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27Dec/09

Darth History

Did you know Darth Vader attended the Yalta conference at the end of World War Two?

History makes such good raw material for the Photoshop-inclined. See the full set of wonderfully mashed up Superheroes in History from agan harahap. [Via io9]

Tagged as: darth vader, history, superheroes No Comments

14Oct/09

Digital Culture Links: October 14th 2009

Links for October 12th 2009 through October 14th 2009:

MySpace Loses Market Share As Facebook, Twitter Gain [SMH] - "MySpace has lost more than half of its market share in the past year even though Australians have doubled the amount of time they spend on social networking sites in that period. New figures released by Nielsen this week revealed that Australians spent 1.6 million hours on social media sites in June this year, up from 800,000 hours a year earlier. The two major beneficiaries of the social media rush have been Facebook and Twitter, which, according to Nielsen, now have 8 million and 1.5 million unique Australian users, respectively. Conversely, MySpace has been hemorrhaging users in the past year, with its monthly Australian unique visitors reaching 2.381 million in August, Nielsen said. Separately, traffic monitoring company Experian Hitwise said the site's Australian market share dropped by 54 per cent in the year to October 10." (So ... notMySpace?)
Ajay Rochester threatens to sue Woman's Day magazine [The Australian] - TV host Ajay Rochester has used microblogging site Twitter to threaten to sue ACP Magazines' Woman's Day over a story claiming she was planning "a raft of cosmetic procedures". In a series of "tweets'', the first of which was posted at about 2am today Sydney time, LA-based Rochester writes: "Shame on you Woman's Day! Photo's are 7 months old and u didn't have permisson to use! Shame Shame Shame!'' Rochester also took aim at a Woman's Day reporter, saying: "Phil Koch - better get a lawyer son, better get a reaaaal good one! You had every op to do this with respect, integrity and honesty.'' However, this tweet was later deleted. [...] "Thank You Twitter for giving people like us the op to shout back at the injustices the media think they can just take with our lives." [she tweeted.] "Had many things said about me in the last year - mostly untrue twisted by people intent on hurting me. But this is THE WORST. No respect!''
Australian social media use doubles [Media Hunter] - "The amount of time spent on social media sites has nearly doubled from around 800,000 hours per month in August 2008 to 1.6 million hours per month in June 2009. Online measurement company Nielsen has found time spent on social media sites was just behind entertainment, which had just over 1.6 million hours per month. The number of Australians accessing social media sites has continued to grow in the past year, with Facebook’s unique audience surpassing eight million for the first time in August 2009. Twitter was up 979% to 1.5 million in August 2009."
4,000,000,000 [Flickr Blog] - Flickr just passed the 4 billion photos mark ... that's a lot!
No Video for Twitter and No Twitter for Miley [New TeeVee] - "Elsewhere in the intersection of Twitter and video, teen queen Miley Cyrus posted a rap on YouTube about why she shut down her Twitter account. “The reasons are simple, I started Tweeting ’bout pimples; I stopped living for moments, and started living for people.” OK, so I’ll agree it’s ridiculous to consider this a news story, but I have to admire Cyrus’ chops; she executes a fantastically low-fi explanatory music video complete with back-up dancers in shower stalls. With YouTube partner ads on some 1,750,000 views over the weekend..." (Her rationale for leaving Twitter seems an entirely reasonable one and quite quotable when trying to capture some people's concerns about Twitter as banal.)

Tagged as: banal, celebrity, everydaylife, myspace, socialnetworking, stats No Comments

30Jun/09

Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 29th 2009

Links for June 13th 2009 through June 29th 2009:

Just Add Performance [Kiri Miller / Flow 10.02] - "... if you want to get involved in value-oriented debates about it, here’s a thought experiment: rather than concluding that Guitar Hero players are wasting the time that they would otherwise be putting into long hours of practice on a real guitar, consider the possibility that they might otherwise spend that time just listening to recorded music (or, of course, playing Grand Theft Auto). Anyone who has played Guitar Hero or Rock Band for more than five minutes will tell you that it requires a deeper level of musical engagement than listening to an iPod—intellectually, emotionally, physically, and often socially. Moreover, everyone I’ve interviewed for my research reports that the games have substantially changed the way they listen to popular music when they’re not playing. [...] Guitar Hero and Rock Band let players put the performance back into recorded music, reanimating it with their physical engagement and performance adrenaline." (Great little article!)
Keeping News of David Rohde’s Kidnapping Off Wikipedia [NYTimes.com] - "For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban. But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia." The weird tale of trying to keep something (that was legitimate news) out of the Wikipedia.
Picasa With Creative Commons Search [Goole Blogoscoped] - Search Google's PicasaWeb for CC-licensed images: "Google’s photo album service, Picasa Web Albums, now allows you to show options during your search. As Ionut noticed, as part of these options you can tick the “Creative Commons” link, which will only return shareable pics. The amount of images is not all too bad either, at least for some queries: a CC-only search for the keyword google shows 276,529 pics, according to Picasa. A search for obama returns 43,510 pics right now. For comparison, the same CC-only obama search yields 127,858 results on Flickr."

