Links for July 21st 2010 through July 28th 2010:

• How Twitter Is Being Used In The Election Campaign [National Times] - Axel Bruns offers a quick look at how Twitter is being used in the Australian politician election campaigning to date: short version, the candidates aren't doing brilliantly well and #ausvotes is the real hashtag, while #ozvotes is all about electing wizards!
• Julia Gillard Impersonators On The Rise [National Times] - There are a lot more fake Julia Gillards on Twitter than the real one (currently our PM); most of the fake ones are much funnier, and all of them get that Twitter isn't just a broadcast platform (the real one hasn't figured this out, yet).
• Old Spice Sales Double With YouTube Campaign [Mashable] - Apparently social media + charismatic actor + great scripts = advertising gold: "You know those YouTube videos with that manly Old Spice guy and his hilarious responses to Twitter fans? Of course you do. So does everybody, it seems, because Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in the past month thanks to that social media marketing campaign. We already published stats from video analytics company Visible Measures that made it clear that the Old Spice guy was a hugely successful initiative from marketing firm Wieden + Kennedy, achieving millions of viral video views quicker than past hits like Susan Boyle and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election victory speech. The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen..."
• Amazon's ebook milestone: digital sales outstrip hardbacks for first time in US [The Guardian] - "In what could be a watershed for the publishing industry, Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time. Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating."
• Skin Whitening, Tanning, and Vaseline’s Controversial Facebook Ad Campaign [danah boyd | apophenia] - An insightful look at a controversy that has sprung up about a Vaseline ad on Facebook, aimed at India, for a skin whitening cream which offers a preview of a whitened face. boyd does a great job of showing how racism is often culturally and historically specific, and that Americans who are deeply offended by the ads really need to engage with how the ads are read by the Indian internet users who are targeted. boyd stresses that most histories of racism and the meaning of skin-colour are deeply problematic, but the main point is that these operate quite differently in different places and cultures, and that these contexts need to be taken into consideration.
• Gay zombie porn gets festival flick [The Age] - Film censorship returns to Australia - gay zombie film in peril: "The Australian censor has banned a film from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival for the first time in seven years - a work described as ''gay zombie porn''. Festival director Richard Moore received a letter yesterday from the Film Classification Board director Donald McDonald, stating that L.A. Zombie, the latest offering from Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce, could not be screened as it would in his opinion be refused classification. The festival is not generally required to submit films for classification, but after reading a synopsis of the plot of L.A. Zombie, which features wound penetration and implied sex with corpses, the Classification Board requested a DVD to watch, and then refused to issue an exemption. It is the first film to be banned from the festival circuit since Larry Clark's Ken Park in 2003."

Largely Lost-centric links for May 24th 2010:

• Lost Finale: What the Web Wasn’t Made For [Mashable] - Why I'll be off most social media today: "Those two wonderful facets of the web — on-demand viewing and instant communication between fans — tonight become a double-edged sword. The Lost Finale will be shown at 9pm ET on the East Coast, and 9pm PT on the West Coast. These time zone delays are the antithesis of what the web is about: Instant communication. The web is the perfect platform for the spread of breaking news, rumor, and those facts that corporations and politicians would rather keep quiet. In short: blogs, Facebook and Twitter make the spread of information immediate. But the web doesn’t understand the concept of the “spoiler”: The kind of information you’d like to avoid until a specific date or time. A TV blog can’t set its RSS feeds to be delivered later to the West Coast than the East. A Facebook update doesn’t get held back until you’ve watched the finale on your DVR. Your phone doesn’t know to block all Lost-related Tweets until you’ve watched the final episode."
• Final episode Lost in transmission [WA Today] - Australian broadcasting is indeed, Lost, but not in a good way: "AT 2PM AEST today the final episode of supernatural drama Lost will be broadcast simultaneously in eight countries. Fans in the US, Canada, Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Turkey will sit down as one to discover how the big questions in one of television's most diabolically complicated shows are resolved. The international simulcast aims to stave off piracy, while attracting viewers worldwide before spoilers hit the web. But not in Australia. Channel Seven will not screen the 2½-hour finale until 8.30pm Wednesday. [...] 'Ridiculous,'' says comedian Wil Anderson, a Lost die-hard. ''If I was going to watch it on Wednesday, I could not go on the internet at all for two days. I will definitely have watched it by Wednesday.'' Many Australian Lost fans have left free-to-air television for an alternate viewing reality, downloading, to join in discussions online..."
• Ahead of ‘Lost’ Finale, Fans Shut Off Virtual Hints [NYTimes.com] - "Erin Farley has her plans for Sunday all laid out. Two hours before the last episode of “Lost” is broadcast three time zones away, she will shut down her home Internet connection. TweetDeck? Off. Facebook? Off. Her cellphone? Stashed out of reach. “I’ll turn off the whole Internet just to avoid having anything spoiled,” said Ms. Farley, a 31-year-old freelance writer in Portland, Ore. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.” The Internet in general, and social media like Twitter in particular, can be a minefield for those who are trying to keep themselves in the dark about an event or show so they can enjoy it later. When the Olympics and Grammy Awards are time-delayed, for example, armchair critics chattering about the wins and losses online can destroy the suspense in an instant. [...] people who don’t live on the East Coast, where Lost is shown first, are especially at risk for online spoilers. Overseas fans may have to wait days for a local broadcast - several years in Internet time"
• Lost bows out – after 121 baffling episodes – with 5am TV simulcast to beat plot spoilers [Television & radio | The Guardian] - Closer to non-sporting global television events: "Early on Monday morning [UK time] , millions of Lost fans will be hoping that the mysteries of the US drama's fictional island accumulated over five years are finally revealed when the show closes in a unique broadcasting event. The finale will be simulcast on ABC in the US and by seven broadcasters around the world. Lost fans in the UK will be switching on Sky1 at 5am on Monday for the two-and-a-half-hour climax to six series, and 121 episodes, of baffling TV. Fans in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Turkey, Canada, as well as the UK, will see the show at the same time it is aired by ABC on America's west coast. The time lag between broadcast in America and in the UK used to be six months or more, but has been narrowing for the most popular imports to counter DVD piracy and illegal downloads. Sky1 has been broadcasting this year's final series of Lost on Friday nights — five days after its US Sunday evening premiere on ABC."
• LOST re-enacted by Cats in 1 minute.
• Fan-made Lost Finale Trailer
• Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole [WSJ.com] - "Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent. The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code. Advertising companies are receiving information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person's real name, age, hometown and occupation." [Also see Benjamin Edelman's analysis.]
• PAC-MAN rules! [Official Google Blog] - After their first interactive logo, celebrating Pac-Man's 30th birthday, Google makes their homage game available permanently: "We've been overwhelmed — but not surprised — by the success of our 30th anniversary PAC-MAN doodle. Due to popular demand, we’re making the game permanently available at www.google.com/pacman. Thanks to NAMCO for helping to make this wonderful collaboration happen. Enjoy!"
• Watching for Iron Sky [The Chutry Experiment ] - Useful introduction to the crowd-sourced film Iron Sky (coming some time 2011) for Web 207.

