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15Mar/10

Digital Culture Links: March 15th 2010

Links for March 12th 2010 through March 15th 2010:

9 Million Australians Use Social Networks [Nielsen] - "Nielsen Online released their “Nielsen 2010 Social Media Report” today which has a wealth of statisitcs on the social media landscape here in Australia. Among the findings:
* 9 million Australians now interact via social networks
* content sharing is the most popular activity
* 4 in 5 Australian Internet users have shared a photo
* Twitter usage grew by 400% in 2009
* Nearly 3/4 of Australians read a wiki
* 2 in 5 Australians interact with companies via social networks"
Read a PDF of their press release.
"Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity" by danah boyd [danah.org] - danah boyd tackles the issues of privacy and social media head on, arguing privacy is far from dead, but that the world is a bit different, the rules are a bit different, and the way privacy, publicity and openess operate can be different but neither absolute nor gone.
What’s Happening—and Where? [Twitter Blog] - Twitter now officially supports geotagging but quite sensibly you have to OPT IN to use it: "Every day, millions of tweets are created. These little bursts of information are about anything and everything—they make Twitter a hub for discovering what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world. A recent burst of interest in location sharing applications, games, and services has many Twitter users excited about appending geographic data to some of their tweets. Not everyone wants to add their current location to a tweet so this feature is off by default and must be activated to use. Check out How To Tweet with Your Location to learn how you can turn it on."People who choose to add this additional layer of context help make Twitter a richer information network for all of us—location data can make tweets more useful.
Reuters to Journalists: Don’t Break News on Twitter [Mashable] - "Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to “scoop the wire” by breaking stories on Twitter. The strict instruction makes it clear that even though news continually breaks on Twitter first — especially in disaster scenarios — Reuters journalists are to break their stories first via the wire and not on Twitter. The social media policy in question also addresses a number of other Twitter, Facebook, and online concerns, offering up instructions and recommendations whenever possible."
Conan O’Brien Embraces Team Coco – Poster and All - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com - Conan knows his fans! "With Thursday’s announcement of Conan O’Brien’s 30-city tour, the former late-night comedian is fully embracing his online fan base, “Team Coco.” The official poster for the tour re-uses the image made famous on the Internet of a heroic Mr. O’Brien, orange hair aflame, in front of an American flag. The image was produced by Mike Mitchell, an artist in Los Angeles, as a show of support for Mr. O’Brien when NBC tried in January to move “The Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. Within days the image and its message, “I’m With Coco,” was a viral sensation, inspiring dozens of pro-Conan groups on Facebook. Several of Mr. O’Brien’s employees even made the image their Facebook profile photo. Now they have formally adopted the image as their own. Days after Mr. O’Brien signed off of “The Tonight Show” on Jan. 22, one of the comedian’s producers contacted Mr. Mitchell and said that they wanted the “Coco” illustration to be the emblem of a nationwide tour they were planning. "
“I’m With CoCo” Artist Makes Big Bucks From Conan’s Tour [Mashable] - "Mike Mitchell, the artist who created the now-iconic “I’m With CoCo” image of Conan O’Brien that has circulated through Facebook profile pictures and blogs since NBC’s The Tonight Show scheduling controversy, told TMZ that he’s been paid by Conan’s producers for the right to use the image during Conan’s impending “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour.” TMZ reports that the producers paid him well enough that he can “take a very, very long vacation.” Mitchell originally posted the image to TwitPic, but it achieved meme status when it became the profile image for the huge “I’m With CoCo” Facebook (Facebook) group that was used to promote the real-world pro-Conan rallies. "

Tagged as: conan, danahboyd, fandom, geolocation, identity, journalism, mobile, net303, reuters, stats, teamcoco, web101, web206, web207, web309 No Comments

1Nov/08

Annotated Links of Interest: October 31st 2008

Links of interest for October 31st 2008:

War and Social Upheaval Cause Spikes in Zombie Movie Production [io9 - Chart Porn] - "There's been a huge spike in the production of zombie movies lately, and many of them seem to be inspired by war. Everything from 28 Days Later to Zombie Strippers make explicit reference to wartime, as did seminal 1968 zombie flick Night of the Living Dead. Is there really a connection between zombie movies and social unrest? We decided to do some research and find out. The result? We've got a line graph showing the number of zombie movies coming out in the West each year since 1910 — and there are definite spikes during certain years, which always seem to happen eerily close to historical events involving war or social upheaval."
Beatles make digital debut in new game [The Age] - "The Beatles are coming to a game console near you. For the first time, the legendary group's music will be featured in the lucrative video game market in a deal with MTV Games and Harmonix, creators of the Rock Band series. The game is scheduled to make its debut in time for next year's holiday season. "The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out," Paul McCartney said in a statement. The game will not be titled Rock Band, but will work with the existing instruments - a guitar, drums and microphone. Game developers were cagey about whether new instruments, such as a keyboard, would be incorporated." (One final frontier for Paul McCartney to get royalties ... and, yes, I suspect when this comes out he'll get a few of my hard-earned dollars!)
Hulu, Dr. Horrible Make Time's 50 Best Inventions of the Year [NewTeeVee] - Dr Horrible is a horribly good idea, it seems!
Election '08 Fanfiction - US election fan fiction and even slash fiction ... Obama/Clinton is one thing, but Obama/McCain ... hmmm. [Via Waxy]

