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Digital Culture Links: January 1st 2012
Happy New Year! Links for December 21st through January 1st:
- My New Year Wish [Neil Gaiman’s Journal:] – As New Years wishes go, I think Neil Gaiman wins this year: “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
- Henchminion Sends In the Tale of “The Magna Carta Essay!” [College Misery] – In 2005 a frustrated US college professor wrote a fake essay about the Magna Carta – filled with notable errors, jokes and almost no substance – and posted it online to several notable paper mills and plagiarism websites. Six years later it’s still out there and still being quoted. A notable tale for would-be undergraduates cutting corners with their research and citation!
- Marvel’s lawyers get into fanboy flamewar with IRS about human-status of its mutants [Boing Boing] – Marvel’s lawyers argue that the X-Men aren’t human for tax purposes. Of course, this undermines almost 50 years of the X-Men as repressed and misunderstood humanity. Looks like the lawyers are running Marvel!
- Doctor Who Meets Star Wars Episode I – The Prequel Menace [Mashup] – Extremely silly, but made with so much love and affection that it’s well worth 6 minutes of your time! đ
- ‘Doctor Who’ Tops ‘Modern Family’ as iTunes Best-Seller of 2011 [Anglophenia | BBC America] – “Never underestimate the power of Whovians. That loyal fan base has lifted Doctor Who to the very top of iTunesâ list of most downloaded full TV seasons of 2011! Yes, more than any other show on TV. Can I get a Woo-Who? That means Doctor Who beat ABCâs hit, Emmy-winning sitcom Modern Family (No. 2), Dexter (No. 3), Breaking Bad (No. 4), and True Blood (No. 5) in downloads. Just behind them at No. 6 is BBC Americaâs Top Gear. Hereâs the full top 10 via The Hollywood Reporter:
TOP-SELLING SEASONS:
1. Doctor Who
2. Modern Family
3. Dexter
4. Breaking Bad
5. True Blood
6. Top Gear
7. Glee
8. Entourage
9. Archer
10. The Walking Dead” - Company sues ex-employee for his Twitter followers [The Guardian] – “A Twitter user is being sued for ÂŁ217,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs. Noah Kravitz, a writer from Oakland, California, amassed 17,000 followers on the social networking site when he worked for PhoneDog, a website providing news and reviews about mobile phones. He posted Twitter messages under the name @Phonedog_Noah, but in October 2010 he left the company, renamed his account @noahkravitz and took his following with him. PhoneDog has launched legal proceedings seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000. The company is arguing that Kravitz’s list of followers constitutes a customer database and the valuation is an estimate of how much each follower is worth to the company.”
- ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ Pirate Sentenced to One Year in Prison [ComicsAlliance] – “A man who’s confessed to uploading an early cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the Internet a month before the film was to debut in cinemas has been sentenced to a year in federal prison. Deadline reports that 49-year-old Gilberto Sanchez pleaded guilty in March to one count of “uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution,” a charge which United States District Judge Margaret M. Morrow described as “extremely serious.” The early leaking of the DVD-quality workprint of Wolverine created quite a commotion back in 2009. The pirated cut was downloaded at least four million times, which according to Reuters could have translated to $28.7 million in lost ticket sales if the downloaders opted out of seeing Wolverine in the theater. Compounding fears, the leaked copy was missing final special effects shots and other material, and the advance spoiler-filled reviews were incredibly damning of the X-Men sequel, which cost $150 million to produce.”
Digital Culture Links: July 21st 2011
Links for July 13th 2011 through July 21st 2011:
- Google Scholar Citations [Google Scholar Blog] – Google launches (in very limited release) Google Scholar Citations, their own citation statistics for scholarly articles and books. Google Scholar has appeared to be one of Google’s least loved and least developed projects, so I’m glad to see it’s getting some TLC. That said, citation metrics are funny things and tend to be used in far more ways than intended, especially in evaluating ‘academic performance’. What sets these metrics apart from others is that thanks to Google Books, many citations from books and of books are in here too (many citation metrics are articles only). Which leaves me with one big question for now: carrot (what Google can do for struggling scholars out to prove their worth) or stick (is your data in Google Books, and if not, why aren’t you hassling your publisher to get included and thus get better metrics?)?