Links for May 7th 2010 through May 10th 2010:

• An Early Look At Twitter Annotations Or, “Twannotations” [TechCrunch] - Twitter are adding annotations, or twannotataions, in the near future; it'll let specific 'things' be identified. It's a bit like turning Twitter into a semantic communication tool. Richard Giles asks if this will make Twitter (a privately owned) internet protocol be default, but either way annotations should make Twitter even more of a cultural barometer.
• The Tell-All Generation Learns When Not To, at Least Online [NYTimes.com] - Privacy concerns online cross all generational barrier, despite the myth of the millennial mindset: "The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud. While participation in social networks is still strong, a survey released last month by the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than half the young adults questioned had become more concerned about privacy than they were five years ago — mirroring the number of people their parent’s age or older with that worry. They are more diligent than older adults, however, in trying to protect themselves."
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative [Wired.com] - Ryan Singel takes Facebook to task for the continual failings in respecting user privacy both in terms of their architecture (so many things simply can't be turned off now) and their policies (basically, screwing with privacy one step at a time, while using a raft of lawyers to ensure it's not illegal ... but maybe unethical). Singel argues that everything Facebook currently provides could be achieved by a series of open tools and protocols which provide real and clear choices about what we do and don't share with the world. Singel argues we need to make these choices now because Facebook, for many, has almost become our online identity.
• Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing [NYTimes.com] - From November 6, 2008: "On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, was cheerfully unruffled. Mr. Zuckerberg pinned his optimism on a change in behavior among Internet users: that they are ever more willing to tell others what they are doing, who their friends are, and even what they look like as they crawl home from the fraternity party. “I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before,” he said. “That means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more.” Call it Zuckerberg’s Law." The great thing about controlling the privacy settings for more than 400 million people, is it's pretty easy to change things so more and more and their information is shared ... even if many users don't understand how and don't think this is what they signed up for!
• The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook [mattmckeon.com] - A really useful inforgraphic by Matt McKeon which demonstrates five stages of Facebook's default settings and how much information is public by default at each stage (short version: 2005 - not much; 2010 - almost everything!)
• Most pirates say they'd pay for legal downloads [News.com.au] - Peer-topeer sharers want legal options in Australia: "Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent. That's the finding of the most comprehensive look yet at people who illegally download TV shows, movies and music in Australia, conducted by news.com.au and market research firm CoreData. The survey canvassed the attitudes of more than 7000 people who admitted to streaming or downloading media from illegitimate sources in the past 12 months. It found accessibility was as much or more of a motivator than money for those who illegally download media using services like BitTorrent. More respondents said they turned to illegal downloads because they were convenient than because they were free ... [More results here.]
• What Happens When You Deactivate Your Facebook Account [Read Write Web] - Facebook is a big part of millions and millions of peoples' lives, but what happens when you pull the plug? Last night I met a man who walked to the edge of the cliff and nearly deactivated his Facebook account. He took a screenshot of what he saw after clicking the "deactivate my account" link on his account page - and it is pretty far-out. That man considered quitting Facebook because it was having an adverse emotional impact on him and I'll spare him and his contacts from posting the screenshot he shared with me. I have posted below though a shot of the screen I saw when I clicked that button myself. Check it out. I bet you haven't seen this screen before, have you? [...] Can you believe that? How incredibly manipulative! And what claims to make. Facebook has undoubtedly made it easier to keep in touch with people than almost any other technology on the planet, but to say that leaving Facebook means your friends "will no longer be able to keep in touch with you" is just wrong."

Links for May 4th 2010 through May 5th 2010:

• Twitter is the New CNN | Lance Ulanoff [PCMag.com] - A pretty solid argument about why Twitter is better at sharing news and information than being a social network as such. The inequality of links (ie you don't agree with a twitter contact to mutually interact, you can follow without being followed) is one of the strongest arguments against SNS use although, ultimately, I think is still depends on how individuals use the platform.
• Keeping Your Photos Off Facebook & Other Privacy Concerns [The Age] - Stock-standard piece reminding everyone that stuff on Facebook and other social networks often isn't private (and you should check if you think it is). I'm not sure quoting a "Cyber psychologist" talking about young people having a yet-to-mature frontal cortex is really the winning argument, though! Equally, the advice at the end (basically: be aware and check your Facebook settings) would be a little more genuine if it linked to something which actually illustrated HOW to make those changes (the complexity of Facebook's privacy settings is one of the biggest privacy challenges today!)
• Viacom v YouTube is a microcosm of the entertainment industry [guardian.co.uk] - Cory Doctorow's fighting words about Viacom Vs YouTube: "From the Digital Economy Act to the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, Big Content's top brass are looking for ways to increase the liability borne by "intermediaries" – the companies that host and transmit user-uploaded material – in order to give them the footing from which to put pressure on tech firms to pay them off and go into bankruptcy. The lawmakers who say that they favour these draconian copyright powers are not on the side of creators. The creators are the ones busily shovelling their creative works on to YouTube. These laws are designed to provide full employment for the litigation industry, and to encourage the moral hazard that has TV and record companies turning into lawsuit factories."
• 'One Book, One Twitter' launches worldwide book club with Neil Gaiman | Books [guardian.co.uk] - Twitter as global book club: "The brainchild of Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing and a contributing editor at Wired magazine, the One Book, One Twitter scheme launches tomorrow. Readers have been voting for the book which they'll be tackling for the past month, with Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel American Gods eventually triumphing [...] "The aim with One Book, One Twitter is – like the one city, one book programme which inspired it – to get a zillion people all reading and talking about a single book. It is not, for instance, an attempt to gather a more selective crew of book lovers to read a series of books and meet at established times to discuss," explained Howe at Wired.com. "Usually such 'Big Read' programs are organised around geography. [...] This Big Read is organised around Twitter, and says to hell with physical limitations.""
• Choose Privacy Week Video [Vimeo] - Fast-paced largely talking-head style video advocating better attention to privacy online. The video is US-based and features lots of candid interviews along with notable privacy advocates including Cory Doctorow and Neil Gaiman. Launched as part of the first US Privacy Week, 2-8 May, 2010. (Downloadable as 1280x720, 344.57MB Quicktime movie.) [Via BBoing]
  

  Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.

Links for March 9th 2010:

• Mapping the growth of the internet [BBC News] - Useful flash-powered world map from the BBC visually demonstrating the growth in internet use across the globe from 1998 to 2008. (Quite a lot of growth to be seen!)
• Return of the natives by Slavoj Zizek [New Statesman] - Slavoj Zizek gets stuck into Avatar: "So where is Cameron's film here? Nowhere: in Orissa, there are no noble princesses waiting for white heroes to seduce them and help their people, just the Maoists organising the starving farmers. The film enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle. The same people who enjoy the film and admire its aboriginal rebels would in all probability turn away in horror from the Naxalites, dismissing them as murderous terrorists. The true avatar is thus Avatar itself - the film substituting for reality."

• Adventures in the Wild, Wild West: Media140 Perth [media140.org] - Official wrap-up post for Perth Media 140 (Feb 2010), including links to pretty much everyone involved and a snappy little video summarising some of the key themes (if you watch closely you can see what 10 seconds of my talking head looks like after presenting a talk in a room which is warmer that 40 degrees Celsius!).
• Study: Ages of social network users [Royal Pingdom] - A really useful breakdown of social networking websites by age, including these stats:
  "* Bebo appeals to a much younger audience than the other sites with 44% of its users being aged 17 or less. For MySpace, this number is also large; 33%.
  * Classmates.com has the largest share of users being aged 65 or more, 8%, and 78% are 35 or older.
  * 64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older.
  * 61% of Facebooks’s users are aged 35 or older. [...]
  * The average social network user is 37 years old.
  * LinkedIn, with its business focus, has a predictably high average user age; 44.
  * The average Twitter user is 39 years old.
  * The average Facebook user is 38 years old.
  * The average MySpace user is 31 years old.
  * Bebo has by far the youngest users, as witnessed earlier, with an average age of 28."
• Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets [Mashable] - "It’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. [...] you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. The milestone shows that Twitter’s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago."

While I fear the upcoming film RepoMen is unlikely to live up the the dystopian promise of its premise (the repossession of artificial organs from people who’ve defaulted on their repayments in a not-too-distant-future), I love some of their promotional posters …

Links for January 27th 2010:

