links for 2007-12-19
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“One of Australia’s biggest computer game developers, Auran Development, was placed into voluntary administration yesterday, despite recently securing multi-million dollar investments from the National Australia Bank and the federal Government.:
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“YouTube has seen tens of thousands in the conservative Saudi kingdom upload and download a broad range of thrill-seeking, political and just downright bizarre video clips in a surge of expression.”
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“… the adorable animals that dominate so many online video streams refuse to do their work—that is, to be adorable—in solidarity with striking writers who have walked out on their work…” (It’s WGA-week at In Media Res!)
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“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association had requested a waiver for its NBC broadcast, but the WGA rejected it.” So, no writers for the Globes or the Oscars!
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After catching his 15-year-old smoking pot, a Canadian man sold the hard-to-get Guitar Hero III video game he bought his son for $US90 ($103) for Christmas at an online auction, fetching $US9,100 ($10,420) from an Australian buyer.
CC+
One of the big announcements at the celebrations of Creative Commons’ fifth birthday was the release of the CC+ (CCPlus) licensing arrangement which combines existing CC licenses with ability to also explicitly point to additional licensing (for example, terms for commercial use on an NC CC license). From the CC blog:
CC+ is a protocol to enable a simple way for users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a CC license. For example, a Creative Commons license might offer noncommercial rights. With CC+, the license can also provide a link to enter into transactions beyond access to noncommercial rights — most obviously commercial rights, but also services of use such as warranty and ability to use without attribution, or even access to physical media.
“Imagine you have all of your photos on Flickr, offered to the world under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial license,” said Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons. “CC+ will enable you to continue offering your work to the public for noncommercial use, but will also give you an easy way to sell commercial licensing rights to those who want to use your work for profit.”
While CC+ isn’t exactly new – it was always possible legally – the simplification of this arrangement is sure to see a lot more people explicating the terms under which they’d released material commercially and, hopefully, this encourage commercial producers to use material in this form.
In case you prefer you explanations to be more engaging, here’s a video explaining CC+:
If the video is a little hard to watch at this size, head to the full-size version on blip.tv or download a QuickTime movie version (56Mb). Alternatively, you can check the CC+ page or download the explanatory PDF.
One of the reasons I really like CC+ is that I can really see its value for media produced by students; CC licenses really encourage others to view and share, but having commercial uses spelt out means that if what students create is good enough, they could also see it making money for them!
links for 2007-12-18
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I’m just delighted to see Scrabulous – the Facebook Scrabble application – get its own article in the New York Times! (Even if the article doesn’t say much…)
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“In a report on Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 per cent of US adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine. That is more than twice the 22 per cent in 2002 …”
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“The word “weblog” celebrates the 10th anniversary of it being coined on 17 December 1997. The word was created by Jorn Barger to describe what he was doing with his pioneering Robot Wisdom web page.”
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“Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency 12/16/2007. Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online…”
The Simpsons Go Viral … Almost
In a wonderful parody of the viral YouTube hit that was Noah’s photo ever day for six years, The Simpsons have included this clip in the latest episode in the US:
If that doesn’t amuse you, then perhaps edutainment is more to your taste, so you might want to check out the updated stats in Did You Know 2.0.
Update: Sadly the clip has been removed from YouTube due to a Fox copyright infringement claim.
links for 2007-12-17
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“Apple quietly introduced an update to Garageband that adds a cool new feature: iPhone ringtone creation. Anything you’ve got in Garageband, you can turn into a ringtone.”
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“The project, which is in an invitation-only beta stage, lets users create clean-looking Web pages with their photo and write entries on, for example, insomnia. Those entries are called “knols” for “unit of knowledge,” Google said.”
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“Google announced last night they are starting a project called knol that will allow anyone to create wiki-like pages on topics. … My initial take on this is that knols are going to kill Wikipedia – but it will take time.”
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I must be getting behind on the nets, as I only saw half of these before they appeared on a Top Ten list!
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Here is the lost intro to A New Hope, edited out due to time restrictions: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=DCyPTM2FJgA
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“The word weblog is ten years old today!”
links for 2007-12-14
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“A Dunkin’ Donuts worker stopped a thief in his tracks so he would look good on YouTube.” (Foucault’s panopticon anyone?)
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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning is now out in the world, freely available as a series of PDFs!
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“”w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading US dictionary. Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster said “w00t”, typically spelled with two zeros…”
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Customised version of Google specifically searching open-licensed music and sound samples.
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Some useful tips for all undergraduates (and lots of other people) on how to write a solid, convincing university-level essay or paper.
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Predicts that the WGA strike in the US will lead US downloaders to download a lot more European TV, broadening the use of BitTorrent overall!
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Detailed bibliography of research on web 2.0 and education.
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Composing and Compositing: Integrated Digital Writing and Academic Pedagogy – Jamie ‘Skye’ Bianco; Reinventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media – Cheryl Ball & Ryan Moeller; The Digital, the Virtual and the Naming of Knowledge…
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“Facebook has just updated their statuses so that “is” can be removed. The word “is” has finally become a throwback. Not much to announce except that it has been removed.”
Tama Leaver dot Net by Tama Leaver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.