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Digital Culture Links: March 14th 2011
Links for March 8th 2011 through March 14th 2011:
- Twitter angers third-party developers with ‘no more timelines’ urging [Technology | guardian.co.uk] – “Twitter has amazed and outraged developers by warning them that it will severely curtail their ability to build apps that use its output. The announcement on Twitter’s development mailing list – which has notably not been repeated or referred to on its company blog – comes from Ryan Sarver, the head of platform and API at Twitter. The site, which has grown from 48m to 140m tweets per day in the last year, and which celebrated its fifth birthday on Sunday night, now says that it is going in effect to take over the process of writing “the best client” for connecting to Twitter. The move follows the temporary suspension last month of a number of Twitter apps for “violating Twitter’s terms of service” But for the dozens of third-party apps which hook into Twitter’s API, and which fund themselves and their ongoing development through adverts, payments, or a combination of both, the announcement is a threat to their existence.”
- Twitter Libel Case | First Twitter Libel Case [The Age] – “A former Welsh mayor became the first Briton to be ordered to pay libel damages over a Twitter entry after a political rival sued him in the high court, a report said at the weekend. Colin Elsbury, a former mayor in the south Wales town of Caerphilly had tweeted ahead of a council election that his independent challenger Eddie Talbot had been “forcibly removed” from a polling station by police before realising that it was a case of mistaken identity, The Times newspaper said. Although Elsbury later tried to correct the tweet, Talbot took him to court in the Welsh capital Cardiff where a judge on Friday handed down a fine of £3,000 ($4751) and ordered him to pay costs of around £50,000 ($79,196) as well as apologise publicly to Talbot on his Twitter feed.”
- The once mighty medium of television is on its last legs [The Punch] – “Here’s a simple statistic that TV executives are happy you didn’t know. Back in the 1980s the population of Australia was about 14 million. A good TV show would rate about 5 million viewers. Fast forward to 2011. Australia’s population has grown to 20 million and TV execs are dancing on their mini-bars if their show attracts over 1.2 million viewers.The population has doubled, the viewers have halved. The maths is not good. “Masterchef” peaked last year with over 3.5 million viewers. Proportionally, based on 1980’s viewing habits, Masterchef should have rated nine million viewers. The velocity of the decline is increasing. For an industry that was once a sizable chunk of the life and breath of Australian culture, the Australian free TV industry is “circling the drain”. That’s cop show talk for dying. It’s not just competition from DVD’s, pay TV and on-line. Woeful staff management and lack of vision has seen free TV become embittered and as irrelevant to the next generation …”
- From “Businesses” To “Tools”: The Twitter API ToS Changes [TechCrunch] – “Yesterday, Twitter made a swift and sweeping move to alter their ecosystem. In an email to developers, Twitter laid out the new rules. Essentially, third-party developers should no longer try to compete with Twitter on clients; instead they should focus on things like data and specific verticals for tweets. Not surprisingly, there’s quite a bit of backlash against this maneuver.”
[TOS] January 3 version: “We want to empower our ecosystem partners to build valuable businesses around the information flowing through Twitter.”
March 11 version: “We want to empower our ecosystem partners to build valuable tools around the information flowing through Twitter.” Now perhaps you see why the ecosystem, the “partners”, are so enraged. - I hope these people aren’t your friends [Pharyngula] – Horrible, offensive comments in the wake of Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami devastation. Surely these people have never ever thought about the longevity of their comments online: “Japan has a tragic and devastating earthquake. American responses follow a range of attitudes. […] And then there’s a third reaction. I was sent a collage of messages posted on Facebook in the last day or so, and these make me ashamed to share a culture with these wretched people. I may be about to ruin your morning. Don’t click on this compilation of facebook entries unless you’re one of those cynical people who already has low expectation of the worst of Americans.” (The same rubbish can be found on Twitter, too.)