• Terms of (Ab)Use: US and UK Consumers Dance to Different iTunes [Electronic Frontier Foundation] - Further illustration of the insanity of different national licensing agreements: "For example, as with many TOS agreements, the iTunes U.S. Terms purport to allow Apple to terminate any part of the service, including access to any music or other content available through iTunes, at any time without warning. The U.K. Terms step back from that extreme position. In particular, the U.K. Terms do not allow Apple to affect a user's access to content already purchased. Furthermore, before terminating a user's access to iTunes, the U.K. Terms require there at least be "strong grounds," rather than mere "suspicion," to believe the user has violated the agreement, and also obligates iTunes to provide notice of any planned modification, suspension, or termination to the extent possible. In other words, the U.K. Terms provide customers at least some guidance as to the grounds for termination, rather than leave them to worry their access to iTunes can be terminated at any moment for any reason."
• Australia Set to Introduce Internet Filter that Could Block Access to Thousands of Anime, Comics, Gaming (ACG) and Slash Fan Sites by Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong [Guest Post: Confessions of an Aca-Fan] - Guest post by Mark McLelland looking at the implications of the Australian government's forthcoming ISP-level internet filtering legislation on slash, anime, manga sites and thus fans in Australia. Outlook: poor.
• After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday's Web Site [The New York Observer] - So, how's that paywall going? "In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect? So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class. That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn't know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35."
• Google Doodle For Australia Day Missing Aboriginal Flag [SMH] - "An Australia Day artwork by student Jessie Du will be viewed by millions on Google's home page today but one feature of her original design is conspicuously absent - the Aboriginal flag. Jessie's Australia-themed version of the Google logo beat thousands of other entrants in the search giant's Doodle 4 Google competition [...] Jessie, 11, is a student at Rydalmere East Public School. Her entry fashioned the letters in Google's logo out of native Australian animals, such as the kangaroo, koala and emu. The central "o" in the original design was the Aboriginal flag but this has been edited out of the final version that adorns Google's home page today. The discrepancy caused much consternation on Twitter, but a Google spokeswoman explained that the editing of Jessie's design was due to a copyright dispute. The designer of the flag, Harold Thomas, who owns the copyright to the flag, refused to give Google permission to reproduce the design on its website..."
• Stop pining for life on Pandora and come back to planet Earth [Telegraph] - Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson on Avatar: "It is a feature of powerful military empires that they like to romanticise their victims and luxuriate guiltily in the pathos of their suffering. Think of the Roman crowds pleading for the lives of captured barbarians in the amphitheatre.[...] And I can't believe that many of these gloomy post-Avatar Westerners, when they really think about it, would want to up sticks to Pandora and take part in Na'vi society, with its obstinate illiteracy, undemocratic adherence to a monarchy based on male primogeniture and complete absence of restaurants. The final irony, of course, is that this entrancing vision of prelapsarian innocence is the product of the most ruthless and sophisticated money-machine the world has ever seen. With a budget of $237 million and with takings already at £1 billion, this exquisite capitalist guilt trip represents one of the great triumphs of capitalism."

Links for January 3rd 2010 through January 4th 2010:

• Self-Proclaimed Social Media Gurus on Twitter Multiplying Like Rabbits [B.L. Ochman's blog] - There are now 15,740 self-proclaimed social media gurus on Twitter! Don't be one of them.
• Ban This Game! - Silly but simple flash game exploring the "logic" of the Australian government's proposed internet censorship regime.
• Talks from Media140 Sydney 2009 - Real-Time Web on Journalism and Media - A bunch of recorded talks from Media 140 in Sydney last November, from a great range of speakers as diverse as Jay Rosen and Malcolm Turnbull. I'll be speaking at Media 140 Perth on February 25, so I'm brushing up on past Media 140s to get a feel for the style.
• 'Avatar' tops $1 billion at worldwide box office [Variety] - "Twentieth Century Fox and James Cameron's "Avatar" rang in the New Year with an estimated worldwide cume of $[US]1 billion through Sunday, becoming the fourth highest grosser of all time. Domestic cume was $352.1 million, including a weekend take of $68.3 million, the best gross ever for a film in its third weekend. Overseas, the pic's cume through Sunday was $670.2 million."
• We All Live In Public Now. Get Used To It. [TechCrunch] - If we start from the premise that everything we do online is public, and then ask "how do I make this private" for specific bits and pieces, it's more likely privacy will actually exist: "As the Web becomes more social, privacy becomes harder and harder to come by. People are over-sharing on Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting their whereabouts every ten steps on Foursquare and Gowalla, and uploading photos and videos of their most private moments to the Web for all to see. It’s easy to say that privacy is dead, we all live in public now, and just deal with it. But things are a bit more complicated. It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. [...] Public is the new default."
• Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again! - Sign out forever! - Had enough of being part of social media? Kill all your web 2.0 profiles here (disclaimer: this really does delete your profiles ... forever!).

Links for December 3rd 2009 through December 6th 2009:

• Panic Attack and YouTube Discovery [The Chutry Experiment] - Great post from Chuck Tryon about Fede Alvarez's sudden appearance on the Hollywood radar thanks to his YouTube short “Ataque de Pánico,” (Panic Attack!), 4 minute special effects driven extravagnaza in which a city is destroyed and a career created: "One of the underlying narratives associated with Hollywood mythology is the “discovery story,” the idea that a talented newcomer emerges by chance, out of nowhere, to become a Hollywood “star.” Lana Turner was discovered, so the legend goes, on a barstool at Schwab’s drugstore. Now, as the tools of filmmaking and film distribution have been democratized, those discovery stories have expanded to filmmakers as well. And although it is the case that such stories can be read ideologically, it is also true that YouTube and other video sharing sites still offer us the opportunity to be astonished by the talents of an aspiring filmmaker."
• Memories of a paywall pioneer | Media | guardian.co.uk - Scott Rosenberg reflects on Salon's experiments with a paywall, suggesting it's not the model for future news media: "I'm not hostile to the notion of people paying for online content. I do so myself. I'm glad people stepped up and paid for Salon. But the value of stuff online is usually tied to how deeply it is woven into the network. So locking your stuff away in order to charge for it means that you are usually making it less valuable at the moment that you are asking people to pay for it. And that's why people so often respond with: "No thanks.""
• Vampire Politics by Lisa Nakamura et al [Flow TV, 11.03, 2009] - "True Blood is socially conservative, gesturing towards a radical politics (or any social movement based politics) that it cannot (or will not) deliver. Likewise, the form of the medium itself is conservative. Like its vampires, True Blood is a relic - it airs on television, not the Internet, and it is broadcast rather than streamed. Though HBO claims “it’s not television, it’s HBO,” we know better. Like the credit sequence’s time-delayed decayed foxes and possums, True Blood is a memento mori - to the Civil Rights South, to broadcast television, to civil rights organizing and “unsexy” rights-based movements. True Blood pursues vampire politics, which are all about sexy self fashioning. Were it not for the exquisite Godric’s self-immolation in season two, the program’s credo might be “survival of the sexiest.”"
• Networking Families: Battlestar Galactica and the Values of Quality by Jordan Lavender-Smith [Flow TV, 11.03, 2009] - "Galactica’s interrogation of post-nuclear family mechanics and what it means to be human was potentially groundbreaking, but by the show’s end the reconstitution of the family breaks down, and a thick line is drawn between the natural and artificial, delivering an outmoded humanism through posthuman technologies."
• Identity Wars: Google & Yahoo! Bow to Facebook & Twitter [RW Web] - "Yahoo! announced this morning that it is adding Facebook Connect across many of its properties. This afternoon Google Friend Connect announced the inclusion of Twitter as a top-level log-in option. These moves will be convenient for users, but may not be good for the future of the web." (This is a really interesting article looking at what happens when Facebook and Twitter become default identity authentication systems - so much power then resides in these systems, and what happens to attempts at standards like OpenID?)

Links for November 27th 2009 through December 2nd 2009:

