Frikkin Laser Beams
I’m in Hong Kong at the moment, teaching up here for a week, and, as every time I’m here I find the mixture of old traditions, new technologies and unbridled capitalism both fascinating and repelling at the same time. That said, I’m always a sucker for a good light show, and Hong Kong’s Symphony of Light is always well worth catching; and while the winter fog and mists obscure parts of the city, they’re an excellent medium to bounce spotlights and lasers off! I’ve captured a few long exposure shots from last night’s Symphony which, if you’re interested, you can see mixed in with some other night cityscape shots here.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 16th 2009
Links for February 9th 2009 through February 16th 2009:
- Vigilantes publish alleged arsonist’s image online [The Age] – “Facebook vigilantes, frustrated at a court order protecting a man charged with lighting one of the deadly Victorian bushfires, which killed at least 11 people, have published his photograph and address on the social networking site and threatened his life. The move potentially breaches an order suppressing his image and address amid fears of a violent backlash by angry victims. Victoria Police has contacted Facebook seeking the removal of the details and urged people to let police do their job. This morning the suppression order on naming the man, Brendan Sokaluk, 39, was lifted, but the order remains in place on publishing his street address or his image. At least two Facebook groups have been created to name and shame the alleged arsonist, and thousands of Facebook users have joined them. Membership is growing rapidly as word spreads.” (While I completely understand people’s anger, this sort of social networking lynch mob mentality is really quite dangerous.)
- Fair Use Held Hostage by ABC-Disney [Just TV] – Jason Mittell’s tale of how aquiring copyright permission from ABC/Disney for a cover image for his new book, Television and American Cuture, became a debacle with Disney refusing to license the cover image unless the publishers licensed every internal Disney image – something that should be covered by fair use – but with the book already at the printers, the publishers gave into Disney’s demands. As Mittell notes, Disney are legally able to do this, but it’s a bit of a slap in the face for fair and educational uses.
- Murdoch looks for new ways to monetise MySpace traffic [The Age] – “”Rupert Murodch has delivered a sobering assessment about the internet as a growth engine, revealing search and advertising revenues at News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media division – which houses the popular MySpace networking site – have stalled. The new-media unit, which has invested heavily to expand MySpace, contributed just $US7 million ($10.4 million) to News Corp’s $US818 million second-quarter operating income, the company said on Friday. There was a “slight downturn” in revenue at the social networking site, Mr Murdoch said. That compares to $US179 million News Corp made from newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and information services such as the Dow Jones news wire. Asked about his views on the long-term viability of the internet, Mr Murdoch said generating a return on investment for assets such as MySpace, which News Corp bought for $US580 million in 2005, was still a challenge. “I think we have to find new ways to monetise our huge audiences,” he told analysts.”
The Victorian Bushfires
Normally when historic disasters strike I end up collating the various instances of people using social software and other participatory cultural tools to engage with that event and blogging about that; however, it’s also true that these events tend to be sufficiently far removed from my immediate experience to seem at least a bit distant and abstract. However, the horrific bushfires which have swept across Victoria do not seem distant in any way.
While Victoria is on the other side of the country from Perth where I live, the threat of bushfires are serious for most Australians during the harsh summer heat. Moreover, for whatever reason, many friends and colleagues from Perth have relocated to Melbourne and other bits of Victoria over the last few years – I sometimes wonder if there are more Perthies there than here. Thus I can only describe the news of the past few days of fire after fire after fire as gut-wrenching. No one I know personally has perished, but I know people who’ve lost homes. More to the point, this is a national disaster and a national tragedy; more than 200 people are estimated to have died in a manner I simply cannot imagine. The TV news for the past few days has showed horrific scenes of devastation, crying survivors who all know someone who perished, and images that have no place outside existing except as a special effect in a dystopian end-of-the-world feature film. Amongst this overwhelming imagery, I found that Adrian Miles’ post – Fire – reminded me how personal and close these fires were for so many people, their effects broad-reaching and upsetting in a multitude of ways. (If you really want to look at the social software side, the Wikipedia article ‘2009 Victorian Bushfires’ is growing rapidly, while Asher Moses has a predictable summary – ‘Social media rush as Victorian bushfires rage’ – over at The Age.)
For now, though, the most important thing is to try and help the survivors rebuild, help the injured recover, and help where we can. So, if you can, please consider donating to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfires 2009 appeal.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 8th 2009
Links for February 5th 2009 through February 8th 2009:
- Journalism Education’s Future: Broader, Deeper in Community [Center for Citizen Media] – Dan Gillmor, on the challenge for journalism educators in the C21st: “Journalism educators should be in the vanguard of an absolutely essential shift for society at large: helping our students, and people in our larger communities, to navigate and manage the myriad information streams of a media-saturated world.We need to help them understand why they need to become activists as consumers — by taking more responsibility for the quality of what they consume, in large part by becoming more critical thinkers. And they need to understand their emerging role as creators of media.
