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Digital Culture Links: September 17th 2009
Links for September 11th 2009 through September 17th 2009:
- 50 Cent: Piracy Is A Part Of The Marketing [Techdirt] – “…rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his “business acumen.” I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying — as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because “the people who didn’t purchase the material, they end up at the concert.” He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they’ll go to concerts. He notes that you can’t stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.” (Can’t say I’m a fan of his music, but his perspective on piracy, fans and the business futures for music are spot on!)
- Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist [Mashable] – The US White House is seeking to archive all of their social media presence and conversation. While their motivations are legal (they’re required to archive all correspondence of any sort) this is still an important archiving process of important historical value. It would be nice to see all national governments following a similar procedure for their national records (hello Mr Rudd).
- Hands-On: iPod Nano vs. Flip SD [NewTeeVee] – The new iPod Nano with video-recording offers a direct challenge to the Flip market. Testing a new Nano versus a Flip HD, the results: “Overall — the Flip offered a MUCH better picture both indoor and out, providing way more detail in the image. The Flip microphone was also a little more discerning in our test, able to distinguish our subject’s voice in a crowded room much better than the Nano.
- Wikipedia’s Rapid Reaction to Outburst During Obama Speech [The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com] – “If journalism is the first draft of history, what is a Wikipedia entry when it is updated within minutes of an event to reflect changes in a person’s biography? This is the very live issue that cropped up in a heated argument on the discussion page that accompanies Wikipedia’s entry on Representative Joe Wilson Wednesday night, just 30 minutes after the Republican from South Carolina interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “You lie!””
There’s an app for that, too.
Sometimes the simplest parodies are the most effective. Case in point: Adam Sacks’ brilliant, satirical take on the power of a range of Apple iPhone applications.
Privacy, Power, Permanence & Politics!
One of the reasons I’ve been so quiet is that in the past few weeks I’ve started teaching two new units here at Curtin. Both of these units have been completely redeveloped and this is their first run in the new form. I’ll talk about Web Communications 101 another day, but I wanted to point out how much I’m enjoying teaching our new Internet Politics and Power unit. The unit has a healthy dose of thinking from people like Lessig and Zittrain and really tackles many of the big issues for digital culture today. So I’m now required to stay on top of many of those issues I like to blog about, like privacy and copyright, rather than having to steal a hour here or there! 🙂 There are so many issues that are relevant today, but one area which is really getting me thinking is the way that Apple, Google, Facebook and others are creating their own bounded realms of control!
A recent example that really highlights the complexity of these issues is the policing of Apple’s application store for the iPhone. Recently there was a a fairly heated discussion after Apple rejected the Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary application ostensibly for offensive words (but words which are present in many other apps). It turns out Apple had more complex reasoning which was, among other things, wrapped up with new parental controls being introduced for apps. While this rationale is less bizzare, John Gruber still makes the very important point that the biggest issue is there needs to be "fairness, consistency, and common sense in the App Store review process" and that consistency is, thus far, sorely lacking.
Apple’s app store has also been under fire for rejecting a Google app which would allow many users to access cheaper calls and services. Elisabeth Oppenheimer, writing at Zittrain’s Future of the Internet blog, notes that Apple claimed that they rejected Google’s app since it "duplicates iPhone functionality" but in real terms many people suspect it was rejected since it threatened the monopoly AT&T have enjoyed in being the exclusive iPhone service provider in the US. Oppenheimer is "hopeful that killing Google Voice will be the one step too far that inspires consumers and regulators to sit up and work to get sensible open-access rules" but I’m not necessarily that optimistic.
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch is demanding Amazon hand over the details of Kindle users who subscribe to media from Murdoch’s vast empire. So far Amazon has not complied, but I wonder if they’re willing to risk their relationship with Newscorp in the long run? Along similar lines, this week Facebook purchased Friendfeed which potentially adds even more information to Facebook’s vast array of user information that they manage in, at times, curiously questionable ways.
While not quite an app, on another front the permanence of archives has come under threat from another third-party tool. While there have been concerns for a while about URL-shortening services, the upcoming closure of tr.im is the first one that I know of to go under. These services have become extremely popular, allowing people to create tiny web page addresses that can fit alongside a tweet and still fit Twitter’s 140 character limit. However, what will happen to all of the tweets which contain tr.im address? They’ll go dead, effectively making those tweets useless. While tr.im is not really to blame (really, what is the business model for a URL-shortener?), our reliance on these services leaves our tweets and related links fragile and vulnerable when a company or service collapses under the weight of their own popularity. This is less a privacy issue than an issue of utility: relying on third-party tools with no real backup function leaves the usefulness of our personal and collective archives in the hands of folks who, ultimately, may not have the resources to run these services forever!
Update: On the tr.im font there appears to be a happy ending, with the announcement that tr.im is becoming a community-developed open source project.
Update 2: Apple claim that they “did not reject an iPhone application submitted by Google and that it was still studying it, in part because of privacy concerns.”
Digital Culture Links: August 5th 2009
Links for August 5th 2009:
- Women comprise 55% of Twitter users [SheSpotter] – “A new study released in Harvard Business publishing examines gender trends in Twitter.
Highlights include: Females hold a slight majority on Twitter: men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. ” While there are slightly more women using Twitter, there are a lot less young people Tweeting according to Mashable. - Music off the menu as licensing row heats up [SMH] – “The fee paid by restaurants and cafes for background music is due to skyrocket if a new licensing proposal goes ahead. For Stuart Knox, the owner of the 55-seat Fix St James restaurant in the city, it means his annual licence fee would rise from $69 to more than $5500. ‘‘For that sort of fee, I’d prefer to buy my customers an iPod each and they can listen in private at their table,” he says. There is widespread concern in the restaurant industry that new tariffs suggested by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia will make the cost of playing music prohibitive.” (If costs get too out of hand, I wonder if someone will collate a whole range of Creative Commons Attribution – CC BY – music and point Australian restaurants to it – they wouldn’t need to pay a cent!)