• Seven’s FlashForward “leaked” to US [TV Tonight] - "Monday night’s episode of FlashForward was the last for the year on Seven, and screened before the US which took a broadcast break for Thanksgiving. That resulted in the episode being uploaded as a torrent and now “leaked” to America. The Hollywood Reporter notes that “Australians don’t care about our guilt-tinged empire-expanding holiday traditions and didn’t take a break. Whether the US-Aussie FlashForward schedule being jolted out-of-sync will result in future episodes also being leaked isn’t known.” Presumably the episode will be downloaded across the US complete with a Channel 7 watermark. It’s all rather ironic given Disney / ABC went to great lengths to make sure Aussie media didn’t reveal information on the series in the lead-up to the premiere, insisting they attend a cinema screening and sign confidentiality clauses." (US viewers, welcome to the other side of the tyranny of digital distance!)
• The hits on iView [TV Tonight] - "Four Corners, United States of Tara, Good Game, Doctor Who, The Chaser’s War on Everything and Media Watch are the most popular titles on the ABC’s iView platform. The online catch-up service has been operating since July 2008. Since April this year there have been 6.2 million views of programs with an annual monthly average of 610,000 visits, up by 140% compared to last year. It averages 206,000 visitors per month, up by 60% compared to last year. In October 2009, ABC iView recorded its highest ever number of visitors and visits. 286,000 visitors and 1.054 million visits to ABC iView." (Finally, streaming timeshifted TV is making solid inroads in Australia.)
• Moviegoers 2010 available for download [Marketing Strategy for Entertainment and Brand Clients – Stradella Road] - "Why does movie studio tracking and research so often surprise and disappoint us? The answer experienced movie marketers gave us in private conversations was this: We still don’t know our customers/audience as well as we should.
  Where do moviegoers really spend their time? What are the social dynamics of the decision-making process? How do we synthesize the sea changes taking place with digital technologies in order to reach the right audience with the right message at the right time in the right place? We designed the Moviegoers 2010 research study to answer these questions [...]
  • Moviegoers spend more time each week online (19.8 hours) than they do watching TV (14.3 hours)
  • 52% of moviegoers have digital video recorders (61% of the 30-39 demo) and, of those consumers, 71% fast-forward to skip commercials.
  [Download the full report - PDF]
• Westfield Facebook application draws fire [mUmBRELLA] - Westfield has drawn criticism over a Facebook application that may be in breach of the social networking site’s terms and conditions, despite the two companies collaborating to develop it. The application updates a user’s status with a Westfield-branded message to promote its Gift Card. It requires the user to opt in so that their status is updated to “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card”, with extra copy stating that the user has now gone into the draw to win a $10,000 gift card. [...] But the promotion has also attracted a backlash from other users, complaining that the promotion is taking over the social networking site as friends’ status updates that feature the Westfield branding, clutter their screens. Facebook groups have also been created in opposition to it. One group, known as If All You Want For Christmas Is A Westfield Gift Card, I Don’t Want To Know, currently has over 3,300 fans." (Spam as a Facebook App ... great marketing!)

After Tony Abbott won the #spill, ensuring Australia will continue doing nothing about Climate Change in the immediate future, it would be fair to say that December has not begun on a peachy note.  This effort from the Goodie Bag showing the Hollywood penchant for destroying New York seems to fit the day nicely:

I’ve always been partial to Gershwin!

Links for  November 2nd 2009:

• How to Give Your Movie Away Free and Still Make Money [Jawbone.tv] - Some great ideas from Brian Newman about ways to both freely distribute and make money from feature films. (Thanks, Chuck.)
• Teens Sue School Over Punishment For Racy MySpace Pics [Huffington Post] - "Two sophomore girls have sued their school district after they were punished for posting sexually suggestive photos on MySpace during their summer vacation. The American Civil Liberties Union, in a federal lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the girls, argues that Churubusco High School violated the girls' free speech rights when it banned them from extracurricular activities for a joke that didn't involve the school ... some legal experts say that in this digital era, schools must accept that students will engage in some questionable behavior in cyberspace and during off hours. "From the standpoint of young people, there's no real distinction between online life and offline life," said John Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "It's just life."" (It's called MYspace for a reason, methinks!)
• Memories of Friends Departed Endure on Facebook [Facebook] - Facebook adds the ability to "memorialize" a Facebook page of someone who has passed away, but their loved ones wish their profile to remain online as a place for people to remember and reminisce about their lives. This feature has probably come along since Facebook got some bad press after suggesting people 'reconnect' with their deceased loved ones.[Via BBoing]

Links for October 9th 2009 through October 10th 2009:

• Y,000,000,000uTube [YouTube Australia Blog] - YouTube Chad Hurley posts a rather self-congratulatory post about YouTube passing an daily average 1 billion views (he also compares YouTube to fast food - not the best metaphor for a CEO - and drops the expression 'open platform' into the mix despite the ability to download YouTube clips, or for creators to enable that option, being one of the most requested and never created functions on the platform. Hurley: "Three years ago today, Steve and I stood out in front of our offices and jokingly crowned ourselves the burger kings of media. We'd just made headlines by joining with Google in our shared goal of organizing the world's information (in our case, video) and making it easily and quickly accessible to anyone, anywhere. Today, I'm proud to say that we have been serving well over a billion views a day on YouTube."
• Big bother: DVD Jon has Steve Jobs in a twist [SMH] - "...Jon Lech Johansen, who became known as DVD Jon after he cracked the encryption used on DVDs when he was 15, has released a new version of his doubleTwist software that allows iPod owners to completely bypass iTunes and iPhoto when buying and managing their music, videos and photos. [...] In a further slight, Johansen released a clip parodying Apple's famous "1984" ad for the Mac, which portrayed IBM as an Orwellian overlord and Apple as the leader of the rebellion. [...] In Johansen's version, made 25 years after the original, it is Jobs who is the oppressive Big Brother figure. The clip quickly went viral and has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. "No other choices shall detract from our glory," Jobs says in the clip, before a voiceover announces "on October 6, doubleTwist brings you ... choice."
• TRUTH IN NUMBERS - Trailer for a new film about the building and running of Wikipedia, featuring both advocates and critics.

Links for March 31st 2009 through April 3rd 2009:

• Internet traffic in Sweden plummets on first day of law banning web piracy [Guardian] - Internet traffic in Sweden – previously a hotbed of illicit filesharing – has fallen dramatically in the first day of a new law banning online piracy. The country – home to the notorious Pirate Bay website, whose founders are awaiting a court judgment on whether they have broken the law by allowing people to find films, games and music for illicit downloads – has previously been seen as a haven for filesharing, in which people can get copyrighted content for free. As many as one in 10 Swedes is thought to use such peer-to-peer services. But the so-called IPRED law, which came into force on Wednesday, obliges internet service providers to turn over details about internet users who share such content to the owners of copyrighted material, if a court finds sufficient evidence that the user has broken the law. ... internet traffic in Sweden had fallen by about 30% compared with the previous day."
• New Wolverine film leaked online [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] - "An almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman has been leaked online a month before its cinema release. The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video websites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible." (It took less than 24 hours for this workprint to appear for sale in Jordan's pirate DVD markets and C20th Fox are on the warpath. While a leak like this might be good for publicity, given that a workprint - which means unfinished special effects more than anything else - tends to emphasise the quality of the plot and dialogue, this could really hurt the box office.)
• Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale [The Onion - America's Finest News Source] - "According to sources in the White House, President Barack Obama has been uncharacteristically distant and withdrawn ever since last month's two-hour series finale of Battlestar Galactica. "The president seems to be someplace else lately," said one high-level official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Yesterday we were all being briefed on the encroachment of Iranian drone planes into Iraq, when he just looked up from the table and blurted out, 'What am I supposed to watch on Fridays at 10 p.m. now? Numb3rs?'" "I haven't seen him this upset since Admiral Adama realized that Earth was actually an uninhabitable wasteland," the official continued. "Or at least that's what he told me. I don't actually watch the show. It's not really my thing.""
• Victim Of Wikipedia: Microsoft To Shut Down Encarta [ paidContent.org] - "Microsoft will discontinue both its MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software, which have both been surpassed by rising competitors, like Wikipedia. In a message posted on the MSN Encarta Web site, Microsoft says, “Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.""

Links for February 2nd 2009:

• Researcher: No Link Between Violent Games & School Shootings [GamePolitics] - "A researcher at Texas A&M International University has concluded that there is "no significant relationship" between school shootings and playing violent video games. Writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Prof. Christopher Ferguson criticizes the methodology used in earlier research linking games to violence and aggression. He also points out that no evidence of violent game play was found in recent high-profile incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Utah Trolley Stop mall shooting and the February, 2008 shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University."
• Internet users worldwide surpass 1 billion | Digital Media [CNET News] - "Global Internet usage reached more than 1 billion unique visitors in December, with 41.3 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by ComScore. The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15 who accessed the Net from their home or work computers. Europe grabbed the next largest slice of the global Internet audience, with 28 percent, followed by the United States, with an 18.4 percent slice. But Latin America, while comprising just 7.4 percent of the global Internet audience, is the region to watch, noted Jamie Gavin, a ComScore senior analyst. "
• YouTube - 2009 Oscars Interactive Photo Hunt! - "A new genre? YouTube user Copyrighthater has created a game using YouTube's in-video links and annotation tools. In each video (a.k.a. game level) you're presented with two images from an Oscar movie and you have to find the difference and click it. If you're right, you get to the next level." (Thanks, Jill!)
• The Pope on YouTube [Official Google Blog] - "Today we're delighted to announce that the Vatican has launched a dedicated YouTube channel. To find out more about why the Pope has taken the decision to interact with YouTube on a regular basis, here is a short introduction from Father Federico Lombardi, S.I., Director of Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Centre and the Holy See Press Office."
• Video games thrash movies and DVDs [WA Today] - "The video games industry is now double the size of the box office and more than 40 per cent larger than the movie disc industry in Australia, thanks to explosive growth in social games that allow the whole family to play. The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) today released figures showing games industry revenue was $1.96 billion in calendar year 2008, an increase of 47 per cent from the previous year. Box office takings for the same period were up 6 per cent to $946 million, the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia said. Total revenue for movies sold on disc grew 5 per cent to $1.4 billion, the Australian Visual Software Distributors Association (AVSDA) said."

