links for 2007-07-03
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An Adelaide woman has been arrested in the United States for allegedly trying to kidnap a 17-year-old boy she had met playing role-playing game World of Warcraft on the Internet.
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“Plasma televisions are sending home power bills sky high as more people install bigger and more energy-intensive screens. Electric hot-water systems remain the No.1 energy guzzler in the home but plasma TVs are fast overtaking…”
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“Richard Dawkins, the British ethologist and author of The God Delusion… reveals in a recent interview … that he has a digital alter ego — an avatar — who frequents the virtual world Second Life.”
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Little website to FLIP text upside down and then lets you cut’n’paste the upside-down version.
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“Channel Seven will broadcast two of its cult import dramas, Heroes and Prison Break on the same day as their US screenings in a ploy to lure drifting audiences away from DVDs and the internet.”
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Alex Malik notes that Australian commercial TV broadcasters also have a nasty habit of editing US shows to fit timeslots and more ads in, especially in the late-night slots (eg Boston Legal).
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Outsourcing social networking profile building?
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Miles, Adrian. “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.” Australian Screen Ed.41 (2006): 66-9. (Good introductory piece/)
links for 2007-07-02
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The publicly-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation turns 75 today and is still going strong! 🙂
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Google aligns with the US Health Corporations against Moore’s Sicko?!?
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“While 96% of online tweens and teens have used social networking technologies, 71% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week, according to a study and white paper being released today…”
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Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reported that a man was imprisoned for stealing cars and assaulting people with weapons, then sent to a psychiatric facility for “acting in a bizarre manner.” … he thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto
When Subiaco Oval Attacks!
The second half of 2007 hit with something of a bang today. The combination of extreme winds and the proximity of our place to Subiaco Oval suddenly led to the rather loud, dramatic and quite dangerous appearance of the massive advertising signs from Subi Oval hitting out (glass) back door and coming to rest in our back yard:
While fascinating on some level, these huge signs had to travel over the top of the oval (they’re supposedly fixed to the stands) and fly probably 50 metres in the air before spinning down into our place. It’s incredibly lucky that it was pouring with rain, too, because it anyone was outside, being hit by one of these could have caused some very serious injuries.
When the winds settled a little, Emily headed out the front door and discovered a whole lot more of these hoardings lying on our road and in the drive-way, so now we have four massive advertising banners on centimetre-think cardboard sitting soggily in our little backyard:
We now have part of an SGIO sign, a National Australian bank advertisement and something that has NTER in its lettering. I wonder when Subiaco Oval will be knocking on our door looking for them? Maybe they’ll offer to replant the bits of the garden that were sheered in half when the sign flew in from the sky?!
(Given that these signs cost advertisers anywhere from $5000 to $60,000 dollars each to display, I suspect someone might want them back!)
links for 2007-06-29
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Simple but very effective Flash-based narrative presentation about the huge privacy problems inherent in Facebook’s design and the way users fill it with their private data!
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Audio Twittering: Short-burst (200Kish) Mp3 files connected to Twitter tweets …
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Countries of the world mapped by their dominant social networking service. I’m surprised MySpace is still the biggest choice in Australia as the rush to Facebook in the last month has been huge … I hope this map is updated monthly!
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Solid piece about the history and success of Postsecret, written by its progenitor, Frank Warren.
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Quicktime recordings of: “On June 19, danah boyd participated in the Berkman Luncheon Series to discuss her work and research in the area of social networks. ” (Runtime: 1:26:24, size: 320Ă—240, 247MB, .MOV, H.264 codec)
Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica
Since I’ve just signed off on editors’ proofs for my chapter in the forthcoming Cylons in America edited collection, I thought I’d paste this little advertisement from Continuum’s 2007 Pop Culture catalogue to remind myself (and anyone else interested) that it should, in fact, be out before the end of the year …
[Click image to enlarge.]
This is my first book chapter (as opposed to a journal article, of which there are a few) and I’m quite excited to see the collection in print in the near future!
Update (15 Sept 07): The publication date for this collection has now been confirmed as January 31 2008 (for the US) and Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica
Update 2 (26 November 07): It looks like the US version will now get a December 10th release! Check out the cover:
Update 3 (7 Dec 07): As a few people have asked about this book, I thought I’d add the Table of Contents to this post, so you can get a sense of what’s under the cover:
“I see the patterns”: Battlestar Galactica and the Things That Matter – C. W. Marshall and Tiffany Potter
I. Life in the Fleet, American Life
- (Re)Framing Fear: Equipment for Living in a Post-9/11 World” – Brian L. Ott
- Torture, Terrorism, and Other Aspects of Human Nature – Erika Johnson-Lewis
- Alienation and the Limits of the Utopian Impulse – Carl Silvio and Elizabeth Johnston
- The Cain Mutiny: Reflecting the Faces of Military Leadership in a Time of Fear – Rikk Mulligan
- Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? Negotiating Stereotypes of Science – Lorna Jowett
- “Pyramid, Boxing, and Sex” – Kevin Wetmore
II. Cylon/Human Interface
- The Cylons, the Singularity, and God – C.W. Marshall and Matthew Wheeland
- Sharon’s Choice: The Role of Decision in the Self-Constitution of Personhood – Robert Moore
- Uncanny Cylons: Resurrection and Bodies of Horror – Alison Peirse
- “Humanity’s Children”: Constructing and Confronting the Cylons – Tama Leaver
- Hybridity’s End – Matthew Gumpert
- Erasing Difference: The Cylons as Racial Other – Christopher Deis
III. Form and Context in 21st-Century Television
- When Balance Goes Bad: How Battlestar Galactica Says Nothing” – Chris Dzialo
- “This Might be Hard for You to Watch”: Salvage Humanity in “Final Cut” – Kevin McNeilly
- “Long Live Stardoe!”: Can a Female Starbuck Survive? – Carla Kungl
- Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked? – Suzanne Scott
- Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating the Aural Space – Eftychia Papanikolaou
- “All this has happened before”: Repetition, Re-imagination, and Eternal Return – Jim Casey
links for 2007-06-28
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(Via Chutry)
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“An Introduction to the Power of Web2.0”, Edition 2.0, from Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins. Quite a useful primer, with everything from blogs to Twitter and Jaiku.
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If you want to know anything about Australia’s 19.8 million citizens, the 2006 census results have just gone live …
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Things went pear-shaped for a Malibu Banana Rum after an online videoclip creation competition held in YouTube was acussed of being rigged by competitors! (What out when viral and participatory competitions backfire!)
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We keep on writing about startup after startup getting into the online video space, but we’ve noticed a somewhat disturbing trend: they all say they’re looking to monetize professional content.
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