- Apple tries to silence owner of exploding iPod with gagging order [Times Online] – “Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child’s iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company. The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.”
- 2009 Social Network Analysis – Social Network Demographics – Social Network Geographic Data [Ignite Social Media] – Useful 2009 snapshot of the demographics and for: Badoo.com, Bebo.com, Digg.com, Facebook.com, Fark.com, Flickr.com, Flixster.com, Friendster.com, Gather.com, Habbo.com, Hi5.com, Iambored.com, Identi.ca, IndianPad.com, Last.fm, Linkedin.com, Livejournal.com, Meetup.com, Metafilter.com, Mixx.com, Multiply.com, Myspace.com, Netlog.com, Newsvine.com, Ning.com, Plaxo.com, Plurk.com, Pownce.com, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, Reunion.com, Shoutwire.com, Skyrock.com, Stumbleupon.com, Tribe.net, Tuenti.com, Twitter.com, Wayn.com, Xanga.com, Yelp.com, YouTube.com.
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 8th 2009
Links for January 7th 2009 through January 8th 2009:
- How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR (Good advice.)
- Apple Drops Anticopying Measures in iTunes [NYTimes.com] – In moves that will help shape the online future of the music business, Apple said Tuesday that it would remove anticopying restrictions on all of the songs in its popular iTunes Store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them. Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so. In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents. Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99″
- Raid Gaza! Editorial Games and Timeliness [News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project] – “Raid Gaza! is a new editorial game about the Gaza crisis. Like editorial games should, it takes a strong position. But unlike so many, it also offers coherent gameplay that is related to the conflict it critiques. … The game is headstrong, suffering somewhat from its one-sided treatment of the issue at hand. But as an editorial, it is a fairly effective one both as opinion text and as game. It is playable and requires strategy, the exercise of which carries the payload of commentary. It’s release on user-contributed animation and games portal Newgrounds came on 30 December 2008, only three days after the Israeli Defense Forces launched airstrikes as a part of “Operation Cast Lead.” The rapidness with which the game was developed, combined with its relatively sophisticated ability to mount commentary through gameplay, underscore one of the biggest issues with editorial games.”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: January 5th 2009
Links for January 3rd 2009 through January 5th 2009:
- Participatory Media Literacy: Why it matters [Digital Ethnography] – Michael Wesch (of The Machine is Us/ing Us fame): “Those of us striving to integrate participatory media literacy practices into our classes often face resistance. Other faculty might argue that we are turning away from the foundations of print literacy, or worse, pandering to our tech-obsessed students. Meanwhile, students might resist too, wondering why they have to learn to use a wiki in an anthropology class. The surprising-to-most-people-fact is that students would prefer less technology in the classroom (especially *participatory* technologies that force them to do something other than sit back and memorize material for a regurgitation exercise). We use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them – that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create.”
- Speeding hoons in Victoria and South Australia goad police with vanity videos on YouTube [PerthNow] – “Furious police are scouring the internet for the irresponsible antics of hoon drivers and have vowed to use covert sting operations to catch them. The warning to exhibitionists who post videos of their potentially deadly stunts on website YouTube has been issued by South Australia’s police Traffic Support Branch Superintendent Mark Fairney.”We’re not taking it, we’ve had enough,” he said. A series of hoon videos made in SA has been posted on YouTube in the past six months. The footage outraged police and the RAA, with both saying innocent motorists were at risk from the stunts. In one video clip, a motor-cyclist was filmed from different angles and can be seen reaching a speed of 210km/h at Eagle on the Hill. The white-knuckle ride was filmed by a bike-mounted camera and several roadside positions. The title of the clip boasts that the rider hit 215km/h. The video, posted in July, included a Google Earth map following the route”
- Homework is fun on an iPod touch [WA Today] – “A pilot program in which teenagers used iPods for school work has increased attendance and increased enthusiasm for homework. A class of year 8 students at Shepparton High School in central Victoria are the first in Australia and among the first in the world to use iPod touches in the classroom for a global “mobile learning” project. The students use the hand-held media players to search the internet, download music, do quizzes, research and submit assignments and collaborate with a school in Singapore. Preliminary research on the program found students were more willing to come to school, did more homework and used their iPods more than laptops or desktop computers.”
- Who on earth is Matt Smith? [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] – “Matt Smith has been named as the actor who will take on the role of TV’s most famous time traveller. He may be the youngest actor to play the Doctor, but Smith has already built up an impressive CV on stage and the small screen. His biggest television role has been in BBC Two’s political drama Party Animals (2007) in which he played parliamentary researcher Danny Foster.” (New Doctor actor is youngest ever. )
- Popeye the Sailor copyright free 70 years after Elzie Segar’s death [Times Online] – ““I yam what I yam,” declared Popeye. And just what that is is likely to become less clear as the copyright expires on the character who generates about £1.5 billion in annual sales. From January 1, the iconic sailor falls into the public domain in Britain under an EU law that restricts the rights of authors to 70 years after their death. Elzie Segar, the Illinois artist who created Popeye, his love interest Olive Oyl and nemesis Bluto, died in 1938. … While the copyright is about to expire inside the EU, the character is protected in the US until 2024. US law protects a work for 95 years after its initial copyright. The Popeye trademark, a separate entity to Segar’s authorial copyright, is owned by King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation — the US entertainment giant — which is expected to protect its brand aggressively.”
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