- Pottermore and Google team up to enable Harry Potter ebooks push to Google Books libraries [Inside Google Books] – Google Potter – definitely a win for Google: “When JK Rowlingâs new website Pottermore opens its doors this Fall, weâll provide services to help fans make the most of their ebook purchasing experience. Pottermore and Google are teaming up to integrate Pottermore with a number of Google products and APIs. So when the series of Harry Potter ebooks launches on Pottermore.com in early October, these bestsellers will be available in the U.S. via the open Google eBooks platform. When you buy a Harry Potter ebook from Pottermore, you will be able to choose to keep it in your Google Books library in-the-cloud, as well as on other e-reading platforms. […] Also under this agreement, Google Checkout will be the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com.”
- âŞRebekah Brooks “Friday” (Rebecca Black Parody)âŹâ [YouTube] – Impressive mashup lampooing Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
- Australian Cinema Tickets Most Expensive: Choice [WA Today] – Throw in 3D for good measure and it’s close to $100 for a family of 4! “Australian cinema-goers pay more for their silver screen experience than anyone else in the Western world, according to consumer advocate Choice. Spokeswoman Ingrid Just said that Australians heading to the cinema paid far more than movie audiences in the US and New Zealand. Research found that, on average, Australian adults paid around $18 per ticket, while families of four can expect to fork out up to $67 for admission to the local multi-national cinema complex. “Taking into account exchange rates, an Aussie family of four spends just over $34 more than a New Zealand family and $28 more than a US family on a trip to the flicks,” Ms Just said.”
- LulzSec hack into Murdoch’s British websites [The Age] – “Hackers who broke into the News Corporation network and forced its British websites offline claim to have stolen sensitive data from the company including emails and usernames/passwords. All of News Corporation’s British websites were taken offline today following an attack on the website of tabloid The Sun, which earlier today was redirecting to a fake story about Rupert Murdoch’s death. Further pain is expected for the media mogul as the hacker group responsible for the attack claims to have also stolen emails and passwords for News International executives and journalists. It said it would release more information tomorrow. […] The infamous hacking group LulzSec have claimed responsibility for taking over The Sun’s website, linking to a site with the fake story under the headline “Media moguls body discovered”, with “Lulz” printed at the bottom of the page.”
- A life in writing: Slavoj Ĺ˝iĹžek [Culture | The Guardian] – Short and sweet interview with Slavoj Ĺ˝iĹžek. Notable quote regarding Wikileaks: “”We learned nothing new really from WikiLeaks,” he tells me later. “Julian is like the boy who tells us the emperor is naked â until the boy says it everybody could pretend the emperor wasn’t. Don’t confuse this with the usual bourgeois heroism which says there is rottenness but the system is basically sound. […] Julian strips away that pretence. All power is hypocritical like this. What power finds intolerable is when the hypocrisy is revealed.””
- BBC rents out Doctor Who via Facebook [TV Tonight] – “BBC Worldwide will offer a series of digitally remastered Doctor Who stories to ârentâ via Facebook in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. By using Facebook credits, users visiting the official Doctor Who page will be able to stream a selection of nine stories (each containing several episodes) from the history of the Time Lord, including digitally remastered classics such as âTomb of the Cybermenâ, âSilence in the Libraryâ and âEnd of the Worldâ. […] John Smith, Chief Executive at BBC Worldwide said âAs we have grown internationally, weâve seen through our Facebook channel that fans who are loving the new series are asking for a guide into our rich Doctor Who back catalogue. Our approach to Facebook and other leading edge platforms is to be right there alongside them in fostering innovation. We see this service as a perfect way to give our fans what they want, as well as a great way for them to get their fix between now and the autumn when Series Six continues.â
Annotated Digital Culture Links: December 24th 2008
Links for December 23rd 2008 through December 24th 2008:
- Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2008 [TorrentFreak] – ” Lost is without a doubt the most downloaded TV-show, with over 5 million downloads for one single episode. TV-shows are getting increasingly more popular on BitTorrent. Most TV-broadcasters wonât be happy to hear this, but one could argue that BitTorrent has actually helped TV-shows to build a stronger, broader, and more involved fanbase. Perhaps even more importantly, the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent.” (In order: Lost, Heroes, Prison Break, Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Desperate Housewives, Stargate Atlantis, Dexter, House, Greyâs Anatomy, & Smallville.)
