Ponderance

Ponderance: May 22, 2003 - March 11, 2007.

2007-03-11T10:40:00.000+09:00

I began this blog on something of a whim on May 22, 2003, and I'm making the final post to Ponderance today, March 11, 2007. With over 850 posts over 3 years and nine months, I really doubt I had any idea how significant blogging would be to me personally and professionally at the beginning, but I certainly see it as one of my core activities today. I've always found the Blogger platform to be really easy to use and a great tool, but there are simply too many things I want to be able to manage myself, too many plugins and tweaks I want to make, so I'm migrating over to a new, wordpress-powered blog at my own domain (tamaleaver.net). Of course, I'll be leaving Ponderance here as an archive!

For those who read Ponderance via RSS feeds, if you're getting the ATOM feed and want to get the feed from my new blog, you'll need to manually subscribe here. For those using the Feedburner feed, I'm going to re-direct that to my new blog in the next few hours so the transition should (I hope) be seamless! The only major difference in your feed experience will be that I've changed the del.icio.us links so they won't appear as-posted, but will be collected at the end of each day (at 8am Perth time, or midnight GMT).

I've written a lot over the last four years, but I thought I'd take the opportunity in this last post to finish off by pointing to a number of posts ordered by the themes which have most interested me across the duration of my blogging so far. I'm sure I'll be writing more on most of these issues in my new blog, but without any further ado, I give you my entirely subjective, Best Of Ponderance ...

Citizen Media & Participatory Culture

Tsunami Wednesday, December 29, 2004
The Mediascape & The London Bombings Friday, July 08, 2005
Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media I Saturday, September 03, 2005
Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media (Part 2) Sunday, September 04, 2005
Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media (Part 3) Monday, September 05, 2005
Kayne West: Voicing the Anguish Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media (Part 4) Thursday, September 08, 2005
Kayne West Political Mashup: "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" by The Legendary K.O. Friday, September 09, 2005
Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media (Part 5) Saturday, September 10, 2005
George Bush Don't Like Black People: The Music Video Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Tyranny of Digital Distance

The Tyranny of Digital Distance Monday, August 08, 2005
The Battlestar Galactica Webisodes & The Tyranny of Digital Distance Monday, September 11, 2006
Alex Malik on TV downloading in Australia Thursday, February 22, 2007

Citizen Justice

Citizen Justice or Opening Pandora's Box? Sunday, August 28, 2005
Ponderance Quoted in the LA Times! Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The Eye Generation Saturday, October 29, 2005
Citizen Justice Revisited ... Smarter Mobs? Monday, April 10, 2006

YouTubery

Happy Slapper Slapped! Thursday, April 20, 2006
YouTube: Thoughts, Gems and a very rare Star Wars deleted scene! Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Lonelygirl15 Jumps The Shark ... but Jessica Rose has a promising future career! Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Lonelygirl15 - The story so far ... Thursday, September 14, 2006
From YouTube to the Silver Screen Monday, February 19, 2007

I hope you'll come over and visit the my new blog at tamaleaver dot net.

For Ponderance, that's it! All done.

Advertising from the Future - Children of Men

2007-02-28T21:14:00.000+09:00

I'm giving a couple of lectures this semester in the Ecotexts: Nature/Writing/Technology course which has some great books and films on it. I'm getting to give lectures on Blade Runner and the anime Metropolis, but I've also been exploring links between these and other films on the course, including Code 46 and Children of Men. Of the three non-animated films, one of the most interesting textures they use is advertising; the bleak landscapes and cityscapes of the near-future are awash with commercials and warnings! In my online explorations, I've found a wonderful clip produced as a portfolio piece by the Foreign Office, the design company which worked on many of the media textures in Children of Men:

The future imagined through these advertisements and warnings is one easily extrapolated from today, yet cleverly different enough to suggest a future setting!

[View/Download High-Quality H264 Version] [Via WaxyLinks]

Human Lobotomy: Great Net Neutrality Mini-Documentary

2007-02-24T21:50:00.000+09:00

If you're interested in Net Neutrality, then check out this evocative mini-documentary on why regulating the internet in the ways being debate in the US are a bad idea of democracy, a bad idea for the US, and a really bad idea for the rest of us!

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

If you're not interested in Net Neutrality, perhaps after watching this you should be!

[Via Lawrence Lessig]

Alex Malik on TV downloading in Australia

2007-02-22T00:44:00.000+09:00

The Age has a revealing article on work done by Alex Malik which concludes that the delay between the US/UK and Australia release dates for television are one of the primary reasons what people turn to bittorrent:

Huge delays in airing overseas TV shows locally are turning Australians into pirates, says a study conducted by technology lawyer and researcher Alex Malik. It took an average of 17 months for programs to be shown in Australia after first airing overseas, a gap that has only increased over the past two years, the study found. The findings were based on a "representative sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series or specials", said Malik, who is in the final stages of a PhD in law at the University of Technology Sydney. [...]

Malik admitted there had been some signs of progress recently - programs such as The O.C. air within days of being shown in the US - but he insisted the overall delays had become longer. "Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.6 to 16.7 months," the study reads. Malik also studied comments by TV viewers on various internet forums, and concluded: "These delays are one of the major factors driving Australians to use BitTorrent and other internet-based peer-to-peer programs to download programs illegally from overseas, prior to their local broadcast."

Malik's findings are perfectly in line with the idea of the tyranny of digital distance which I've written about before (see "The Tyranny of Digital Distance" and "The Battlestar Galactica Webisodes & The Tyranny of Digital Distance"). Malik's study is further evidence that as long as media distributors continue to enforce ridiculous national/geographic-based release dates in an era of global information (and promotion, and fan actvitity), then bittorrent will continue to be a major source of TV for Australians. However, if we could legally download episodes at the same times as our US and UK neighbours, then media companies may very well discover that they could make more money, not less, by giving Australian consumers the choices we want!

Scouta is Outa ... and Abouta!

2007-02-20T23:11:00.000+09:00

Under the banner "Scouting is better than searching", the new people-powered recommendation engine, Scouta, has made its way online. From Scouta's 'About' page:

Scouta is the new way to get relevant online content. It’s the bold new way for you to get personal recommendations to suit your interests and tastes. These online recommendations come from Scouta learning what you like, and from you--and people like you--sharing the best of what you find online. Scouta will offer you new online audio and video you can pick from and rate, listening and learning as you go. It's free. Join now! Instead of searching for information, inspiration, laughs, and contacts, Scouta will do the work for you--delivering stuff you might never have found searching for hours on your own. The more you add or rate, the smarter Scouta gets. And with every new release, and every new member, it just gets smarter.

