Using four iPhone apps, CameraBag ($1.99) Melodica ($0.99) Brushes ($4.99) and Banner ($0.99), Richard Koci Hernandez produced a 3:25 “movie” that uses 54 photos to document 54 days of riding Bus 54 in Oakland, CA. Content produced entirely on the iPhone. I’m unclear on how he turned the content into the video. (I’ve asked.)

Watch on Facebook or Vimeo.

This post originally appeared at FlipTheMedia.

You know Twitter is a Hot Topic when the opinion of one 15-year-old British teen is presented by a U.S. bank as “fact” — and the MSM jumps all over it. Without caveats. Shame on you, Bloomberg, because as a wire service, you helped this story go viral.

Matthew Robson, I believe that the execs at Morgan Stanley used you as PR fodder. (Which succeeded, probably beyond the wildest dreams of their marketing/PR folks.) Enjoy your 15-minutes of fame!

In the “I can’t believe that they really said this” category (it may explain the sorry state of banking in the U.S.), Morgan Stanley execs reveal their total disconnect with reality:

The US bank said the report was “one of the clearest and most thought provoking insights we have seen”, and published it.

Morgan Stanley folks, I point you to Pew Research, Groundswell, Here Comes Everybody, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever, Millenial Makeover, The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media, anything by Yochai Benkler (@yochaibenkler) or Larry Lessig (@lessig) or Jeremiah Owyang (@joywang). Oh, and I’m pretty sure your corporate library has access to either Gartner or Forrester research. Check it out.

The Guardian (bless them) published the teenager’s “research note” in easy-to-read HTML. (Bloomberg didn’t even link to the Financial Times, which published a pdf of the report.) I ask you – are there any references for the sweeping generalizations in this “thought provoking” report? [Hint: no. A subsequent report asserts intern Matthew Robson queried a few friends via text.]

We can’t really call this “news” because assertions that might have been bolstered with research citations, like this one … “consumers are using more and more media but [many] are unwilling to pay for it …” are, umm, old news.

Although Twitter is the hook (Bloomberg headline: Morgan Stanley Intern Says Teens Don’t Twitter, Prefer Events), there are insights that are reflected in more nuanced research on millennials and validated by my experiences in the higher ed classroom. One of those:

“Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it,” Morgan Stanley analysts Edward Hill-Wood, Patrick Wellington and Julien Rossi said in a note, citing Robson.

Note that the Bloomberg reporter was acting more like a transcriber than reporter (lots of “he said” quotes). The reporter could have spent an hour or so doing some online research and written a report putting the bank’s fluff piece into context.

Then there are inanities like this one:

Every teenager has access to the Internet, be it at school or at home.

Really? EVERY teenager? I can assure you that there are a lot of teens in Washington who theoretically have internet connection at school, but the schools have blocked YouTube, Facebook, et al. And there is certainly not a computer for every student (even if social networking sites were not blocked).

Serendipity is one of the reasons I participate in the Twitter space. And serendipity got him the two-week internship:

In January Rudolph, a three-year-old whippet, was being walked by Matthew’s mother in Greenwich Park when he became friendly with the dog of Patrick Wellington, a senior financial analyst at Morgan Stanley. His mother and Mr Wellington began chatting about her son’s struggles to get a work experience placement.

“We had tried many places, mainly in the local area,” said his mother. Matthew had written to local businesses, solicitors and banks including Lloyds TSB and all had turned him down.

So he wrote to Morgan Stanley, which offered him a two-week internship and two weeks ago on Monday he set off for the bank’s offices in Canary Wharf.

The Morgan-Stanley PR effort led to headlines like these (head-shake):

• Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert
• Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe
• Twitter ‘uncool’, teen researcher tells investors
• Teen who doesn’t tweet reveals how he became top dog in the City
• Morgan Stanley’s teenage star: ‘I understood banking within a week’
• Twitter and teens: Challenging the idea of the young digital native
• Twitter is for old people, work experience whiz-kid tells bankers

Sidenote: my just-turned-16 year old niece joined Twitter late last month. She is following an eclectic group (including her aunt – and no, I didn’t suggest this!). After she’s been on Twitter a while, I’ll ask her for an assessment.

Here’s Malcolm Gladwell, criticizing. Here’s Chris Anderson, rebutting. And here’s where you can read Free … for free (Scribd iPaper).

I advise about-to-be-graduating students, people thinking about political office, and folks in the job hunt to double-check privacy settings on their social networks. I suggest that they restrict their photos to “intimate friends” (my language) and not “the world.”

However, I don’t do a good enough job of advising them to double-check their significant other’s privacy settings.

