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Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 4th 2009

February 4, 2009

Links for February 2nd 2009 through February 4th 2009:

  • How Natalie became Australia’s queen of YouTube [The Age] – “From her parents’ home in western Sydney, Natalie Tran, Australia’s queen of YouTube, has proven time and again that titillation is not a prerequisite to internet fame. With more than 150,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, Tran, 22, is easily the most subscribed YouTube user in Australia, while globally she ranks 37th. The 118 videos she’s created over two years have amassed 64 million views, making her also the most viewed Australian YouTube user of all time – more popular on the site than even AC/DC, whose videos have attracted 53 million views. But while some female web stars such as Obama Girl have used their sexuality to amass scores of drooling fanboys, Tran has eschewed titillation in favour of comedic skits about her everyday life.” (She’s very funny and has impressive production values for this sort of talking-from-my-bedroom cam style.)
  • MySpace purges 90,000 sex offenders [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “MySpace has identified and barred some 90,000 registered sex offenders from using the site over the last two years, the online networking site revealed to a US investigative task force on Tuesday. The “shocking” number was 40,000 more than MySpace had previously acknowledged, according to Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal, a co-chairman of the task force of state attorneys-general looking into sex offenders’ use of social networking. MySpace disclosed the figures to the task force in response to a subpoena. “This shocking revelation, resulting from our subpoena, provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators,” Mr Blumenthal said in a statement.” (Blumenthal sees this figure as evidence that MySpace should only allow “real” identities and use age-verification; I see this as evidence that we should be educating young people from an early age about how to deal with unwanted attention, predators and so forth, whatever the medium!)
  • Virtual gold broker “sells” for $10 million [Boing Boing] – Cory Doctorow: “My MMO Inc., has purchased MyMMOShop.com for $10,000,000 — MyMMOShop being a company that buys and sells virtual gold, prestige items, and other virtual wealth. My MMO is a privately held company, so it’s impossible to say whether 10 million actual dollars left one bank account and entered another (as opposed to a stock swap or other “sale”), but this is still pretty whacky news. I’m working on a novel about gold farming and I spent most of the last year talking to farmers, brokers, players, academics, game-runners, moderators and others who follow the field, and I’ve concluded that it’s possibly the weirdest grey market in the world.”

Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 5th 2009

January 5, 2009

Links for January 3rd 2009 through January 5th 2009:

  • Participatory Media Literacy: Why it matters [Digital Ethnography] – Michael Wesch (of The Machine is Us/ing Us fame): “Those of us striving to integrate participatory media literacy practices into our classes often face resistance. Other faculty might argue that we are turning away from the foundations of print literacy, or worse, pandering to our tech-obsessed students. Meanwhile, students might resist too, wondering why they have to learn to use a wiki in an anthropology class. The surprising-to-most-people-fact is that students would prefer less technology in the classroom (especially *participatory* technologies that force them to do something other than sit back and memorize material for a regurgitation exercise). We use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them – that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create.”
  • Speeding hoons in Victoria and South Australia goad police with vanity videos on YouTube [PerthNow] – “Furious police are scouring the internet for the irresponsible antics of hoon drivers and have vowed to use covert sting operations to catch them. The warning to exhibitionists who post videos of their potentially deadly stunts on website YouTube has been issued by South Australia’s police Traffic Support Branch Superintendent Mark Fairney.”We’re not taking it, we’ve had enough,” he said. A series of hoon videos made in SA has been posted on YouTube in the past six months. The footage outraged police and the RAA, with both saying innocent motorists were at risk from the stunts. In one video clip, a motor-cyclist was filmed from different angles and can be seen reaching a speed of 210km/h at Eagle on the Hill. The white-knuckle ride was filmed by a bike-mounted camera and several roadside positions. The title of the clip boasts that the rider hit 215km/h. The video, posted in July, included a Google Earth map following the route”
  • Homework is fun on an iPod touch [WA Today] – “A pilot program in which teenagers used iPods for school work has increased attendance and increased enthusiasm for homework. A class of year 8 students at Shepparton High School in central Victoria are the first in Australia and among the first in the world to use iPod touches in the classroom for a global “mobile learning” project. The students use the hand-held media players to search the internet, download music, do quizzes, research and submit assignments and collaborate with a school in Singapore. Preliminary research on the program found students were more willing to come to school, did more homework and used their iPods more than laptops or desktop computers.”
  • Who on earth is Matt Smith? [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] – “Matt Smith has been named as the actor who will take on the role of TV’s most famous time traveller. He may be the youngest actor to play the Doctor, but Smith has already built up an impressive CV on stage and the small screen. His biggest television role has been in BBC Two’s political drama Party Animals (2007) in which he played parliamentary researcher Danny Foster.” (New Doctor actor is youngest ever. )
  • Popeye the Sailor copyright free 70 years after Elzie Segar’s death [Times Online] – ““I yam what I yam,” declared Popeye. And just what that is is likely to become less clear as the copyright expires on the character who generates about £1.5 billion in annual sales. From January 1, the iconic sailor falls into the public domain in Britain under an EU law that restricts the rights of authors to 70 years after their death. Elzie Segar, the Illinois artist who created Popeye, his love interest Olive Oyl and nemesis Bluto, died in 1938. … While the copyright is about to expire inside the EU, the character is protected in the US until 2024. US law protects a work for 95 years after its initial copyright. The Popeye trademark, a separate entity to Segar’s authorial copyright, is owned by King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation — the US entertainment giant — which is expected to protect its brand aggressively.”

Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 1st 2009

January 1, 2009 / 1 Comment on Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 1st 2009

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.”

Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 9th 2008

December 9, 2008 / 1 Comment on Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 9th 2008

Links for December 9th 2008:

  • Australia’s census going CC BY [Creative Commons] – “In a small, easy to miss post, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has made a very exciting announcement. They’re going CC – and under an Attribution-only license, no less. From the ABS website…
  • Texting Turnbull catches the Twitter bug [The Age] – “As the Opposition’s popularity slips back to where it was under Brendan Nelson’s leadership, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is bringing digital intervention to the fore. The digits in question are his thumbs. Having witnessed the power of the web in the US presidential election campaign, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mr Turnbull are engaged in a high-tech arms race to win the hearts and minds of switched-on Australians. While some politicians including US President-elect Barack Obama are content with older model BlackBerry handsets, Mr Turnbull owns one of the latest releases, the BlackBerry Bold. And he showed off the speed of his thumbs as he settled once and for all the question of whether he writes his own Twitter updates. “I love technology,” he told online journalists in Sydney as he added another “tweet” via Twitter as they watched.” To his credit, more personal than a lot of Kevin07 stuff: http://twitter.com/turnbullmalcolm
  • Virtual world for Muslims debuts [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “A trial version of the first virtual world aimed at the Muslim community has been launched. Called Muxlim Pal, it allows Muslims to look after a cartoon avatar that inhabits the virtual world. Based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims, Muxlim Pal lets members customise the look of their avatar and its private room. Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal’s creators hope it will also foster understanding among non-Muslims. “We are not a religious site, we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle,” said Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim.com – the parent site of Muxlim Pal.”
  • Facebook scandal shames students [The Age] – “A Facebook network of senior students from two of Sydney’s most elite private schools have offended the Jewish community with anti-Semitic slurs. Students from The Scots College in Bellevue Hill created a Facebook site called Jew Parking Appreciation Group which describes “Jew parking” as an art which often occurs at “Bellevue (Jew) Hill”. The site, which has 51 members, contains a link to The Scots Year 12 Boys, 2008, and The Scots College networks, and is administered by Scots students. It is connected to another network created and officiated by Scots College students with postings that include “support Holocaust denial” and a link to another internet address called “F— Israel and Their Holocaust Bullshit”.” (Racist rubbish, but also another example of supposedly ‘digital natives’ misunderstanding how much of their juvenile digital behaviour will be visible and recorded forever online.)
  • Jean Burgess, Joshua Green – YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture [Polity Press] – “YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely discussed sites of participatory media in the contemporary online environment, and it is the first genuinely mass-popular platform for user-created video. In this timely and comprehensive introduction to how YouTube is being used and why it matters, Burgess and Green discuss the ways that it relates to wider transformations in culture, society and the economy.” (Potential textbook material for the Digital Media unit.)
  • Learn at Any Time – The Open University [Podcasts] – The Open University podcasts website is a very well made example of university-based podcasts that DO NOT rely on hosting via Apple’s iTunes platform.

Annotated Links of Interest: October 27th 2008

October 27, 2008

Links of interest for October 27th 2008:

