Digital Culture Links: August 14th 2009
Links for August 6th 2009 through August 14th 2009:
- Gaiman and Doctorow Discuss Giving It Away [Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy] – A few short questions with Doctorow and Gaimain about the usefulness (and profitability) of giving books away for free online. This quote from Neil Gaiman about giving away American Gods for a month is probably the most important: “It’s been really fun in my own slow way nudging HarperCollins out of the stone ages and into the dark ages. As far as I’m concerned the entire argument [of the validity of giving digital books away] was won at the point where I got them to put American Gods online…we gave it away for free for a month, and during the course of that month and for about four weeks after, the number of copies of all of my books…went up three hundred percent. As far as I’m concerned, that answered that question.”
- Bringing the power of Creative Commons to Google Books [Inside Google Books] – Google Books now supports Creative Commons licenses: “Rightsholders who want to distribute their CC-licensed books more widely can choose to allow readers around the world to download, use, and share their work via Google Books. Creative Commons licenses make it easier for authors and publishers to tell readers whether and how they can use copyrighted books. You can grant your readers the right to share the work or to modify and remix it. You can decide whether commercial use is okay. There’s even a license to dedicate your book to the public domain. If you’re a rightsholder interested in distributing your CC-licensed book on Google Books, you have a few different options. If you’re already part of our Partner Program, you can make your book available under CC by updating account settings. If not, you can sign up as a partner. You can select from one of seven Creative Commons licenses, and usage permissions will vary depending on the license.”
- apophenia: Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They? – danah boyd unpacks the claim that teens don’t tweet and finds the data lacking and misinterpreted.
- Murdoch signals end of free news [BBC NEWS | Business] – “News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites. The media giant is looking for additional revenue streams after announcing big losses. Mr Murdoch said he was “satisfied” that the company could produce “significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content”. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution,” he added. “But it has not made content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media. “Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting,” he said.” (It’s far too late to put the free genie back in the bottle … this plan could easily materialise as the move which killed NewsCorp!)
- News Corp records £2bn loss [guardian.co.uk] – “Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire, News Corporation, slumped to a [US] $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for the 12 months to June as a combination of plunging advertising revenue, impairment charges and online losses contributed to the company’s worst year in recent memory. The group suffered hefty accounting charges related to a drop in the value of its assets. After stripping out these one-off items, its full-year operating profit dropped by 32% to $3.6bn, with growth in revenue at the group’s cable television networks failing to make up for a slump in income from films, newspapers, books, magazines and online offerings. … n the final quarter of the year, News Corp made a $203m loss, compared to a $1.1bn profit for the same period in 2008, hit by a $680m impairment charge at Fox Interactive Media – the division that includes the social networking website MySpace, which recently shed 400 staff as it struggles to compete with larger rival Facebook.”
Digital Culture Links: August 5th 2009
Links for August 5th 2009:
- Women comprise 55% of Twitter users [SheSpotter] – “A new study released in Harvard Business publishing examines gender trends in Twitter.
Highlights include: Females hold a slight majority on Twitter: men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. ” While there are slightly more women using Twitter, there are a lot less young people Tweeting according to Mashable. - Music off the menu as licensing row heats up [SMH] – “The fee paid by restaurants and cafes for background music is due to skyrocket if a new licensing proposal goes ahead. For Stuart Knox, the owner of the 55-seat Fix St James restaurant in the city, it means his annual licence fee would rise from $69 to more than $5500. ‘‘For that sort of fee, I’d prefer to buy my customers an iPod each and they can listen in private at their table,” he says. There is widespread concern in the restaurant industry that new tariffs suggested by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia will make the cost of playing music prohibitive.” (If costs get too out of hand, I wonder if someone will collate a whole range of Creative Commons Attribution – CC BY – music and point Australian restaurants to it – they wouldn’t need to pay a cent!)
- Apple tries to silence owner of exploding iPod with gagging order [Times Online] – “Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child’s iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company. The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.”
- 2009 Social Network Analysis – Social Network Demographics – Social Network Geographic Data [Ignite Social Media] – Useful 2009 snapshot of the demographics and for: Badoo.com, Bebo.com, Digg.com, Facebook.com, Fark.com, Flickr.com, Flixster.com, Friendster.com, Gather.com, Habbo.com, Hi5.com, Iambored.com, Identi.ca, IndianPad.com, Last.fm, Linkedin.com, Livejournal.com, Meetup.com, Metafilter.com, Mixx.com, Multiply.com, Myspace.com, Netlog.com, Newsvine.com, Ning.com, Plaxo.com, Plurk.com, Pownce.com, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, Reunion.com, Shoutwire.com, Skyrock.com, Stumbleupon.com, Tribe.net, Tuenti.com, Twitter.com, Wayn.com, Xanga.com, Yelp.com, YouTube.com.
