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Links for April 1st 2008

Interesting links for March 31st 2008 through April 1st 2008:

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One Clever Ad.

The Simpsons Go Viral … Almost

In a wonderful parody of the viral YouTube hit that was Noah’s photo ever day for six years, The Simpsons have included this clip in the latest episode in the US:

[Via Peter Black]

If that doesn’t amuse you, then perhaps edutainment is more to your taste, so you might want to check out the updated stats in Did You Know 2.0.

Update: Sadly the clip has been removed from YouTube due to a Fox copyright infringement claim.

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The WGA Strike: Making Writers Visible (starring Ron Moore with a special guest appearance by Daily Show writers)

wga-battlestar-250The WGA Writer’s Strike is now in its third week, so I thought I should finally get around to blogging a few thoughts.  First off, I have to say, it’s fantastic to see the issue of online content finally being taken seriously – as more and more material hits the web, I completely agree that writers should be getting their (usually very small) cut.  I find the claims by the media conglomerates that the web offers no solid business model disingenuous – and, as many writers have argued, a small percentage of nothing is still nothing: residuals only get paid if money gets made.

Also, for me the Writer’s Strike coincided with my final revisions on my Tyranny of Digital Distance paper which looks at the way online content and networked communication change the expectations and possibilities of media (especially television) distribution.  The series that formed my case study was Battlestar Galactica (BSG) and so I was intrigued to see show-runner Ron Moore talking about BSG’s first webisodes (The Resistance from 2006) in relation to the strike.  He noted that despite being put together by the same crew and cast as the regular episodes, the studio didn’t want to pay for this ‘promotional’ content, which wouldn’t involve paying anyone; Moore held out and got people paid, after some industrial action, but the studios still wanted to run the webisodes without credits and eventually did.  From this, Moore came to one conclusion:

“If there’s not an agreement with the studios about the internet, that specifically says ‘This is covered material, you have to pay us a formula – whatever that formula turns out to be – for use of the material and how it’s all done,’ the studios will simply rape and pillage.”

One of the stumbling blocks in getting the studios to agree to share the profit from online content is the fact that writers are simply not the most visible people in the whole world, and thus lack bargaining power.  Actors are, and film directors, but writers are rarely well known and that’s one of the things the strike has changed somewhat.  Or rather, an increased visibility of writers is one of those things that happened leading up to the strike, in some corners, at least, and has worked in favour of the writers’ cause.  Ron Moore, I think, is a great case study here: sure, he’s the show-runner for BSG as much as a writer, but across the last few years Moore has amplified the voice of the writer to BSG‘s fans and beyond.  The episodic BSG commentary podcasts have occasionally featured actors from the show, but the podcasts have most frequently focused on discussions of the writing process and have even featured additional raw recordings of writers’ meetings.  The fact that the podcasts are released synchronously with the episodes means that fans have often linked the writers perspectives with the show as much as the actors and CGI that make the visual experience.  If nothing else, I would argue, Moore helped fans ‘hear’ the writers in an explicit way which highlighted the ongoing creative role of the writing team.  Indeed, if Joss Whedon had been podcasting during the filming of Buffy, he’d probably have filled this role, and his DVD commentaries certainly talk about the writers and the process of writing, but the immediacy of Moore’s podcast are, I think, key to their success.

Ron Moore has also maintained a blog and, like the podcasts, this was hosted by SciFi.com and centrally branded.  However, one of notable things about the strike has been that Moore wanted to blog outside of the corporate umbrella and has thus started writing at his own domain.  On his second post he noted that when the much-anticipated Battlestar Galactica: Razor airs next week, the podcast commentary will be a little different: it’s a recordings of the writers’ room when the Razor story was broken.  Again, the writers are in the spotlight.  Now, wearing both his writer and show-runner hats, Moore has blogged about BSG’s uncertain future, a post sure to have the full sympathy of (albeit anxious) fans:

Production wrapped on episode 413 late last night, and there’s no certain date to resume shooting.  No more scripts exist.  My office staff has been laid off.  My cast has been suspended, without pay.

I refuse to believe that we won’t finish, that we won’t be back to film our final stories, but I know and accept there is that possibility.  The strike will be a seminal event for many of us in this business as it’s put literally everything we care about in the balance (if only for a short time so far) for something we all believe is important.

Writers talk a lot about the strike, about the reasons we’re out on the picket lines and our feelings and experiences in the business.  It’s been an interesting three weeks.  I’ve connected with more scribes in the last few weeks than in many months before and I come away from it to date with a sense of optimism about the solidarity of the membership and admiration for my peers.

