Lectopia, the enterprise-level presentation capture and delivery system developed at the University of Western Australia (formerly know as iLecture) has been purchased by Anystream Apreso. Sad to see it go, but good luck to the Lectopia team!

The next Adobe Flash player will support H.264! Bring on the high-quality YouTubery! 😉

Light-weight but interesting profile of the three guys behind The Pirate Bay, the web’s #1 stop for illegal bittorrent files! [Via]

“… IBM’s 9,000 workers in Italy, is planning a most novel form of industrial action – a strike on Second Life – and it wants as many avatars as possible manning the picket lines.”

“Education Minister Mark McGowan will introduce new guidelines to ban the use of mobile phones in Western Australian classrooms.”

“A bid to create a new world record and have the biggest number of people dressed up as daleks in one location has taken place in Manchester.”

Blogger blogs now support free-hosting of videoblogs: “Today we are releasing video uploading to Blogger! This feature allows you to upload videos and create a video podcast with the same ease that we currently provide with photo uploading.”

“A New Jersey teenager has unlocked the iPhone, opening the way to Apple’s iconic mobile telephone being used by non-US networks. The Associated Press news agency confirmed George Hotz, 17, had unlocked the iPhone …”

“A 21-year-old man from the western Sydney suburb of Prairiewood faces up to five years’ imprisonment after he was charged with uploading a pirated copy of The Simpsons Movie on the internet.”

The Australian Government’s “NetAlert” website and free internet content-filters for all Australian families is finally released. This addresses symptoms, not causes. Even the filters themselves don’t actually work!

A “corrupted blood” disease infecting World of Warcraft avatars is being used as a model of real-world behaviour in the case of a viral pandemic!

“A new study conducted by Nottingham Trent University …found one in 10 players who regularly played online games had started a physical relationship with a fellow gamer, and most had made good friends while playing. “

“Internet addiction’ doesn’t exist. It can’t, because it’s a logical impossibility … ‘Internet addiction’ researchers conceive of the internet as if it were a set of activities when, in fact, it’s a medium for communication.”

A combination of successful radio-based podcasts and newer TV-based ‘vodcasts’ have Australia’s national broadcaster serving over 5 million downloads per month.

Is marrying one woman in the material world, and another -or at least her avatar – in Second Life cheating or polygamy? That’s the question in this WSJ article on the ‘fuzziness’ of the line between game-life and the outside world.

“…the Internet broadens the field of civic engagement. Young people from across the [US] nation are invited to engage in community and public service and they do so in significant numbers.”

Cutting out the middle person (ie record companies) between bands and fans should make more money for bands and cost less for fans.

Students do Google, but not by any means as much as the backlash against student over-use of search engines would suggest!

Matthew Kirschenbaum looks at the pros and cons of digital composition. “Today nearly all literature is “born digital” in the sense that at some point in its composition, probably very early, the text is entered with a word processor, saved on a hard dri

“Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose programs were once among the most viewed on YouTube, were requested by the video site to give testimony in legal proceedings as it fights a $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom Inc , according to court filings.”

QUT academics John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, suspended over public disparagement of a PhD candidate’s proposal, “argue that QUT punished them because of their political opposition to post-modernism” …

“The social networks mushrooming over the internet are a rich source of information for young people choosing a university. “

“A general method for the generation of natural language narrative is described. It allows the
expression, or narrative discourse, to vary independently of the underlying events and existents
that are the narrative’s content. “

“Cardiff University has reprimanded more than 20 bio-sciences students over comments made on the social networking site Facebook. … making offensive remarks about biosciences lecturer … and using the site to share information about coursework.”

A 13-year old Titantic fan has spotted Russian state TV trying to use footage from the blockbuster as actual footage in a news story. [Via]

Australian Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, now has 5000 Facebook friends, the limit currently allowed. Rudd’s Facebook success is part of his canny “Kevin07” campaign which features substantial online engagement.

Despite the traditional and legally mandatory “cooling off” period in which political parties cannot advertise in mainstream media for 3 days before a national election, online presence and social networks are challenging those boundaries…

Margaret Robertson: “The debate around video games and violence rears its head every few months. But are the right questions being asked?”

“Before they blog, upload a video to YouTube, or even play a game of World of Warcraft, members of the British military first have to get approval from superior officers, if there’s any hint that defense matters might come up.”

“Universal Music — who are usually the most extreme piracyphobes in the music industry — have announced that they’re going to try selling much of their catalog without DRM from now until January.”

As Rex says: “A very thorough post about the Minneapolis bridge collapse and citizen journalism.”

“The biggest bank in the virtual world of Second Life has closed its doors after a run on its deposits, putting at risk hundred of thousands of real dollars of savings and investments.”

Malaysia is trying to prosecute a student who created a rap song and uploaded it to YouTube; the song features lyrics and themes that the Malaysian government calls “seditious”.