Funny: “Actor James Gandolfini, best known for his portrayal of mob kingpin Tony Soprano on … The Sopranos, was shot to death Tuesday … by a fan unable to accept the open-ended conclusion of the series finale that aired earlier this month.

“…virtual reality might finally be the medium that unites the passive experience of watching television with the interactive potential of the Web.”

“Next time your children are in MySpace, consider this: they may be joining a political movement. Virtually all next year’s US presidential hopefuls have now set up profiles on MySpace and Facebook …”

Facebook for the rich, MySpace for the less rich? (boyd, danah. 2007. “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace .” Apophenia Blog Essay. June 24 . http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html)

“I guess I see my blog as a space to work out half-formed ideas. I just didn’t expect 90K people to read it. Blog essays to me are thoughts in progress, blog entries that are too long to be blog entries. But I can see where there’s confusion.”

Bob Harris writes 3000 words about the last 5 minutes of The Sopranos. It’s worth reading every one of them (but not until after you’ve watched the episode, of course!)

“Missed Bloomsday this year? There’s still time to celebrate. In fact, if your whole weekend is free, you can download a new audio version of Ulysses, listen to the entire book, and still have a few hours left for eating and sleeping.”

Interesting article about the rise of amateur/citizen taken photographs in the public domain and the impact this has for journalism and activism.

“Doctors have backed away from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more. “

My In Media Res post on the pre-911 Spider-Man trailer, its removal from cinemas and strange non-history thereafter.

WIth conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey leading a review of history curricula in schools, all you need to know is that Conservative has areally big ‘C’.

Lars says When I viewed the new iPhone site something struck me: did Apple change the dimensions of the unit? A quick comparison of the official Apple photos revealed they’ve just changed handsize.

The Spanish short film, Lo que tú Quieras Oír–released under a CC … license–has achieved a huge amount of popularity on YouTube, totaling close to 10,000,000 views! (This is why all Youtube films should have a CC option at upload!)

Is increasing product placement going to ruin or financially revitalize videoblogged/YouTube hits like Lonelygirl15? (I suspect the latter…)

“Google is expanding its empire into universities – with entire campus e-mail networks switching over to using Google’s e-mail service.” (Given how bad many uni email systems are, I can see the appeal, despite the privacy issues.)

Sony tries its hardest to piss off its female consumers with PS2 ads with the punchline: “PS2, because your girlfriend bores you shitless” (Are they really ignorant of how many female gamers are out there?)

Ian Bogost and Ian McCarthy ‘performed’ the ‘Wandering Rocks’ section of Joyce’s Ulysses via Twitter on June 16 (Bloomsday).

In the UK, ” 80% of the Internet browsing public over the age of 15 watched a video in April. Viewers went primarily to YouTube and Google Video, who counted 16 million uniques and over 600 million streams out of a total of nearly 25 million online video

Jean Burgess does a roundup of current and in-progress academic research on/into YouTube, its contents and its communities.

Clever. Hillary Clinton does a parody of the final minutes of Sopranos to announce her “campaign song”. This is very, very clever politics! 🙂

Three options – one free.

Nancy Baym’s excellent little essay looking at what it means to be a music fan in the web2.0/internet era, and gives big music companies some good advice on dealing with musical fandoms (celebrate with, not fear them!)

“This essay deals with the phenomenon of the perceived freshness fetish, the automation of this freshness and the common habit of apologizing for a lack of freshness. I will argue that this freshness fetish is not new to blogs…”

Jason Mittell’s debrief report on his ‘Media Technology & Cultural Change’ unit and the many cool assignments tried out by his students, including mashups and machinima. Some good ideas here! 🙂

Hilarious “steampunk” remix of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction as a Penny Dreadful! 🙂

“Red vs. Blue, the cult hit, web-video series created from in-game Halo footage, concludes its genre-defining run as it airs its 100th and final episode Wednesday evening.”

“In what’s being touted as a milestone for web marketing, the viral phenomenon Dove “Evolution” advertisement won the Grand Prix at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this weekend.”

“10. Deodorizer. 9. Plant food. 8. Insect repellant. 7. Dye. 6. Furniture scratch cover-up. 5. Cleaning product. 4. Kitty repellent. 3. Flea dip. 2. Dust inhibitor. #1 use for used coffee grounds….drum roll here…. Cellulite reducer.” (!)