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Digital Culture Links: Last Links for 2012.


Happy New Year, originally uploaded by Tama Leaver.

End of year links:

  • Best Memes of 2012: Editorial Choices [Know Your Meme] – The best memes of 2012, according to Know Your Meme:
    #10: Sh*t People Say
    #9: What People Think I Do
    #8: Overly Attached Girlfriend
    #7: Ehrmagerd
    #6: Ridiculously Photogenic Guy
    #5: Somebody That I Used to Know
    #4: Kony 2012
    #3: Call Me Maybe
    #2: Grumpy Cat
    #1: Gangnam Style
    Personally, I’d add Texts from Hillary, McKayla is Not Impressed and Binders Full of Women to the list!
  • Posterous Spaces backup tool available now [The Official Posterous Space] – Posterous adds the ability for users to download their entire Posterous sites as a zip file, complete with images and a usable (if dull) html interface. There hasn’t been a lot of movement with Posterous since the team were bought out by Twitter, so this new tool may signal the beginning of the end of the end for Posterous, which is a real shame since it’s still a more robust tool than Tumblr in a number of ways.
  • App sales soar in 2012 [Technology | The Guardian] – “Shiny new tablets and smartphones given as presents make Christmas Day and Boxing Day the two most lucrative days of the year for app sales. Yet in the apps economy, turkeys are a year-round phenomenon. Thousands of new apps are released every week for devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, but most sink without trace. With an estimated 1bn apps released so far on those two platforms alone, there are relatively few winners and many losers. This month, industry analyst Canalys claimed that in the first 20 days of November, Apple’s US App Store generated $120m (£75m) of app revenues, with just 25 publishers accounting for half of that. And 24 of those 25 companies make games, including the likes of Zynga, Electronic Arts and Angry Birds publisher Rovio. But analysts suggested in August that two-thirds of Apple store apps had never been downloaded – a lifeless long tail of more than 400,000 unwanted apps.”
  • 2012’s Most Popular Locations on Instagram [Instagram Blog] – “What was the most-Instagrammed place in the world this past year? The answer may surprise you. Out of anywhere else in the world, Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport tops the list. Over 100,000 photos were taken there last year! What other locations were popular in 2012? From Asia to Europe to North America, Instagrammers shared their view of the world. Read on for the full list:
    * Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) ท่าอากาศยานสุวรรณภูมิ in Bangkok, Thailand
    * Siam Paragon (สยามพารากอน) shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand
    * Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California
    * Times Square in New York City
    * AT&T; Park in San Francisco
    * Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
    * Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles
    * Eiffel Tower in Paris
    * Staples Center in Los Angeles
    * Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles”
  • Wikipedia’s most searched articles of the year revealed [BBC News] – “A study of 2012’s most read Wikipedia articles reveals striking differences in what proved popular across the different language versions of the online encyclopaedia. Facebook topped the English edition while an entry for adult video actresses did best in Japan. Hua Shan – a Chinese mountain featuring “the world’s deadliest hiking trail” – topped the Dutch list. By contrast, cul-de-sacs were the German site’s most clicked entry. … Lower entries on the lists also proved revealing. While articles about Iran, its capital city Tehran and the country’s New Year celebrations topped the Persian list, entries about sex, female circumcision and homosexuality also made its top 10. …
    English language most viewed
    1. Facebook
    2. Wiki
    3. Deaths in 2012
    4. One Direction
    5. The Avengers
    6. Fifty Shades of Grey
    7. 2012 phenomenon
    8. The Dark Knight Rises
    9. Google
    10. The Hunger Games”
  • Bug reveals ‘erased’ Snapchat videos [BBC News] – Using a simple file browser tool, users are able to find and save files sent via Snapchat, an app that’s meant to share and then erase photos, messages and video. Not surprisingly really, since all communication online is, essentially, copying files of some sort or another.
  • Web tools whitewash students online [The Australian] – Universities offering web presence washing at graduation. Perhaps teaching grads to manage their own would be better.