Digital Culture Links: July 30th 2009
Links for July 24th 2009 through July 30th 2009:
- Law 2.0 – Law 2.0: The Challenge of User-generated and Peer-produced Networks, Content & Culture [Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ] – Peter Black’s primer on the changing legal landscape in the ‘Web 2.0’ era. Pitched at legal educators, but a really useful overview for anyone interested. [Talk on Vimeo] [Powerpoint Slides]
- Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Search Agreement [NYTimes.com] – “Microsoft and Yahoo announced a partnership in Internet search and advertising on Wednesday morning intended to create a stronger rival to the industry powerhouse Google. Under the pact, Microsoft will provide the underlying search technology on Yahoo’s popular Web sites. The deal provides a lift for Microsoft’s recent overhaul of its search engine, renamed Bing, which has won praise and favorable reviews, after years of falling further and further behind Google. Running such a search system proves expensive, and Microsoft can now filter more searches through the Bing technology infrastructure. It expects to deliver better answers to search queries over time as well by learning from more peoples’ queries.” Yacrosoft or Mihoo! ?
- Would the real social network please stand up? [apophenia] – Some useful thoughts about social networks and their differences from danah boyd and Bernie Hogan: “The truth of the matter is that there is no “real” social network. It all depends on what you’re trying to measure, what you’re trying to do with those measurements. We do ourselves an intellectual disservice when we assume that these different types of networks are interchangeable or that studying one automatically tells us about another. Most scholars get this, even when they’re quoted out of context by journalists to suggest otherwise (see Cameron Marlow). But I get the sense that a lot of journalists, marketers, advertisers, politicians, and everyday folks don’t. This is a problem.”
- China now has 338m internet users [News.com.au] – “The number of internet users in China is now greater than the entire population of the United States, after rising to 338 million by the end of June, state media reported today. China’s online population, the largest in the world, rose by 40 million in the first six months of 2009, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a report by the China Internet Network Information Centre. The number of broadband internet connections rose by 10 million to 93.5 million in the first half of the year, the report said.”
- 6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations [Mashable] – Cool visualisation tools for Twitter – useful for explaining the potentially global conversations going on.
- Movie studios try to harness Twitter effect | Technology [Internet | Reuters] – “Box office watchers say Twitter, a micro-blogging service that allows anyone to post on-the-fly wisecracks for all the world to see, is the latest weapon in an arsenal of cell phones and computers that audiences use to critique films quickly, often when they are still sitting in theaters. Such word-of-mouth publicity from fan to fan can boost, or bomb, ticket sales. “Has everything speeded up? The answer is yes,” said Adam Fogelson, Universal’s president of marketing and distribution. “Depending on how big your opening day audience is, word-of-mouth starts playing a factor immediately,” he said.”
News & the Net: Two Steps Backwards …
Local citizen journalism evangelist, Bronwen Clune, often describes the news media corporations and mechanisms as ‘control media’. While this is certainly a striking expression, and no doubt fair when thinking about the likes of Rupert Murdoch, I’ve wondered if it’s at times a bit of a harsh brush with which to paint the news media in general . However, the Associated Press (AP) seems to be doing out its way to take the idea of control media literally, which has not been embraced by the interwebs at large; AP recently described a system of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to police the uses of its news content online. Their explanatory graphic and been, how shall we say, reinterpreted by the public they’re expecting to pay for AP’s services:
[Source for the top half of the image: AP’s Press Release “Associated Press to build news registry to protect content”; source for the full image: “What the AP really meant to convey”. Via Boing Boing]
At the same time, Chris Anderson on the promotion trail for his new book Free, has been enjoying himself by being as provocative as possible in interviews (conducted, oddly enough, by journalists). For example:
In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part-time job. Maybe media won’t be a job at all, but will instead be a hobby. There is no law that says that industries have to remain at any given size. Once there were blacksmiths and there were steelworkers, but things change. The question is not should journalists have jobs. The question is can people get the information they want, the way they want it? The marketplace will sort this out. If we continue to add value to the Internet we’ll find a way to make money. But not everything we do has to make money.