I've been in the beta-tester group for Scouta for a couple of months, but I must confess I've been one of the laziest beta-testers in history! While I must admit, I wondered what a new recommendation system could offer, I've only entered a dozen media links thus far, and I've already had something recommended to me that I'm really quite surpised managed to slip under my radar. The recommendation was the "Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 Gag Reel" and it's such a funny collection that I have to share it with you:

If my recommendations are this good after a dozen entries on my part, I'm going to have to keep using for a while to see what else the Scouting Community sends my way! And congratulations, Richard, on the big launch!

From YouTube to the Silver Screen

2007-02-19T16:32:00.000+09:00

The big news for YouTube watchers is that YouTube's first megastar - New Zealander Jessica Rose aka Lonelygirl15 -- is making the transition from the tube to the silver screen.

As The Age notes:

Web video star Jessica Rose - better recognised by her YouTube alias Lonelygirl15 - will play a role in an upcoming film starring Lindsay Lohan. The film - I Know Who Killed Me - has reportedly been in production since late last year, and filming is scheduled to wrap up this month. A number of photos of Rose and Lohan on the set of the film have cropped up on celebrity gossip websites. It is a reassuring sign for budding filmmakers and actors seeking to use video-sharing sites such as YouTube as a launch pad for Hollywood success.

While not a huge shock, Lee's move to the cinema will no doubt further fuel the millions of YouTubers hoping that their webcam home movies can be the beginning of a Hollywood career!

For background, see Lonelygirl15: The Story So Far...

"Not New Media, Now Media!" Seminar: Fremantle, 27 Feb, 7pm

2007-02-19T09:29:00.000+09:00

Next week, FTI are running an exciting public seminar entitled "Not New Media, Now Media!":

Last year we presented 'What's all this talk of Cross Platform and New Media' which featured an impressive panel of speakers from diverse backgrounds trying to make sense of the shifting technological and cultural media landscape. Join us again as we look at the situation 12 months later and access the current situation. What will happen to the media landscape in 2007 and what will be the implications for filmmakers?

Taking a look at the most important cultural and technological developments will be Bronwyn Clune founder of Citizen Journalism site Perth Norg, Richard Giles CEO of the soon to be launched Video Bookmarking site SCOUTA, Kate Rothschild who has a background in interactive entertainment including work at Nickelodean in the USA and Producer Matt Morgan from IN8VISIONMEDIA. It's sure to be an exciting and interesting discussion. We will also be using a live internet connection on the big cinema screen to demonstrate some of the panelists key points.

The best thing is it is 100% free! 7pm - 9pm Tuesday 27th February FTI 92 Adelaide Street, Fremantle.

More here (as well as an RSVP email/phone number). [Via]

Spook Country or ... Spook Country?

2007-02-09T13:57:00.000+09:00

I know the old saying warns against judging a book by its cover, but what happens when you have to judge which cover to have for a book? I've always been fascinated by the fact that UK and US publishers frequently have covers for their published books which are quite different. William Gibson has been blogging about the covers for his upcoming Spook Country, and they are fairly different ...

[UK]

[US]

Thankfully, I'm pretty sure I prefer the UK version and this is what usually turns up on Australian shelves. When Gibson's previous book, Pattern Recognition came out, I was in the US and was delighted to get a hardback copy at a decent price in its first week of release. Months later, back in Australia, I found the UK cover version (which had a stylised CD case image) which seemed far more in keeping with the book ...

[UK]

[US]

For some reason, despite the same text in both, I've always coveted a UK cover-design copy. I know that's a tad fickle, but it seems to have considerable impact on often a book makes the journey from my shelf to the bedside table.

It this just something that happens to me or do others hunt for their cover-art of choice despite already owning the book?

[Tags: books | williamgibson | covers | patternrecognition | spookcountry]

The 79th Academy Awards: the Nominees and the Pirates

2007-01-24T11:42:00.000+09:00

The nominations for this season's Academy Awards are out. No major shocks; it's a little odd that Dreamgirls got 8 nominations, but isn't up for Best Picture. Children of Men picked up two nominations -- Achievement in cinematography and Achievement in film editing -- possibly on the back of the grassroots campaign to get Children of Men noticed by Oscars voters. Pan's Labyrinth did well with six nominations: Achievement in art direction, Achievement in cinematography, Achievement in makeup, Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score), Original screenplay and Best foreign language film of the year. It deserves to win more a lot of those, but I imagine it'll probably only pick up Best foreign language film. I truly hope that Happy Feet wins over Cars and Monster House in the Best animated feature category - I was really quite surprised that Cars won the Golden Globe over Happy Feet!

However, the most interesting Oscars story is that Andy "Waxy" Baio has revived his tradition of looking at how widely Oscar-nominated films are being pirated. He's produced a detailed analysis (provocatively titled "Pirating the 2007 Oscars"), which included these findings:

* Academy members received screeners for 30 out of 34. (Everything except Click, Monster House, Poseidon, and Black Dahlia.)
* 31 out of 34 films were released online in some form, including camcorder footage. (Everything except Letters from Iwo Jima, Notes on a Scandal, and Venus.)
* 24 screeners were leaked online. (In several cases, they were leaked months before Academy screeners were mailed.)
* The average length of time between a film's USA release and its first appearance online is 12 days.
* 9 screeners appeared online before they were mailed to Academy members.
* On average, a screener appears online 24 days before it's received by Academy members. (Excluding these early leaks, the average time is 13 days.)

Andy also touches on one of the more the controversial issue of the film distributors: is it better to limit/encrypt/tightly control Oscar screeners (the free copies of films sent to Oscar voters to garner their support) or is it better to distribute the film widely - and thus more potentially accessible to pirates - with a view broadening the ease of watching and thus appeal to voters (as Andy notes, it seemed to work for Crash).

All in all, this analysis is a solid picture of how the torrent and pirate scene is operating as well as insight into the futility of many RIAA/MPAA efforts.

[Tags: oscars | academyawards | 2007 | 79th | piracy | bittorrent | childrenofmen]

The (Data) Pirates of Sealand!