Sir John Sawers, newly appointed MI6 chief, has learned that lesson the hard way.

According to The (London) Telegraph:

[H]is wife’s posting on the social networking site [Facebook] have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends and where they go on holiday.

Lady Shelley Sawers put no privacy protection on the account, meaning that any of Facebook’s 200 million users in the ‘London’ network could see the entries, no matter where they were in the world.

Oops.

When I was in San Francisco in May, I met up with a college friend. She asked that all of us who were posting photos not to include her last name. That’s an admonition most parents make regarding their children. It’s one that many of us might consider requesting in advance, as it’s much easier to nip compromising photos in the bud in “real time” than retroactively.

This anecdote reminds me of my junior year at the University of Georgia. I was running for senior class secretary. I got a call from a friend that the campus daily, the Red&Black, had a photo of me at a campaign party in “half blink” … which made me look inebriated. (Shoot, half-blink will make most people look inebriated!) Note: this was before cellphones and the internet! I don’t recall who got my resultant panicked telephone call, but the photo did not run. And yes, I was elected.

This personal story shows that compromising or suggestive photos are nothing new. What is new is today’s real-time, almost-ubiquitous web with millions of cameras (cellphones) and push-button publishing making the photos more easily accessible to everyone.

Talking with Tim Reha at the Seattle Wine Awards event two weeks ago. The UWMCDM new media team working the event: Annie, Filiz, Meg, Rubi. Ladies, we could not have done it without you!

Citing the classic public-official-gone-bad investigative journalism that many of us worry about losing in these days of belt-tightening at newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Connie Schultz takes aim at “aggregators” as the source of online newspaper financial woes.

She compares “aggregation” at sites like The Daily Beast and Newser with a 1918 case between the Associated Press and International News Service. She writes:

[P]arasitic aggregators reprint or rewrite newspaper stories, making the originator redundant and drawing ad revenue away from newspapers at rates the publishers can’t match.

[...]

INS was copying or rewriting AP stories and transmitting them by telegraph and telephone to papers in western U.S. time zones.

The Supreme Court ruled that INS engaged in unfair competition that ultimately would drive AP out of business. It enjoined INS from reproducing the AP stories, but only for a brief period while AP’s dispatches had commercial value.

Thus, the financial solution and the way to ensure that investigative journalism continues, Schultz believes, is to rewrite copyright law to force “parasitic aggregators” to reimburse content creators for using the “sweat of our brow to compete against us.” The words are from Daniel Marburger, professor in the College of Business, Arkansas State University.

Their proposal is to put a 24-hour hold on copy that appears on a news site.

A 24-hour hold on links in the era of Twitter? You must be kidding me. Because, at its heart, this proposal questions the value of other people — or automated web sites — pointing potential readers at a story via a link.

What, pray tell, makes someone an ‘aggregator’?

The two sites that Schulz mentions do not fall into my mental model of an aggregator. Google News (normally the news industry whipping boy) is an aggregator; an alogorithm “decides” what stories appear on the news page. The links reflect headlines and the first sentence (or two) from a news organization RSS feed.

Conversely, I don’t think of either The Daily Beast or Newser (the two examples Schulz provides) as an “aggregator.” At each site, a human writes a compelling recap of a “print” (aka “text”) story and links to an original story. In my mental model, this is not aggregation. The writers are “adding value” to their readers, who may have never visited the originating web site. Moreover, this is exactly the same thing that TV and radio news stations have done, at least in local markets, for decades. One key difference: those on-the-air news reports don’t have a mechanism for getting the reader to the original newspaper story.

At 9.30 pm Pacific, the top two stories at the “cheat sheet” on Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast were  a Washington Post story about Obama and climate change, datestamped Sunday  5.54 pm Pacific, and a story about Honduras that linked to the Wall Street Journal, datestamped Sunday 4.35 pm Pacific. Both newspaper sites indicate that these are stories in their Monday printed edition, but neither timestamps their articles or properly credits the day they were published online. (Why not? Because they are still thinking “fixed, once-a-day publishing”? Because they haven’t customized their print-to-web software to consider the unique chracteristics of web publishing and the web audience?)

But the Cheat Sheet, which is not copy-and-paste but instead writing with an edge, isn’t the primary attraction of The Daily Beast. There are photo galleries like this one. And then there’s the TV newsclips, another use of news content. But The Daily Beast produces even more original content, much of it commentary. We can argue about the “proper” role of commentary versus reporting in the “ideal” daily news diet, but commentary is not ripping off “the sweat of our brow.”

