I’ve updated my MSMDX diagram, which illustrates how media and metadata flow to and from different activities around media on the web. The old diagram (on the left), which Chris Anderson called “one of the more cogent graphics illustrating the new architecture of participation in a remix culture,” and Howard Rheingold described as “a kind of mandala of technologies of cooperation in many-to-many cultural production,” was nice, but it had a few serious problems:

1. It didn’t include any metadata flows from casual consumption to the other activities. This was a serious oversight, as this “attention metadata” is one of the most important and useful sources of information about the meaning of media. I strongly believe that “consumers” need to be viewed as active cultural participants and producers, not just passive receivers of “content.”
2. It didn’t show that each kind of metadata is potentially useful for each of the other activities. This is mostly because of the way I designed the graphic: the arrows were too big to show too many of them.
3. It wasn’t sufficiently Powerpoint-friendly.

So I attempted to correct these deficencies in the new diagram, which isn’t quite as aesthetically pleasing but is, I think, more useful. Comments and criticism welcome.

According to CollaborativeRank, I am one of the top 500 most helpful del.icio.us users (#376, to be exact). Furthermore, my “areas of expertise” are semweb, testing, usability, metadata, and rdf, which seems pretty bogus, as I would consider myself expert in only one of those areas. Still, pretty cool. Can I get a T-shirt or something?

Update (8/15/2005): Now I’m #5366. CollabRank fame is fleeting…

Due to popular demand (actually, just danah), I am taking my linklog out of the main syndication feed for this blog and putting it in a separate feed. For the 60 or so of you that subscribe to my link feed, that means you will no longer be flooded with my linkorrhea, unless you decide to subscribe to my link feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/delicious/rybesh

The live-updating sidebar and archive of things I listen to have been updated to link to Yahoo! Audio Search, except for the few items that are in the Amazon catalog. (I feel bad ganking Amazon thumbnails without linking to them. Plus sometimes people buy music from Amazon which makes me almost eleven dollars a year.)

I’m really happy that Audio Search is finally out. This is what I was working on last summer, and it was so cool I wanted to tell everyone about it. But of course I couldn’t. I had to hold my tongue longer than expected, but I can talk about it now…. Of course my contribution to the project was extremely small, but I’m glad I had a part in it nonetheless.