2007-01-15T12:27:00.000+09:00

In a move straight out of a Bruce Sterling novel, the Swedish bittorrent tracker group The Pirate Bay have announced they're attempting to raise enough money to buy an "island" data haven! From Boing Boing:

The Pirate Bay is raising money to buy the tiny, bankrupt "island" of Sealand. Sealand is the abandoned ~~drilling platform~~ gun battery near the UK that was occupied, declared sovereign, and turned into a offshore data-center for sensitive information. Sealand's owners have put the "country" on the block, and the Pirate Bay, Sweden's gutsy, notorious BitTorrent tracker, is soliciting donations to buy it. They're even promising citizenship to donors. If they don't get enough to buy Sealand, they're promising to buy another island somewhere!

Why "Children of Men" Should Be Nominated For Best Picture!

2007-01-10T13:22:00.000+09:00

As Children of Men was, in my opinion, one of the best films of 2006, I was pleased to see it rising to #3 on the US box office charts this week, despite apathetic distribution and advertising. Over at Something Awful, user blairerickson was so impressed by the film and so disappointed that the studio wasn't pitching Children of Men at Oscar nominators that they started their own Why Children of Men Should Be Nominated For Best Picture campaign which centres around a neatly cut (if rather spoilerish) trailer featured above and on YouTube. As the SA forum notes:

Well with at least another week to go before Oscar nomination ballots are mailed in, I think it would be helpful to do as much as possible to at spread the Best Picture buzz for "Children of Men" across the internet. Though the film is being snubbed by its studio, perhaps a last minute grassroots hype campaign could change the tide. That's exactly how Crash won last year. And believe it or not, big industry players in Hollywood do read internet websites, even this one. After I wrote the Uwe Boll article I got fun email from some pretty big name producers and screenwriters within the first few hours of it going online.

So what can you do? For starters users can all DIGG "Children of Men" related stories and threads. If you're posting on other message boards, make a thread telling people to go see the movie. Oh and feel free to spread the YouTube video around, and perhaps that will remind a few academy voters somewhere about the movie or encourage more of them to check it out to see what the buzz is about.

I think this is an excellent grassroots campaign, using the power of participatory culture to push for a film nomitated by the fans if not pushed by the studios! The campaign is already picking up some respectable buzz which is great to see. If you've not seen Children of Men, I recommend you do ... and spread the word by sharing the YouTube video and blogging your thoughts far and wide!

(Incidentally, since I never posted an end-of-year wrap-up, my three favourite films for 2006 were The Prestige, Chidlren of Men and Casino Royale.)

[Tags: childrenofmen | bestpicture | academyawards | oscars | youtube | participatoryculture | grassroots]

iPhone

2007-01-10T10:32:00.000+09:00

At MacWorld yesterday, Steve Jobs announced Apple's much-hyped iPhone. With a Mac OS X brain, a wide-screen iPod, web apps specifically by Google and Yahoo and features aplenty, this really is both the iPhone and the WiPod! Engadget have all the details of the launch in pictures along with a glowing report; more balanced items from the New York Times and BBC News are both positive as well. (Of course, Australia as part of the Asia region isn't slated to see these devices until 2008 - and without a mobile carrier in place here an eBay purchase still won't be a working Australian phone ). I have to say I was most impressed by the touch-screen keyboard and controls. The controls which change depending on your application are an obvious idea, but one which Apple has followed through with in their usual stylish way!

I suspect this (and Apple's iTV) will re-centralise the "convergence" discussions which suggest in the future every application and function will run through one multi-tasking device. Even though Henry Jenkins' book Convergence Culture isn't so much a technical one-box for everything argument, I think his choice (or his publisher's choice) to put a docked video iPod on the cover seems even more apt that before!

Update: Engadget points out that the iPhone still has a few annoying limitations, including:

* No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man.
* No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
* No expandable memory.
* No removable battery.
* No Exchange or Office support.

Lawrence Lessig: "Free, the difference between code and culture"

2007-01-09T14:53:00.000+09:00

After spending more than three weeks with no internet connectivity at all I'm back at work so that, during the day at least, I'm back online for 2007.

To start the year off, I'd like to recommend that anyone who cares about culture and creativity watches Lawrence Lessig's talk "Free, the difference between code and culture" which was delivered at 23C3. Until last month, Lessig has been at the helm of the Creative Commons organisation and has been the white knight of sensible copyright laws (which foster creativity rather than disabling it). His talk at 23C3 shows that this advocacy is as strong as ever. One comment transcribed by Thomas Roessler gives you some idea of what Lessig argues:

Barlow, from the floor: Civil disobedience will be important to break the current copyright system. Teenage geeks win the technical side of the war, and recording industry will lose battle for their hearts and minds.

Lessig: Don't doubt technical community's ability to crack DRM, but doubt their ability to deal with the politics that are created. Don't lose the opportunity to convince people why we are right. MGM vs. Grokster got thought about as "should people be allowed to steal," and was lost. If there's a perception that community doesn't take on the political side of the argument, but just wants free stuff, then it'll continue to lose.

A Big Announcement

2006-12-22T23:51:00.000+09:00

As some of you would have known, on Wednesday I waved goodbye to my twenties and celebrated my 30th birthday. It was a wonderful day for many reasons, but far and away the most amazing and exciting was that I proposed to Emily and she agreed to marry me! That's right, we're engaged!! (A few little piccies are here.)

Also, I must apologise for a lack of blogging in the last week and the following one. Emily and I are moving houses, but our internet connection will take more than a week to arrive at the new house.

So, since you won't hear from me berforehand, can I also wish everyone out there a wonderful festive season (be it Christmas or any other holiday you enjoy)!

Mini-Update (30 Dec 06): Em and I are without a land-line or an internet connection until some time in the first week of 2007, so if you need anything please call my mobile number. Apologies to anyone waiting on replies to emails ... we will get back to you once we can access the web from home!

[Tags: wedding | engaged | tama | emily]

More Than Half of Australian Internet Users Download TV via Torrents

2006-12-14T22:25:00.000+09:00

Lara Sinclair reports in today's Australian IT that a University of Sydney study has found 53% of Australian internet users regularly download TV shows online:

The research, conducted by University of Sydney honours student Adam Zuchetti, shows one in four people download TV programs twice a week or more, with downloads now the main form of TV viewing for 21 per cent of respondents. Almost 800 TV fans responded to the survey, which was conducted on local TV websites earlier this year. [...]

