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Annotated Links of Interest: October 29th 2008
Links of interest for October 29th 2008:
- New chapter for Google Book Search [Official Google Blog] – Google Book Search settles the lawsuit, makes a whole lot of things more accessible (especially if you’re a library or a university) and generally makes books searchable! đ (Read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s excellent summary and initial reponse to the settlement.)
- Warfare game throws down gauntlet to Iran [The Age] – “A Sydney-based Jewish businessman bankrolling a shoot-’em-up warfare game pitting Israeli troops against Iranians says the aim is to “throw out a challenge to Iran” after its President vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
But Kevin Bermeister, world renowned for being sued by the music industry in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the Kazaa file-sharing program, said his intention was also to take the war between Jews and Muslims out of the real world and into cyber space. The online multiplayer game, Rising Eagle – Gaza, was officially released as a free download less than a week ago. It earns revenue through advertising billboards peppered throughout the game environment. The game, which contrary to its setting does not include any Palestinian fighters, is an update to earlier versions of the game set in Paris and China. It pits the Iranian Revolutionary Guard against Israel’s elite Golani Brigade in a first-person shooter setting.” - A history lesson in video games [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “The UK’s first official national video game archive has been launched in a bid to preserve the history of gaming. The archive has been set up in partnership between Nottingham Trent University and the National Media Museum in Bradford in the north of England. The gaming industry is now worth an estimated ÂŁ22bn globally and steps are needed in order to record its development. The archive will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford and will include consoles, cartridges and advertising campaigns. “We are going to be archiving video games but it’s not just about the games themselves, it’s also about gaming culture,” said James Newman, from Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play, a research group dedicated to video games.”
- Editor furious over Bishop plagiarism explanation [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “A plagiarism row between deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and the editor of a book on the party, Peter Van Onselen, has flared again. Ms Bishop’s chief of staff has taken responsibility for plagiarising a speech by a New Zealand businessman when he wrote a chapter for the book, called Liberals and Power; The Road Ahead, on Ms Bishop’s behalf. Now Mr Van Onselen says he is angry with Ms Bishop for saying that the footnote crediting the businessman was forgotten. “It’s not just a matter of them having forgotten to send through footnotes,” he said.
“Even once they belatedly sent those footnotes through they didn’t cover the plagiarism. “Footnoting doesn’t cover the fact that there weren’t quotation marks around exact lifting of words without attribution that came from this New Zealand businessman’s speech.”” (It seems no one’s buying the Bishop defense!)
Annotated Links of Interest: October 28th 2008
Links of interest for October 28th 2008:
- Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere) [apophenia] – danah boyd’s sensible and timely reminder about Facebook’s ridiculously complicated and confusing privacy settings: “Facebook’s privacy settings are the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry. Over and over again, I interview teens (and adults) who think that they’ve set their privacy settings to do one thing and are shocked (and sometimes horrified) to learn that their privacy settings do something else. Furthermore, because of things like tagged photos, people are often unaware of the visibility of content that they did not directly contribute. People continue to get themselves into trouble because they lack the control that they think they have.” [Via Jill] (These, incidentally, are among the reasons why you won’t see any pictures of my son on Facebook! Flickr, where I retain copyright and can actually use meaningful privacy settings, is far preferable!)
- Google considers local centre [Australian IT] – “Google has quietly dispatched a team of experts from the US on a fact-finding mission to decide whether it should establish a data centre in Australia. In the past few weeks the team of about five Google US employees had been involved in high-level discussions with local data centre providers, sources said. The meetings are believed to have been led by Simon Tusha, who labels himself as “Google’s duke of data centres”. A Google-run data centre would be positive for the company’s operations in Australia as it sought to increase its penetration of the large education sector.”
- Microsoft to battle in the clouds [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “Microsoft has unveiled a cloud computing service, in which data and applications will not be stored on individuals’ computers. The new platform, dubbed Windows Azure, was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. The platform was described by Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie as “Windows for the cloud”. … The move sees Microsoft taking on established players like Google and Amazon in the rapidly growing business of online software. The aim is to allow developers to build new applications which will live on the internet, rather than on their own computers.” [Check out Windows Azure; but Dave Winer’s not impressed.]
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy
Lawrence Lessigâs latest, and reportedly last, Creative Commons related book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy, has been released and it looks very impressive! Hereâs the blurb :
For more than a decade, weâve been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Centuryâs model of âcopyright law.â In this, the last of his books about copyright, Lawrence Lessig maps both a way back to the 19th century, and to the promise of the 21st. Our past teaches us about the value in âremix.â We need to relearn the lesson. The present teaches us about the potential in a new âhybrid economyâ â one where commercial entities leverage value from sharing economies. That future will benefit both commerce and community. If the lawyers could get out of the way, it could be a future we could celebrate.
