How a well-known military blogger, Major Andrew Olmsted, got the final word after he was killed in Iraq but got a friend to post his pre-prepared goodbye via his blog.

Can webisodes make money? A Western Australian perspective: “The first point is: People are already making money from creating webisodes.”

New report from the Centre for Social Media. Looks at the uses, motivation and challenges in using material currently under copyright in participatory media. US-centric in its looks at fair use, et al, but still an interesting read.

The companion website for Axel Bruns’ much anticipated Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. Already lots of bits worth reading!

In their worst ever re-writing of their own universe’s history, Spider-Man makes a deal with the Devil and was never married (nor revealed his identity to the world). Seriously: worst retcon ever.

“Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr said the government had cancelled RQF because it was fundamentally flawed. “The RQF is poorly designed, administratively expensive and relies on an impact measure that is unverifiable and ill-d

A scene by scene remake of Star Wars shot in 1977 on Super8 film!

“… One of the reasons that Heroes (and other NBC shows) shot to the top of this list is that NBC decided to sever their relationship with iTunes last year, meaning you couldn’t zap these over to your iPod at $1.99 a pop. …”

“64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004. Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog…”

“An outspoken Saudi blogger is being held for “purposes of interrogation,” the Saudi Interior Ministry confirmed Tuesday. … the blogger, Fouah al-Farhan, was “being questioned about specific violations of nonsecurity laws.””

Last year, Stacy Snyder, 25, was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile.

Lawrence Lessig corrects some misunderstandings held by ASCAP(American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ) in their recent stance on CC licenses.

“Illegal downloads of videos continue to grow, with Australians increasingly pirating new US shows well before they ran downunder. … Television series Heroes was last year’s most popular television program with 2,439,154 downloads”

“One of Australia’s biggest computer game developers, Auran Development, was placed into voluntary administration yesterday, despite recently securing multi-million dollar investments from the National Australia Bank and the federal Government.:

“YouTube has seen tens of thousands in the conservative Saudi kingdom upload and download a broad range of thrill-seeking, political and just downright bizarre video clips in a surge of expression.”

“… the adorable animals that dominate so many online video streams refuse to do their work—that is, to be adorable—in solidarity with striking writers who have walked out on their work…” (It’s WGA-week at In Media Res!)

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association had requested a waiver for its NBC broadcast, but the WGA rejected it.” So, no writers for the Globes or the Oscars!

After catching his 15-year-old smoking pot, a Canadian man sold the hard-to-get Guitar Hero III video game he bought his son for $US90 ($103) for Christmas at an online auction, fetching $US9,100 ($10,420) from an Australian buyer.

I’m just delighted to see Scrabulous – the Facebook Scrabble application – get its own article in the New York Times! (Even if the article doesn’t say much…)

“In a report on Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 per cent of US adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine. That is more than twice the 22 per cent in 2002 …”

“The word “weblog” celebrates the 10th anniversary of it being coined on 17 December 1997. The word was created by Jorn Barger to describe what he was doing with his pioneering Robot Wisdom web page.”

“Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency 12/16/2007. Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online…”

“Apple quietly introduced an update to Garageband that adds a cool new feature: iPhone ringtone creation. Anything you’ve got in Garageband, you can turn into a ringtone.”

“The project, which is in an invitation-only beta stage, lets users create clean-looking Web pages with their photo and write entries on, for example, insomnia. Those entries are called “knols” for “unit of knowledge,” Google said.”

“Google announced last night they are starting a project called knol that will allow anyone to create wiki-like pages on topics. … My initial take on this is that knols are going to kill Wikipedia – but it will take time.”

I must be getting behind on the nets, as I only saw half of these before they appeared on a Top Ten list!

Here is the lost intro to A New Hope, edited out due to time restrictions: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=DCyPTM2FJgA

“The word weblog is ten years old today!”