All of the free-to-air networks are experimenting with making clips from programs available over the internet, with Ten's podcasts of its comedy Thank God You're Here just one example. The network has also screened shows such as The OC and Jericho within 24 hours of their US debut in order to reduce the temptation for fans to go online. [...]

Lost was the most downloaded show, the study revealed, followed by Veronica Mars, House, Prison Break and Dr Who.

Paid downloads are among the options local TV operators are exploring to make more shows available on demand: Yahoo7 has flagged its intention to make fresh episodes of TV shows available over the internet for a price. Ten has meanwhile made clips from Australian Idol available to watch with pre and post-roll video ads.

According to Zuchetti's study, a slight majority (53 per cent) of respondents say they are prepared to pay for content, but one in three will not. "The most popular option would be to offer the choice of the two: paid, or free downloads with advertising," he says.

On the back of studies like this one, it should be apparent that treating Australia as a market that operates in a vacuum simply won't work. Consumers take the easiest path to the shows they want to see. Websites, and advertising online, hype the upcoming shows in the US, but these currents (especially the fan-driven ones) are often just as powerful in Australia. The Australian media marketplace is already dominated by US products, so it's no surprise that four of the five most downloaded shows were from the US. Personally, I still think sales of legally downloadable TV shows (using the iTunes store or something similar) is the best way to maximise on the buzz of new US (and UK) shows. The media giants in Australia just need to work out how they're going to get their slice of the pie in different ways, or, thanks to the ease of bittorrent and similar services, they won't get any at all.

Update: As the comments on this post point out, the survey sample was on the small side and self-selected by TV fans. The actual percentage of the Australian population downloading TV shows is estmiated by many to be more around the 5 - 10% mark.

[Tags: australia | bittorrent | downloads | tv | us | ]

My Little Sister Got Married!

2006-12-11T17:40:00.000+09:00

On Saturday, I was absolutely delighted to see my little sister, Simone, marry the love of her life, Paul. It was an emotional cermony and a fabulous reception! I wish the two of them all the happiness in the world!

(For those interested, a few pictures have their way onto Flickr.)

[Tags: simone | paul | marriage]

ccSalon: Creative Commons Australia

2006-11-27T22:32:00.000+08:00

This Wednesday is the first ever Creative Commons Australia ccSalon. The details:

creative commons australia (CCau) invites you to its first ccSalon, a showcase of the creative commons in australia.

the ccSalon is a public exhibition/performance/expo of how artists are using creative commons licences and material worldwide. the ccau event features creative commons licensed material by a range of australian artists, including a live audio/visual mash up including music by collapsicon and hybrid arts music ensemble collusion with music and visuals by andrew garton of toysatellite.

garton will be drawing on cc content by other australia creators including animation duo blackbrow, photographer frollop, the community convergent newsroom, a new leaf media and footage from engage media and a swag of australian flickr photographers.

The ccSalon will also and include a share your wares, a hands on space for people to experience the diversity of CC licensed content. If you’re interested in including anything in that hands-on event, please get in contact with us.

The CCau ccSalon will be held from 6pm on 29 November 2006 at the Block, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, corner of Musk Ave and Kelvin Grove Rd, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane. Free entry, all welcome.

ccSalon is a public event. For further information, please contact Elliott Bledsoe or Jessica Coates or you can phone us on (07) 3138 9597.

You can also access the full program for the Salon by clicking on the attachment.

Unfortunately, despite being Australian, as I live 4500kms away, I won't be making it to the ccSalon (but you will be able to see one of my CC-licensed Flickr images on display). If you're in Brisbane or can get there, head to the party and wave the Creative Commons banner down under!

During the day of the ccSalon, Creative Commons Australia is also holding an industry forum looking at CC with/in Government; Open Access, Education + Libraries; and Creativity, Media + the Arts. Finally, don't forget that the main Creative Commons organisation is in the midst of their annual fundraising effort (please give if you can!).

Update (30/11): To my great pleasure I have discovered that Melanie Cook's photos from the ccSalon include one where you can see someone looking at one of my photos:

[Click to enlarge.]

[Tags: creativecommons | australia | ccSalon]

Special Issue of Reconstruction on 'Theories/Practice of Blogging' is Out!

2006-11-25T19:24:00.000+08:00

The special themed issue of Reconstruction which focuses on blogging is out! Here's the announcement:

Reconstruction is proud to announce the publication of its Vol. 6, No. 4 (2006) themed issue, "Theories/Practices of Blogging," which can be found at http://reconstruction.eserver.org.

Featured in the issue:
* Michael Benton (aka Thivai Abhor), "Thoughts on Blogging by a Poorly Masked Academic"
* Craig Saper, "Blogademia"
* danah boyd, "A Blogger's Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium"
* Tama Leaver, "The Blogging of Everyday Life"
* Erica Johnson, "Democracy Defended: Polibloggers and the Political Press in America"
* Carmel L. Vaisman, "Design and Play: Weblog Genres of Adolescent Girls in Israel"
* David Sasaki, "Identity and Credibility in the Global Blogosphere"
* Anna Notaro, "The Lo(n)g Revolution: The Blogosphere as an Alternative Public Sphere?"
* Emerald Tina, "My Life in the Panopticon: Blogging From Iran"
* Various Authors, "Webfestschrift for Wealth Bondage/The Happy Tutor"
* Lilia Efimova, "Two papers, me in between"
* Lauren Elkin, "Blogging and (Expatriate) Identity"
* Various Bloggers, "Why I Blog, Part I", "Why I Blog, Part II"

I'm pleased to see this issue appear for all sorts of reasons, but here are there good ones:

1. Even though I've given a number of conference papers, talks and run units using and exploring blogging, my first full article on blogs, "The Blogging of Everyday Life" appears in this issue. Take a look and let me know what you think!

2. The place of blogging inside academia has a been a hot topic for years, so Michael Benton's "Thoughts on Blogging by a Poorly Masked Academic" and Craig Saper's "Blogademia" are both welcome explorations of both individual and larger motivations for blogs in the academy!

3. And, in keeping with the style of a blog, this issue has a section called the Blogroll which, like many sidebars across the blogosphere, contains snippits pointing to dozens of interesting posts where various bloggers from all sorts of backgrounds answer the question "Why I Blog?". I've mentioned my contribution to that list in the past, but there are so many interesting thoughts on blogging that I strong encourage you to have a look!