On the other hand, Newser features more non-self-generated content on its home page (”on the grid”) than The Daily Beast. One of those top stories at 9.30 pm Sunday was about Michael Jackson. The Newsweek story it links to is datelined Saturday 27 June (no time, again); the Newser recap, Sunday at 6.27 pm Pacific. For this one, Schulz’s 24-hour “hold” doesn’t come into play.

Interesting to me, Newser also appears to be an Associated Press subscriber.

So what’s the bottom line?

Yes, news organizations need to figure out a business model. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them — they’ve had decades reaping monopoly rents that they did not use to explore new markets.

But demanding money for links isn’t going to save the day. Either we’ll simply stop linking to you — and you’ll see your traffic drop accordingly — or there will be so many link forms (Twitter, blogs, search engines, etc.) that there won’t be a way to assess everyone — or one intrepid national organization will realize that if they don’t charge for links, they’ll get all the traffic (free-rider effect).

See, like many other schemes that seek to make people pay for generic news, this one would work only if 100 percent of the news sites agreed. And that would require an anti-trust exemption, which ain’t gonna happen.

Related:

• Digital Goods Are Non-Rival; Why Is This Concept So Foreign To People?
• The Future Of Journalism Discussions Need Reality Economics
• “No More Free Content”
• Follow Up: “No More Free Content”

Tip: Jay Rosen

Announcing Mike and Kathy’s summer BBQ schedule:

Dates/Times

• Sunday 5 July :: 3 pm :: RSVP
• Sat 25 July :: 4 pm :: RSVP
• Sun 23 Aug (the day after Gnomedex – Kathy’s b’day weekend) :: 3 pm :: RSVP
• Sat 12 Sep (Kathy’s dad and Mike’s parents here for this one) :: 4 pm :: RSVP

RSVP not necessary but it is helpful. Trying GoogleDocs, not eVite; RSVP info is private (for Kathy and Mike’s eyes only).

Where

Lynnwood, WA, near Edmonds Community College. Contact Kathy or Mike directly for address info/directions. With planning, we can pick people up at the Ash Way, Lynnwood, Edmonds CC transit centers or Mountlake Terrace park-and-ride …. or better yet, at SR99 and 196th!

Details

For the grill, we provide:

• Polish sausages
• Hamburgers
• A few vegi burgers
• Chicken of some sort (Kathy’s whim)
• (Probably) flash-grilled “pizza”

[BYO grill-able flesh if your taste buds feel like something else!]

We’ll also have

• Mike’s baked beans
• Mike’s famous bean dip & chips
• Beer, wine & soda

[BYO Drink if you don't appreciate the lottery!]

Please consider bringing something complementary … you can provide details on the RSVP form. Talk to us via phone, e-mail, text or tweet if you want to know what’s “missing” (desserts, veggies always appreciated – please be prepared to take leftovers home with you!).

TwitPic brings us photo tweets; Trottr is the latest audio tweet tool.

It’s simple. Create a (free) account and then call one of the access numbers (there are several countries on the list). Enter the PIN you received upon registration, and your phone is synched.

To make a recording, call an access number and record 140 seconds of audio. You can then tweet the message, include it in an email or on a web page, share it on Facebook or Digg or del.icio.us. Listen to my test case (on the Trottr site). Or download the mp3. How do you see this tool being used?

My iPhone (16GB, white) and I got off to a rocky start.

After standing in line (in the rain, the first in 30 days) for an hour and a half, I entered the very-well organized Apple iPhone purchase-and-activation system.* Buy the phone and give the AT&T computers a heads-up that a phone number migration is about to happen. Move to activation station. In less than the time it took to take that picture, my Blackjack had been deactivated (which I discovered when I tried to post it to TwitPic).

Open the box, remove the phone, plug it into one of those laptops, and moments later I hear, “You’re good to go. It will take a few minutes for the phone to show that it’s active.”

Use that “wait time” to pick up screen protection (I choose matte finish) and grippy side/back cover. Wander over to a station with no Apple employee to sync my contacts with my MobileMe account. (I migrated my Blackjack contacts to Apple’s address book, using The Missing Sync.) Phone still showing “not activated” so I connected to my MBP and the store wifi network. Walk through iTunes setup stuff; sync calendar and address book. Check phone. Still not activated.

I’m not yet impatient, but I wander back to my activation guy. He says, “It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.” I tell him it’s been more than 15 minutes. He takes the phone, checks that AT&T still thinks it’s activated, asks me to wait a little longer. So I play around with it (Tweet from Safari) and wonder if I’ll ever get used to the keyboard. Typo city!

Another 20 minutes or so, and I go back to my activator. He double checks (again) and then physically turns the phone off and back on. Success! [Of course, it's sad that "when in doubt, reboot" remains a necessary consumer electronics mantra.]