  • Telecommunications Today Report 6: Internet Activity and Content [ACMA, 22 October 2008] – A detailed look at Internet use in Australia (September 2008): “Age is a determining factor in the activities consumers choose to perform online. Email is the most common application across all age groups. Streaming videos and banking online feature in the top five activities of all age groups, and participating in auctions features in the top 10. Internet users aged between 16 and 24 years are the most likely group to use the internet for entertainment, while those aged between 25 and 34 also recorded a high level of use of social and entertainment applications. A high proportion of users over the age of 45 use the internet to submit forms or information to government websites; this activity is recorded in the top 10 of all three age group segment …” [View the full PDF.]
  • Net filters may block porn and gambling sites [The Age] – “Family First Senator Steve Fielding wants hardcore pornography and fetish material blocked under the Government’s plans to filter the internet, sparking renewed fears the censorship could be expanded well beyond “illegal material”. The Opposition said it would most likely block any attempts to introduce the controversial mandatory ISP filtering policy, so the Government would need the support of Senator Fielding as well as the Greens and Senator Nick Xenophon to pass the legislation. Industry sources said Senator Fielding’s sentiments validated ISPs’ concerns that the categories of blocked content could be broadened significantly at the whim of the Government, which is under pressure to appease vocal minorities.”
  • Bishop apologises after second plagiarism incident [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Deputy Opposition Leader [and former education minister!!] Julie Bishop has been forced to apologise after being embroiled in a second plagiarism row. A spokeswoman for Ms Bishop says the Opposition treasury spokeswoman submitted a chapter for a book about the future of the Liberal Party, that was actually written by her chief of staff, Murray Hansen. In the essay, Mr Hansen used material contained in a speech made by New Zealand businessman Roger Kerr several years ago. Mr Hansen says he forgot to provide footnotes to the publisher.” (I wonder how many of our students will be ‘forgetting to include the footnotes’ and calling it the Bishop defense, this semester? *sigh*)

Annotated Links of Interest: September 10th 2008

September 10, 2008

Links of interest for September 9th 2008 through September 10th 2008:

  • Pirates become canon keepers [The Australian] – “Some commentators have suggested that it’s simply easier for studios to replace the entire score than to investigate music rights. In any case, an unannounced modern alteration is cultural vandalism, even if you don’t think the original work was any good. As a result the DVD is useless as a piece of cultural history and as a representation of an original work. With the internet full of sellers (often fans themselves) willing to provide the copies of this and other series taken from unedited broadcasts, the studio has taken a huge step towards legitimising piracy as a means of cultural preservation.” (A fantastic, if rather sarcastic, article by Kit MacFarlane arguing that piracy may be the only course open to preserve tv texts in the face of minor – and major – alterations made by studios and distributors on the way to dvd releases and more. )
  • BATTLESTAR GALACTICA returns to iTunes…in HD [GALACTICA SITREP] – Battlestar Galactica and other NBC shows return to iTunes (US). If you’re logged into the US store right now you can get 4×03 (He That Believeth in Me) in HD for free (logged in to the US store, I say, not necessarily in the US!).
  • Australia rated foot of developed world on school funding [PerthNow] – “Australia’s government spending on public education is the second lowest among developed nations, a new report has found. Turkey, Portugal, Mexico and Iceland all spend more money on public education institutions than Australia. … Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard says the new OECD Education at a Glance report highlights the need for the Rudd Government’s much-hyped “education revolution”.” (Yes, but WHEN is this much-vaunted education revolution actually going to start? It’s close to unforgivable that the once ‘clever country’ is so far behind in global terms.)
  • Google Turns 20 (fiction) – “This month, September 2018, marks the 20th anniversary of Google as a business…” A provocative little piece of speculation fiction looking back from 2018 at the rise, and fall, of Google. A few ideas are a bit far-fetched (Windows Free?) but most are plausible; all beg interesting questions about current trends, from software design, to monopolistic practices, to (really) participatory culture!
  • John McCain Gets BarackRoll’d [YouTube] – John McCain gets rickrolled by the all-singing, all-dancing Barack Obama show! LMAO!

Links for July 30th 2008

July 30, 2008

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

Links for July 26th 2008

July 26, 2008

Interesting links for July 25th 2008 through July 26th 2008:

Links for May 27th 2008

May 27, 2008

Interesting links for May 25th 2008 through May 27th 2008:

  • Death knell for television as we know it [The Age] – “Japanese television technology that will give viewers access to high-speed broadcasts over the internet could render conventional television obsolete and transform the media landscape within years, analysts have predicted.”
  • Owning the Clouds [how now, brownpau?] – A worrying look at the way Google’s copyright takedown system favours big media over amateur production by letting derivative works (initially) send takedown notices to the original authors!
  • HSC students to get Wikipedia course [The Age] – In an Australian first, NSW HSC students will from next year be able to take a course in studying Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia. Wikipedia,… has been listed by the NSW Board of Studies as prescribed text for an elective course…”
  • Joss Whedon Fans Jump the Gun [NewTeeVee] – “Perhaps still smarting from their precious Firefly being killed off so soon, Joss Whedon fans are already mobilizing to save his next show, Dollhouse? before the first episode airs.”

Links for May 19th 2008

May 19, 2008

Interesting links for May 18th 2008 through May 19th 2008:

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