    “Samantha Grossman wasn’t always thrilled with the impression that emerged when people Googled her name. “It wasn’t anything too horrible,” she said. “I just have a common name. There would be pictures, college partying pictures, that weren’t of me, things I wouldn’t want associated with me.” So before she graduated from Syracuse University last spring, the school provided her with a tool that allowed her to put her best web foot forward. Now when people Google her, they go straight to a positive image – professional photo, cum laude degree and credentials – that she credits with helping her land a digital advertising job in New York. “I wanted to make sure people would find the actual me and not these other people,” she said. Syracuse, Rochester and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore are among the universities that offer such online tools to their students free of charge …”
  • Mark Zuckerberg’s sister learns life lesson after Facebook photo flap [Technology | The Guardian] – A photo from Randi Zuckerberg’s Facebook page gets taken out of context and reposted on Twitter and she complains, then goes overtly moral, tweeting: “Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly. It’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency”The Guardian’s take: “But what’s most odious about the episode is the high-handedness of Zuckerberg’s response. Facebook makes money when users surrender their privacy. The company has made it the user’s job to defend personal information, which otherwise might be made public by default. Got a problem with that? The company’s answer always has been that users should read the privacy settings, closely, no matter how often they change. … Eva Galperin said that while Facebook has made amendments to their privacy settings, they still remain confusing to a large number of people. “Even Randi Zuckerberg can get it wrong,” she said. “That’s an illustration of how confusing they can be.”
  • Twitter and Facebook get on the school timetable in anti-libel lessons [Media | The Guardian] – Some private schools in the UK are now embedding social media literacies into their curriculum, especially how to avoid defamation of others, and, I guess, how not to get sued. While it’d be nice to hear about more well-rounded literacies – like managing your identity online in its early forms – this is nevertheless a step in the right direction. I fear, though, a new digital divide might appear if social media literacies are embedded for some, not all.
  • Top Tweets of 2012: Golden Tweets – Twitter’s official list of top 2012 tweets, led by Barack Obama’s “Four more years” and in second place … Justin Bieber.
  • Facebook’s Poke App Is a Head-Scratcher [NYTimes.com] – Ephemeral Mobile Media: “.. it’s hard to grasp what the point of the Facebook Poke app really is. Poke, which came out last week, is a clone of Snapchat, an app popular among teenagers. Many have labeled Snapchat a “sexting” app — a messaging platform ideally suited for people who want to send short-lived photos and videos of you-know-what to get each other feeling lusty. The files self-destruct in a few seconds, ideally relieving you of any shame or consequence, unless, of course, the recipient snaps a screen shot. (Poke and Snapchat alert you if a screen shot has been taken.) It’s a bit of a head-scratcher for adults, like me and my Facebook friends, who aren’t inclined to sext with one another. We’re more used to uploading photos of pets, food, babies and concerts, which aren’t nearly as provocative. The most interesting aspect of Poke is that you can send photos and videos only of what you’re doing at that moment; you cannot send people a nice photo saved in your library …”
  • Game of Thrones tops TV show internet piracy chart [BBC News] – Game of Thrones has emerged as the most-pirated TV show over the internet this year, according to news site Torrentfreak’s latest annual survey. It said one episode of the series had racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads – slightly more than than its estimated US television audience. … Despite all the closures, one episode of of Game of Thrones racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads, according to Torrentfreak. That was slightly more than than its estimated US television audience. The level of piracy may be linked to the fact that the TV company behind it – HBO – does not allow Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or other US streaming services access to its programmes. It instead restricts them to its own HBO Go online product, which is only available to its cable subscribers. Outside the US, Torrentfreak noted that Australia was responsible for a disproportionate amount of illegal copies of Game of Thrones…”