Tagged as: embodiment, Google, guitarhero, journalism, music, news, performance, physicality, Picasa, rockband, socialgaming, wikipedia No Comments

19Jan/09

Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 18th 2009

Links for January 16th 2009 through January 18th 2009:

At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool [NYTimes.com] - YouTube as #2 search engine? Googlopoly clearly progressing according to plan: "The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries. ... And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. (Google, incidentally, owns YouTube.) In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore."
Hudson River plane crash [Kottke] - Detailed wrapu-up of the citizen journalist (and some mainstream media) responses to teh Hudson River plan crash. Twitter and Flickr excel. [Via BBoing]
U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work [Slicon Valley Insider] - Twitter as a citizen journalism platform: "Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter from his iPhone. Thirty-four minutes after Janis posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV as a witness ..."

Tagged as: newyork, searchengines, Twitter No Comments

11Jan/09

Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 11th 2009

Links for January 11th 2009:

let the remixes begin (UPDATED) [Lessig Blog] - Lawrence Lessig appears on The Colbert Report promoting his new book, Remix... remixes ensue!
tiltshiftmaker.com - Transform your photos into tilt-shift style miniatures - "Tilt-shift miniature style photos are pictures of real-life scenes that are manipulated to look like model photographs. Now you can easily transform your existing digital camera photos into tilt-shift style miniatures using tiltshiftmaker.com." (A fairly minimal setup, but with the right photographs, these can look impressive.)
Mouthwash linked with increased cancer risk [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - "Dental experts are warning mouthwash could cause oral cancer and should be made available on prescription only. A review published in the Australian Dental Journal has linked mouthwash containing alcohol to an increased risk of developing the deadly disease. The alcohol in mouthwash is believed to allow cancer causing compounds to attack the lining of the mouth more easily. The review author, Michael McCullough, is an Associate Professor in Oral medicine at Melbourne University."
Whopper® Sacrifice - Sacrifice 10 friends from Facebook for a free WHOPPER® - Latest Burger King promotion is pretty web-savy: use Burger King Facebook application, delete 10 Facebook friends (and the application tells them you've done so) and get a free burger.

Tagged as: colbert, facebook, health, lessig, mouthwash, photoshop, remix, socialnetworking No Comments

11Jan/09

I’ve always found the idea of tilt-shift photography appealing, but I’ll never be able to justify the lens required. A combination of photoshop filters can have a similar effect, but I’ve never found the time, but I am enjoying playing with the simple but efficient Tilt Shift Maker, an online tool which does the processing work for you. For those who don’t know tilt-shift photography (or, more specifically, tilt-shift miniature simulation) can make a photograph look like the contents are miniature-sized rather than realistic thanks to different depths of field. Here are two examples of tilt-shifting my own photos:

[1] Luxury Boats docked along Venice:

[2] Pier 17 in New York:

I’ve got a little way to go until I’m happy with these – I should really be using photoshop to refine them – but if you’re interested check out the example gallery at Tilt Shift Maker (all photos under a Creative Commons license) or the rapidly-growing Tilt Shift Maker Flickr group.

Tagged as: tiltshift, tiltshiftmaker No Comments

22Dec/08

The Day the Cupcake Stood Still

[Look Behind You! Run, Run for your Life! Nom, Nom, Nom all CC BY]

I turned 32 on the weekend, but with a 9-week old in the house we’re much more in tune with our inner children, too, so I was just blown away when Em made me these amazing Alien Invader cupcakes! There were lots of other highlights – a great lunch with family, some brilliant presents, watching my son giggle away, and an early Christmas party dinner with good friends – but I just had to share the cupcake pictures!

