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Australia’s Political Downfall

So, Australia woke up confused and unhappy this morning, after a soul-destroying election resulting in no clear leadership, no future Prime Minister and the largest number of informal votes ever. Even more bizarrely, the clearest commentary on events so far, comes from everyone’s most mashed up dictator:

(If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, there are quite a few parodies of Hitler commentating on various events, using footage from the Downfall film.)

*sigh*

Digital Culture Links: August 16th 2010

Links for August 12th 2010 through August 16th 2010:

  • Cultural Studies – Crafting Fictional Personas With the Language of Facebook [NYTimes.com] – Interesting if very judgmental piece which is ostensibly looking at a fictional Facebook profile as part of a fiction narrative, then suggests that all Facebook profiles are fiction: “…a brilliant stroke to use Facebook for novel writing, because in general Facebook feeds on fiction; it consumes it, and spits it out in every direction. Being “friends” on Facebook is more of a fantasy or imitation or shadow of friendship than the traditional real thing. Friendship on Facebook bears about the same relation to friendship in life, as being run over by a car in a cartoon resembles being run over by a car in life. Facebook is friendship minus the one on one conversation, minus the moment alone at a party in a corner with someone (note to ninth graders: chat and messages don’t count); Facebook is the chatter of a big party, the performance of public cleverness, the facades and fronts and personas carefully crafted, the one honed line, the esprit de l’escalier; in short, the edited version.”
  • When to use i.e. in a sentence [The Oatmeal] – Want to know when to use ‘i.e.’ or ‘e.g.’ properly – the Oatmeal has funny words with pictures to clarify these confusing issues. 🙂
  • NBN crucial to health of economy: expert [WA Today] – My colleague Matthew Allen talks about the importance of the NBN for future development in Australia: “Australia’s economy would suffer if work to improve internet speed and availability isn’t immediately started, according to a Curtin University internet expert. Internet studies Professor Matthew Allen said Labor’s national broadband network may take longer to roll-out and cost more than the Coalition’s plan but it would be of greater benefit in the long run. The government yesterday announced its $43 billion national broadband network would be upgraded to provide speeds of up to one gigabyte per second, making it 10 times faster than was originally touted.”
  • Pushing Our (Tweet) Button [Twitter Blog] – Twitter releases its official ‘tweet this’ button, which can be included on any website with just a few lines or code. It’s fairly similar in style to Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, but obviously performs a slightly different function. I quite like the option to include a counter showing how many times a post has been retweeted already – the counter seems to include retweets using most popular url shortening services!
  • Whiteboard girl hoax fools thousands on net [BBC News] – Shocking almost no one, it turns out that the hugely popular net sensation ‘Jenny’, who quit her job using a series of messages on whiteboards, is a hoax, orchestrated by thechive.com. The model’s name is Elyse Porterfield and today she and thechive.com admitted the hoax.

Digital Culture Links: August 4th 2010

Links for August 4th 2010 (definitely not endorsed by any version of Andrew Bolt):

