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Digital Culture Links: October 8th 2009

October 8, 2009

Links for October 4th 2009 through October 8th 2009:

Angry Outbursts on Twitter Prompt Lengthy Legal Discussions [NYTimes.com] – “Times are tough for the “tweet before you think” crowd. Courtney Love was sued by a fashion designer after she posted a series of inflammatory tweets, one calling the designer a liar and a thief. A landlord in Chicago sued a tenant for $50,000 after she tweeted about her moldy apartment. And Demi Moore slapped back at Perez Hilton over a revealing photograph of the actress’s daughter. A growing number of people have begun lashing out at their Twitter critics, challenging the not-quite rules of etiquette on a service where insults are lobbed in brief bursts, too short to include the social niceties. Some offended parties are suing.” (Yes, as with all social media, if you think things you post or tweet will ever go away … they won’t.)
Hotmail users advised to change passwords following information theft [Technology | guardian.co.uk] – “Hotmail users are being advised to change their passwords, after thousands of account details were posted online. A list containing more than 10,000 apparently genuine account names and passwords was posted to a website last week, where it remained until being spotted over the weekend by Microsoft security researchers. The list, which has been seen by the Guardian, appears to be genuine. It only contains usernames beginning with the letters A and B, but covers accounts ending in @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com – three services owned by Microsoft which have more than 280m users worldwide. Although the stolen details have since been taken offline, copies of the list are already available elsewhere on the web – meaning that the details are potentially in the hands of criminals.” (Putting the HOT back into hotmail …)
Not a Nobel Headline [The Content Makers] – “What on earth is this shit? Australia gets its first female Nobel prize-winning scientist, and The Age runs with the following headline on the front page of its print edition: What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing with a Nobel Prize? Perhaps its meant to be all very po-mo and “oh look we’re so not sexist that we can actually pretend we are sexist in an ironical kind of way, ho ho”. And it is written off the first para, which says that this was what Elizabeth Blackburn was once asked by a family friend. But as a front page splash, it demeans the story to the level of cute human interest, rather than serious breakthrough. It leaves me thinking: What Are Nice Boys Like You Doing With a Newspaper?” (I couldn’t agree more!)
The life cycle of social networking sites. [Democratic Underground] – Amusing visualisation of the life-cycle of social networking sites, from the ‘New & Cool’ through to the inevitable ‘Cash Grabbing’ phase. Facebook is probably between steps three and four! 🙂
Google Wave’s unproductive email metaphors [Scoblizer] – Robert Scoble on why Google Wave isn’t really like email at all (which is good, apparently, because email isn’t that productive!).

Digital Culture Links: September 21st 2009

September 21, 2009

Links for September 18th 2009 through September 21st 2009:

RIP Facebook Beacon [Mashable] – “Facebook launched its ad platform “Beacon” in Nov 2007, hoping to revolutionize advertising by posting updates to your Facebook profile when you interacted with its partner sites. This week Facebook said that it has settled a class-action lawsuit against the product, agreed to shut it down completely, and will establish a $9.5 million “settlement fund” to fund initiatives related to online privacy. … Facebook Beacon was a system that posted your activity on third-party websites – Blockbuster, Gamefly, Overstock.com and more – back to your Facebook profile. Privacy advocates rallied against it, however, arguing that data was being sent without the users’ explicit permission. The situation worsened after a report claimed that Beacon was collecting data from partner sites regardless of whether users were Facebook members …” (Beacon remains one of those most teachable examples of Facebook’s privacy woes, but I’m delighted with the idea of money being spent privacy initiatives.)
Nigeria ‘offended’ by sci-fi film [BBC NEWS | Africa] – “Nigeria’s government is asking cinemas to stop showing a science fiction film, District Nine, that it says denigrates the country’s image. Information Minister Dora Akunyili told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that she had asked the makers of the film, Sony, for an apology. She says the film portrays Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes. An actor from the film said that it was not just Nigerians who were portrayed as villains. … But Mr Khumbanyiwa said Nigerians in the cast did not seem worried by the portrayal of their country. He suggested that the film, which depicts people wanting to eat aliens to gain the superhuman powers, should not be taken too literally. “It’s a story, you know,” he said. “It’s not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don’t even exist in the first place.”” (Well said, Mr Khumbanyiwa, well said.)
Welcome to the (anonymous) rabbit hole [Unleashed] – Mark Pesce’s playful take on the largely unsuccessful attempts by Anonymous to take down the ACMA and Australian Prime Minster’s websites on 09/09/09/
VICTORY: FCC to Mandate Net Neutrality for the Web [Mashable] – “The Federal Communications Commission has been in the middle of it, as it has outlined loose net neutrality guidelines in the past. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the FCC is about to propose definitive rules that could have major repercussions for the entire web. The new rules, expected to be announced Monday by Julius Genachowski, the FCC Chairman, will outline requirements for ISPs to treat all traffic on the Internet equally. This means that Comcast can’t decide that Google gets less bandwidth and Microsoft/Bing (Bing) gets more for any reason (i.e. one pays for preferential treatment). It’s also expected that the net neutrality rules will apply to wireless services, meaning they would be in effect for Internet data via your phone and 3G networks. The impact of this cannot be understated, especially as iPhones and other smart phones make the mobile web a major part of our lives.” (Excellent!)
Google slams Murdoch plan to charge for online news [The Age] – “Publishers of general news would find it hard to charge for their content online because too much free content is available, the chief executive of Google said. Speaking to a group of British broadcasting executives via video link, Eric Schmidt said he could, however, imagine niche providers of content such as business news succeeding in this area. Schmidt was responding to an announcement by News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch that he could start charging for content online. “In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity,” he said. “So my guess is for niche and specialist markets … it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news.””
Meme Analysis: Kanye Interrupts, the Internet (and Obama) Listens [NewTeeVee] – Everything you ever wanted to know about the Kayne West interrrupts Taylor Swift meme …

How to Stalk Your Kids on Facebook!