Galactica’s coming back, I frakking promise you that.  But I am ready to put the rest of the story on the table and take the risk that I’ll never be able to tell it, in support of this strike.

Like Adama says, you make your choices and then you live with them. 

Still. 

A helluva gamble.

It’s a gamble that fans might have been unprepared to accept in the past, but with the visibility of writers thanks to Moore, and thanks to the strike, it’s a gamble which fans will likely support.  That said, I think the writer’s have probably gotten all of the sympathy that viewers are likely to give – things will get harder as the episodes already in the can run out and shows stop abruptly mid-season. Lets just hope that as talks between the WGA and the studios resume next week, a reasonable outcome can be reached.

Until then, for an accessible and convincing explanation of the WGA’s position, watch this ‘Why We Fight’ clip.  However, if you prefer your news just a little funnier, then this clip from Daily Show writer Jason Rothman (with a characteristically odd cameo from John Oliver) in the style we’ve come to love, is for you:

Incidentally, I think this clip is brilliant, because Rothman does such a good job of showing how much of The Daily Show comes directly from the writers’ pens.

Visit United Hollywood for more, or to show support click on Fans4Writers.

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Doctor Who: ‘Time Crash’

In a seven-minute special filmed for the Children in Need Appeal in the UK, the current Doctor, David Tennant meets his earlier, fifth, incarnation Peter Davison.  The episode is largely fan service, but it’s still a good little clip.  Check it out here:

Oh, and for those fans who noticed all sorts of continuity references there is a good Wikipedia entry for the episode with all the details.

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From YouTube to UniTube?

It would appear that the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has the dubious honours of being the first Australian university to have their own YouTube channel.  In the past couple of months, there have been a number of reports of US universities setting up on YouTube.  For example, this article from News.com on UC Berkeley’s channel:

YouTube is now an important teaching tool at UC Berkeley.

The school announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on the Web’s No.1 video-sharing site.

Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley.

Berkeley said it will continue to expand the offering. The topics of study found on YouTube included chemistry, physics, biology and even a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005 by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

“UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community,” said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley’s vice provost for undergraduate education in a statement.

Similarly excited press has greeted other US universities, this article on the University of Southern California’s channel (Via).  However, the I think educational administrator and web 2.0 aficionado Greg Whitby notes probably wins the most excited prize for his take on the UNSW channel (Via):

While it’s a great marketing strategy, it recognises where today’s students are.  Although the channel will broadcast some lecturers in an attempt to reach potential students, it captures the ubquitous nature and popularity of Web 2.0.  

This is the democratisation of knowledge – no longer contained within lecture theatres or classrooms but shared.  Learning becomes accessible, anywhere, anytime.  Transportable, transparent, relevant and exciting.

The University of NSW is to be applauded but we still lag behind.  iTunes has developed a store dedicated to education called University.  It’s ‘the campus that never sleeps’ –  allowing universities across the US to upload audio/video lectures, interviews, debates, presentations for students – any age, anywhere.  And it’s free. It’s astounding and exciting to think that a cohort of students and teachers from a school western Sydney can watch a biology lecture from MIT. 

The challenge for us is to open our K-12 classrooms to a new audience – to share knowledge as professionals and to showcase quality learning and teaching as we move from isolated classrooms to a connected global learning environment.

Readers of any of my blogs will know I’m also an advocate for integrating certain web 2.0 tools into learning and teaching.  However, these announcements seem oddly familiar to me – it’s just like the press that came out as pretty much every university in the world embraced podcasting one after another, each pushing out press releases about embracing the future.  However, what didn’t happen half as readily was the pedagogical discussion about how podcasting should or could be used in education.  Nor, I have to say, are we seeing much interrogation of the use of online video via YouTube or other services.  Let me be clear: there is certainly value in using YouTube in particular ways in education.  However, as I argued about podcasting in the past, it’s probably more important to focus on working out new ways to engage students (such as having them create content for podcasting or to post on YouTube) rather than primarily just replicating the top-down structures of lecture delivery. (I don’t have a problem with recorded lectures, I should add, I just don’t think that’s all we should worry about.)

It’s also worth keeping in mind that YouTube is a two-way street as demonstrated by clips of teachers at their worst appearing on YouTube.

[Cross-posted from my eLearning blog.]

