links for 2007-07-10
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“The Live Earth global pop concerts broke a record for an online entertainment show by generating more than 9 million internet streams, Microsoft web portal MSN said.”
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“Instead of offering radically new options for connecting, online dating merely reinforces traditional forms of intimacy, where “man still meets woman” according to explicit and implicit social criteria.”
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Interesting look at the history of political protests, including the changing face of activism in the era of social networks and smart mobs!
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“As Users and Brands Head to Startups, Giant in Space Starts to Seem Outdated” (Apparently, Second Life is getting a little passe!)
Five Second Films!
I confess, I’m addicted to short, sharp edits that are representative of whole films. The ‘Re-Enacted in 30 seconds with bunnies” series, but I think I’ve not found a new addiction … the 5 second film. So far, my absolute favourite is the 2001: A Space Odyssey re-cut:
But, I must admit, the Fargo effort is pretty funny, too:
What’s your favourite?
links for 2007-07-09
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” … data released by Facebook today shows that Facebook users are searching in large volume: 500 million Facebook searches were conducted in May alone.”
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Written Ashley Deal from the Education and Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University. Confirms earlier work, cites some useful examples of podcasting in academia, not just recorded lectures …
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And Facebook’s average user gets older … Visitors aged 12-17 increased 150% over the last yea; Visitors 18-24 increased 38%; Visitors 25-34 increased 11% during that time – a huge number; Visitors 35+ increased 98%
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“More than one hundred Australians every hour are signing up to share their lives on Facebook.com, making the nation the fifth-highest ranking country using the social utility.”
links for 2007-07-08
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“A young German entrepreneur has won a legal battle against internet behemoth Google on the use of its “Gmail” brand for free electronic mail service. Google The regional court in the northern city of Hamburg ruled that Google may not…”
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Whether business or academia, how could this not be funny? 😉
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“We should have predicted this. Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Second Life resident Volkov Catteneo. This is apparently the first time an avatar has sued another avatar in the virtual world.”
links for 2007-07-06
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“During these “wilderness years”, it was Doctor Who fandom that was engaged in producing new stories for the franchise. I don’t think there’s been another SF TV fandom in history that’s had such an amazing opportunity to take control …”
Facebook and Australian Politics?
Over the past month I’ve suddenly seen Facebook grow from an oddity to something on which the majority of my university-based friends appear. Since I spent some of yesterday pondering the oddities of US politics and digital culture, I thought I’d spend a little of today looking at Australian politics. For those of you not in the know, Australia has what amounts to a two-party political system, divided between Liberal (close to Republican/Tory parties) and Labor (close to the Democrat/UK Labor parties); the Liberal party is led by John Howard, who is our current Prime Minister, while the Labor party, after many years of leadership ambiguity, is led by Kevin Rudd.
Unlike the US (and a lesser extent the UK), mainstream press and politics in Australia really hasn’t embraced either the blogosphere or social networking as a means of promotion or gaining support (and Australian politicians can’t and don’t fund-raise in the explicit way US politicians do). That said, younger voters are clearly looking for some sort of connection with the political sphere, even if its not done through the same rhetoric of civil participation that comes through the US education and advocacy systems. So, that said, is either Australia’s Prime Minster or his Labor rival on Facebook? The answer, initially, appears yes to both, although after some scrutiny, the answer changes to yes for Rudd and no for John Howard – there are, in fact, three Howards, but all are fake.
Of the three Howards, two are obvious fakes, while one is more subtle, but still not authentic. Since this is a fun moment to think about digital literacy, I’ve taken screenshots of the three Howard profiles and circled in red the most obvious indicators that these aren’t authentic pages.
and John Howard #3 …
In contrast, Kevin Rudd’s Facebook page is rather dull, but clearly authentic. (I’ve just made a friend request, so if there’s anything exciting in friends-only land, I’ll write a little more.) It is worth noting that comments which cast John Howard as a sexual or ‘hot’ figure are unambiguously meant to be satirical, in contrast to the clips from the US mentioned yesterday which, while playful, aren’t necessarily ironic (although they might be, especially Hott4Hill).
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