September 1, 2009 / 3 Comments on How to Stalk Your Kids on Facebook!

Once again, those satirists at the Onion have shed a little light on the privacy issues surrounding Facebook with this little video:

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Digital Culture Links: August 24th 2009

August 24, 2009

Links for August 24th 2009:

The Message of Twitter: "Here It Is" and "Here I Am" [Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives] – Henry Jenkins has a thoughtful post on why Twitter matters. The most positive being that "None of us can spot everything in our field and collectively pooling our knowledge is of enormous value. For me, that's been my primary use of Twitter both as a consumer and as a contributor." The most negative being the misquoting that from the contextlessness of 140 characters (something especially problematic for academics).
Identity of 'skank' blogger revealed [The Age] – "An anonymous blogger whose identity was unmasked by court order after she called a Vogue Australia covergirl a "psychotic, whoring, lying … skank" plans to sue Google for $US15 million for breaching her privacy. The model, Liskula Cohen, confronted and forgave the blogger after a judge ordered Google to tell Cohen who had allegedly defamed her on a blog called "Skanks in NYC". … it has now been revealed that the blogger is Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old New York fashion student. … In an interview with the New York Daily News, Port said Cohen, 37, had defamed herself by launching such a public lawsuit. She claimed she had the right to an opinion and that she had been "put on a silver platter for the press to attack". "Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my website: one from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."" (The privacy 'there and back again' …)
Fairfax records $380m loss [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – "Fairfax Media has posted a net loss of $380 million for the 2009 financial year. The media company says its underlying earnings were $605m, down 27 per cent on the previous year. Fairfax has blamed the speed of the economic slowdown, cuts to advertising revenues, and the move towards online services for the result."
Location, Location, Location [Twitter Blog] – Twitter are adding (optional) geo-location metadata: "We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information." Jeff Jarvis has a good run down of why this will actually be very useful.
Retractions up tenfold [Times Higher Education] – "The rate at which scientific journal articles are being retracted has increased roughly tenfold over the past two decades, an exclusive analysis for Times Higher Education reveals. Growth in research fraud as a result of greater pressure on researchers to publish, improved detection and demands on editors to take action have been raised as possible factors in the change. The study, by the academic-data provider Thomson Reuters, follows the retraction last month of a paper on the creation of sperm from human embryonic stem cells. The paper, written by researchers at Newcastle University, was withdrawn by the Stem Cells and Development journal following its discovery that the paper's introduction was largely plagiarised."
Teenager is first to be jailed for Facebook bullying [Telegraph] – "Teenager Keeley Houghton, who used Facebook to make death threats against Emily Moore, has become the first person in Britain to be jailed for bullying via a social networking site. Houghton, 18, boasted on the site that she wanted to kill Miss Moore, also 18, who she had bullied since they were at school together. Houghton, who admitted harassment, was sentenced to three months in a young offenders’ institute and given a five-month restraining order. District Judge Bruce Morgan told her: “Since Emily Moore was 14 you have waged compelling threats and violent abuse towards her. “Bullies are by their nature cowards, in school and society. The evil, odious effects of being bullied stay with you for life. “On this day you did an act of gratuitous nastiness to satisfy your own twisted nature.” On July 12, the court heard, Houghton wrote on her Facebook site: “Keeley is going to murder the —–."

Digital Culture Links: August 20th 2009

August 20, 2009

Links for August 15th 2009 through August 20th 2009:

iiNet uses Telecommunications Act to boost copyright case [Australian IT] – "iiNet has put two new lines of legal defence before the Federal Court in its bid to stop a group of entertainment companies suing it for copyright infringement. … barrister Richard Cobden today ventured a new defence in which he revealed the ISPs intent to argue that bowing to AFACT's demands to disconnect the customers for "unproven allegations of copyright breaches" would itself be in breach of privacy provisions of the Telecommunications Act. Mr Cobden also told the court that the ISP intended to argue that any steps AFACT required it to take could not be considered reasonable unless its rivals in the telecommunications sector were also asked to pursue them. … iiNet said: "There are very good public policy reasons why ISPs cannot use their customers' information in the manner AFACT has demanded. "The existing law currently provides a process for investigating copyright theft or any other illegal activity using the internet, requiring court orders, warrants and due process."
Liskula Cohen Forces Google To Reveal Anonymous 'Skank' Blogger's Identity [SMH] – "A former Vogue Australia cover girl has won a landmark court battle to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" and an "old hag". Model Liskula Cohen sued Google in January in the hope of forcing the company to reveal the person responsible for allegedly defamatory comments on a blog called Skanks in NYC, which was hosted by Google's Blogger service." (While I don't believe anyone is really anonymous online, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the precedent this sets with Google being forced to release user details.)
Video gamers 'older than thought' [BBC NEWS | Technology] – "The average age of an adult video game player is 35 – higher than previously thought, a US study suggests."