[Tags: blogs | blogging | blogosphere | reconstruction | academia | everydaylife]

Christy Dena Talks Cross-Media (and Games, and Blogs...) in Perth

2006-11-16T15:05:00.000+08:00

Christy Dena, one of the leading figures in Cross-Media Enterntainment in Australia, is coming to Perth. Thanks to AFTRS, Christy's running a series of events relating to cross-media, blogs, ARGs and the like. Some details:

Serious Games [at WestOne]
This is no laughing matter! Serious Games are created by the arts, education, academic, government, advertising, entertainment, military and public sectors. They all have a message besides just being fun: motivate to buy, sign-up, vote or protest; for skills acquisition, education and health. And they're popular too. America's Army, an online game created by the U.S. Army in 2002, has had over 17 million downloads and has over 6 million players. This seminar will provide an overview of the variety of serious game forms available and design considerations. It will be an a useful over view into current trends in serious games, and will be of interest to game makers, and those involved with simulators, military, education , the public sector and government people.

Date: Thursday, November 30, 2006, 6.30pm-9pm
Venue: WestOne Theatrette
WestOne- Leederville
164- 194 Oxford St, Leederville
Cost: $35
RSVP: Tom Lubin on 0410 416 799 or tom.lubin@aftrs.edu.au

Everything you every wanted to know about blogging in 60 minutes (but were too scared to ask)
Blogs about communicating with friends, reaching potential customers, having your say, engaging with associates, developing communities of practice, branding, standing on a soap box, making money. Its all of that. A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic, and are part of a wider network of social media.

Following the session will be refreshments.

Date: Friday December 1, 2006, 6:30pm-8pm
Venue: Australian Writers' Guild
196 Oxford St Leederville
Parking: TAFE Oxford St entrance.
Cost: FREE
RSVP: Tom Lubin on 0410 416 799 or tom.lubin@aftrs.edu.au

Alternate Reality Games [at the Innovation Centre]
What are the creators of The Blair Witch Project doing now? What do Microsoft, Dreamworks and Audi have in common? There'll all working on 'alternate reality games' or ARGs. This genre of entertainment is not only solving the riddle of how to have story and gameplay, but also how to get entertainment and marketing working together. Millions of players worldwide are spending hours, weeks and months with these elaborately written, directed and programmed stories that traverse websites, emails, faxes and phone calls. They have been called the 'Citizen Kane of online entertainment' (Internet Life). They are innovating audience interaction, the use of real-world devices, immersion and advertising in ways that you can utilise now. This half day seminar will show you just what they are, what advertising agencies think of them, how many are playing them and what you can take from them for your own properties.

Date: Saturday December 2, 2006, 9.30am-1pm
Venue: Innovation Centre WA, Enterprise Unit 3, 11 Brodie Hall Drive, Bentley [free parking]
Cost: $40 (lunch is included if you attend both Saturday sessions)
RSVP: Tom Lubin on 0410 416 799 or tom.lubin@aftrs.edu.au

Designing Cross-Media Entertainment [at the Innovation Centre]
This half day seminar will provide a primer for film, TV & emerging media practitioners and producers wishing to develop a cross-platform property. It is ideally suited for writers and producers who will be in the position of creating and managing the projects. The session will provide a tirade of information about innovative & commercially successful cross-platform properties in Australia and Internationally. What worked and what didn't will be explained, along with an insight into the design issues for creating such properties. Guidance on how to select platforms and formats according to target audiences will also explored. And for those that just have to know: examples of how marketing and entertainment have worked together to produce innovate and monetized content without selling out either of their respective values will be provided!

Date: Saturday December 2, 2006, 2pm-5:30pm
Venue: Innovation Centre WA, Enterprise Unit 3, 11 Brodie Hall Drive, Bentley [free parking]
Cost: $40 (lunch is included if you attend both Saturday sessions)
RSVP: Tom Lubin on 0410 416 799 or tom.lubin@aftrs.edu.au

OR: Attend all Christy Dena Events for $100 Save $15

For full details see Christy's AFTRS promotional PDF.

For those who are lucky enough to be attending the CyberGames 2006: International Conference on Games Research and Development on 4-6 December you can also hear Christy's paper "A Case-Study of miniARGs: Design Issues for Creating Alternate Reality Games for Professional Training and Education" and end the conference with one last workshop on "Alternate Reality Games and Cross-Media Entertainment: Low-tech, high-impact immersive experiences".

I must confess, I'm unlikely to be at CyberGames (mainly due to cost and other commitments; I'd certainly like to be there) but I'll be sure to catch a few of Christy's earlier AFTRS events (and I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of crowd attends the free blogging talk).

Hope to see a few Perth faces there!

[Tags: christydena | crossmediaentertainment | args | blogs | australia]

The Future of Digital Literacy and Media Education

2006-11-08T20:56:00.000+08:00

In the past month, two important reports have been released in the US which detail the current state of digital media literacy in both the K-12 environment and tertiary education. These reports are extremely valuable in thinking about curriculum design and about wider social, cultural and political concerns relating to digital media and technology. A quick overview ...

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

Recently, the Digital Media and Learning section of the US MacArthur Foundation made the following announcement:

The MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations. The initiative is both marshaling what is already known about the field and seeding innovation for continued growth.

An an integral part of this push toward fostering and enhancing young people's understanding and participation in digital technology and related spheres, the MacArthur Foundation colloborated with Henry Jenkins who wrote their white-paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century [PDF version].

Rather than giving the technologies centre-stage, Jenkins argues that it is extremely important to educate young people and facilitate their full potential in engaging with what he terms participatory cultures (an idea familiar to readers of this blog or to those familiar with Jenkins' Textual Poachers or more recent Convergence Culture). A snippet from the report:

That is why we focus in this paper on the concept of participatory cultures rather than on interactive technologies. Interactivity is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends.

We are using participation as a term that cuts across educational practices, creative processes, community life, and democratic citizenship. Our goals should be to encourage youth to develop the skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks, and self-confidence needed to be full participants in contemporary culture. Many young people are already part of this process through:

Affiliations -- memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace).

Expressions -- producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).

Collaborative Problem-solving -- working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling).