Links for December 30th 2008 through January 1st 2009:

• Principles for a New Media Literacy by Dan Gillmor, 27 December 2008 [Center for Citizen Media] - "Principles of Media Creation: 1. Do your homework, and then do some more. ... 2. Get it right, every time. ... 3. Be fair to everyone. ... 4. Think independently, especially of your own biases. ... 5. Practice and demand transparency.""We are doing a poor job of ensuring that consumers and producers of media in a digital age are equipped for these tasks. This is a job for parents and schools. (Of course, a teacher who teaches critical thinking in much of the United States risks being attacked as a dangerous radical.) Do they have the resources — including time — that they need? But this much is clear: If we really believe that democracy requires an educated populace, we’re starting from a deficit. Are we ready to take the risk of being activist media users, for the right reasons? A lot rides on the answer."
• Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies by Howard Rheingold [Freesouls, ed. Joi Ito] - "Literacy−access to the codes and communities of vernacular video, microblogging, social bookmarking, wiki collaboration−is what is required to use that infrastructure to create a participatory culture. A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.
• How to Do Everything with PDF Files [Adobe PDF Guide] - Pretty much anything you can imagine needing to do with PDF files, without needing to buy Acrobat!
• The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2008 [Photoshop Lady] - Many useful photoshop tutorials from fancy fonts to montages and entirely new creations!
• Israel posts video of Gaza air strikes on YouTube [Australian IT] - THE Israeli military has launched its own channel on video-sharing website YouTube, posting footage of air strikes and other attacks on Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The spokesman's office of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it created the channel -- youtube.com/user/idfnadesk -- on Monday to "help us bring our message to the world." The channel currently has more than 2,000 subscribers and hosts 10 videos, some of which have been viewed more than 20,000 times. The black-and-white videos include aerial footage of Israeli Air Force attacks on what are described as rocket launching sites, weapons storage facilities, a Hamas government complex and smuggling tunnels. One video shows what is described as a Hamas patrol boat being destroyed by a rocket fired from an Israeli naval vessel."
• No terminating the Terminator ... ever [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - "Time will not be allowed to terminate The Terminator, the US Library of Congress said overnight. The low-budget 1984 action film, which spawned the popular catchphrase "I'll be back", was one of 25 movies listed for preservation by the library for their cultural, historic or aesthetic significance. Other titles included The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Deliverance (1972), A Face in the Crowd (1957), In Cold Blood (1967) and The Invisible Man (1933). The library said it selected The Terminator for preservation because of Arnold Schwarzenegger's star-making performance as a cyborg assassin, and because the film stands out in the science fiction genre. "It's withstood the test of time, like King Kong in a way, a film that endures because it's so good," Patrick Loughney, who runs the Library of Congress film vault, said."
• Webisodes Bridge Gaps in NBC Series [NYTimes.com] - Takes a look at the late 2008/early 2009 webisodes from NBC (particularly for Heroes and Battlestar Galactica) and the way these online stories are used to keep fans engaged with television series (or, really, television-spawned franchises) during breaks.
• Nintendo to offer videos on Wii [WA Today] - "Nintendo will start offering videos through its blockbuster Wii game console, the latest new feature for the Japanese entertainment giant. Nintendo said it would develop original programming which Wii users could access via the internet and watch on their television. It is considering videos for both free and fees. The game giant teamed up with Japan's leading advertising firm Dentsu to develop the service, which will begin in Japan next year, with an eye on future expansion into foreign markets."

Links for December 2nd 2008:

• Why defend freedom of icky speech? [Neil Gaiman's Journal] - Neil Gaiman on defending freedom of speech: "If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said. The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made."
• Iron Man and me [Adactio] - The story of how a CC BY Flickr photo ended up in the Iron Man film!
• ABC views year from on high [TV Tonight] - "The [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]ABC is hailing 2008 as its best ever result, improving 2% on its 2007 performance. With 7 of its top 10 shows being local productions, ABC is also buoyed by several brands hitting all time highs ... The broadcaster also notes the popularity of its iView platform and the success of the relaunched ABC2 channel ...
  iView - Since iView’s launch on Wednesday 23rd July: ABC iView has recorded a total of 2.3 million page views. The most popular iView channel is Catch Up. (This data is up to midnight on Sunday 30th November 2008) (Source: WebTrends OnDemand)
  VODCASTS (1 January – 16 November 2008)
  • The total number of vodcast downloads this year to date is 14 million.
  • Most downloaded vodcasts in 2008 to date include At The Movies, triple j tv (including jtv), Catalyst, ENOUGH ROPE segments, Bed of Roses, Not Quite Art, The Cook And The Chef, Gardening Australia, Lateline Business segments, Lateline segments. (Source: WebTrends, Akamai Mpeg Stats)"

Links of interest for November 11th 2008 through November 13th 2008:

• New York Times: Fake New York Times Declares Iraq War Over! Here's Who Did It [Gawker] - "The Iraq War is over, according to the fake New York Times! This morning a cadre of volunteers has fanned out across New York City to pass out a remarkably good, faux-copy of the Times dated July 4, 2009. They've even set up an entire website with all of the liberal fantasy headlines. Universities to be free! Bike paths to be expanded! Thomas Friedman to resign, praise the Unitarian Jesus! It's not funny like The Onion, but obviously a lot of work went into this. Now we play "Who did it?"" The Yes Men. Clever parody; very clever indeed ...  the cover.
• Big fuss brews over LittleBigPlanet [The Age] - "LittleBigPlanet is fast firming as one of the biggest game launches this year because players can create and share their own worlds, but Sony's heavy-handed moderation has many gamers crying foul. A key selling point of the PlayStation 3 game, which was launched in Australia just days ago and has received an average rating of 95 per cent from reviewers, is that people can share their own levels over the PlayStation Network. Some have spent days crafting their ideal custom worlds, including tributes to classic games and characters such as Final Fantasy, Pac-Man, Batman, Sonic The Hedgehog, God Of War, Super Mario Bros and Indiana Jones. Over the past few days, many have found their levels summarily blocked by Sony and LittleBigPlanet's developers, Media Molecule, because they allegedly breach someone else's intellectual property." (Copyright vs creativity in an entirely corporately-owned toy world with brilliant design tools ... what could go wrong? )
• Interview @MarsPhoenix - Universe - "For over a year, Veronica McGregor has been Twittering from Mars. Of course, she's not living among the wind storms and dirt of the red planet herself, but she is the voice of MarsPhoenix, the strangely compelling, first-person, lonely robot Twitter feed that somehow became the official mouthpiece of NASA's Phoenix mission and has catalyzed an entirely new kind of public involvement in science."
• Cloverfield: Mapped [Google Maps] - Blow by blow map of the action in Cloverfield. As you might suspect, the action doesn't quite make sense if you look at it on a New York map!
• China issues first definition of Internet addiction [China Daily] - Chinese doctors define what they call "internet addiction": "Symptoms of addiction included yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping. The definition, based on a study of more than 1,300 problematic computer users, classifies as addicts those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one symptom in the past three months."

