Tag Archives: reputation - Page 2

Digital Culture Links: September 28th 2009

Posted by on September 28, 2009 No comments

Links for September 22nd 2009 through September 28th 2009:

  • Creators’ Corner [YouTube] – YouTube have just announced ‘Creative Corner’, a series of resources to help aspiring digital video creators learn better techniques, add special effects, and make the most of getting views on YouTube.  Seems like a useful resource.
  • Online Aussies: ‘We won’t pay for news’ [mUmBRELLA] – “A large majority of Australians say they would not pay for online news, a survey suggests. According to a poll of more than 18,000 Australians released today by Pure Profile, only 5% said they would be willing to pay for “high quality articles”. A further 7% said they would be willing to pay if there was no advertising. 10% said they would not pay because the quality of online news was unimportant to them, while the vast majority – 78% – said they would simply refuse to pay for online news.”
  • An Infusion of Another $100 Million Is Seen for Twitter [NYTimes.com] – “…the start-up appears to have chalked up another achievement. Twitter, which has no discernible revenue, is set to raise about $100 million of new funding that would value the company at around $1 billion, a person briefed on the company’s plans said Thursday. … But Twitter’s cash infusion and exospheric valuation are not easily reduced to the level of the blind bets of past dot-com bubbles. In its three and a half years, Twitter has become a magnet for media attention, and its Web site now attracts 54 million visitors a month, according to comScore, the tracking firm. Along with Facebook, it is helping to remake the Web as a forum for the perpetual sharing of even the most trivial bits of information about people’s lives.” (A billion dollars … seems a lot to me.)
  • ‘Nigel the Crazy Noonga’ Website Shut Down | Racism Outrage – “A website set up by a Perth student about a fictional Aboriginal character has been shut down and is being investigated by police amid racism claims. The website, which Radio 6PR reports was created by a 19-year-old Curtin University student, features audio excerpts of a character called “Nigel the crazy Noonga”, who prank calls businesses and fast-food outlets with a fake Aboriginal accent. The portrayal of negative Aboriginal stereotypes has sparked outrage from the Aboriginal community. Craig Somerville, lecturer at the Curtin University Centre for Aboriginal Studies, told 6PR he believed the material on the website had crossed the line between humour and racism. “This is very nasty, rude and bad material,” he said. “It’s not only bad humour; it perpetuates a wrong judgment about Aboriginal people.” Mr Somerville expressed his disappointment at claims the student who set up the website was from his university.”
  • Ubiquitous Media, Rare Earths [sean cubitt's blog] – “… we act as if computing and network resources were unbounded. But materials, manufacture, use and recycling put boundaries round the materiality of internet and convergent media. The squalor and penury associated with extracting metals, building computers and recycling mobiles, TVs and digital devices are one half of a story which includes toxic waste, toxic working conditions, human waste from the maquilladoras, atnospheric and water pollution in the recycling villages of Africa and China, species and habitat loss . . . Like any other form of organisation, maintaining the negentropy of the internet requires vast amounts of energy, physical and human. It also requires materials that are becoming more strategic and costly by the minute. “
  • US proposes net neutrality rules [BBC NEWS | Technology] – The US has proposed new rules that would require internet firms to respect the principle of “network neutrality”. The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that “all web traffic should be treated equally”. The new rules are intended to prevent firms throttling bandwidth-sapping web traffic such as streaming video. … [The FCC] proposed two new rules to guide the FCC’s approach to network neutrality. The first would prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from discriminating against bandwidth-intensive web-content and applications by slowing or blocking it. … The second would mean that ISPs would have to be more transparent about how they manage network traffic. The two new rules join four previous guiding principles of the FCC, which state that all consumers must be able to access “lawful” content, applications, and services, and attach non-harmful devices to the network.” (Network Neutrality FTW!)
  • In Facebook Fracas, Beauty School Goes After Student for Online Comments [The Wired Campus] – “A beauty school in Illinois is suing a student for his “defamatory” comments on a Facebook site that encouraged students to vent about their instructors. The Salon Professional Academy of Elgin, Ill., says Nicholas Blacconiere created a site called Tspa RobinHood that looked similar to TSPA Elgin’s Facebook page because it used the academy’s logo. The suit, filed in July, also says that he posted libelous comments about school officials on the site. Print-outs of the Facebook page included in the suit show several posts by “Tspa RobinHood.” The site says it gives “the students a voice, because what happens when we need to be heard? Nobody gives a s___.” It encourages students to send messages to the site, which it says will then be posted anonymously.” (Reputation management: it’s a game everyone can play!)

Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 6th 2009

Posted by on January 6, 2009 No comments

Links for January 6th 2009:

  • Digital guru Clay Shirky’s media forecast and predictions for 2009 [Media | The Guardian] – “The question is who figures out the business model that says it’s better to have 6 million passionate fans than 7 million bored ones? That is going to be the transformation because what you see with these user groups, whether it’s for reality TV or science fiction, is that people love the conversation around the shows. The renaissance of quality television is an indicator of what an increased number of distribution channels can do. It is no accident that this started with cable. And the BBC iPlayer? That’s a debacle. The digital rights management thing …let’s just pretend that it was a dream like on Dallas and start from scratch. The iPlayer is a back-to-the-future business model. It’s a total subversion of Reithian values in favour of trying to create what had been an accidental monopoly as a kind of robust business model. The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.”
  • NIN’s CC-Licensed Best-Selling MP3 Album [Creative Commons] – ” … Ghosts I-IV is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon’s MP3 store.Take a moment and think about that.

    NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon’s MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked. The next time someone tries to convince you that releasing music under CC will cannibalize digital sales, remember that Ghosts I-IV broke that rule, and point them here.”

  • Twitter accounts of Obama, Britney Spears hacked [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The Twitter accounts of US president-elect Barack Obama, singer Britney Spears and other prominent figures were hacked on Monday (US time) and fake messages sent out in their names on the micro-blogging service. Twitter founder Biz Stone, in a post on the official company blog, said a total of 33 Twitter accounts had been hacked including those of president-elect Obama and Rick Sanchez, a CNN television anchor with tens of thousands of followers. “We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue,” Mr Stone said. … Twitter, which allows users to post real-time updates of 140 characters or less, has an estimated 4-5 million users according to a recent study. Launched in August 2006, it has been embraced by a number of celebrities including president-elect Obama, who has more than 150,000 followers, and four-time NBA champion Shaquille O’Neal of the Phoenix Suns.”
  • How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant (Margaret Simmons, 6 Jan 09) [Crikey] – “Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions. This month’s edition of Quadrant contains a hoax article purporting to be by “Sharon Gould”, a Brisbane based New York biotechnologist. But in the tradition of Ern Malley – the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant’s first editor, James McAuley – the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes.” [Margaret Simmons' Further Blogged Thoughts] [Windschuttle's Response]
  • Facebook under fire for racist rants [The Age] – “Facebook has come under fire from Australian users for ignoring racial vilification on the site and failing to remove blatantly racist groups even though they have been flagged as offensive. Sydney-based Facebook user Alex Gollan, who has campaigned against the racist groups, has been threatened with violence and fears the site could be used to rally people if another incident such as the Cronulla riots flares up. The site permanently banned one offender this week but only after the issue of racism on Facebook came under the spotlight following revelations that Scots College and Kambala students had created anti-Semitic groups on the site.”