No stupid breaks; Advance the storyline; Don’t cancel the show without an ending; Commit to an end time for the first storyline; Don’t have cliffhangers season to season; Don’t name the show; Don’t screw with the timeslot; Find a new storyline …

Dave Winer: “…next step … is the professional media fully embracing the new media, no longer see it as a threat to their continued employment. Seeing amateur public writing, the former audience who is no longer silent…”

… Jericho was canceled on short notice recently, leaving … fans scrambling to try to save it. “Scramble” might be the wrong word, because in fact it’s a delightfully well-coordinated effort, complete with daily missions and 14,684 pounds of nuts

BBC: “More than a third of UK bloggers risk the sack by posting derogatory or damaging details about their workplace, boss or colleagues, a survey claims.”

Rex Sorgatz: “We visited the Zune HQ today. In the entryway was an iPod recycling bin.”

Jason Mittell on the Lost Season Finale: “This is a great example of the operational aesthetic, … part of the pleasure and engagement with a program is in examining the gears of the storytelling machinery, not just the story itself.”

“… on the one hand, the digitisation of content and provision of information and, on the other, interactivity and opportunities for expression. Some have seen these as in binary opposition. The truth is that they are inexorably merging.”

A YouTubed version of one of Spider Jerusalem’s speeches from Transmetropolitan. (Feels like Trainspotting in a cominc book, on the interweb!) [Via]

Hilarious clip showing some of the (glaring) continuity errors in Star Wars!

Alex Halavais has some good advice on questions to ask BEFORE you embark on a research degree in Communication (or pretty much any other topic, too!). Perhaps a little negative, but sadly by and large realistic…

“Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million.” (All your feeds are belong to us!)

Score one for better education: “Google is to ban adverts for essay writing services – following claims that plagiarism is threatening the integrity of university degrees.”

The creator of Buffy talks about the horrific “honour killing” of 17-year old Iraqi girl Dua Khalil, which was recorded by a cameraphone and distributed online. Whedon compares this with the mysogynistc trailer upcoming feature film, Captivity.

Make your own LOL CATS image with this nifty image generator. Let the procrastination … continue!

“The Middle East Times just released an article on the Maledives being the first country to open a virtual embassy in Second Life. “The Maldives thus pips Sweden to the post…”

“A New Zealand city on the receiving end of a tongue-lashing from British comedian John Cleese has hit back by re-naming its rubbish dump after him.”

The trailer for the upcoming The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, which actually looks okay! It’s nice to see Summer Glau (Firefly, 4400) in another promising TV franchise.

The story of fair use (in the US) re-told using snippits of Disney owned films! See also the Stanford Uni Project this comes from.

Christian McCrea takes Zizek to task for his exuberant 300 review essay. Lots of quotes from others responding to Zizek, too. Interesting stuff …

Amazing street-art installations … all spectres of people amongst the urban decay; very clever stuff!

“A report for Britain’s Fraud Advisory Panel wants the Government to extend real-world financial regulations into Second Life…. It warns that players can transfer large sums of money across national borders without restriction and with little risk of be

Adrian Miles makes a great post summarising the differences in software architecture and pratice between Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and web2.0 tools, such as blogs.

“Sweden will open the first “diplomatic representation” in the virtual reality of web-based Second Life, a fantasy world inhabited by computer-generated residents, on May 30.”