Interesting links for July 3rd 2008:
- Virtual Worlds Research: Past, Present and Future (Vol 1, No 1) [Journal of Virtual Worlds Research] - The inaugural issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is out, showcasing some excellent research and situating virtual worlds in an ongoing and dynamic research context. It’s also an exemplar of open publishing: all content is online and under Creative Commons licenses.
- Uni cheats outsource to India [The Age] - “Computer Science students are farming out their coursework to cheap programmers in countries like India and university staff admit they are powerless to detect and prevent it….Various well-established sites already sell students essays and other written work.”
- Is YouTube Killing Video Originality? [NewTeeVee] - “…more people are creating …video than ever before… The issue becomes when people start creating for the playcounts. What?s the fastest way to rack up a million plays on YouTube, land an agent and get on Oprah? It?s not by making something new!”
- VioletBlue VioletBlue - An archive of all of the posts that Boing Boing deleted in relation to sex blogger Violet Blue. Looking through this archive, it’s hard to see how these deletions haven’t damaged Boing Boing’s historical presence.
- Firefox download record official [BBC NEWS | Technology] - Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries.
Tags: academia, boingboinged, censorship, cheating, creativity, digitalculture, ethics, firefox, Google, highered, journal, learning, mashup, mozilla, oer, opensource, plagiarism, remix, research, youtube
Interesting links for June 30th 2008 through July 2nd 2008:
- The Internet Has the Power to Transform Your TV Show into a TV Brand [Deep Focus/Yahoo!] - New research (from a survey of 2000) which shows viewers under 35 treat the TV show as part of a franchise or brand, and that engaging with the franchise online strengthens brand ties (viewers > 35 see the TV show as the main event). [Via Nancy]
- World’s Best Presentation Contest [SlideShare] - Online slide sharing service Slideshare are running their annual competition to find the best slides (ppt, keynote, whatever else in pdf form) from around the world. We need many examples of powerpoint done better, so get sliding! (Entries close July 31st 08).
- Fast-talking Fred is the toast of YouTube [The Age] - Fourteen year old Lucas Cruikshank and his online persona, 6 year old Fred (with anger management issues and a chipmunked voice), is YouTube’s latest (and very annoying) micro-celeb. Visit Fred’s Channel.
- The romantic appeal of the “long tail hypothesis” [PopMatters | Blogs] - An interesting critique of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory: “With our identity riding on what we consume, we come to believe that there’s something valuable about having unique tastes, but we don’t actually pursue such a course in practice.”
- That Violet Blue thing [Boing Boing] - Boing Boing respond to accusations of censorship, stating their own position (they can retrospectively delete whatever they want) and getting quite a few comments in response!
- MySpace suicide: new law outlaws cyberbullying [The Age] - “Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a bill today outlawing cyberbullying, just kilometres from where a 13-year-old girl committed suicide nearly two years ago after being harassed on the Internet.”
- EA Grabs Your “Spore Creature Creator” IP [Clickable Culture] - “Talk about harshing my buzz. Electronic Arts is going to let us design creatures with its long-awaited Spore game and stand-alone Creature Creator, but in using the game and creator, we agree to hand over all rights in our creations to the megalithic publisher…”
- swedish teenager making millions off her blog? [jill/txt] - Jill Walker Rettberg looks at the fascinating case of a Swedish teenager who appears to be making a very healthy sum blogging by inserting paid ads and editorial comment without disclosure. [More links here.]
Tags: boingboinged, celebrity, censorship, cyberbullying, digitalculture, digitalhistory, economics, ethics, fred, ip, law, legal, longtail, marketing, myspace, powerpoint, presentation, slideshare, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, spore, sporn, stats, sweden, wired