- Making the Intangible Tangible, the Economic Contribution of Australiaâs Copyright Industries IP Down Under [PricewaterhouseCoopers report] – “PricewaterhouseCoopers, for the Australian Copyright Council, has released its report Making the Intangible Tangible, the Economic Contribution of Australiaâs Copyright Industries, which has found that Australiaâs copyright industries in 2007:
⢠employed more than 837,000 people (8 percent of the nationâs workforce) â up 21 percent since 1996;
⢠generated $97.7 billion in economic activity (10.3 percent of GDP) â up 66 percent since 1996; and
⢠accounted for $6.8 billion in exports (4.1 percent of all exports) â up 6.3 percent since 1996.” [Via Terry Flew] - Aussie âDoctor Whoâ Fans Set to Time Travel With BitTorrent [TorrentFreak] – “Australia has been the focus of much tech news recently, as the country struggles with its Internet piracy âproblemâ. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of ABC, Aussie Doctor Who fans are left with a tough decision – wait until mid-January to watch the showâs pivotal âChristmas Specialâ – or pirate it with BitTorrent.”
- WoW! How The Guild beat the system [Media | The Guardian] – “The Guild was written as an hour-long TV pilot but was rejected by a number of studios. “We were fighting against the stereotype of online gamers as pickly-faced teenagers living in their basements,” she recalls. In the end, Day and her co-producer, Kim Evie, funded the first episodes themselves and spent eight hours a day emailing bloggers about the show and marketing it through the Buffy and WoW communities. The next seven episodes were funded through donations collected via a PayPal button on their website and donors were credited at the end of each show. … The Guild has been a masterclass in direct marketing of content to a niche peer group. “The web is an amazing opportunity for people who want to tell stories but aren’t permitted because they aren’t the mainstream,” says Day.” (Profile of The Guild as a rags to riches webisode series now it has been picked up by Microsoft.)
- Net music theory ends up a tall tale [Australian IT] – “The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets. But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this “long tail” theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year. The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in 2006. But a study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits. It found that for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from about 52,000 tracks. For albums … 1.23million available, only 173,000 were ever bought”
Annotated Digital Culture Links: November 25th 2008
Links for November 23rd 2008 through November 25th 2008:
- Film studios to become ‘police, judge, executioner’ [The Age] – “Internet users would have their connections terminated summarily on the whim of the film and TV industry should it win its landmark legal battle against iiNet, legal experts have warned. Seven of the world’s biggest film studios and the Seven Network last week filed suit against iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP, in the Federal Court. They claim iiNet authorised copyright infringement by failing to prevent its users from downloading pirated movies and TV shows. iiNet, and the industry body, the Internet Industry Association, say ISPs should not be required to take action against any customers until they have been found guilty of an offence by the courts. ISPs argue that, like Australia Post with letters, they are just providing a service and should not be forced to become copyright police.” (No, they really shouldn’t!)
- de_vangogh – A Van Gogh Counterstrike Mod [YouTube] – Running around in a level of Counterstrike entirely made out of Van Gogh paintings? Tripping, and actually visually quite amazing! [Via]
- Journalists warned of two years of carnage ahead [The Australian] – “Journalists have been warned they cannot be spectators if they are to survive the new world of media fragmentation and digitalisation … . “A report, Life in the Clickstream: The Future of Journalism, released today by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, warns that the Western media industry faces “two years of carnage”, squeezed by the global economic meltdown and the unravelling of traditional economic models. The report reveals that more than 12,000 journalists worldwide have lost their jobs so far this year…. While newspaper circulation in Australia is “holding up remarkably well” with aggregate circulation of metropolitan dailies falling only slightly in the past six years, television remained the dominant source of news for most Australians. The country also boasts one of the highest percentages of online news visitors in the world. … new technology and shrinking workforces has resulted in more than 70 per cent of journalists reporting increased workloads…”
- SF Sunday: Happy 45th Anniversary, Doctor Who! [Hoyden About Town] – “Yes, itâs 45 years since the world first saw a man travelling through time in a wooden box.” (Happy Birthday Doctor Who! I hate to think how many hours I’ve spent watching, discussing and generally being a fan of the good Dr … although I’ve enjoyed every minute. Well, except a few of the Colin Baker hours … :P) io9 also have an amusing (if a bit random) top 45 moments in Dr Who … 33 was, to say the least, amusing!