- It’s the (virtual) economy, stupid [SMH] – “Mark Pincus has amassed a $US1 billion fortune selling bits and bytes that have no intrinsic value to an army of virtual farmers and city planners. Every month, 275 million people sign on to one of Pincus’ addictive games, paying real money to buy virtual seeds and crops in Farmville, construct fake buildings in CityVille or expand their criminal empire in Mafia Wars. Pioneers of the “virtual goods” market, Pincus’ company Zynga – just three years old – earned $850 million in revenue last year and is now valued between $US7 billion and $US9 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. It’s not a new phenomenon – for years people have been spending real money to buy their own virtual islands and toys in the online world Second Life and others have spent thousands on rare items in online games like World of Warcraft. Last year, a virtual space station in Entropia Universe sold for $US330,000. But with Zynga, virtual goods have hit the mainstream …”
Digital Culture Links: March 1st 2011
Links for March 1st 2011:
- Should an employer ever require your social media passwords as an employment condition? [eGov AU] – “At least one state agency in the US, Maryland Division of Correction, recently started requiring employees to provide their personal Facebook password and allow their employer to scrutinise their account as a condition of continued employment. Apparently this request wasn’t illegal – although it breaches Facebook’s usage policy (which could mean the employee loses their account). The rationale given by the employer was that they needed to review the contents of the account as part of the employment contract. A video of one staff member asked to provide his personal Facebook password is below. […] A number of law enforcement agencies have also apparently begun requesting this information as part of their recruitment process, as reported by USANow in the article, Police recruits screened for digital dirt on Facebook, etc. […] Should employers be allowed to request your passwords?” My answer: absolutely not!
- Your view from the #Oscars stage [Twitter Media] – “The 83rd Annual Academy Awards captured the country’s attention on Sunday night, but ABC’s cameras didn’t provide the only view. This year’s show was a new kind of 360-degree event, with:
* a camera-snapping, live-tweeting host;
* an official hashtag on air; and
* a big, sustained second-screen conversation on Twitter.
First: whatever you thought of his hosting, there’s no question that James Franco broke new ground with his tweeting. […] And all together, that represents a brand-new kind of event experience: one where viewers get to experience it from every vantage point, from even the stage itself. And the experience went both ways, because Franco got to hear what the viewers at home were saying, too; his account was mentioned 63,737 times during the show. Second: an official #oscars hashtag appeared on air twice—once near the beginning of the telecast and again near the end: Now, we know that when a hashtag shows up on TV, it causes a surge of Tweets.” - Auto-Tune the News Rocks the Oscars: Online Video News [NewTeeVee] – “I’m probably not the only one who was ready to fall asleep halfway through the show during last night’s Oscars telecast, but then it happened: Anne Hathaway and James Franco joked slightly awkwardly about this being “the year of the movie musical,” only to wake up the audience with an awesome auto-tune mash-up, featuring Harry Potter pals Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Woody from the Toy Story franchise, Justin Timberlake playing Sean Parker and Twilight’s Edward, Jacob and Bella. […] The video wasn’t just a tribute to the YouTube auto-tune mash-up phenomenon, though; it was actually produced by none other than the Gregory Brothers, best known for Auto-Tune the News and their Songify This videos. Asked about the collaboration, Evan Gregory told me via email: “The producers of the broadcast reached out to us and asked us to do a piece. Then we collaborated with them over a period of several weeks to pull it together.””
- 5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years [Dan Schawbel – Personal Branding – Forbes] – While I don’t agree with all of these points, it is a useful indicator of how central web presence will be in terms of employment now and even more so in the future:
“5 reasons why your online presence will replace your resume:
1. Social networking use is skyrocketing while email is plummeting
2. You can’t find jobs traditionally anymore
3. People are managing their careers as entrepreneurs
4. The traditional resume is now virtual and easy to build
5. Job seeker passion has become the deciding factor in employment” - Gmail back soon for everyone [Official Gmail Blog] – Apparently it was “0.02%” of gmail accounts that were temporarily deleted – still tens of thousands of accounts. Google sound confident all data will be back, soon, but that’s an awfully big scare, especially given how stable and reliable Gmail has appeared in the past compared to other cloud email services (yes, Hotmail, I’m looking at you!).