Circulations -- Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging)

The MacArthur Foundation has launched an ambitious effort to document these activities and the roles they play in young people's lives. We do not want to preempt or duplicate that effort here. For the moment, it is sufficient to argue that each of these activities contains opportunities for learning, creative expression, civic engagement, political empowerment, and economic advancement.

Through these various forms of participatory culture, young people are acquiring skills that will serve them well in the future. Participatory culture is reworking the rules by which school, cultural expression, civic life, and work operate. A growing body of work has focused on the value of participatory culture and its long-term impact on children's understanding of themselves and the world around them.

The full report contains a great deal more context, detail and has the potential to act as a coherent and robust blueprint for incorporating digital media literacies into K-12 environments and the has clear implications for the tertiary sector as well. Jenkins also recently blogged "Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape" which was originally written for the white-paper but cut for length reasons. If you find the report of interest, I'd recommend checking out that post as well since it provides important context (and a useful shorthand for explaining the state of digital media literacy in the US and elsewhere).

The Horizon Report

The Horizon Report is produced by the NMC (New Media Consortium) and EduCause, two of the peak US technology and education organisations focused on higher education. The report examines the current state of technology use in the US tertiary system and signposts a number of technologies to watch and their estimated rate of implementation on a broad scale. The full report is released under a Creative Commons license [PDF version] and comes complete with a project wiki. I'd heartily recommend diving into the full report, but to give you a taste of what's inside, here's a sample from the executive summary:

Social Computing. The application of computer technology to facilitate interaction and collaboration, a practice known as social computing, is happening all around us. Replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual collaboration tools, working on a daily basis with colleagues a thousand miles away, or attending a conference held entirely online is no longer unusual. An interesting aspect of social computing is the development of shared taxonomies - folksonomies - that emerge organically from like-minded groups.

Personal Broadcasting. With roots in text-based media (personal websites and blogs), personal broadcasting of audio and video material is a natural outgrowth of a popular trend made possible by increasingly more capable portable tools. From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting is already impacting campuses and museum audiences significantly.

The Phones in Their Pockets. A little further out on the horizon, but rapidly approaching, the delivery of educational content and services to cell phones is just around the corner. Among the keys that will unlock the true potential of this technology are improved network speeds, Flash Lite, and video: as new features that take advantage of the capabilities of these appear in phones, barriers to delivery of educational content will vanish.

Educational Gaming. A recent surge in interest in educational gaming has led to increased research into gaming and engagement theory, the effect of using games in practice, and the structure of cooperation in gameplay. The serious implications of gaming are still unfolding, but we are not far away from seeing what games can really teach us.

Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization. Currently in use in disciplines such as medicine, engineering, and archaeology, these technologies for bringing large data sets to life have the potential to literally change the way we see the world by creating three-dimensional representations of abstract data.

Context-Aware Environments and Devices. Advancements in context-aware computing are giving rise to devices and rooms that respond to voice, motion, or other subtle signals. In the ultimate application of these technologies, the computing part simply disappears, leaving an environment transparently responsive to its human occupants.

Together, I think these two reports go a long way in illuminating the issues, challenges and vast potential related to technology, media and education in the coming years. Both of these reports are focused on the US, but the issues raised are equally relevant to the Australian context. Perhaps the uptake of certain technologies is further away, but in my opinion the issues raised should be addressed now across all levels of education, both K-12 and tertiary, to ensure that digital literacy is at the core of the Australian student experience.

[Tags: macarthurfoundation | henryjenkins | participatoryculture | education | horizonreport | nmc | educause | digitalliteracy]

Tim Berners-Lee on the Importance of Blogging

2006-11-05T23:57:00.000+08:00

In two recent articles, one in The Guardian and one from the BBC, it appeared that Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist who invented the internet as we know it today, had decided blogs were part of the problem, not the solution. From The Guardian, for example:

Sir Tim believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust: "The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what." The next generation of the internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.

However, as Berners-Lee has not pointed out, these comments were taken out of context and that he's actually a blogger himself and a fan of blogging. From Berners-Lee's own blog in a post simply called "Blogging is great":

People have, since it started, complained about the fact that there is junk on the web. And as a universal medium, of course, it is important that the web itself doesn't try to decide what is publishable. The way quality works on the web is through links.

It works because reputable writers make links to things they consider reputable sources. So readers, when they find something distasteful or unreliable, don't just hit the back button once, they hit it twice. They remember not to follow links again through the page which took them there. One's chosen starting page, and a nurtured set of bookmarks, are the entrance points, then, to a selected subweb of information which one is generally inclined to trust and find valuable.

A great example of course is the blogging world. Blogs provide a gently evolving network of pointers of interest. [...] In a recent interview with the Guardian, alas, my attempt to explain this was turned upside down into a "blogging is one of the biggest perils" message. Sigh. I think they took their lead from an unfortunate BBC article, which for some reason stressed concerns about the web rather than excitement, failure modes rather than opportunities.

It seems quite telling and very affirming for the blogosphere that even when reputable news sources like the BBC had a different tack to that intended by an interviewee, the blogosphere can provide a space for those important corrections! Equally, it's fantastic to see the inventor of the web using blogs to express his voice most clearly.

[Tags: timbernerslee | www | internet | theweb | blogging | blog | blogosphere]

Pie-chart humour!

2006-11-03T12:29:00.000+08:00

I never thought I'd write a post about pie-chart humour, but this is hilarious...

[Via Boing Boing]

[Tags: piechart | pacman | humour]

New RCCS Reviews

2006-11-02T18:10:00.000+08:00

In November's offerings from the Resource Centre for Cybercultural Studies I've got a book review of Viviane Serfaty's The Mirror and the Veil: An Overview of American Online Diaries and Blogs. This month also feature reviews by my friends Michele Willson from Curtin, looking at Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet; and Christy "Cross-Media Entertainment" Dena examining Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, an edited collection of McLuhan's unpublished work.

In fact, there are even more reviews than that posted this month, so why not take a minute and check out our thoughts on your potential reading!

[Tags: bookreviews]

UWA's MyResearchSpace & Best Blog Competition

2006-11-02T16:57:00.000+08:00

One of the more interesting projects I've been involved with this year has been the development of a blogging server and file storage and fora platform for UWA's graduate research students. The platform, playfully dubbed MyResearchSpace, is live and includes fora, blog and gallery tools, as well as 500Mb storage space for every research student (no more excuses for not backing up those chapters!). To promote MyResearchSpace, we've just announced a little competition as well:

Announcement of a prize for the most interesting blog on MyResearchSpace.