In both cases, as consumers and creators, we start with principles.
For media consumers:
• Be Skeptical
• Exercise Judgement
• Open Your Mind
• Keep Asking Questions
• Learn Media TechniquesFor media creators (after incorporating the above):
• Be Thorough
• Get it Right
• Insist on Fairness
• Think Independently
• Be Transparent, Demand Transparency” - Stimulus package Facebook activism [Larvatus Prodeo] – “Thanks to commenter Bird of paradox on a previous thread for drawing my attention to the creation of a Facebook group “Come on Turnbull, don’t take away my $950 bucks !”. As of this morning, it was the largest political Facebook group in Australia with 5000 members and a goal of 8000 by 9pm tonight. They’ll easily reach that. When I checked in five minutes ago, there were 7887 members. Another 60 have joined now. The group creator describes his motivation this way: ‘We are sending a clear message that Australians need this boost. As a uni student I need help to buy my text books, my mother is a single parent who needs help and my brother is heading into year 12 and he needs it… Think about how much difference this bonus will make to you and your families…’ The group page also provides information on how to lobby Senators. Very interesting indeed.” (Checking today there were more than 34,000 members!)
- Australians desert MySpace for Facebook [The Age] – “Facebook celebrates its fifth birthday this week and the company has much to crow about, as new figures reveal the social network has twice as many monthly users in Australia as its nearest competitor, MySpace. According to web traffic monitor Nielsen Online, Facebook attracted 4,682,000 unique visitors in December, compared with just 2,362,000 for MySpace. Furthermore, each Facebook user viewed 381 pages on Facebook but MySpace users looked at only 252 pages.
The figures show Australians appear to be deserting MySpace for Facebook … In Britain, the BBC reports, Facebook has 17 million users or three times as many as MySpace. Globally, ComScore released figures late last month showing 222 million people visited Facebook in December, versus 125 million for MySpace.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: February 4th 2009
Links for February 2nd 2009 through February 4th 2009:
- How Natalie became Australia’s queen of YouTube [The Age] – “From her parents’ home in western Sydney, Natalie Tran, Australia’s queen of YouTube, has proven time and again that titillation is not a prerequisite to internet fame. With more than 150,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, Tran, 22, is easily the most subscribed YouTube user in Australia, while globally she ranks 37th. The 118 videos she’s created over two years have amassed 64 million views, making her also the most viewed Australian YouTube user of all time – more popular on the site than even AC/DC, whose videos have attracted 53 million views. But while some female web stars such as Obama Girl have used their sexuality to amass scores of drooling fanboys, Tran has eschewed titillation in favour of comedic skits about her everyday life.” (She’s very funny and has impressive production values for this sort of talking-from-my-bedroom cam style.)
- MySpace purges 90,000 sex offenders [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “MySpace has identified and barred some 90,000 registered sex offenders from using the site over the last two years, the online networking site revealed to a US investigative task force on Tuesday. The “shocking” number was 40,000 more than MySpace had previously acknowledged, according to Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal, a co-chairman of the task force of state attorneys-general looking into sex offenders’ use of social networking. MySpace disclosed the figures to the task force in response to a subpoena. “This shocking revelation, resulting from our subpoena, provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators,” Mr Blumenthal said in a statement.” (Blumenthal sees this figure as evidence that MySpace should only allow “real” identities and use age-verification; I see this as evidence that we should be educating young people from an early age about how to deal with unwanted attention, predators and so forth, whatever the medium!)
- Virtual gold broker “sells” for $10 million [Boing Boing] – Cory Doctorow: “My MMO Inc., has purchased MyMMOShop.com for $10,000,000 — MyMMOShop being a company that buys and sells virtual gold, prestige items, and other virtual wealth. My MMO is a privately held company, so it’s impossible to say whether 10 million actual dollars left one bank account and entered another (as opposed to a stock swap or other “sale”), but this is still pretty whacky news. I’m working on a novel about gold farming and I spent most of the last year talking to farmers, brokers, players, academics, game-runners, moderators and others who follow the field, and I’ve concluded that it’s possibly the weirdest grey market in the world.”
Talking about Facebook & Privacy with RTR FM
I was interviewed this morning on Perth’s RTR FM about privacy concerns raised in light of media reports that Facebook plans “to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150 million members by creating one of the world’s largest market research databases.” While the reports themselves might have overstated the case in this instance, I’m constantly surprised by how little thought most users of social networking sites give to their own privacy; I’m equally dismayed when it comes as a revelation to people that Facebook is actually about trying to make money – it’s a business, not philanthropy! That said, any chance to get people thinking a bit more about the digital footprints they leave is a good thing and I enjoyed the this morning’s chat on the air. If you want you can access ‘Facebook is evil now?’ on RTR’s website, on click here for an mp3 of the interview (10 minutes, around 9Mb).
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