- Many Gmail Users Can’t Find Their Messages [Google OS] – Woah: Google has (accidentally?) deleted “0.08%” of all gmail accounts. That must be hundreds or thousands of accounts! While I love Gmail, it’s this sort of accident that reminds us all how precarious data in the cloud can be. Google are in the process of restoring these accounts, but even a few days with none of your email or email account would cause real challenges for most people! (Actually the BBC note that this might mean up to 150,000 Gmail accounts!!)
- iiNet again slays Hollywood in landmark piracy case [The Age] – “The giants of the film industry have lost their appeal in a lawsuit against [Australian] ISP iiNet in a landmark judgment handed down in the Federal Court today. The appeal dismissed today had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally. The film studios had sued iiNet arguing that, by not acting to prevent illegal file sharing on its network, it was essentially “authorising” the activity. “I have concluded that the appeal should be dismissed,” Justice Arthur Robert Emmett said in court this afternoon…”
- Filmed on a phone, spy movie takes out junior Tropfest award [WA Today] – Tropfest under-15 winner shot the whole film on an iPhone: “Simeon Bain cites the 2010 blockbuster Inception as the motivation for his own film, for which he won the Tropfest film festival’s Trop Jr prize this year. Like Inception, Simeon’s film, Imagine, follows the story of a skilled spy, but that is where the similarities end. Simeon’s film was much cheaper, costing $70 to make over three days, and being shot entirely with a mobile phone. ”I was between cameras,” Simeon, from Gisborne, said. ”I was on the verge of getting a new one, and my old camera just wasn’t good enough, so I decided to use my iPhone instead. Filming with a phone has its benefits, because it requires very little set up and it’s highly portable.””
- What is ‘The Streisand Effect’? [YouTube] – Quirky little video which actually explains the Streisand Effect very clear (short version: attempts to censor information online often lead to that information becoming a lot more popular and viewed!).
- Facebook Privacy: 10 Settings Every User Needs to Know [Mashable] – Useful list of privacy settings every Facebook user should be aware of.
- How Angry Birds really took off: 200m minutes a day spent playing it [SMH] – Fluffy article on the development of Angry Birds, but it does highlight the importance of the Apple App Store as a reliable single portal for developers: “Rovio needed a solution and the iPhone provided one. After the phone’s launch in 2007, Rovio realised that their industry was about to change completely. For the first time, users from all over the world would be able to download games from the same place: Apple’s online App Store. So a manufacturer only had to produce one version of a game, reducing costs dramatically.”
Digital Culture Links: February 7th 2011
Links for February 1st 2011 through February 7th 2011:
- The ex factor: when love doesn’t click, revenge does … online [SMH] – Another digital shadow: “In dating land, revenge is now a dish best served online, with jilted lovers using Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to dish the dirt on their exes. And what would once have been a heat-of-the-moment spray can now live on forever, dredged up by a simple Google search. As the online reputation management company SR7 says, “what happens in Vegas stays on Facebook”. In the latest example, an angry ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend’s professional photograph and overlaid it with derogatory text – then uploaded dozens of different versions to the web. They now come up every time someone Googles his name. The feud was first spotted by the SEO Roundtable blog, which also uncovered that the ex-boyfriend’s mother sought help from the Google Webmaster Help forum. The post has now been removed but not before hitting the blogosphere.”
- Big business buys up to outsmart ‘typosquatters’ [The Age] – “BIG Australian companies are buying up ”misspelt” internet domain names to stop others making money from their brand. Corporations such as Qantas, Westpac and Woolworths have registered the incorrectly spelt internet names because many people are terrible typists or cannot spell. Consumers can type in quantas.com.au and still get to the airline’s website. And if they leave the ”s” off the end of Woolworths, they are still diverted to the giant retailer’s website. Australia Post has registered austaliapost.com.au and australipost.com.au to make sure clumsy typists can still get access. Another company, Weather.com.au, has also registered whether.com.au and wether .com.au. Internet authorities are also cracking down on so-called ”typosquatters” who register deliberately misspelt domain names to make money from big business. The ”domainers” run ads on the misspelt websites and get paid up to $20 a click by the advertisers.”