  • Andrew Bolt discovers Twitter fake. Is cross. [mUmBRELLA] – News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt has, it would appear, had something of a sense of humour failure over his fake Twitter persona. This morning, Bolt wrote in his Herald Sun blog: “It shouldn’t need saying, but I do not have a Twitter account and the fake one seems to be the work of people whose employer will be very embarrassed to find its staff once more engaging in deceitful slurs. A little warning there. A tearful sorry afterwards will be both too late and insincere, especially from people with their record of sliming.” The fake Andrew Bolt, who has about 5000 followers, does give certain subtle clues on Twitter that he ain’t the real deal. Such as his bio: “Journalist. Blogger. Broadcaster. Climate scientist. Great in bed. This is the Twitter of Andrew Bolt. Follow me you barbarians.” Or messages such as: “Julia Gillard should put together a comittee of common folk to see if they can change the laws of physics. I suspect they can.””
  • Andrew Bolt is not happy about @andrewbolt [Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ] – Peter Black looks at the legal side of (fake) Andrew Bolt on Twitter: “…it seems to me that Bolt would at least have an arguable case, that one or more of the tweets constituted a defamatory imputation. Moreoever, they were referrable to Bolt and published. It is also worth noting that cartoons, caricatures, jokes or satire may be defamatory depending upon the context of the publication (see Entienne v Festival City Broadcasters (2001) 79 SASR 19). How a jury would construe these statements, given they take place in the context of a fake Twitter account, is hard to predict. Nonetheless, I do believe that a judge would find that the material is capable of defaming Bolt and that it would then be up to a jury to decide whether the material actually defamed Bolt. So while I think it is highly unlikely Bolt would actually sue for defamation, it is worth remembering that even fake Twitter accounts, while intended for the purpose of satire and humour, may well have legal consequences.”
  • Twitter List @andrew__bolt/AndrewBolt – A list of more than 30 ‘Andrew Bolt’ (fake) accounts on Twitter, the majority of which have appeared in the last 24hrs since Andrew Bolt (the man) complained about @andrewbolt (the most popular fake, on twitter).
  • SRSLY? SMS Celebrates Its 25th Birthday [The Next Web] – “According to a press release from Sherri Wells, ‘one of the leading SMS messaging experts in the world’, SMS is celebrating 25 years of existence today, making its way from a R&D lab at Vodafone to become a technology that is now present on every single mobile phone currently in existence. Although SMS was developed twenty-five years ago in a collaboration between France and Germany, the first text message was actually sent seven years later on December 3rd, 1992, reading “Happy Christmas”. Since then SMS evolved through various stages, starting as a free service where teens helped popularise the service, before carriers then charged for the service, causing a decline of up to 40% in the process. Back in 2000, the average monthly texts sent per user was a paltry 35, today it’s as high as 357 with 1.5 trillion messages sent annually in the US.”
  • Bill Cosby dead rumours dismissed on Twitter [WA Today] – Tweets of my death have been greatly exaggerated! “Television star Bill Cosby has been forced to reassure fans he’s still alive and well after news of his ‘death’ became a top trending topic on Twitter. ‘Bill Cosby died’ remains the fifth highest trending topic on the micro-blogging site this morning. “Emotional friends have called about this misinformation,” the Cosby Show star tweeted in response to the announcement. “To the people behind the foolishness, I’m not sure you see how upsetting this is. “Again, I’m rebuttaling rumours about my demise (sic).” This is the second time this year that Cosby has been pronounced dead by social media.”
  • Old Spice Voicemail Generator – Make your own voicemail or answering machine message made up of audio samples from the Old Spice guy’s recent replies. This voicemail is now diamonds! (By Chriswastaken, Area, and Nelson Abalos Jr | Thanks to Reddit)
  • YouTube Star to Put His Life in Your Hands for a Year [Mashable] – “Heyo all you megalomaniacs out there — may we introduce yet another way to get your jollies this year: Dan 3.0. Starting today, 20-year-old YouTube sensation Dan Brown is launching a new web show/social experiment in which he will turn control of his life over to you, the viewers, for an entire year. Brown […] is one of those rare dudes whose only gig is video blogging. […] When asked how he thinks this project will affect his day-to-day life, Brown told us: “Basically I’m going to be living my life, doing what my viewers tell me and documenting it. That’s going to be it. Daily life is going to be affected – I don’t know exactly what it means for relationships with friends and relationships with people I know in real life. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.” So as to prevent any catastrophes, Brown has a few ground rules. Viewers can’t ask him to do things like, say, dump his girlfriend, or to do anything illegal or harmful to others. He has also veto power …”
  • Google Android phone shipments increase by 886% [BBC News] – There’s a lot more smartphones out there: “Google Android phone shipments increase by 886% Shipments of Google’s Android mobile operating system have rocketed in the last year, figures suggest. Statistics from research firm Canalys suggest that shipments have increased 886% year-on-year from the second quarter of 2009. Apple showed the second largest growth in the smartphone sector with 61% growth in the same period. Overall, the smartphone sector grew by 64% from the second quarter 2009 to the second quarter 2010, the research says.”

Digital Culture Links: July 20th 2010

Links for July 20th 2010:

  • Jessi Slaughter (“You dun goof’d” / “The consquences will never be the same”) [Know Your Meme] – Know Your Meme’s (still being researched) page on the 4chan Vs “Jessi Slaughter” debacle.
  • How The Internet Beat Up An 11-Year-Old Girl [Defamer Australia] – 4chan and /b/ collectively turn on self-styled tween micro-celeb “Jessi Slaughter”, a very foul-mouthed video poster whose antics and anti-“hater” video got their undivided attention. The young girl in question is certainly provoking people, but SHE’S ONLY 11 YEARS OLD!
    As Defamer note “here are some important lessons from this tale:
    1. What are your kids doing on the internet? Normally we find fears about kids on the Internet the product of technophobic hysteria. But this case is a very good argument for why parents should at least be vaguely aware of what their kids are up to on the internet. […]
    2. Tumblr is becoming a home for trolls. […]
    3. Don’t pick on 11-year-old girls. Seriously. No matter dumb they seem – no matter how much it seems like they deserve it – they are, at the end of the day, 11-year-old girls. You wouldn’t make an 11-year-old girl cry in real life; why do it on the internet?”
  • The Art Of Trolling: Inside A 4chan Smear Campaign [Defamer Australia] – 4chan go after Dahvie Vanity, the lead singer of “the terrible electro-pop MySpace band Blood on the Dance Floor”, who has supposedly been linked to 11-year-old 4chan victim Jessi Slaugher (he’s been rumoured to be a paedophile, but these are by now means substantiated – to my knowledge, no police action has been taken). /b/’s actions are citizen justice at its worst.
  • 4Chan’s Sad War To Silence Gawker [Defamer Australia] – 4Chan go after Gawker media (Defamer’s parent company) to try and stop them writing about 4Chan; their efforts are not successful.
  • Jessi Slaughter and the 4chan trolls – the case for censoring the internet [News.com.au] – Peter Farquhar uses the 4chan Vs Jessi Slaughter debacle as an excuse to promote the notion of an internet filter in Australia. While there is some token disagreement towards the end of the article, it’s still an example of terrible writing since it implies that (if she was in Australia, presumably) the proposed filter would have helped the situation. For the record, even the most extreme version of the filter Conroy mooted, would have made absolutely no difference in this case whatsoever. What WOULD make a difference for young people in Australia is more money and resources put into education about social media and online interactions across the national curriculum; the sort of money being spent developing and arguing about a useless mandatory filter would be exactly the put of money that could make a real difference in the eduction, awareness and thus safety of young Australians online.
  • NB: No spoiler warning for MasterChef evictees! [TV Tonight] – Australian TV blog TV Tonight reminds those of us in the West that the interwebs will be filled with spoilers since Masterchef will go to air AEST! (Yes, we know: AEST is an anagram of EAST after all …)
  • Why this is NOT the Twitter election [mUmBRELLA] – Quick post pointing out that while the upcoming Australia election will certainly be influenced by Twitter and social media, it certainly won’t be driven by it given the paucity of social media use and awareness of the two newbie leaders of the big parties.
  • Google Discontinues the Nexus One Android Phone [Mashable] – Google’s experiment as a smartphone distributor come to a swift end: “Google has pulled the plug on the Nexus One, its once highly anticipated smartphone. The last shipment has arrived at Google HQ, and once those are gone there will be no more Nexus Ones for U.S. consumers. The handset will still be sold through Vodafone in Europe and some Asian carriers, and developers will still be able to get their hands on one, but it looks like the Droid phones on Verizon will carry the mantle for Google’s (Google) Android (Android) mobile operating system. This is the end the company’s grand experiment with an unlocked handset. Following disappointing sales, Google had already closed the Nexus One web store two months ago, so this final nail in the coffin was already overdue.”

Digital Culture Links: July 10th 2010

Links through July 10th 2010:

  • Regarding real names in forums [World of Warcraft – English (NA) Forums] – Blizzard backtracks, deciding against mandatory use of real names in their forums – fans applaud.
  • RealID and WoW Forums: Classic Identity Design Mistake [Habitat Chronicles] – As Blizzard shift to a ‘real names’ model for their forums, including all official World of Warcraft forums, many folks are unhappy. Blizzard are trying to get some users to be more responsible for their posts, but as Randy Farmer argues Blizzard haven’t learnt from many, many identity-related mistakes in online fora of the past!
  • Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life [Mashable] – “YouTube has announced a project called Life in a Day, which attempts to document one day, July 24, seen through the camera lens of people around the world. The project will be executive produced by Ridley Scott […] edited by Kevin Macdonald, best known for directing films such as The Last King of Scotland and One Day in September. The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival; if your footage makes the final cut, you’ll be credited as a co-director, and 20 contributors will be selected to attend the premiere. If you’re hoping for financial gain, however, you’ll be disappointed; for this one, glory is your only reward. To contribute to the project, you need to capture July 24, 2010, on camera, and upload the footage to the Life in the Day channel sometime before July 31. As for what your footage should consist of, YouTube (YouTube) wants you to have no limits, to be personal, to film anyone you like…”
  • Prank leaves Justin Bieber facing tour of North Korea [BBC News] – LOL: “Justin Bieber’s Twitter page has become the target of an internet joke. A public vote on the Canadian singer’s My World Tour page asked users which country he should tour next, with no restrictions on the nations that could be voted on. This spurred users of imageboard website 4Chan to nominate North Korea, with the vote now turning viral. There are now almost half a million votes to send Bieber to the secretive communist nation. The contest, which ends at 1800 on 7 July, saw North Korea move from 24th to 1st place in less than two days, several thousand votes ahead of Israel.”

