You may have noticed that LeftClick is receiving a makeover. It's not because we want the site to be prettier, it's because we want to fine tune its utility.
The idea is to showcase key audio and video so that your access to media is a simple one click -- one left click of course!
A proportion of what LeftClick has blogged before is now taken up by such sites as Links and ASAP and these sites do it much better than we ever did. So rather than replicate such good oil, LeftClick has moved to occupy a multimedia, cross platform niche which has a preference for local news and POV.
This also coincides with some rethinking at RatbagMedia such that we allow ourselves to move away from the tyranny of trying to generate a regular schedule -- not that we ever did! -- to a more eclectic and relaxed approach to seeing through occasional projects -- both video and audio.
We'll still run any number of photo essays/slide shows and grab any worthy digital presentations that we can share (the next one will be on the Tamil struggle in Ceylon). Actually we do more of that sort of thing than what is published here on LeftClick -- but if whatever we touch warrants a wider audience, you'll find it showcased here.
These changes mean that we'll be downgrading text a smiggin and going cross platform a lot more. But the game is to make it an easier journey and if you haven't noticed , here you can listen to the audio programming and continue to surf the whole web; or explore the sites many wares while still -- if you can manage it -- watching a video in a pop up. The related joy is that you can sample any of these items and switch them off if you prefer not to proceed.
So in effect we're running both a radio station and a TV channel. The video programming aspect is still experimental but the idea is to ensure that we make your visit worthwhile by aggregating a lot of stuff you won't find anywhere else -- especially anywhere else in the one place.
Of course if you want this rather than that you can visit the source of such programs as LeftCast or LatinRadical by going directly to their main sites.
Web 2.0: Promise or Not?
I guess it should be mentioned that a few years back when we got into blogging the Web 2.0 promise was supposed to be that anyone could create their own TV or radio station.
This isn't what Rupert Murdoch had in mind of course when he said in 2006:
"A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it...This new audience - and we are talking here of tens of millions of young people around the world - is already using technology, especially the web, to inform, entertain, and above all educate themselves.”
And while as I wrote in 2006 the web promise is juiced up with rhetoric there is nonetheless some substance amongst the bullshit. While many forgo their radios for the mp3 web stream or download(while also sending the recording industry into crisis), the most startling development is, of course, the massive usage of online video as people, especially young people, turn off the televisions in preference to a night watching their computer screens. If we can just wean ourselves from the sorry quality of so much YouTube stuff maybe we "content providers" have a new and very bright future ahead of us there -- on the web but preferably not by being sentenced to YouTube.