- WikiLeaks has created a new media landscape [Clay Shirky | Comment is free | The Guardian] – Clay Shirky on Wikileaks: “WikiLeaks allows leakers transnational escape from national controls. Now, and from now on, a leaker with domestic secrets has no need of the domestic press, and indeed will avoid leaking directly to them if possible, to escape national pressure on national publishers to keep national secrets. WikiLeaks has not been a series of unfortunate events, and Assange is not a magician – he is simply an early and brilliant executor of what is being revealed as a much more general pattern, now spreading. Al-Jazeera and the Guardian created a transnational network to release the Palestine papers, without using WikiLeaks as an intermediary, and Daniel Domscheit-Berg is in the process of launching OpenLeaks, which will bring WikiLeaks-like capability to any publisher that wants it. It is possible to imagine that secrets from Moscow, Rome or Johannesburg will be routed through Iceland, Costa Rica, or even a transnational network of servers volunteered by private citizens.”
- Single or Spoken For? Facebook Can Alert Your World [NYTimes.com] – “Why do so many Facebook users agree to announce their romantic entanglements? “What is a wedding ring, but a status report?” said Nancy Baym, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas and the author of “Personal Communications in the Digital Age.” But she noted that Facebook had changed the way people report developments in their love lives to the wider community, creating the ability to instantly send out an update, which, she said, “forces you to make things explicit.” “It can force you to have discussions, or arguments, or decision points,” she added. “When you start dating somebody, you go through the transition, ‘Gee, we are hanging out and having fun,’ you don’t usually make an announcement.””
- Finding the Global Village through a Twitter Bot [Just TV] – Media scholar Jason Mittell has responded to the misuse of Marshall McLuhan on Twitter by creating a Twitter bot which automatically assails tweets which mention MchLuhan with a famous line from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. In that scene the real McLuhan confronts a pompous academic who misunderstands McLuhan, responding “You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong.” Now the Twitter bot shares that same retort; the Twitter profile points back to a YouTube clip of the scene in question, so anyone getting autotwittered at can share the joke (although not everyone does). Is this comedy, criticism, spam or the new face of the “digital humanities”? 🙂
- ePub Converter – Online electronic publication converter. Creates .mobi and .epub out of lots of different formats, including Word documents and PDFs.
- The New York Times vs. Fox News [POLITICO.com] – Damn right: “New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has become the most prominent media figure so far to blame Fox News for the polarized discourse that has become such a hot topic in the wake of the Tucson shooting. During an interview with Marvin Kalb in at the National Press Club in Washington Monday night, Keller expanded his complaint with Rupert Murdoch beyond the scope of the Wall Street Journal’s newspaper war with the Times, accusing Murdoch of poisoning the American discourse through Fox News. “I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general,” Keller said. “It has contributed to the sense that they are all just out there with a political agenda, but Fox is just more overt about it. And I think that’s unhealthy.””
- Media Life and Protests in the Arab World [Deuzeblog] – Mark Deuze: “It is safe to say that just about every news organization and technology-blog spends significant time these days engaging with the ongoing protests and turmoil across the Arab world and the role of internet and mobile media in general and Al-Jazeera, Twitter, Facebook, and texting in particular. […] I’m covering this debate in my (work-in-progress) Media Life book, aiming to articulate a position beyond whether ‘media did it’, instead suggesting that lived experience is synonymous with mediated experience, and therefore we cannot experience a revolution or indeed any kind of process of social change outside of media.”
Digital Culture Links: January 18th 2011
Links for January 10th 2011 through January 18th 2011:
- Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App stores a clear and present danger [TECH.BLORGE.com] – Interesting: “The app store model is a more immediate threat to internet freedom than breaches of net neutrality. That’s the opinion of Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales. According to Wales — who was quick to stress he was speaking in a purely personal capacity — set-ups such as the iTunes App Store can act as a “chokepoint that is very dangerous.” He said such it was time to ask if the model was “a threat to a diverse and open ecosystem” and made the argument that “we own [a] device, and we should control it.””