Digital Culture Links: June 14th 2010

Links for June 10th 2010 through June 14th 2010:

  • Pollies ‘twitspit’ in not-so-social media [The Australian] – NSW’s political twits: “Not content with their offline stoushing, NSW Premier Kristina Keneally (@KKeneally) and Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell (@barryofarrell), both keen tweeters, have now taken to using the social media site for slinging digital barbs. Last week’s exchange was triggered by Keneally making fun of O’Farrell’s claim that the fact he had walked the Kokoda Track proved he was a strong leader, commenting: “Well, so did Miss Australia, so congratulations, Barry.” O’Farrell took to Twitter to retort that Keneally, having seen her quip “blow up in her face”, “now tries to politicise Kokoda”. Keneally responded that it was O’Farrell “who uses Kokoda as political football”. O’Farrell struck back with a couple of obscure digs at Keneally for her “keen interest” in his tweets about his coffee meetings. He also taunted the Premier by calling her by her full initials, “KKK”, although in more recent tweets he has reverted to using “KK”.”
  • I Can Has Cheezburger Blog Leads to a Web Empire [NYTimes.com] – “Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures — and saw vast potential. Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. […] Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it. “It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?” Mr. Huh has since found that the appetite for oddball Internet humor is insatiable. Traffic to the Cheezburger blog has ballooned over the last three years, encouraging Mr. Huh to expand his unlikely Web empire to include 53 sites, all fueled by submissions from readers. In May, what is now known as the Cheezburger Network attracted a record 16 million unique visitors…”
  • Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! [Roger Ebert’s Journal] – Roger Ebert on finding his voice, and many conversations, on Twitter: “I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct. Twitter is now a part of my daystream. I check in first thing every morning, and return at least once an hour until bedtime. I’m offline, of course, during movies …”
  • Inglis racial slur is unacceptable | Herald Sun – My complete respect to Tahu; it’s this level of dedication to stamping out racism that’s absolutely needed: “Andrew Johns last night quit the NSW Origin team after he admitted a racist sledge towards Queensland superstar Greg Inglis was behind Blues winger Timana Tahu walking out of the side. After one of Origin’s most dramatic days – with NSW team management at first trying to cover up the scandal – Johns said he had no choice but to resign as assistant coach after it emerged he had sledged Tahu’s long-time friend at a bonding session at a Kingscliff hotel on Wednesday night. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal Johns told Blues centre Beau Scott: “You must shut that black c… down.””
  • “for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy [danah boyd | apophenia] – 4chan as the hackers of the attention economy? I’m not sure I’m 100% convinced by boyd here, but it’s certainly an idea worth thinking about: “I would argue that 4chan is ground zero of a new generation of hackers – those who are bent on hacking the attention economy. While the security hackers were attacking the security economy at the center of power and authority in the pre-web days, these attention hackers are highlighting how manipulatable information flows are. They are showing that Top 100 lists can be gamed and that entertaining content can reach mass popularity without having any commercial intentions (regardless of whether or not someone decided to commercialize it on the other side).”
  • Govt wants ISPs to record browsing history [Zdnet] – Is Conroy TRYING to lose the next election? “Companies who provide customers with a connection to the internet may soon have to retain subscriber’s private web browsing history for law enforcement to examine when requested, a move which has been widely criticised by industry insiders. The Attorney-General’s Department yesterday confirmed to ZDNet Australia that it had been in discussions with industry on implementing a data retention regime in Australia. Such a regime would require companies providing internet access to log and retain customer’s private web browsing history for a certain period of time for law enforcement to access when needed. Currently, companies that provide customers with a connection to the internet don’t retain or log subscriber’s private web browsing history unless they are given an interception warrant by law enforcement, usually approved by a judge. It is only then that companies can legally begin tapping a customer’s internet connection.”
  • Augmented Reality – Explained by Common Craft – [Common Craft] – Useful basic explanation of augmented reality using a smartphone. (It combines the ‘real’ world and information in a seemingly seamless manner on your screen.)
  • In Hong Kong, Eternity Goes Online [NYTimes.com] – Hong Kong, one of the most wired societies in the world, is taking the Internet to a higher level. Bereaved users in this city of seven million got a new way of honoring and commemorating their loved ones Thursday: A Web site that enables them to set up online profiles for the dead, www.memorial.gov.hk. The creator of the site is not some Internet-savvy, 20-something college graduate, but the Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department […] Hong Kong culture takes death very seriously. Elaborate ceremonies twice a year honor not just recently deceased relatives and friends, but also generations of ancestors before them. […] The Web site is free, but the site is restricted to individuals who were buried or cremated in facilities operated by the Hong Kong government.

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