Interesting links for August 23rd 2008 through August 25th 2008:

• Drilling Down - Preferring the Web Over Watching TV [ NYTimes.com] - "For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television. The study found that the children often did research online before making a purchase (or bugging their parents to make one). The big exception to this rule was apparel: like many grown-ups, the children said they preferred to choose their clothes at a store."
• Film Studies For Free [Catherine Grant on Blogger] - "Film Studies For Free actively espouses the ethos of Open Access to digital scholarly material. It aims to promote good quality, online, film and moving-image studies resources by commenting on them, and by linking to them. These resources will include published scholarship or research in various forms: from film and media weblogs, through online peer-reviewed journals, to other forms of web-based scholarly writing, as well as online works of film/moving-image research by practice. Film Studies For Free readers are invited to bring relevant items to the blog's attention; please use the comments option or this email link to do so."
• "A Few Lives Left" for Poor Research into Virtual Worlds [PERSONALIZE MEDIA] - A substantial, well-research and convincing rebuttal of this article from the SMH on Second Life and Virtual Worlds. This rebuttal contains many stats and figures which cast Asher Moses' piece in a pretty poor light.
• Hollywood losing its grip on television content [Darknet] - JD Lasica interviews Eric B Kim (an Intel VP and general manager of its Digital Home Group) and Patrick Barry (VP of TV for Yahoo) about the coming trend of getting TV properly on the net: "Kim's quote that most stuck out for me was this: "We're bringing television to the internet." Notice what Kim didn't say: We're bringing the Internet to television, which has been the approach of the big movie studios until now. (Or, until recently, We're preventing the Internet from coming to TV.) I don't know whether Kim's turn of phrase was intentional or not — I suspect so — but the difference is a significant one. "
• Video: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games [Times Online] - "Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology. Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated. She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness. Researchers at a Californian company (Image Metrics) which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a 'control system'." [Via io9]
• The dawn of intelligent machines [BBC NEWS | Technology] - "The idea may scare some, but Intel predicts that by 2050 machines could surpass the peak of human intelligence. So predicted Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at the chip maker, in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum which examined how technology is expected to bridge the gap between man and machine. The vision included sensitive robots and shape-shifting materials. "There is no question that one of the most likely things that will happen in the next 40 years is that machine and human intelligence will come much closer together," Mr Rattner told the BBC. "The ability of humans to communicate with machines and for machines to communicate with humans will get so much better.""

Interesting links for August 21st 2008 through August 22nd 2008:

• Monkey Magic - Karen Lury / University of Glasgow [Flow TV, 8.06] - Playful and engaging reading of the BBC Monkey-style BBC Opening for the Olympic Games: "A playful, irreverent choice then: a trailer that reverses a mythic journey (from West to East) and which pays overt homage to a cult TV series that was never - in any coherent sense - an ‘authentic’ reflection or interpretation of Chinese culture or mythology. ... The animation itself reproduces certain static poses and a colour scheme that may have been inspired by Chinese illustration and Japanese Manga; but for Hewlett fans, this is recognisably a Hewlett world – a world that is both menacing and cute (and where ‘cute’ is revealingly close to its roots in the freakish world of the side-show). It is funny and slightly unsettling as Pigsy smirks provocatively or when Monkey opens his mouth to reveal his dirty and surprisingly sharp teeth."
• Tiger Woods Responds to Fan's YouTube Video [Micro Persuasion] - "This video response is brilliant marketing on the part of Electronic Arts and Tiger Woods. A fan posted on YouTube that it's possible for Woods to hit a golf ball in Tiger Woods 08 while walking on water. How does Tiger react? By showing how it's done and promoting Tiger Woods 09 in the process. It shows they listen and bring in the big guns to engage."
• Digital futures report: the internet in Australia [CCI] - "This report provides an overview of our work, presenting results for each of the questions asked. We will also be publishing work that examines relationships between our key variables exploring, for example, differences between users with broadband access at home and those on dial-up connections and the differences that age, gender and education levels make to people’s use and experience of the internet. Analysis we have already conducted shows that broadband does make a substantial difference to peoples’ use of the internet. The internet is more highly valued by those with broadband connections and they use the internet for longer and for a greater variety of purposes. Younger people have been quick to integrate the internet into their lives, they use the internet more and particularly for entertainment." [Full Report PDF]
• Few lives left for Second Life [The Age] - "Separately, figures released by the virtual world's creator Linden Lab in April show there are only 12,245 active Australian Second Life users, down from highs of 16,000 towards the end of last year. ... Australians appear to have lost interest in Second Life and the users still there appear to be shying away from the big corporate brands. Kim MacKenzie, a PhD student at the Queensland University of Technology, centred her honours year thesis around the business applications of Second Life. She studied the Second Life bases of 20 international brands over three months last year, including Dell, Toyota, Coca-Cola, BMW, AOL and Vodafone. "They were like ghost towns," said MacKenzie, adding that many of the users she saw on the company islands appeared to be staff members." (A significant rebuttal of the information and argument in this article can be found at Personalize Media.
• For YouTube videos, a 'fair use' boost [News.com] - "Copyright owners, such as NBC Universal, Warner Bros., and Viacom, were put on notice Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that they must not order video be removed from Web sites indiscriminately. Before taking action against a clip, copyright owners, must form a "good-faith belief " that a video is infringing, according to Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "
• Poor earning virtual gaming gold [BBC NEWS | Technology] - "Nearly half a million people are employed in developing countries earning virtual goods in online games to sell to players, a study has found. Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly. Researchers say the industry, which is largely based in China, currently employs about 400,000 young people who earn £80 per month on average." (Good article, but really, "playbourers"?)
• Up, Up, and Away? Separating Fact from Fiction in the Comic Book Business [Alisa Perren / Georgia State University - Flow TV 8.06] - A timely look at the relationship between comic book sales and the blockbuster movies they've been driving so successfully this year: "Myth #1: Comic-Con is all about comics. From its inception in 1970 well into the 1990s, this was largely the case. However, in recent years, the Hollywood studios increasingly have focused their energies on using the annual event as a means of promoting upcoming films and television programs. ... Myth #2: Since movies based on comics are all the rage, comic books must be selling like crazy."
• iTunes blocked in China after protest stunt [WA Today] - "Access to Apple's online iTunes Store has been blocked in China after it emerged that Olympic athletes have been downloading and possibly listening to a pro-Tibetan music album in a subtle act of protest against China's rule over the province. The album, called Songs for Tibet, was produced by an a group called The Art of Peace Foundation, and features 20 tracks from well-known singers and songwriters including Sting, Moby, Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette. It was released as a download on the iTunes Store on August 5 - three days before the start of the Olympics - with the physical CD launched on Tuesday this week. The Foundation provided free downloads of the album to Olympic athletes, urging them to play the songs on their iPods during the Games as a show of support."

The trailer for The Sculptor is online now, so you should go and watch it right now (or download it). In case The Sculptor is new to you, you should know a couple of things: first off, it’s the feature film debut for director Chris Kenworthy and scriptwriter Chantal Bourgault (a rather talented colleague of mine from Communication Studies).  Chris cut his teeth on innovative low-budget special effects heavy shorts such as The Dream Sequence so he should really been able to do some amazing things with a full feature budget!  The film is also the first Western Australian production (as far as I know) to be shot on the fantastic Red Cameras, giving it an even crisper look.  And given Chantal teaches scriptwriting and film production, I’m sure the story will take some classical narrative ideas and make them just that little bit more intriguing!

One other reason this film will be extremely important to the filmmaking landscape of Western Australia is that the production company, Skyview Films, is both practically and philosophically focused on funding and promoting internationally-competitive local productions.  As their mission statement attests, they aim:

• • To deliver high quality Australia feature films for the Australian & international markets.
  • Use of “high concept” scripts.
  • Use of “state-of-the-art” equipment and techniques.
  • To provide significant contributions to a sustainable feature film industry in Western Australia.
  • Three full length feature films programmed from 2007-2011.
  • Additional films scheduled beyond 2011.
  • Shareholder and board commitment to re-invest in additional films before investment dividends are paid.
  • Private equity funded company, including international shareholders.
  • Board of Directors paid solely from dividends.
  • Operations to provide meaningful investor and stakeholder returns, commercially and by fostering growth within the industry.
  • Prioritise the employment of local cast and crew with a Western Australian management team.
  • Provide innovative opportunities for new talent to obtain training in all facets of feature film making.

Skyview already has two more features in pre-production, which is a great sign both of their confidence in The Sculptor and their long-term commitment to local film production. Oh, and if you wondered what the film is actually about after that pretty but mainly impressionistic teaser, here’s the quick description:

A struggling artist dabbles in black magic to find success, but when he has everything he ever dreamed of, the demons come back to haunt his life, his work and his family.

