Pew Research Center for People and the Press find 44% Americans have heard of a viral video about the upcoming US election, 27% have seen one. ” In each case, more people had seen the videos on TV than online.”

Senator Andrew Bartlett looks soberly at the use of MySpace in Australia for engaging the Australian population in poliitcs. While MySpace may very well not do much at all here, I’m still pleased politicians are willing to give it a try!

“…British web monitoring company Envisional found that Aussies are the world’s second-largest downloaders of online pirated TV programs (15.6 per cent), second only to Britain (18.5 per cent) and ahead of the US (7.3 per cent).”

“Turning consumers into creators is the latest fad among companies scrambling for new profits in the digital age. How better to revive a 30-year-old series than by enlisting armies of kids to make the content interesting again?”

MySpace Australia “today launched its Impact channel for politicians and non-profit organisations, but don’t expect to add the Prime Minister, John Howard, to your friends list. Labor politicians outnumber Liberals 2-to1 …”

“The Facebook userbase has quadroupled from 7.5 million in July 2006 and spread from 20 million to 30 million in the last 3 months alone.” (So there’s more people of Facebook than the population of Australia!)

WoW “gold farmers” spell their URLs in dead gnomes in World of Warcraft to circumvent a ban on in-game advertising!” [Via BBoing]

“Nearly half of the pregnant teenagers in China’s financial hub, Shanghai, met their partners on the internet, state media said.” LOL!

A new promotional video from William Gibson for ‘Spook Country’ includes a really interesting take on interacting with the blogging and forum communities at WilliamGibsonBooks.com.

Lisa Nakamura looks at Sharon Agathon (Athena) in terms in terms of the Korean-Canadian racial identity, especially in terms of her relationship to/with/as technology. Provocative (if not 100% accurate).

Penguin celebrates William Gibson’s new book with events in Second Life, including an appearance by Gibson himself (or his avatared self) … very meta for cyberspace!

The ultimate geek generator … how didn’t think about being on the cover of Wired at some point? 😛

“The Live Earth global pop concerts broke a record for an online entertainment show by generating more than 9 million internet streams, Microsoft web portal MSN said.”

“Instead of offering radically new options for connecting, online dating merely reinforces traditional forms of intimacy, where “man still meets woman” according to explicit and implicit social criteria.”

Interesting look at the history of political protests, including the changing face of activism in the era of social networks and smart mobs!

“As Users and Brands Head to Startups, Giant in Space Starts to Seem Outdated” (Apparently, Second Life is getting a little passe!)

” … data released by Facebook today shows that Facebook users are searching in large volume: 500 million Facebook searches were conducted in May alone.”

Written Ashley Deal from the Education and Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University. Confirms earlier work, cites some useful examples of podcasting in academia, not just recorded lectures …

And Facebook’s average user gets older … Visitors aged 12-17 increased 150% over the last yea; Visitors 18-24 increased 38%; Visitors 25-34 increased 11% during that time – a huge number; Visitors 35+ increased 98%

“More than one hundred Australians every hour are signing up to share their lives on Facebook.com, making the nation the fifth-highest ranking country using the social utility.”