The Graduate Research School is pleased to announce that a prize will be awarded for the most interesting blog appearing on myResearchSpace. The blog that records the most reads and comments between now and the next Graduate Research Induction (March 2007) will receive a new model compact digital camera.

myResearchSpace is an online community set up by the Graduate Research School for UWA research candidates. It provides storage space (500MB) for your research files, a blog for a personal or research journal, forums for interest groups, news and more. If you are a research student at UWA, visit http://myresearchspace.grs.uwa.edu.au and join today.

I'm afraid the competition is only open to UWA graduate research students using MyResearchSpace as their blogging tool, but if that's you, get blogging!

Update: A few people have emailed me and pointed out that it looked to them as if I'd currently win the Most Interesting Blog competition. Let me reiterate: the Most Interesting Blog Competition is only open of current gradaute research students at UWA in the period November 2006 - March 2007. That means that my MyRS blog -- Tama Leaver's GRS Blog -- is not part of the competition. Nor are the following MyRS blogs which are run by GRS academics: Robyn Owen's Blog; The Ezone (also maintained by Robyn); Discourse on thesis supervision (by Michael Azariadis); Krys.Haq's Blog (by Krystina Haq); or the generic MyResearchSpace Blog. Nor, I should add, have we finalised which model of digital camera will be the prize. If you've got a suggestion, Robyn would love to hear from you here.

[Tags: myresearchspace | uwa | universityofwesternaustralia | grs | graduateresearchschool | competition | mostinterestingblog | blog]

Why I Blog

2006-10-27T23:39:00.000+08:00

Michael Benton has been organising a special issue of Reconstruction on “Theories/Practices of Blogging” and has asked far and wide for bloggers to write or contribute a post on why they blog. This is mine ...

Beginning and Motivations

As someone whose doctoral thesis examined many aspects of digital media, you might imagine that my motivation for beginning a blog was obvious: in 2003 even though there were, by most estimates, less than two million blogs they had already become an important part of the digital media landscape. However, my motivations were less academic and more personal, and I remember three things which led me to Blogger.com in May 2003: firstly, I'd recently been travelling and was a little frustrated with mass emails as a means of keeping in touch with friends and family; secondly, I'd just returned from an academic conference and heard a few people talk about their websites and I wanted my own; and thirdly, and this was the main motivator, a friend of mine had been blogging for a while and it looked really cool! Initially, I had no idea what Ponderance would turn in to; I just wanted a place to write and rant. Since then, blogging has become an integral part of my academic life and has had social impact, too (although, I must admit, I do try and stay away from blogging too much about really personal stuff).

As I write this in October 2006, I've been blogging here for over three years (with more than 850 posts); I maintain another blog which looks specifically at digital tools and pedagogy; and I see blogging as a key part of who I am. I'm sure I could write a great deal about why I blog, and some of it might even be interesting. However, as brevity is often seen as a key blogging trait, I'm going to mention three aspects of blogging have been important for me: blogs as part of my teaching; the unexpected connections that I've made; and the use of my blog as a personal archive.

Blogging in/as Teaching

In 2004 I was fortunate enough to run my first full undergraduate course, entitled Self.Net: Communicating Identity in the Digital Age. Given the topic it seemed sensible to have a practical component which actually entailed some sort of personal experience of online identity so I chose to create tutorial blogs and have students post some of their thoughts and responses to topics, as well as their webliographies (critical annotated bibliographies of online material). For the most part the experiment was a huge success., with students getting more of a chance to interact outside of tutorials and, quite importantly, to constructively and critically engage with each other's work and writing. Pedagogically, this meant students were getting more feedback from each other, not just their tutor or lecturer, and more feedback is always useful!

There were some compromises when the logistics of assessment and pragmatics of a semester-length span restricted some of the more organic parts of the blog experience, but as a first taste (for many) at the stage, most students indicated that they found blogging a useful and rewarding part of the course. Their positive comments were reinforced by an anonymous exit-survey in which 90% of students said they thought blogging was an "important and useful part of the course".

In 2005 I was also lucky to be asked to run an honours-level course in Communication Studies. The course I came up with, iGeneration: Digital Communication & Partcipatory Culture, was looking critically at the cutting edge of digital media and with a smaller class I again ran the course via a blog, but this time with everything blogged: the syllabus, the weekly readings, students assignments and their many reflections all appeared in the blog. The course was fairly small, and the intimacy of interactions in the face to face seminar quickly mapped onto long conversations and comments in the course blogs. Also, iGeneration was the first tertiary course to ask students to create podcasts as their major research project, and the outcomes were very impressive with everything from a 'podplay' in the style of a 1930s RKO radio play, through to an alternative audio commentary for a particular episode of The Simpsons. As the iGeneration course blog remains online today, the materials and assignments have a lifespan as public resources and media, contributing back to the participatory cultural spheres which we examined. Also, with the use of a Creative Commons license, the students and I were pleased to be able to put the entire course syllabus online via the blog, and explicitly indicate that any other students or academics who wish to use any or all of the course materials are more than welcome (and legally able) to do so. In teaching and learning terms, when used well I think blogs are an amazingly useful teaching platform (when mixed with face to face contact still, whenever possible), with the social lessons of participatory culture meaningfully informing scholarly ideas and practices about digital culture and online communication.

Unexpected Connections

In August 2005 I wrote a post called "Citizen Justice or Opening Pandora's Box?" which responded to a Boing Boing story about a young woman capturing an image of a flasher abusing her on the New York subway. While I was impressed by the victim's quick-thinking, I was concerned that after she posted the cameraphone image of the man flashing her onto Flickr, both other blogs and print newspapers ran with the story as if the man had already been charged and found guilty despite almost no involvement by police of the courts at that point. A few people left comments on my post and a few linked to it and I thought I'd had my say. Then, a couple of days latter, I got an email from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Robert Lee Hotz working for the Los Angeles Times. Hotz asked to interview me about my thoughts on the incident, which I happily agreed to, and in early September Hotz's piece "Camera Phones Give Flashers Unexpected Exposure" appeared in the print and online versions of the LA Times, complete with a quotation from me about the ethical issues this incident raised.