Tagged as: beatles, drhorrible, fandom, fanfic, film, games, josswhedon, McCain, movies, music, Obama, rockband, slash, usa, visualization, zombies 1 Comment

26Oct/08

Annotated Links of Interest: October 26th 2008

Links of interest for October 24th 2008 through October 26th 2008:

(SPOILER) What happened when the lights went out. [Whedonesque] - Joss Whedon talks straight to the fans about Dollhouse: "Sadly, this is not a naughty post. It's just Joss nattering on again. I thought it was time to check in with you once again, gentle viewers. Or readers. Or pictures-looker-ats (that might be viewers). Also listeners, sniffers, haberdashers, Olympic hopefuls, the elderly, the youngerdly, and the mighty state of Oregon (go Oregon-based sports franchise!) Welcome all. Welcome... to me. What's me up to? I'm glad me asked. Me've (I'm not doing that any more) been working on a little show called Dollhouse. Yes, perhaps you've read about how it's blazing an untrammeled path to surefire success, with nary a hitch or a hiccup, just pure blazing blazery, comet-like and meteoresque. What's that, you say? You've read other things? Dark, Yog-Sothothy rumors about shutdowns and delays? Poppycock! They’re true. But I never pass up a chance to say "poppycock". "
Flunking Spore - John Bohannon [Science, 322 (5901): 531b, October 2008] - Apparently Spore fails to live up to the expectations of scientists and the promotional material for Spore might have been a little disingenuous: "So over the past month, I've been playing Spore with a team of scientists, grading the game on each of its scientific themes. When it comes to biology, and particularly evolution, Spore failed miserably. According to the scientists, the problem isn't just that Spore dumbs down the science or gets a few things wrong--it's meant to be a game, after all--but rather, it gets most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong. I also tracked down the scientists who appeared on television in what seemed like an endorsement of Spore's scientific content on the National Geographic channel. They said they had been led to believe that the interviews were for a straight documentary about "developmental evolutionary" science rather than a video promoting a computer game "
The Medium - The Hitler Meme [NYTimes] - The New York Times on that Hitler (Downfall) meme: "On YouTube, we’re in a bunker, and the enemies are always, always closing in. The ceilings are low. The air is stifling. A disheveled leader is delusional. This is the premise of more than 100 videos on the Web — the work of satirists who for years have been snatching video and audio from “Downfall,” the 2004 German movie of Hitler’s demise, and doctoring it to tell a range of stories about personal travails and world politics. By adding new English-language subtitles, they transform the movie’s climactic scene, in which Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) rails against his enemies and reluctantly faces his defeat, into the generic story of a rabid blowhard brought low."
YouTube Enables Deep Linking Within Videos [TechCrunch] - "It’s not a big new feature but it’s certainly one that will come in handy: YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video’s URL. It’s pretty surprising that this functionality wasn’t available earlier, as Google Video introduced the same feature over two years ago. YouTube users have been forced to rely on third party services like Splicd to do the same thing. To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively."
Woman in jail over virtual murder [BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific] - "A woman has been arrested in Japan after she allegedly killed her virtual husband in a popular video game. The 43-year-old was reportedly furious at finding herself suddenly divorced in the online game Maplestory. Police say she illegally accessed log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character. The woman, a piano teacher, is in jail in Sapporo waiting to learn if she faces charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data."
Fan fury at Nine [TV Tonight] - Australian "Fans of Fringe who were unaware the show had been pulled from Nine’s current schedule got a rude shock last night and vented their anger in online messageboards. They were universally vehement in their displeasure with Nine’s programming. This site alone now totals 95 posts in one thread alone. Over on Nine’s own messageboard there were more furious comments: Fringe Dweller: C’mon channel 9, have some balls and tell the people why Fringe has been pulled! Oh I’m sorry, you don’t care about what people like. Maybe we could lose one of the four hundred different versions of CSI. God Bless ‘Two and a Half man’ where would you be without them. Maybe you can rename yourselves to Channel Two and a Half Men CSI Malibu!!! Why I’m at it, you pulled Fringe and we still have to put up with that The Strip crap."

Tagged as: artificiallife, digitalculture, dollhouse, ethics, evolution, fandom, fringe, games, howto, identity, josswhedon, legal, meme, mmos, science, spore, useful No Comments

16Jun/08

Links for June 17th 2008

Interesting links for June 12th 2008 through June 17th 2008:

Blogger arrests hit record high [BBC NEWS | Technology] - "Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed."
Facebook No Longer The Second Largest Social Network [Tech Crunch] - "April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore ... Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month."
Save Jericho Again: TV Campaign Info - The fan fight to save the now twice-cancelled US TV series Jericho continues, with dedicated Jericho nuts this time raising funds for a series of tv advertisements and billboard trying to save the show and get a new network to pick up the series.
Sexually Frustrated Superheroes: Superheroes Who Can't Have Sex [io9] - Which comic-book superheroes can't have sex? Any why? (And I can't believe there is an alternative future Spider-Man comic in which Mary-Jane dies after sharing too many bodily fluids with Marvel's favourite hero!!).

Tagged as: censorship, facebook, fandom, jericho, myspace, privacy, sexuality, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, spiderman, stats, surveillance No Comments

27May/08

Links for May 27th 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."