As the founder and leading light of the Creative Commons movement, Lessig is ideally situate to comment on these matters. Indeed, as I wait for my copy to arrive in the mail, my only disappointment is that the book didnât come out a few months earlier â my honours students are currently completing their own remix projects and this would have been the perfect companion text (you can see the chapter breakdown to get an idea of the content). As with all of Lessigâs books, a freely redistributable version will be released shortly, this time under the Bloomsbury Academic imprint, a new line of academic books which will release all of their titles under CC or similar licenses allowing free redistribution (if youâre interested, you can read an interview with Bloomsbury Academicâs publisher Frances Pinter about this new line).
As well as the book, youâll definitely want to watch out for Brett Gaylorâs new documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto which takes a look a remix culture via interviews with the usual suspects (Lessig, Doctorow), but with mashup and remix artist Girl Talk as the focal story. Hereâs the trailer:
Building Open Education Resources from the Botton Up
Hello to everyone at the Open Education Resources Free Seminar today in Brisbane. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person today, but for those who were there – and anyone else interested – my short presentation ‘Building Open Education Resources From the Bottom Up: How Student-Created Open Educational Resources Can Challenge Institutional Indifference‘ is embedded here:
My apologies for the few glaring typos in the slides – it’s a good argument against recording a presentation at 1am in the morning! Any comments, questions or thoughts either from folks at the seminar, or from anyone else, are most welcome!
Update: If you’re just after the powerpoint slides, you can now view or download them on Slideshare.
Remarkable Remixes
The winners of Total Recutâs âWhat is Remix Challenge 2008â competition are in, with many outstanding examples each showing strengths technical, political or just plain entertaining. For me, though, those that most directly engaged with the politics and practice of remix were the most inspirational; from the top ten, my favourite three were âŚ
In second place in the competition, right on the boundary between the still and moving image, is âCompositionâ by Jata Haan:
Two things stood out for me with this video: firstly, that all the images, and music, Haan used were licensed under Creative Commons (more that 100 images); and secondly, that, quite literally, this remix showed that digital tools and creativity can bring previously static material to life! Also, as odd as it is, I quite like the Sydney Opera House.
A lot shorter, and in fifth place in the competition, is âRemix Cultureâ by Sylvia Koopman:
Koopmanâs remix is short, pithy and directly to the point. It also highlights the joys and perils of fair use, when the the ratio of remix to credits is about 3:1! Itâs worth noting that Koopman is still in high school and posts a lot her other remix work on YouTube. I think she must be one of those digital natives we keep hearing about! đ
The last clip I want to mention is Ricardo Carrion’s âRemix Culture IIâ:
Carrionâs piece is probably the most useful in really âexplainingâ remix culture and certainly has some fun with older science footage and science fiction. As with many in the competition, though, I would have preferred more detailed credits on Coopmanâs work. One of the missed opportunities with these remixes was the chance to have ready-to-click credits so that others could easily take a look at the source material and take a whirl at creatively remixing it themselves. I should add that DJ Le Clownâs âXmas in New York Cityâ which won overall was certainly showed a lot of talent and is technically impressive; itâs just not in my favourites because the actual content remixed is largely unexciting to me (no, not a Sinatra fan, Iâm afraid)! If youâre inspired to make your own remixes, take a look at the resources that Total Cut highlighted for entrants to this competition. Everything you need to get inspired, and started, is either above or right there! đ
Annotated Links of Interest: September 5th 2008
Interesting links for September 4th 2008 through September 5th 2008:
- 19% of U.S. Households Watch Online TV [NewTeeVee] – A new report from The Conference Board shows that 19% of US households watch broadcast TV online: “In its study of 10,000 households, TNS and the Conference Board found that of those who watch TV online, 43 percent tune into the news, the most popular category. Thirty-nine percent watch drama shows, 34 percent sitcom/comedy shows, 23 percent reality shows, 16 percent sports, and 15 percent user-generated content.”
- Wikipedia vandals target West Australian politicians [The Australian] – “According to giant online encyclopedia Wikipedia, West Australian polician Matt Birney has a small penis and premier Alan Carpenter is helped by the outlaw bikie gang Gypsy Jokers. … As the State election draws nearer, volunteer editors at the site, which has more than two-and-a-half million articles, are scanning the entries of WA politicians to ensure inaccurate entries are removed as quickly as possible. … Alan Carpenterâs Wikipedia entry was vandalised three times late last month. It said he was sacked from the ABC, had a drug addiction, âdestroyed the teaching professionâ and insisted âteachers are overpaid and underworked kretins (sic) of our societyâ. But two minutes after the final act of vandalism, editor Rror removed the offending material.” (That’s pretty quick editing! Who’d’ve thought so many people were watching WA politicians’ wikipedia pages?) [Via Anna @ iGenmasters]
- Google backs down over browser amid privacy concerns [The Age] – “Google has made an embarrassing backdown after it was revealed the company would have rights to any information entered into websites by people using its new internet browser. A day after the Google Chrome browser was released, a controversial clause in its “End User License Agreement” (EULA) has been removed following concerns it breached people’s privacy and copyright.” (I’m delighted that clause is gone, but credit to them, it disappeared pretty quickly after blogosphere unrest! It’s interesting, too, that in The Age Google backed down … for the BBC it’s a “tweak“.)
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