While change is definitely in the air, suggesting that journalism is a redundant profession is going too far. We need good journalism; we need people who are willing to take risks and invest huge amounts of time into investigative reporting; and they need to be paid. I’m not suggesting the status quo even means anything any more, and the last few years have definitely forced the news industry to decide whether it’s just an entertainment business or something more, but amongst all of that I think we need to try and figure out sustainable models that support journalism (but not sensationalism). I think unpaid citizen journalism and random acts of journalism by netizens will definitely play a significant role in the news media landscape that’s developing, but I don’t every think the culmination of citizen journalism will ever be enough by itself. I can’t live without the ABC or SBS, and I’m delighted they’re mainly government funded, but I know that’s not the only answer. And I also realise that answers aren’t readily available yet. We should, however, be looking for them. While the news industry is definitely having a rough time, and the future is uncertain, I also don’t think AP’s approach hard core ‘lock it all up’ approach, or Anderson’s dismissive suggestion the all journalists need to get real jobs and write news as a hobby, are really helping the debate. Not one little bit.
Digital Culture Links: July 22nd 2009
Links for July 14th 2009 through July 22nd 2009:
- How-To: Read George Orwell’s 1984 on your Kindle [Make Online] – “Citizen! If you bought a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four,” (1984) for your Kindle it was deleted. It appears that the publisher changed its mind about digital versions (update, they were never allowed to publish them in the first place) and Amazon reached in and removed it from your reader. Sorry for the inconvenience! So, what to do? Let’s assume you’re going to go on a nice trip, like Australia, and you really wanted to read 1984 – once you get there, you can easily reload your Kindle with a copy of 1984.” (Yes, under Australian copyright law, 1984 is in the public domain!) [Via BBoing]
- Australia’s Digital Economy: Future Directions [Federal Government] – “The Australian Government released the Australia’s Digital Economy: Future Directions paper on 14 July 2009 which outlines: * why the digital economy is important for Australia * the current state of digital economy engagement in Australia and why current metrics point to a need for strategic action * the elements of a successful digital economy * the role for the Government in developing Australia’s digital economy, and * case studies of Australians who have successfully engaged with the digital economy from a diversity of industries including content, e-health, maps, banking, education, smart technology and citizen journalism.”
- SharePod – Nifty freeware application for backing up music FROM your iPod/iPhone to your PC. Especially useful if your computer dies and you want to restore your library from your iPod rather than ripping the music of 200+ CDs!
- Iran – The Rebellion Network [Foreign Correspondent – ABC] – Foreign Correspondent Story: ‘The Rebellion Network’ originally broadcast 07/07/2009, reporter: Eric Campbell. A solid overview of the role of social media in the post-election protests and other social movements in Iran (with particular mention of Twitter).
Twitter thoughts and blog neglect
I realised today that this blog has been rather neglected and while there are the usual way-too-busy reasons (all of which remain true!) I’ve noticed I’m spending more and more time looking at Twitter and less and less actually writing anything here; actually, I’m a fairly tweet-low Twitterer, too, I think – I read a lot more than I write. As I was pondering this, the core value of Twitter – it’s immediacy – really hit home as I found out about the major earthquake off the cost of New Zealand’s South Island (near Dunedin, where I was born and where my grandparents still live) via Twitter, and the ensuing Tsunami Warning (which makes an earthquake seem a lot scarier!). It took any mainstream news media, or blogs, that I read more than half an hour, and more than an hour for most, to break this story. By then, I’d had my little worried moment, reassured myself that the Tsunami (which, thankfully, never happened) wouldn’t hit my grandparents since they live up a hill, and returned to work. By then ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Tsunami Warning’ were both Trending Topics, second only to Harry Potter on the back of the film debut of the sixth feature. Of course, following the links from the Trending Topics, I also accidentally hit spoilers regarding tonight’s episode of the Master Chef finals; time to go Justine, it seems (like the US, the East Coast of Australia, is 2 hours ahead those of us in the West, so Twitter is a rather potent spoiler source).
In turn, I suspect Twitter is rapidly becoming normalised as part of the everyday conversation for all sorts of folks, not just social media addicts. Indeed, I was amused to read Melissa Gregg’s post about an episode of Desperate Housewives including a character who fails to get a job due to their lack of Twitter-knowledge! Perhaps in a future episode said character might change their fortune by stumbling across this useful History(ish) of Twitter diagram. In the mean time, I’ll see if I can work out a better balance between the lifestreaming deluge of Twitter and my neglected but still loved blog.
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