A look at Blade Runner on the eve of its 25th anniversary, especially looking through the eyes of academia in its various flavours.

” … it is clear that what people mostly want from public space is to be alone with their personal networks.” [Via]

“YouTube is experimenting with inline ads, showing a text ad at the bottom of its player as a video is playing. If a user clicks on the text, a video ad expands and appears layered on top of the player.”

When is child pornography not child pornography? Can an “avatar” commit a crime? What is real, and what is not? (The article is over the top, but still provokes extremely important questions which will need real and internationally legal answers!)

“After becoming a podcasting convert, the author talked with other students at colleges and universities across North America about their iPod and MP3 use, their familiarity with podcasting, and how they see podcasting as part of the classroom.”

A conceptual (over-)analysis of the LOL CATS memes of late. [Via]

PC World asks, while some schools are banning iPods, should they really be focusing on how best to use them educationally?

While, sadly, I agree, there is still some pretty rich irony in hearing George “Jar Jar Binks” Lucas saying about Spider-Man 3, “It’s a silly movie. … There just isn’t much there.” LOL

“A group of students on a field trip in Toronto investigating the pros and cons of public surveillance cameras ended up catching a slice of big city street hostility on their own cameras Tuesday. The Grade 12 students caught a road rage incident …”

“The US military is now posting video clips on YouTube showing US troops in combat and insurgents being bombed in a “boots on the ground” perspective of the Iraq war, officials said today.”

While I’m not sure of his motivations, I am nevertheless delighted with the uncharacteristically large amount of money being added to Education funding in the National Federal Budget! 🙂

Keynote talk on ‘Intermediation’ by Kate Hayles at the National Humanities Center’s 2006 Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity conference.

$US250+ million later, MySpace solves its Photobucket dilemma by buying the company out.

“British Prime Minister Tony Blair took to the Internet on Monday to congratulate Nicolas Sarkozy on winning France’s presidential election. Blair posted a message on video-sharing site YouTube, praising Sarkozy as ‘a strong leader.'”

A blog which documents and protests instances of internal academic bullying in universities. (Controversial, to say the least.) [Via]

ABC TV series ‘Lost’ now has an finite life-span, of three more years, with 16 epsiodes a year. It’s a clever move since it (should!) mean that the ever-expanding list of unanswered questions will have to be designed in an answerable way!

“Many people go to YouTube to look at video clips. But what they really want to do is direct. Fortunately, for these people, God created the parody video.” (NY Times cynicism at its best…)

“Cellphone videos that depict a teenage girl being stoned to death by a crowd surfaced online last week.” These videos sparked national protests in Iraq – as they should – but a horrifyingly large crowd appears to have taken part in the stoning.

Audio podcasts of the four Battlestar Galactica papers presented at the recent MIT5.

A new YouTuber is initially mistaken for a new Lonelygirl15 (ie a commerical product, not an authethic ‘person’ per se) only to turn out to be a naive YouTuber being gamed by the proto-gurus of piggy-back social marketing.

As part of UWA’s Teaching Month I’m participating in a group blog exploring blogs as the “new university workplace”, including thinking on ePortfolios, digital literacy and writing in public.