Firefox 3 … Go Get It … Today!
Unless you’ve been hiding under a digital rock, you’d know that the best browser in the world has released an even better incarnation: Firefox 3 is here. I could write about all of its improvements, but you can get a fuller version here, suffice it to say it runs faster, takes a lot less memory (20 tabs open suddenly takes about 300mg less RAM for me!) and has some spiffy new security features. And let’s not forget, it’s an open source creation, made by the people, for the people!
To celebrate, Mozilla are encouraging people to download Firefox 3 today, attempting to break the Guinness World Record for most downloaded software in a 24hour period. For those of us in Perth, that 24 hours runs from 1am Wed 18 June until 12.59am Thurs 19 June. So, be part of a World Record and download now! I was the 29005th person to download from Australia, so I know there are a few Aussies who could download yet! And just in case you need one last ounce of motivation, downloading FireFox 3 today will get you a cute little certificate:
Seriously: go download it now.
Links for June 17th 2008
Interesting links for June 12th 2008 through June 17th 2008:
- Blogger arrests hit record high [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.”
- Facebook No Longer The Second Largest Social Network [Tech Crunch] – “April 2008 was the milestone: Facebook officially caught up to MySpace in terms of unique monthly worldwide visitors, according to data released by Comscore … Both services are attracting around 115 million people to their respective sites each month.”
- Save Jericho Again: TV Campaign Info – The fan fight to save the now twice-cancelled US TV series Jericho continues, with dedicated Jericho nuts this time raising funds for a series of tv advertisements and billboard trying to save the show and get a new network to pick up the series.
- Sexually Frustrated Superheroes: Superheroes Who Can’t Have Sex [io9] – Which comic-book superheroes can’t have sex? Any why? (And I can’t believe there is an alternative future Spider-Man comic in which Mary-Jane dies after sharing too many bodily fluids with Marvel’s favourite hero!!).
Links for June 11th 2008
Interesting links for June 8th 2008 through June 11th 2008:
- Change Congress – NCMR keynote [Lessig Blog] – Lawrence Lessig’s keynote at the National Conference for Media Reform arguing for a mobilisation of talent to try and end (or, at least, decrease) the corruption in the US Congress.
- J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement [Harvard Magazine] – Rowling gives a really delightful and heartfelt commencement talk at Harvard, rather frankly talking about the importance and benefits of failure, hitting rock bottom, and working out what’s really important in life.
- 280 Slides – Create & Share Presentations Online – Nifty online version of powerpoint/keynote software. A lot more elaborate than Google Docs, but still a long way from Keynote or Powerpoint. A very good, simple and accessible way to do the basics. (I wonder when Google will try and buy this little startup?)
- Sex and the City: A Product-Placement Roundup [vanityfair.com] – The product placement in the Sex and the City movie makes the producers of the James Bond films look like amateurs!
Creative Juices
During the last semester, I’ve been coordinating a fun little honours unit which was called ‘Creative Selves’. One of the main ideas we explored was the ways in which ‘creativity’ is defined and deployed so differently across all sorts of areas from the creative industries to education and marketing. I wish I’d had this little video to start off that conversation:
[Via]
Annotating YouTube
Even thought Viddler already does it, and does it better, I’m still quite excited by YouTube’s addition of annotation tools. I’ve got 28 groups of students creating Digital Media Projects at the moment and one of the stipulations was that they have to examine the videosharing websites out there and select one to host their work: 27 of 28 groups selected YouTube (most of them rely on the simple point that YouTube gets the eyeballs … and, for now, they’re right). From an educational perspective, critically engaging with digital video becomes a lot more fun when annotations, references and links can be added to existing video! Even though they’re pretty crude at this point, the annotation tools for YouTube also mark a shift from treating YouTube as slices of TV (in video terms) toward an environment where the hypertextuality of digital video comes to the in to play. A bit like what Quicktime already facilitates so brilliantly.
Of course, YouTube’s annotations are all in beta at this point (and proper, not perpetual, beta … you can’t embed annotations in external sites yet, and I’m presuming that eventually YouTube will allow optional viewer annotations, too), so the toolkit may very well evolve. Until then, I can’t wait until I’ve got a cohort of students annotating away to critique and comment on digital video … what fun could be had with speak bubbles, I wonder?
Five Years!
I realised today that I’ve passed one of those blogging milestones: about a fortnight ago, I crossed the birthday barrier and have now consistently spent Five Years Blogging! Sure, it hasn’t all been here … like many people I started out on Blogger because it was free, easy and I had no idea what I was doing. This probably should be a moment for reflection, looking at how much has changed (now I think I know what I’m doing), but as I’m preparing for my last day of teaching for the semester tomorrow, I thought instead I’d refer back to October 2006 I wrote a ‘Why I Blog’ post as part of the Reconstruction special issue on blogging. Largely, my reasons for blogging remain the same. I wonder if I’ll still be going in 2013?
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