet)…

Apparently the creator of Zooomr was only 17 years old when he wrote it, and did it in three months. I feel old, and slow.

2. How to track your roommate with frickin’ lasors

3. This chick loves Google more than you do.

4. Hate MySpace? Show them how it’s done! Aw yeah, Ning is back!!

5. SXSW Panel on Web Companies 2.0 – pretty cool! I hope they liveblog/simulacast.

6. Film To Expose MTV, BET & VH1 - Public Enemy’s Professor Griff makes an appearance in the film.

7. Bob Woodruff Reports: To Iraq and Back (Thanks, Monty)

8. This isn’t a link, but isn’t it awesome that Medieval Times’ hotline is 1-888-we-joust

????

WTF #2  Mun2′s random gay diss – Discuss

I love Mun2. They serve clever, original content and have an active, diverse community/audience.  So having said that, being a fan and dedicated viewer, I think that when I come across things that seem a little sketch I should call them out and open up a space to discuss. So here we go…

If you subscribe to their podcast (holamun2: el podcast-o) you can download the segment in question as well: Maestro Ejival’s Review Corner: Spirited Away (2/23/07)

Take a look. Besides the Maestro being slightly creepy (which is both hilarious and disturbing), there was a WTF moment that definitely caught my eye during his review of this fab Japanese Anime film: 

Excerpt….

“You will love it, or you are gay, ok?”

… So Mun2 is not the first channel to use the word gay the way teens use it to insult each other, however considering that their primary audience is teen/young adult latino kids (a set that I am still young enough to be a part of), and knowing how incredibly homophobic a lot of young latinos can be (hello!)… Why would you even include that?

Why not say something like, “You will love it, or I will come to your house and sit on you?” Would it then be unfair to make fun of overweight people?

I just don’t get it. I found this segment to be totally entertaining up until the gay diss threat. Besides being born Latina and raised with Latinos of all sorts, I lived in Washington Heights for two and a half years, a neighborhood that is historically Dominican. I have heard young people in the neighborhood use the word “gay” as an insult more times than I can count. Sometimes it was in fun (joking) but most of the time it was a straight up diss, a threat to manhood, calling someone out for being outside the norm.

I am a little concerned that there were probably at least a handful of Mun2 viewers who saw this, laughed, and internalized just a little more homophobia. Like a lot of teens, they might not have parents who they can talk to about their own sexual identity issues/questions, and here they come across yet another example of the word being used in a negative way. Not cool.

True, kids use “gay” as a word that is often unrelated to sexual preference.

“Oh, that movie was gay” (lame/boring)

“Stop being so gay!” (uncool)

And any network that is trying to stay connected to their audience needs to be aware of the ways that kids communicate with each other.

But what if kids all of sudden were saying “spic” on a regular basis in the same way? Would Mun2 co-opt that word as well? In the same context?

Perhaps if this was the first time I noticed Mun2 using “gay” in a situtation that seemed a little sketchy, I wouldn’t even bother raising this question. But no, it’s happened before:

“Some of you have asked RBG, when will you stop being so gay?”

..In this case, “gay” probably meant “cheesy”. Hey, it’s RGB. So ok, fine. Why am I even bringing this up if I know that it’s all tongue in cheek?

Because I think if you are going to co-opt a word, and transform it’s use in a public space (in the context of light entertainment) you owe it to your impressionable audience to at least offer some sort of explanation. I’m not insulting the intelligence of teens; I am sure they can tell the difference between casually calling something they don’t like “gay” and beating the crap out of a classmate because they prefer the same gender.

But until stuff like this stops happening:

Excerpt:

Mr. Orozco, now 21, says he ran away from home before his 13th birthday after being beaten by his alcoholic father, who was angry about his sexual orientation.

…Shouldn’t we, as purveyors of entertainment, in addition to offering content containing usage of the word “gay” as offensive or something “uncool”, also offer something that provides a message of tolerance?

…WTF?

Until words like beaner, nigger, chink, cunt, gay, etc. continue to be used to hurt others, I feel like we need to be really clear with our messages and as we use these words lightly, as a reflection of current slang, we need to be responsible with how we back up this usage with a historical context. I feel like we can stay in tune with our audience, entertain them, and educate at the same time.

I feel that Mun2 sets the bar high for both educating and entertaining an audience, which is why the random gay diss made me go WTF? in the first place.