- Wikipedia – an unplanned miracle | Clay Shirky [The Guardian] – “Wikipedia is the most widely used reference work in the world. That statement is both ordinary and astonishing: it’s a simple reflection of its enormous readership; and yet, by any traditional view about how the world works, Wikipedia shouldn’t even exist, much less have succeeded so dramatically in the space of a single decade. The cumulative effort of Wikipedia’s millions of contributors means you are a click away from figuring out what a myocardial infarction is, or the cause of the Agacher Strip war, or who Spangles Muldoon was. This is an unplanned miracle, like “the market” deciding how much bread goes in the store. Wikipedia, though, is even odder than the market: not only is all that material contributed for free, it is available to you free; even the servers and system administrators are funded through donations.”
- YouTube mobile video viewing surges [The Age] – “YouTube has said it is serving up more than 200 million videos daily to smartphones and other internet-linked mobile devices. News of the milestone came as the Google-owned video-sharing service began routing Vevo music videos from artists such as Lady Gaga and U2 onto smartphones powered by newer versions of Google-backed Android software. “As the world goes mobile and more people watch videos on their smart phones, we expect more partners will take advantage of these new mobile advertising capabilities and make more of their content available across more devices,” YouTube mobile product manager Andrey Doronichev said in a blog post. Android smartphones running on “Froyo” or newer versions of the mobile operating software will be able to access Vevo’s music video library using a free YouTube application, according to Doronichev.”
- MySpace to shut Australian office [The Age] – “MySpace looks set to close its Australian office as part of its move to cut 500 jobs – or nearly half its staff – potentially setting the stage for a sale of the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.MySpace chief executive Mike Jones said in a statement today that the company would enter into strategic local partnerships to manage advertising sales and content in Australia, with details of partners yet to be finalised. He said the company would retain a core international team to work with partners. It is understood that all Australian positions within MySpace are under review with some opportunities for relocation to other divisions.”
- MySpace cutting global workforce by half [BBC News] – Ouch: “Struggling MySpace is cutting almost half of its global workforce. The social networking website is getting rid of 500 positions, or 47% of its employees. The announcement comes as MySpace continues to be eclipsed by Facebook, and as it tries to reinvent itself as an entertainment website. MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $580m (£372m) in 2005, but it has struggled to make money for its parent company. Mike Jones, MySpace’s chief executive, said the job cuts were “tough but necessary”, and had been taken to put the website on the path towards growth and profitability.”
- ‘Angry Birds’ Exec Calls Android Too Complex [Angry Birds World] – “Those who use the Android might wanna whip some “Angry Birds” out on Peter Vesterbacka, the head of business development in North America for Rovio. While there’s a free version of “Angry Birds” for Android users available, a 99-cent version for the iPhone is a huge success. And the iPhone will continue to be “the No. 1 platform for a long time from a developer perspective.” Question is: why? Apple has “gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots.” Android, too, is growing, he said, “But it’s also growing complexity at the same time.” While there are many devices and carriers that use Android, “device fragmentation (is) not the issue,” Vesterbacka said, “but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google-centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.””
- Celebrities plugging products on Twitter could face legal action [Perth Now] – “As if they aren’t raking in enough money or freebie gifts, greedy British celebs are rapidly utilising the perk power of a new cash cow – their Twitter accounts. However, there could be consequences. Dozens of celebrities, including actress Liz Hurley and singer Lily Allen, face possible court action over claims that they are endorsing products through their Twitter accounts without declaring that they have been paid by the companies concerned, reports the Daily Mail. Celebs who fail to mention that they have a financial interest in ‘plugging’ goods online could be contacted by the UK’s consumer watchdog in the coming weeks. The crackdown has been ordered by the UK’s Office of Fair Trading, which has the power to take offenders to court.”