I packed up my laptop and headed out for breakfast. But first I called Mike to tell him I was a proud owner of a new phone! (Voice dialing rocks!) Even without my Jawbone (I’d left it at home), I thought the device worked pretty well as a phone.

The Application Store
Given my experience with Twitter’s web interface on Safari, I went straight to the Twitter utilities. I decided to experiment with TweetDeck because (a) it’s free, (b) I love it on my desktop (and the two can be synced), and (c) other applications had more mixed reviews (even Tweetie). Oh, yeah, that was a good decision! What a difference a dedicated application makes!

As I prepared to eat an indulgent breakfast, I tested the TwitPict application. I think I prefer the Blackjack’s MMS texting, because I could send pictures to TwitPic, Flickr and Facebook with one “push” (the disadvantage to this method was a very short caption character limit). Unless there is an application to share pictures that I haven’t found yet, I have to post a pic to each application separately. (Note: I haven’t checked out Flickr yet, but I have subsequently added the Facebook application.)

While eating breakfast, I noticed that the iPhone sucks battery power. Less than three hours after activation, without constant use, I was at 55 percent battery power. Ouch. That’s not an 8-hour day! Of course, I wasn’t turning the phone “off” when I sat it aside, I merely let the screen go to sleep (because this was my practice with the Blackjack).

Once I got home, I seamlessly connected to our home Verizon/FiOS network. I fiddled with the settings (rearranged the home icons, changed the wallpaper, added passcode access and changed auto-lock time to 5 minutes, added my primary gmail account) and read the “finger tips” instruction booklet.

Day One Advanced
I had a motorcycle safety instructor meeting this evening. Before/during, I discovered the coolness of maps (it’s like a mini-GPS application; I checked my progress when stopped at red lights), replied to my first text message (I was looking unsuccessfully for “reply” — it took me a second look to see the text box and think “tap that”), added some more applications (Flashlight, Facebook, UrbanSpoon), played with the compass and watched a YouTube clip.

Oh, and I published my first photo to MobileMe; well, I thought I did. I had sent a notice of upload to my gmail account; when I clicked on the link in that mail, Apple prompted me for login info! These uploads aren’t public?!? As you can see, there’s nothing “there” in Firefox or Safari. It turns out the problem is the link in the mail: it contains the caption in the string. Of course, the link is to the gallery folder, not the specific, public image. Lame.

I realize that I am getting better with the keyboard (except for the “m” — I keep hitting backspace) and have figured out how to activate the spelling correction. I’ve decided accessing the number or special character “keyboards” is no less bothersome than mode changes on the Blackjack (and the iPhone mode change is far more visible).

The screen clarity is amazing! I now understand why insiders were agitating/hoping for an Apple tablet this summer.

On my to-do list for the weekend:

• Ringtones – doable? I want Mike’s calls to still be the theme from Doctor Who!
• Flickr upload
• MMS
• Play with video

Overall, I’m very tickled!

* One Reservation
There was a long and congenial line of folks who had reserved an iPhone. Apple employees circulated with cookies, granola bars, water (someone had gone to Costco!). They answered questions. All in all, they were very competent, except for one thing: the way they handled the line of people who had not reserved a phone.

After I’d been in line for about an hour, I could see that there was two lines. We joked that we should go get in the shorter (no phone reserved) line, but an Apple employee said something like “they won’t get their phones until after you get yours.” We laughed and said OK. But that was not how the non-reserved line was handled. Employees let two people in from the reserved line and then one from the non-reserved line. Thus, there was a clear time penalty for having reserved a phone. In my opinion, the non-reserved line should not have had store access until 10 am, as long as there were people waiting who had reserved a phone.

Presentation made to Puget Sound PRSA at Verizon office in Everett. Links below the fold!

Facebook Tools

• Create a Page: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
  Note: Facebook now has customizable URLs (or use the profile.to application)
• Create a Badge: http://www.facebook.com/badges.php

Twitter

• Twitter Resources
• Twitter Research
• Third party applications and services: TweetDeck, Twhirl, FriendFeed, Ping.fm

Read/Watch

• Books: Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody; Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff , Groundswell; Don Tapscott, Wikinomics; Christopher Locke et al, The Cluetrain Manifesto
• Bloggers/Journalists: Howard Rheingold and Jay Rosen
• Blogs: TheReadWriteWeb, MarketingProfs.com
• Videos: RSS (et al) In Plain English
• Video: A Fair(y) Use Tale (copyright)
• Video: EPIC2015
• Video: ShiftHappens (Did You Know) -  YouTube, wiki

• Slides: Social Media Academy Webinar