Tagged as: cakecakes, lego, starwars, troops 1 Comment

13Dec/08

Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 13th 2008

Links for December 9th 2008 through December 13th 2008:

The Rumor Bomb: On Convergence Culture and Politics by Jayson Harsin [Flow TV, 9.04, December 2008] - Jayson Harsin looks at everything from Obama's "terrorist connections" to Steve Jobs' "heart attack" to understand how rumours work in the age of convergence culture (and what a huge impact they can have in an instantaneous, online, connective culture).
Library Releases Report on Flickr Pilot (Library of Congress) [Library of Congress Blog] - "Only nine months into the Library of Congress’ pilot project placing Library photos on the Web site Flickr, the photos have drawn more than 10 million views, 7,166 comments and more than 67,000 tags, according to a new report from the project team overseeing the lively project. “The popularity and impact of the pilot have been remarkable,” said Michelle Springer, project manager for digital initiatives in the Office of Strategic Initiatives, who said total views reached 10 million in October. The site is averaging 500,000 views a month, she said, adding that Flickr members have marked 79 percent of the photos as “favorites.” The report recommends that the Library of Congress continue to participate in The Commons and explore other Web 2.0 communities." [Full Report PDF] (Short version: sharing public cultural goods via participatory culture platforms is a win for everyone!)
Microsoft Office to debut online [BBC NEWS | Technology] - "Microsoft is preparing web versions of some of its most popular programs. In 2009 web versions of Word, Excel and other programs in the Microsoft Office suite plus Exchange and Sharepoint will go online. Users will be able to get at the programs via a web browser rather than install them on a PC. Some versions of the programs are expected to be free to use provided users are happy to view adverts alongside the software." (So, Microsoft are racing to reclaim some of the cloud computing presence which has become Google's spare backbone ... given how slowly Google Docs have evolved as a service, and how crude their slide presentation software is, if their offering is good enough there could be real Microsoft Vs Google competition in the clouds!)

Tagged as: cloud, digitalculture, Obama, office, stevejobs No Comments

3Dec/08

Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 2nd 2008

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)"

Tagged as: abc, australianbroadcastingcorporation, digitalculture, freedomofspeech, legal, neilgaiman No Comments

9Nov/08

Annotated Links of Interest: November 9th 2008

Links of interest for November 7th 2008 through November 9th 2008:

Huffington: 'Obama Not Elected Without Internet' [InternetNews Realtime IT News] - "Obama campaign-related videos garnered 14.5 million hours of viewing on YouTube, according to Democratic political consultant Joe Trippi. He estimates that amount of time would have cost $47 million to buy on TV ... "And to buy that time, you're interrupting people watching football games and soap operas," said Trippi. On the Web, "this is stuff people wanted to watch." Just as the power of television, via televised debates, was credited with helping John Kennedy win the presidency over Richard Nixon in 1960, the panelists agreed with moderator John Heilemann that in 2008 the Web had at least as significant a role."
PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication - "Welcome to PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication, a biannual open-access online postgraduate publication. Founded by the Media and Communications Program, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, PLATFORM has just been launched in November 2008. This new postgraduate journal, PLATFORM, is refereed by an international board of established and emerging scholars working across diverse paradigms in Media and Communication. It is planned to develop it as an international journal."
Gwen and baby Zuma [Gwen Stefani : News] - I really hadn't imagined Gwen Stefani to be a champion of copyright reform and the Creative Commons, but the termsunder which she released the first picture of herself and her baby are positively forward-thinking: "[(c) Mrs. Me, Inc., 2008.] This photo is licensed under aCreative Commons BY-NC-ND license. In addition to the permissions granted to the public under this license, this photograph may also be used in its original and unaltered form for commercial purposes by publishers in connection with the distribution of news or human interest stories, such as magazines, blogs, and newspapers. All other rights, including without limitation use of this photo in whole or in part or in connection with commercial posters, calendars, and other commercial products and services, are reserved exclusively by the copyright holder." (The Obama campaign have been posting CC licensed photos since 2007, too!)
Google Street View turned into artwork [The Age] - "Two American artists have made swooning for Google's all-seeing eye an art form, creating what they term the first artistic intervention in Google Street View. After witnessing the immense online interest in quirky sightings on Google Maps, Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley approached Google with the idea of creating a series of staged tableaux along a street in Pittsburgh. The scenes, which were shot on May 3 this year and feature Pittsburgh's Northside residents hamming it up along a nondescript lane called Sampsonia Way, went live on Google Maps this week." Check out the result: http://www.streetwithaview.com/