And the tagline: Can you keep a secret? (Clearly I can’t, as I think this will be a very exciting debut feature you should all know about!)

For those who prefer to remember the old real Star Wars films, you might just enjoy seeing the Death Star Over San Francisco which features some fairly nifty compositing, in the style (if not tone) of Cloverfield.

Update: Check out a brief interview with the guy who made this clip, Michael Horn.

Interesting links for August 15th 2008:

• Ancient Free Gardeners - flying the CC banner [Creative Commons Australia] - "... Ancient Free Gardeners, a Melbourne-based indie band who use CC licences to distribute their music. We're very pleased to announce that AFG have released their new single, Innards Out, under a CC BY-NC-SA licence, which allows it to be freely distributed and even remixed. And they're getting quite a bit of attention from it."
• Internet becomes Iraq's new matchmaker [The Age] - "Young Iraqis in Baghdad are surfing the internet to search for partners to tie the knot as violence and sectarian tensions take their toll on more traditional forms of socialising. Dating has fallen victim to the insecurity that has reduced the capital to a sullen network of rival neighbourhoods, leaving little space for men and women to meet other than in cyber chat rooms. "I think the Iraqis are looking for love on the internet because there are no other places for them to meet," said Mustafa Kazem, a 20-year-old engineering student who found his soulmate on a university chat forum."
• Brands line up for Bond sequel [Variety] - "James Bond is bringing back some familiar brands in "Quantum of Solace." Sequel to "Casino Royale" will again be backed by Ford Motor Co., Heineken beer, Smirnoff vodka, Omega watches, Virgin Atlantic, Sony Ericsson cell phones and other Sony electronics. These brands all have products placed in the film and each will shell out tens of millions of dollars as a promotional partner of the pic. Sony Pictures, which is distribbing the movie, declined to disclose how much the brands are ponying up, but returning partners spent up to $100 million worldwide on ad efforts around "Casino Royale," industryites estimate. The same is expected this time around." [Via The Frodo Franchise]
• Italy blocks The Pirate Bay [The Age] - "An Italian judge has ordered the country's internet service providers to block access to The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing website, as part of a probe into copyright law violation, officials said on Thursday. Since last week, Italy's anti-fraud police have been informing providers they must heed the order of a judge in the northern city of Bergamo, police Col. Alessandro Nencini said." (Apparently the impact of this 'ban' has been to increase Italian traffic to The Pirate Bay!

Interesting links for August 10th 2008 through August 11th 2008:

• having “exclusive rights” in a region is a remnant of the twentieth century’s mass media [jill/txt] - "The tyranny of digital distance is most often experienced by people outside of the United States. ... Another aspect of these cultural blockades where being outside of the US has been an advantage is baseball. In the US, if you’ve moved away from where the team you support is based you often won’t be able to watch their games because the local television stations won’t broadcast them. So MLB.tv lets you subscribe to watch all baseball games - except local ones, because the local television stations have exclusive rights to them. If you live outside of the US, you have no local games - so you can watch every baseball game live, no holds barred."
• Wizard People, Dear Reader by Brad Neely (NOT Harry Potter) [Illegal Art] - Brad Neely's hilarious "unauthorized re-envisioning of Harry Potter and the Philosophers/Sorcerer's Stone", released in 2004. It's a long audio parody to be played at the same time as the DVD of the first Harry Potter film. Like a DVD commentary for evil! [YouTube Version] [Script] [Wikipedia Entry]
• 1.8 million hits in four days for grocery pricing website. [WA Today] - "The new GROCERYchoice website received 1.8 million hits in its first four days, showing consumers are interested in the information it provides, federal Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen says. GROCERYchoice was launched last week by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to provide consumers with more information about grocery prices."
• How to Get Your Indie Film on iTunes (...It's Not Easy) [CinemaTech] - Scott Kirsner's really useful guide to distributing independent films via iTunes and (more feasibly) via their main competitors like Amazon Unbox. For the upcoming filmmakers of tomorrow, this is essential information! (Especially if you're already planning your own Dr Horrible!)
• Amazon Adds Universal Wish List [Micro Persuasion] - Amazon.com's Wish List feature has been around a long time - over 10 years in fact. However, recently the e-commerce site expanded it with a new feature called The Universal Wish List. Using a simple bookmarklet ... you can now add any item to your list from anywhere on the web." (I use Amazon's wish lists a lot, both for purchases and to fill out bibliographies of new books, so this looks like a really useful little addition to me!)

Interesting links for July 28th 2008 through July 30th 2008:

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog [Hulu] - Joss Whedon's 3 Dr Horrible webisodes - availble for one week only - are now back - for 4 months - on Hulu. Only, of course, if you live in the US. Or know how to circumvent Hulu's region locking.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Trailer [Moviefone] - The new trailer for the Harry Potter 6 film looks amazing. The embedded version seems geo-locked to the US, but the HD versions should load anywhere (or, at least, they loaded in Australia). Evil Young Lord V looks very creepy!
• Conroy welcomes ISP filtering [Australian IT] - "The federal Government will embark on the next step of its internet filtering strategy after initial trials proved successful, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said. ... today released the findings of a recent ... ISP-level internet filtering trial...
• Scrabulous pulled from Facebook in US and Canada [ABC News] - "The creators of online Scrabble knock-off Scrabulous say they have pulled their application from US and Canadian Facebook pages due to a lawsuit filed by game-making giant Hasbro."
• Google enrolled for schools email deal [The Age] - "Google has snatched what is believed to be its biggest single client in the world - the NSW Department of Education - away from its rival Microsoft to claim up to 1.3 million new users of its free email product."
• Joss Whedon's online musical comedy Sing-Along Social Media Blitz [Chief Marketer] - "WWJWD. What Would Joss Whedon Do. Marketers looking to capitalize on the power of social media could do worse than keep that mantra in mind next time they want to launch a campaign." (A look at the success of Dr Horrible.)
• China becomes biggest net nation [BBC NEWS | Technology] - "China now has the world's largest net-using population, say official figures. More than 253 million people in the country are now online, according to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)."
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Absurdly Implausible Excess [NYTimes.com] - Has the phrase “jump the shark” jumped the shark? Or, more to the point, should we be saying that it has “nuked the fridge”? ...which emerged from a 1980s dorm-room discussion of a particularly ridiculous episode of the TV show “Happy Days"...

Interesting links for July 23rd 2008:

• WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars [Wired Magazine 16.08] - To celebrate it's twenty-fifth anniversary, Wired has a good overview of the place of WarGames in videogame and geek history.
• What's In It For Doogie Howser? [Jeffrey McManus] - McManus takes an educated stab at the economics of Joss Whedon's Dr Horrible web experiment. (Joss himself notes that these figures aren't that far off.)
• Xbox 360 users to build and sell own games [The Age] - It'll be interesting to see how well the coming "Xbox Live Community Games" take off and, most importantly, what terms and conditions Microsoft force game creators to accept in order to sell their work to other Xboxers.

So The Dark Knight certainly lives up to its promise of being dark. Disturbingly so. The film is an outstanding collaboration on pretty much all fronts, cast and crew, but it’s already destined to be remembered as Heath Ledger’s swan song, and rightly so: Ledger is not only the best villain a superhero film has ever had, but his performance excels simply because he could because he’s not a super-villain at all. Ledger’s Joker is psychotic, but in an eerily believable way. Unlike the over-the-top efforts of the camp 60s tv show and films, or Jack Nickolson’s caricature under Tim Burton, Ledger plays a Joker that really could have emerged from the nastiest corners of contemporary society. It’s a performance to be seen and experienced – if not necessarily enjoyed – and at this stage of the year Ledger’s posthumous Academy Award looks a certainty.

Credit has to go to Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman who all give strong performances but are accommodating enough to play second fiddle to Ledger’s deranged centrepiece. Gary Oldman steps up in his role as Lt Gordon, and newcomer Aaron Eckhart seems to play Harvey Dent a little too smugly until the latter section of the film where his inevitable downfall really hits home in contrast to the earlier scenes. While not really a weak link, Maggie Gyllenhaal really has the misfortune of being the least impressive in the cast, although she has the difficult task of stepping into the only role where the actor has changed (previously Katie Holmes).