Digital Culture Links: April 19th 2010

Links for April 19th 2010:

  • Why the Library of Congress cares about archiving our tweets [Ars Technica] – Interesting look at the motivations behind the US Library of Congress twitter archive – and their perspective on how Twitter has changed communication – and why Facebook hasn’t. Some of the challenges the Library of Congress archive will face are important issues for researchers, including dealing with shortened urls through third parties such as bit.ly and tinyurl; and whether or not to archive photos on twitter specific photos (eg twitpic) – this one seems unlikely.
  • Twitter Chirp Conference – Videos [Justin.tv ] – A video archive of Twitter’s first official conference – Chirp – in April 2010.
  • Facebook Ads Will Use Your Web History [Mashable] – “Facebook will soon use your activity on other web pages to target ads based on your interests, Financial Times reports. That’s potentially a big boon for advertisers, but it won’t sit well with privacy advocates. Note that Facebook already targets ads using information from your profile, and this new system will not track all of your browsing. Rather, Facebook will offer sharing buttons to interested websites. Readers will be able to click on them to share the links with their Facebook friends via Facebook Connect […] Once the user shares a link with his friends, Facebook will assume that person shared it because he or she liked it, so the company will include content from that web page in the data it uses to target ads based on user interest. The ads will appear whenever the user visits the Facebook website.”
  • Internet dating [SMH] – “Australians are changing the way they date and mate, a survey shows. A Nielsen poll found one in four adults have used the internet to find a partner and another 38 per cent are considering using online dating. The other 37 per cent – many presumably in relationships – said they would never go online to meet someone. Of those who had used online dating, 33.6 per cent reported a short-term relationship, 16.2 per cent said they had a long-term relationship, 8.9 per cent said they had married or were in a defacto relationship, and 2.7 per cent had children. […] The survey shows that:
    * Of those who had used online dating, 62 per cent had dated someone they met online;
    * Men were slightly more likely than women to use online dating services; and
    * Most of those polled (72 per cent) were seeking a serious relationship, but many were looking for friendship or just sex.
    Nielsen polled 3057 people online in November and 3764 in January, with the data weighted to the general population.”

Digital Culture Links: November 14th 2009

Links for November 12th 2009 through November 14th 2009:

  • Labels may be losing money, but artists are making more than ever [Boing Boing] – Interesting figures that show while music labels might be losing money, artists are making more than ever. Live performances are the key revenue raisers. (The figures don’t break down much further than that, but it’s important since it asks whether artists or just labels are the ones who are really fighting “piracy”.)
  • Massively Increasing Music Licensing Fees For Clubs Down Under Massively Backfires [Techdirt] – Time for a few Creative Commons licensed nightclubs to rock Australia: “We’ve noted the ridiculous and self-defeating efforts by many music collections societies around the world to jack up their rates by ridiculous amounts. None was more ridiculous than the attempt in Australia by the PPCA where some of the rate changes would rocket up from figures like $125/year… to $19,344/year. Well, it looks like it’s already backfiring badly. Reader Dan alerts us to the news that the organization that represents night clubs and similar businesses in Australia, appropriately named Clubs Australia, has set up a system whereby the organization will specifically go out and seek music by artists not covered by the collections effort, and distribute that music to clubs and other establishments”
  • Moving forward with our media studies search [Just TV] – Jason Mittell is leading the search for a new comparative media studies faculty member at Middlebury College in the US. What’s fantastic is that as the search leader, he’s blogging the process and trying to explain how decisions are made – given the absolute paucity of jobs available today, these insights are remarkably valuable (and do turn an often opque process into a very human one: “But I think a key lesson for candidates to realize is that not making the cut is rarely a referendum of your worth as a scholar or teacher – it’s usually more about a sense of the position and internal needs that are hard to articulate, combined with the inevitable comparisons among the applicant pool.”
  • URL shorteners suck less, thanks to the Internet Archive and 301Works [Boing Boing] – Big URL shortening companies like bit.ly are working with the Internet Archive to ensure that if their companies ever go bust, the shortened URLs will always work thanks to a backup via the archive. Nice!
  • NASA finds ‘significant’ water on moon [CNN.com] – Wowzers, there’s water on the moon! “NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening “a new chapter” that could allow for the development of a lunar space station. The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference. “I’m here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount” — about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls, he said, holding up several white plastic containers.
  • His Facebook Status Now? ‘Charges Dropped’ [NYTimes.com] – Facebook status updates as an alibi: “Where’s my pancakes, read Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, in a message typed on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11:49 a.m., from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem. … words that were gobbledygook to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, a skinny, short 19-year-old resident of the Farragut Houses, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery, the words took on a level of importance that no one in their wildest dreams — least of all Mr. Bradford — could have imagined. They became his alibi. His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the status update had actually been typed from a computer located at 71 West 118th Street in Harlem, as Mr. Bradford said. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.”