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Special Journal Issue on "Social Network Sites"

The latest edition of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is live, and contains an outstanding special section on “social network sites” edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison.  I’ve not had a chance to read all the articles, yet, but I can say with certainty that danah boyd and Nicole Ellison’s “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” is definitely going to be one of those oft-cited and even more often read papers in university courses!  Here’s the announcement from danah’s blog:

JCMC Special Theme Issue on “Social Network Sites”
Guest Editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/

[X] “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
[X]“Signals in Social Supernets” by Judith Donath
[X]“Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances” by Hugo Liu
[X]“Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites” by Eszter Hargittai
[X]“Cying for Me, Cying for Us: Relational Dialectics in a Korean Social Network Site” by Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun
[X]“Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com” by Dara Byrne
[X]“Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball” by Lee Humphreys
[X]“Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube” by Patricia Lange

While not getting quite as much blog attention, it’s also worth noting that there are a number of other great papers in this issue of JCMC, too.  In particular, I found these two very engaging:

[X] The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of Creative Commons Licenses by Minjeong Kim; and
[X] Every Blog Has Its Day: Politically Interested Internet Users’ Perceptions of Blog Credibility by Thomas J. Johnson, Barbara K. Kaye, Shannon L. Bichard, and W. Joann Wong

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Tale of Mighty Rudd Ascension

As the description tells us, “Short propaganda philosophy tells tale of mighty Rudd ascension” …

Without a doubt, one of the best political satires, and mashups, of the 2007 Federal Election campaign thus far.  And, yes, for those who watch The 7.30 Report, I am getting YouTube pointers from Michael Brissenden these days.  After all, he’s a keen YouTube watcher himself now; as last night’s report said:

The 2007 election will be remembered as the YouTube campaign – the first time the internet became a real force. Both sides are exploiting cyber space relentlessly but as we have seen already, the net is not always such a comfortable place for politicians.

Bring on the political discomfort! 🙂

Update: NineMSN staff writers seem to like this clip, too.

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I’m Making Waffles in The United States of Sparta!

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!

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Blogging Burma


[Photo by Marxpix]

Like the Asian Tsunami (December 29, 2004),the The London Bombings (July 2005) and Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath (September 2005), information about the current demonstrations and atrocities happening in Burma are flowing through user-generated channels as much (indeed, often more so than) through the traditional mainstream media. There is a great deal of activity both in blogs and throughout the broader sphere of citizen media, but some noteworthy places to look are:-

[X] The 2007 Burmese anti-government protests Wikipedia entry – Wikipedia is at its most useful during moments of crisis which have many sets of eyes watching. The collective intelligence of Wikipedia contributors continues to develop one of the best resources on the Burma protests.

[X] YouTube has a number of clips like this one which simply show the enormous scope of the protests [Via]. A very good source is the videostream from news6776 which collates a great deal of footage (both mainstream media-produced and from citizen journalists)

[X] The Support the Monks’ protest in Burma Facebook Group – To be honest, I’ve never really thought Facebook would provide a terribly useful platform for political activism as the ‘groups’ often seem a peripheral part of Facebook’s design. However, I happily stand corrected as the exponential growth of the Support the Monks’ protest in Burma Facebook Group has been amazing – over 170,000 members when I checked this morning – and the links, advice and descriptions of how members can actively support the Burmese demonstrations in that group seems quite robust to me, not just a tokenistic gesture. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say this Facebook group has probably done more to promote the ‘ Day of International Action for a Free Burma – Free Aung San Suu Kyi & Support the Monks in Burma’ on October 6th than any other single outlet online or offline.

[X] The SmartMobs blog notes that cameraphones and other mobile devices are one of the main tools allowing information and media to get out of Burma, but the government has moved from shutting down Internet Cafes to blocking the entire internet in order to try and stop knowledge about the situation in Burma being available internationally. Taking the massive step of blocking the entire internet speaks volumes to how widely the impact of citizen reportage is from inside Burma is disseminating to international viewers and readers.

[X] For a traditional media rundown of the impact of citizen media, see ‘Bloggers in Burma keep world informed during military crackdown’ in the San Francisco Chronicle and Dan Gillmor’s response at the Centre for Citizen Media where he points out, quite rightly, that there’s a lot more than just blogging going on!

[X] Finally, you should visit Free Burma (dot Org) which is a portal for international information on how to support the protestors and get involved in their struggle.


[Photo by Hugo*’s from protestors supporting the Burmese democratic protests, in front of the Myanmar embassy in Paris, with a portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi.]

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