Digital Culture Links: January 5th 2011
Links for January 5th 2011:
- Billionaires take a turn at initiating ‘brand’ damage [SMH] – The Australian retail industry has jumped the shark. In an effort to ‘combat’ consumers getting better deals online, the retail giants have banded together to lobby the government to remove an exclusion that means purchases for overseas goods totally under $1000 don’t have the GST added. Customers, in turn, have pointed out very loudly that they shop online because of the terrible state of retail shops in Australia. Whoever thought up a PR campaign that basically tells consumers that the rich retail giants want consumers to be taxed more because they’re becoming too savvy and demanding better choice clearly failed Marketing 101!
- How iTunes buyers are ripped off [Perth Now] – Australians are sick of the tyranny of digital distance: “Australian music fans are forging foreign iTunes accounts to make big savings on their purchases. The practice, which is a direct breach to iTunes terms and conditions, has exposed the inflated price that Australians pay to access songs off the popular music and entertainment site. By creating an American iTunes account through the use of a US credit card or gift card, users are saving up to 80c per song and $7 per album. The recently released Beatles box set collection can be bought with a saving of more than $A100. […] Numerous forums have surfaced on the net explaining the details of how to access the store which include creating a fake American billing address. Some have even used the address of the Apple corporation in the US to gain access.”
- Facebook Users Uploaded A Record 750 Million Photos Over New Year’s [Tech Crunch] – “It doesn’t come as a huge surprise, but it’s still staggering to think about: over the New Year’s weekend, Facebook saw 750 million photo uploads from its users. That’s a lot of celebrating, and it sets a new Facebook record. The stat was just tweeted by Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg (who is also founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister). We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask what the last record was, but I’m guessing it was set over Halloween, which has historically been the biggest day for Facebook Photos. To give some context to that number, in July Facebook said that more than 100 million photos get uploaded every day (that average is higher now, obviously).”
- Angry Birds launch for Sony’s Playstation 3 and PSP [BBC – Newsbeat] – Angry Birds makes the jump from mobile gaming to the consoles: “Sony has announced that Angry Birds is going to be released on its PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles. The game was originally developed for smart phones and proved a huge success with iPhone and Android users. Since being released in late 2009 it’s been downloaded nearly 40 million times. But with the Japanese entertainment giant now firmly on board developers Rovio have high hopes about bringing the game to a new audience. Released on January 5th it will be available to download for £2.49. “
- What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011? [Center for the Study of the Public Domain] – “Waiting for . . . Waiting for Godot and Lord of the Flies, The Doors of Perception, Rear Window, Seven Samurai, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the first issues of Sports Illustrated, Horton Hears a Who! . . . . Current US law extends copyright protections for 70 years from the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those laws, works published in 1954 would be passing into the public domain on January 1, 2011. What might you be able to read or print online, quote as much as you want, or translate, republish or make a play or a movie from? How about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies?”
- You might do a job on yourself [The Age] – Recruiters and interview panels are increasingly examining web presences: “Thank twice before uploading another photo or status update if you are about to have a job interview – employers are watching you. In an age of oversharing online, with a third of the Australian population on Facebook, many recruiters and companies cannot resist the temptation to screen potential candidates via social media. US employers have taken screening one step further, asking some job candidates to log in to their Facebook pages during the interview. There is no sign of this happening in Australia, recruiters say. But employers were interested in looking beyond a person’s resumé, said Kate Kendall, who specialises in recruitment via social media. “Companies are more interested in a holistic view of who they are hiring,” she said. “You can’t really try to hide.””
- Instagram Quickly Passes 1 Million Users [NYTimes.com] – “Instagram, a social photo-sharing company that opened its shutters to iPhone owners just two months ago, announced Tuesday that it passed a major milestone of 1 million registered users. The company began offering its simple photo service in mid-October that allows people to share images from a mobile phone and then add unique and fun filters. Since then, Instagram has quickly become the talk of the tech community as people have flocked to the service even with stiff competition from a number of well-financed competitors, including PicPlz, Flickr and Path.”
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