Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 8th 2009
Links for June 5th 2009 through June 8th 2009:
- 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know [All Facebook] – Some useful advice and further evidence that Facebook’s privacy settings are far too complicated!
- A Map Of Social (Network) Dominance [TechCrunch] – Facebook planet cometh … “Even on the Web, world dominance must be achieved one country at a time. While Facebook has long been the largest social network in the world, and should soon pass MySpace in the U.S., it is not the largest social network in every country. The map above created by Vincenzo Cosenza resembles more a game of Risk, with Facebook sweeping across the globe from the West.”
- Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Dismissed [The Quintessence of Ham] – “I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed against Zotero by Thomson Reuters. … It’s worth noting that even while the lawsuit was underway over the last nine months, Zotero geniuses completed the implementation of such radical new functionality as cloud-based synchronization, shared group libraries, PDF metadata detection, automatic proxy support, live CVs, and much more. And our amazing community performed this heavy lifting all while supporting a user base that has grown into the millions. I can only imagine what the Zotero project will be able to achieve unimpeded!”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: May 29th 2009
Links for May 28th 2009 through May 29th 2009:
- Cambridge study: DRM turns users into pirates [ Boing Boing] – “A long and deep study of user behaviour in the UK by a Cambridge prof confirms that when an honest person tries to do something legal that is blocked by Digital Rights Management technology, it encourages the person to start downloading infringing copies for free from the net, since these copies are all DRM-free.” [Via] [Full Study] [(Readable) Study Summary]
- Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite [SMH] – Asher Moses suggests: “Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show. Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent. The figures, which do not include peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, are in line with a Newspoll survey of 700 Australians in April, which found almost two-thirds of respondents said they were more tempted to buy or obtain pirated products in tough financial times.” (I wonder if more immediate legal options to purchase tv would actually fare rather well in these tough times – more folks willing to pay a little to watch something at home rather than a cinema ticket?)
Annotated Digital Culture Links: May 24th 2009
Links for May 20th 2009 through May 24th 2009:
- Zoinks! 20 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute! [YouTube Blog] – “In mid-2007, six hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Then it grew to eight hours per minute, then 10, then 13. In January of this year, it became 15 hours of video uploaded every minute, the equivalent of Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies into theaters each week. Now, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute …”
- Watching YouTube [YouTube Bibliography] – Nifty bibliography of YouTube-related research, complied by Michael Strangelove, available in multiple versions under a Creative Commons license.
- JURN : directory of scholarly ejournals in the arts & humanities – “Links to selected arts & humanities ejournals. Journals listed are either free, or offer significant free content.” (An excellent list, nicely categorised and the perfect rebuttal for students who claim they couldn’t find any sources and they didn’t have time to visit the library!)
Slow Blog Month …
I realise it has been quite a while between posts, but I have a good reason!
Hopefully when the pile of marking that awaits me is less daunting, your semi-regular blogging service will resume! 😉
Annotated Digital Culture Links: May 4th 2009
Links for April 29th 2009 through May 4th 2009:
- The Hunt For Gollum (HD version) – a Film & TV video [Dailymotion] – An extremely impressive 40-minute Lord of the Rings fan film focusing on parts of the appendices to Tolkein’s novels. [Via Fan Cinema Today]
- REMIX now ccFree [Lessig Blog] – “The Bloomsbury Academic Press version of REMIX is now Creative Commons licensed. You can download the book on the Bloomsbury Academic page.” The Bloomsbury Academic Press version of REMIX is now Creative Commons licensed. You can download the book on the Bloomsbury Academic page. [Direct PDF link – 5Mb]
- Oprah Already Bored With Twitter [Silicon Valley Insider] – “Oprah Winfrey is one of the most famous people on Twitter, with a huge following. But it seems she is already bored with the messaging/microblogging service. It’s been almost four days since @Oprah last sent a tweet, asking Hugh Jackman if he wanted to catch dinner. In total, she’s sent 20 tweets in 11 days. Almost half are from April 17, Oprah’s first day on Twitter, when Ashton Kutcher and Twitter CEO Evan Williams appeared on her show.”
A Little more on Susan Boyle
I thought Natalie Tran’s take on the Susan Boyle phenomenon was rather to the point:
If you prefer your commentary a little more academic, Henry Jenkins has useful points (including why her Boyle’s success is not an example of viral video) in his post ‘How Susan Spread and What It Means’.