Digital Culture Links: November 5th 2009

Links for November 3rd 2009 through November 5th 2009:

  • The ABC of social media use [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – How bizzare: social media use guidelines in a major corporation which actually make sense! “ABC managing director Mark Scott has announced new social media guidelines, which the national broadcaster’s journalists and staff must abide by. […] In an email sent to ABC staff this morning, the new Use of Social Media policy gives four standards which staff and contractors must follow when using both work and personal social media interaction:
    1. Do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute.
    2. Do not undermine your effectiveness at work.
    3. Do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views.
    4. Do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.”
  • The temporary web [BuzzMachine] – Jeff Jarvis articulates some important concerns about the way Twitter and other social services are contributing to a more temporary, less archivable (or, at least, less searchable in the long term) web: “…search is turning social and our search results are becoming personalized, thus we don’t all share the same search results and it becomes tougher to manage them through SEO. Put these factors together – the social stream – and relationships matter more than pages (but then, they always have). “
  • Internet piracy [Background Briefing – 1 November 2009] – Australia’s Radio National programme Backgroud Briefing takes a look at copyright in the digital age, featuring the big arguments and comments from everyone from AFACT to Lessig and Girl Talk. Segment by Oscar McLaren.

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!””

Annotated Links of Interest: October 29th 2008

Links of interest for October 29th 2008:

  • New chapter for Google Book Search [Official Google Blog] – Google Book Search settles the lawsuit, makes a whole lot of things more accessible (especially if you’re a library or a university) and generally makes books searchable! 🙂 (Read Siva Vaidhyanathan’s excellent summary and initial reponse to the settlement.)
  • Warfare game throws down gauntlet to Iran [The Age] – “A Sydney-based Jewish businessman bankrolling a shoot-’em-up warfare game pitting Israeli troops against Iranians says the aim is to “throw out a challenge to Iran” after its President vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
    But Kevin Bermeister, world renowned for being sued by the music industry in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the Kazaa file-sharing program, said his intention was also to take the war between Jews and Muslims out of the real world and into cyber space. The online multiplayer game, Rising Eagle – Gaza, was officially released as a free download less than a week ago. It earns revenue through advertising billboards peppered throughout the game environment. The game, which contrary to its setting does not include any Palestinian fighters, is an update to earlier versions of the game set in Paris and China. It pits the Iranian Revolutionary Guard against Israel’s elite Golani Brigade in a first-person shooter setting.”
  • A history lesson in video games [BBC NEWS | Technology] – “The UK’s first official national video game archive has been launched in a bid to preserve the history of gaming. The archive has been set up in partnership between Nottingham Trent University and the National Media Museum in Bradford in the north of England. The gaming industry is now worth an estimated £22bn globally and steps are needed in order to record its development. The archive will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford and will include consoles, cartridges and advertising campaigns. “We are going to be archiving video games but it’s not just about the games themselves, it’s also about gaming culture,” said James Newman, from Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play, a research group dedicated to video games.”
  • Editor furious over Bishop plagiarism explanation [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “A plagiarism row between deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and the editor of a book on the party, Peter Van Onselen, has flared again. Ms Bishop’s chief of staff has taken responsibility for plagiarising a speech by a New Zealand businessman when he wrote a chapter for the book, called Liberals and Power; The Road Ahead, on Ms Bishop’s behalf. Now Mr Van Onselen says he is angry with Ms Bishop for saying that the footnote crediting the businessman was forgotten. “It’s not just a matter of them having forgotten to send through footnotes,” he said.
    “Even once they belatedly sent those footnotes through they didn’t cover the plagiarism. “Footnoting doesn’t cover the fact that there weren’t quotation marks around exact lifting of words without attribution that came from this New Zealand businessman’s speech.”” (It seems no one’s buying the Bishop defense!)

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