Visually, the film is once again spectacular, both inside Gotham and in the scenes set elsewhere, especially an unexpected visit to the soaring heights of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers. For comic book fans, there are plenty of knowing nods along the way, but these are subtle enough not to intrude on the film for everyone else. That said, certain character arcs are a lot more tragic when you can see them coming, especially the emergence of Two-Face. There are plenty of doors left open at the end of the film for a third in the Batman series, although the tone left hanging suggests the next film would be even bleaker and its hard to imagine anything much darker than The Dark Knight being palatable at the multiplex.

The new poster for the 2008 Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, looks really good!

As you might imagine, the lead villain this time is the Joker. [Via]

Update: Read my review of The Dark Knight here.

I'm entrenched in marking first-year Flash animation projects today, and so have been thinking about creativity in various ways, but without much time to blog. So, I thought I'd share two YouTube clips which have made me laugh this morning, instead.

The first clip is 1776... ... which is what the US War of Independence would look like if produced by the creative team behind 300.  Apparently this was created by the Robot Chicken folks. It's very funny.  "Tonight we dine in VIR-GIN-I-A!" [Via Cynical-C]

The second is a wonderful mashup of Shrek and The Queen which tells the tale of a most unlikely romance: 
Thanks to Gregg Rossen for the link to this Queen and Donkey clip!

The US release date for the much anticipated Blade Runner: The Final Cut DVD has been set at 18 December 2007 (I hope the same date will be true for Australia, but I can't find anything to confirm that yet). There are sets from 2 to 5 discs in size, including the package pictured, which comes in briefcase in the style of one holding the the Voight-Kampff test in the film. It all looks very exciting, and, unlike, say, George Lucas' Star Wars Special Editions, the Blade Runner sets will contain all the versions of the film, from the 1982 release, the first Director's Cut, the new Final Cut and, for those getting the 5-disc pack, a work-print (which I've never seen) which has all sorts of changes that never made it to any cinema screens at any time.

One of the best parts of this collection will have to be the new 'Dangerous Days' documentary which seeks to be a 'definitive' look at the film, but really will just add more to the film's ongoing mythology. Yahoo! has a few preview clips up, which include footage showing new interviews with most of the cast and crew, including James Edward Olmos and Harrison Ford. I thought the previous Blade Runner documentary put together by Mark Kermode was pretty good, so I'm hoping to be dazzled by 'Dangerous Days' if it has even more to show about the film and its cultural impact.

I'm quite pleased this set is on its way - when I was lecturing earlier this year on Blade Runner I was really starting to think it would be the last time this film would seem relevant to students, but I think this re-release will spark further interest in the film, its peppered production history and the importance of the questions it provokes. Yes, I think Deckard is a replicant in every cut, but I'd be pleased to hear why you disagree ... or agree! [Via AICN]

For Harrison Ford fans, you can also check out the Comicon report from Ford, Spielberg and others from the set of Indiana Jones 4!

Update: Blade Runner: The Final Cut will get a cinematic premiere on September 1st at the 64th Venice Film Festival!

I confess, I'm addicted to short, sharp edits that are representative of whole films.  The 'Re-Enacted in 30 seconds with bunnies" series, but I think I've not found a new addiction ... the 5 second film.  So far, my absolute favourite is the 2001: A Space Odyssey re-cut:

But, I must admit, the Fargo effort is pretty funny, too:

What's your favourite?

[Via Jason Mittell]

Having dedicated the final chapter of my doctoral thesis to examining the first two Spider-Man films as an exemplar of Artificial Culture, I really had to buy and watch the new Spider-Man 2.1 DVD, despite my constant annoyance at how these just-before-the-sequel extended edition DVD releases tend to disappoint. The 2.1 DVD set is advertised as having a new 'Extended Cut' of Spider-Man 2 with eight minutes new footage, while the second disc sports a bunch of 'all-knew' features. Sadly, the features on the extras DVD really don't justify the creation of an disc. The 'sneak peak' and trailer for Spider-Man 3 don't show anything not already floating around the legitimate parts of the internet, while the 'VFX Breakdown' is quite a laborious walk-through of the meshing of live-action, miniature and digital effects. I guess it's hard to make these technical mini-docos all that interesting, but the Lord of the Rings DVDs did show it's possible! I have the feeling VFX piece was shot for the original Spider-Man 2 DVD but cut since they're just really dull.

Of more interest, the eight minutes of extra footage do change the tone of the film in important places. There's a lot of extra character development for Harry and Mary-Jane; Harry's friendship is reinforced in an extended version of Peter's birthday party, while a new sequence between Mary-Jane and her friend highlights the fact that MJ is settling in her marriage rather than following her true love. Also, probably of more interest to the target audience, there are additional, CGI-heavy, shots added into Spider-Man's fight sequences with Doctor Octopus. However, apart from some extra punches and scrapes, these don't add anything notable to the story. Indeed, it's worth pointing out this extended version isn't labeled a 'Director's Cut' as I suspect Rami was quite happy with the theatre-released version.

However, just when I thought the DVD was really quite a waste of money, I found myself laughing out loud at one unexpected sequence in which J Jonah Jameson "celebrates" Spider-Man's retirement and The Bugle's acquisition of the Spider-suit in an entirely unexpected but unforgettably funny way! Of course, the J Jonah Jameson clip is on YouTube: Be warned, though, this scene is much funnier in the context of the film. Forewarned, then, watching this clip by itself may prove less funny ...

Since you're no doubt just watched the clip anyway, I'd recommend against buying 2.1 - there's nothing more to see.

There's been a lot of talk about 300, which is now, financially at least, the first big blockbuster of 2007. Leaving aside Iran's outrage at the film's depiction of their history, one of the most interesting elements of the film was the clever and canny marketing strategies which found success in online arenas where many others have tried, but failed. Deborah Netburn's article in the LA Times points out that 300 succeeded where others (most notably Snakes on a Plane) only appeared to work until the people voted with their feet at the box office:

Fanboy buzz is not enough to sell a film -- "Snakes on a Plane," anyone? -- but Garabedian points out that while the online community was obsessively talking about "Snakes" they were ultimately making fun of it. The people who were driving the chatter around "300" were genuinely excited about the film, especially the way it looked. And after Comic-Con, Warner Bros. marketing department made sure that the fanboys got the usual dribs and drabs of movie art and trailers just to keep their excitement up.

The marketing folks also took full advantage of MySpace. There was of course the requisite MySpace page for the film (now standard for all movies) -- featuring a ferocious looking muscle man in a metal helmet plus tons of video clips, wallpapers and links to the film's official website. But the stroke of genius came when the studio sponsored a feature upgrade to the site that told users they could store 300 photos on their profile thanks to the movie "300." (Previously the limit had been 12). That started Jan. 2 and was incredibly popular with teens. The result was billions of ad impressions and 8 million viewings of the trailer. Is it any wonder that the 52% of the people who saw "300" were under 25?

There are also mundane reasons "300" might have done well. A generally warm weekend across the country encouraged people to get out of the house and brave long lines, and no other major film was released against "300," so it didn't have much competition. And while the critics have been lukewarm on the film -- faulting it for poor dialogue and a thin story -- nobody has said anything negative about the visuals. And to a generation of kids who have grown up with the lush worlds of video games, "300" was a familiar visual masterpiece.

The '300 images' idea is definitely a clever one, and shows that marketing online really has to think outside the box of traditional hype-building.

On a differrent note, 300 is also interesting in that it was entirely edited on Apple Macs. For the tech details, visit the Raw Feed.

I'm giving a couple of lectures this semester in the Ecotexts: Nature/Writing/Technology course which has some great books and films on it. I'm getting to give lectures on Blade Runner and the anime Metropolis, but I've also been exploring links between these and other films on the course, including Code 46 and Children of Men. Of the three non-animated films, one of the most interesting textures they use is advertising; the bleak landscapes and cityscapes of the near-future are awash with commercials and warnings! In my online explorations, I've found a wonderful clip produced as a portfolio piece by the Foreign Office, the design company which worked on many of the media textures in Children of Men:

The future imagined through these advertisements and warnings is one easily extrapolated from today, yet cleverly different enough to suggest a future setting!

[View/Download High-Quality H264 Version] [Via WaxyLinks]