Ponderance

(May 2003 - March 2007.) Tama's thoughts on the blogosphere, podcasting, popular culture, digital media and citizen journalism posted from a laptop computer somewhere in Perth's isolated, miniature, urban jungle ...

The Global MishMash

Monday, November 22, 2004
[X] Podcast Research is trying to distinguish between Streaming Audio, AudioBlogs and Podcasting (the line between the last two, to my mind at least, is pretty fuzzy!).

[X] ABC News reports on JFK Reloaded, a simulation "game" re-creating the assassination of JFK (40 years ago, yesterday, I think). Some people are offended:
a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother, says "it is despicable".
He was informed of the game on Friday but declined further comment.
Kirk Ewing, managing director of the Scottish firm Traffic Games, which developed the game, says he understood some people would be horrified at the concept but he insisted he and his team had nothing but respect for Mr Kennedy and for history.
"We believe that the only thing we're exploiting is new technology," he said.
He says he sent Edward Kennedy a letter before the game's release.
Mr Ewing says the game was designed to undermine the theory there was some shadowy plot behind the assassination.
"We believe passionately there was no conspiracy," he said.
However, how could this be any worse than the millions of games which simulate the Vietnam War or other violent scenarios? WaterCoolerGames also has an item on the simulation, and some thoughtful comments are emerging.

[X] ABC News also reports that "John Laws and Steve Price have been found to have broken homosexual vilification laws in broadcasts last year". Of course, the pathetically weak enforcement of these vilification laws mean that neither Laws nor Price will even have to pay a fine; they'll simply have to apologise.

[X] Boing Boing points to the visually breathtaking G-Cans Project underneath Tokyo City in Japan. The project which seems to be an emergency water pumping facility for flood prevention (or something like that; any Japanese speakers who can translate the page, please leave a comment!). However, the images look like they're hybrid between Giger's art and the sets from Blade Runner. One amazing example:

For more, click here.

[X] Alex Halavais noticed that the 2004 Weblog Awards lack an "academic blogger" category, so he's set up his own 2004 Academic Weblog Award page. Nominations are open now, and at some point in the future voting will take place. Nifty. (I nominated for Best Group Blog: Grand Text Auto; and Single Blogger: Jill Walker.) Alex asks that the word be spread about the 2004 Academic Weblog Award, so please go and nominate your favourite academic blog (Alex also maintains a handy list of academic bloggers here).

[X] Finally, Australian IT reports that Telstra, it seems, has pulled a Cheney, and accidentally congratulated the Australian Idol winner by sending fans to a porn website:
Newspaper advertisements congratulating Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan have mistakenly directed fans to a gay porn website.
The half-page ads, placed by Telstra's internet arm BigPond today in Melbourne's Herald Sun and Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspapers, direct readers to caseydonovan.com.
But anyone calling up the website will be confronted by a full frontal nude picture of American porn star, Casey Donovan, and links to sales of his gay porn DVDs and videotapes.
Australia's Donovan, a 16-year-old who won a lucrative record deal with the BMG label when she won Australian Idol, has a personal website under construction at www.caseydonovan.com.au and a website set up by fans at www.caseydonovan.org.
BigPond corporate affairs manager Craig Middleton put the gaffe down to "simple human error in the last-minute preparation of the ad".
"Obviously everything was put together last night after the winner was announced and unfortunately, the 'au' dropped off the address," he said.
Silly, silly Telstra.

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