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Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 29th 2009

June 30, 2009

Links for June 13th 2009 through June 29th 2009:

Just Add Performance [Kiri Miller / Flow 10.02] – "… if you want to get involved in value-oriented debates about it, here’s a thought experiment: rather than concluding that Guitar Hero players are wasting the time that they would otherwise be putting into long hours of practice on a real guitar, consider the possibility that they might otherwise spend that time just listening to recorded music (or, of course, playing Grand Theft Auto). Anyone who has played Guitar Hero or Rock Band for more than five minutes will tell you that it requires a deeper level of musical engagement than listening to an iPod—intellectually, emotionally, physically, and often socially. Moreover, everyone I’ve interviewed for my research reports that the games have substantially changed the way they listen to popular music when they’re not playing. […] Guitar Hero and Rock Band let players put the performance back into recorded music, reanimating it with their physical engagement and performance adrenaline." (Great little article!)
Keeping News of David Rohde’s Kidnapping Off Wikipedia [NYTimes.com] – "For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban. But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia." The weird tale of trying to keep something (that was legitimate news) out of the Wikipedia.
Picasa With Creative Commons Search [Goole Blogoscoped] – Search Google's PicasaWeb for CC-licensed images: "Google’s photo album service, Picasa Web Albums, now allows you to show options during your search. As Ionut noticed, as part of these options you can tick the “Creative Commons” link, which will only return shareable pics. The amount of images is not all too bad either, at least for some queries: a CC-only search for the keyword google shows 276,529 pics, according to Picasa. A search for obama returns 43,510 pics right now. For comparison, the same CC-only obama search yields 127,858 results on Flickr."

Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 12th 2009

June 12, 2009

Links for June 10th 2009 through June 12th 2009:

Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search [Google OS] – "Google Image Search added the option to restrict the results to images that are licensed using Creative Commons, a list of flexible licenses that allow content creators to share their works with the world. The options aren't yet available in the interface, but you can use the search box below to find images that are licensed using some of the most popular Creative Commons licenses…" (I'm looking forward to this being implemented in the advanced search options, it'll make finding CC images even easier!)
UK CVN Killer Flu – Killer Flu game; not bad at breaking past the pandemic hype and seeing how different types of flu can and can't spread and mutate: "Killer Flu!! Or, maybe, “non-killer flu” to describe the current outbreak of swine flu! Here is a game that allows you to learn more about how the influenza virus is transmitted and how it changes every year – which explains why you can get more than one dose of the flu over your lifetime and why vaccines need changing every year. We also hope it will be a bit of fun."
Facebook racial taunts [WA Today] – "A rapidly expanding social networking site has been slammed for its racist taunts against immigrants to Australia. The Facebook Group, F*** Off, We’re Full, has nearly 65,000 members and believes any immigrants coming to Australia must adapt to what it calls the ‘Aussie lifestyle.’ “This idea of Australia being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity,” the site states. “As Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle.” The website is full of debate on its discussion board. The latest topics put up for comment include: Will Indian race-rioters be hunted down? and All foreigners need to be euthanised." (Another disheartening reminder that racism is all too alive in this day and age.)
Twitterers defy China's firewall [BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific] – "On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings, social networking sites such as Twitter and the photo-sharing site Flickr were blocked in China in an attempt by the government to prevent online discussion on the subject. But Chinese twitterers proved that there are ways to get round the great firewall of China. … Besides the Tiananmen anniversary itself, what seemed to be most important to Chinese twitterers was the blocking of sites. Advice on how to access Twitter – by using a proxy, VPN (virtual private network) or Hotspot shield – spread around quickly. While some were clearly annoyed at this interference, others did not lose their sense of humour. One user congratulated his fellow twitterers with "Happy Chinese Internet Maintenance Day!"."

Annotated Digital Culture Links: June 8th 2009

June 8, 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

May 30, 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

May 25, 2009 / 1 Comment on 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!)