At that point I was still a postgraduate student and working and writing in Perth, Western Australia, which is a long way from LA or New York. On the basis of opinions and ideas expressed in my blog, my thoughts ended up in the LA Times a week after I'd expressed them in my blog. For me this was very real evidence that blogging made important connections and that blogging opened doors and made networks in entirely unexpected and unforeseen ways. Similarly, it meant that even though Perth (where I live) is the most isolated capital city in the world, when I'm blogging those geographic boundaries are easily overcome.

Blogging as Archiving

There is so much which takes place and is documented in various ways online, that keeping track is often a challenge. When you just want annotated links, then del.icio.us is your answer, but often I need more structure and context than the three lines of annotation which del.icio.us allows.

As an example, in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina there were hundreds of posts that I wanted to comment on and more that I wanted to archive. Instead of just building a bibliography, I doubled archiving with making my own opinions know and wrote a series of posts under the title "Katrina: The Aftermath, The Politics & Citizen Media" [I] [II] [III] [IV] [V]. Apart from allowing me to voice my concerns, these links have proven an extremely valuable archive as I have referred to Katrina and her impact on citizen media in both my academic writing and my teaching. Every time, I find myself back at those posts to get my references and to remind myself exactly how I reacted at the time.

Open Conclusions ...

These are but a few examples of why I blog. If anyone has any questions or comments, they are most welcome. The more I think about why I blog, the more complicated the answer becomes, so this post may very well end up being edited a few times and growing in the near future ...

[Tags: blogging | blogosphere | motivation | whyiblog | reconstruction | pedagogy | networks | archives]

NMC Online Conference on The Impact of Digital Media

2006-10-24T23:49:00.000+08:00

The NMC (New Media Consortium) Online Conference on The Impact of Digital Media takes place across the next two days. From the look of the abstracts, the conference has a number of great papers as well as keynotes by two outstanding digital media thinkers, Howard Rheingold and danah boyd (the full conference programme is here). I'm giving what they're calling a poster presentation -- which is really uploading slides and a paper and allowing conference participants to make comments asynchronously, as opposed to the live video-chat full papers. My presentation is called "Student Podcasting and Participatory Pedagogies", with this abstract:

In the past two years podcasting has found a home in university teaching and learning but has primarily replicated the top-down delivery of lectures in the form of "coursecasts" or "profcasts." However, this poster will explore the more dynamic and creative possibilities unleashed when students create and distribute their own podcasts as part of the learning experience. Tama Leaver will extrapolate from an honours course entitled iGeneration in which students created podcasts as their major assignments and argue that student podcasting combines the best attributes of social software and pedagogical practice to enhance student engagement in participatory culture and vastly improve digital literacy.

The paper is quite similar to the iPodium paper I gave at AoIR 7.0 last month and I think after the discussions during this conference it'll be time to finally write up the full version and get the paper published.

I'm quite excited about being involved in a fully online conference and being able to chat to some really interesting and innovative people, but there is one minor hitch: since I'm in a GMT+8 timezone, "Tuesday's" live events occur between 12am and 6.30am Wednesday morning my time, while "Wednesday's" events occur between 11pm Wednesday and 5am Thursday. Thankfully, there is a recorded archive of each paper after it's given, but I would really like the chance to interact as much as possible. I have the feeling I'll make in until 2am tonight -- until the end of Howard Rheingold's session -- and then maybe I'll get up before 4am Thursday morning and hear danah boyd's keynote on "Networked Publics: Youth Socialization on MySpace New".

The only downside to the conference is that it's a paid event, so the exciting sessions are only open to conference participants.

Perhaps I should have gotten more organised and participated in the NMC symposium that ran inside Second Life, held in the lead up to the full conference. Recordings of all the Second Life events are available and can be found here. For more on the experience of the Second Life events, check out Christy Dena's account of her in-world talk (and check out the podcast of her talk, too).

Okay, it's almost midnight (and thus almost 9am in California) so I'm off to log into the conference ...

Update:

Howard Rheingold's keynote "The Pedagogy of Civic Participation" is currently underway, but for those not logged into the conference, Howard gave the talk in the Second Life symposium the other day and you can hear the podcast here. [Via Smartmobs]

[Tags: nmc | digitalmedia | conference | danahboyd | howardrheingold | studentpodcasting | pedagogy]

WiPods ... almost here?

2006-10-19T15:03:00.000+08:00

WiPod?
Is that a wireless iPod or a widescreen iPod?
Why not both?

According to the folks at Engadget Steve Jobs might just be announcing the biggest upgrade to the iPod family since colour screens ... a wireless, wide-screen, touch-screen Video iPod. (More details at Trusted Reviews.)

Of course, if Apple doesn't think a little smarter about PR then all the product innovation in the world won't help! (That said, if the WiPod comes about before Zune, Microsoft have an even steeper uphill battle on their hands!)

[Tags: ipod | videoipod | wireless | wifi | widescreen | touchscreen | apple | stevejobs]

Real Beauty Vs Photoshop (or: An Important Video for Young People)

2006-10-16T18:38:00.000+08:00

As part of Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" they've produced a very evocative (swf) video of the many stages -- both of makeup and then photoshop -- which transforms a real person into a glam magazine covergirl. I think this video certainly has a role in helping young people have a healthier body image and keep in mind how manipulation occurs to most 'photographs' today. The Dove video also works well alongside the Flash ReTouch demonstration I blogged about last year which interactively illustrates how much photoshopping happens to most magazine models, looking at each 'step' of manipulation.

danah boyd clearly found the video powerful, and had this to say:

I will never forget the first time that i did a magazine shoot. It was for a glossy girls magazine and they dyed, curled, teased, plucked, shoved, stretched, and pinned me into a perfect static place. And then they airbrushed me to normalcy cuz i refused to cut off my raver neckless and my hair was purple. (Business mag shoots have always been a bit more civil.) During a bathroom break, i wandered the halls and found a Playboy shoot where i saw how unhappy the model was trying to sit perfectly still as wind was blown on her to keep her nipples perky. The plastic face looked perfect but her eyes showed how miserable she was.

This video depicts that process in the most compelling way i've ever seen. I'm not saying makeup is bad, but i think that it's critical to understand what we're modeling ourselves after. Girl power is a crafted narrative meant to make us consume. The images of perfection we're sold are a fabrication. Most of us know this at some level, but do we really get it?

danah also posted the video to YouTube for ease of access ...

Perhaps the strongest testament to the impact of this video Jill's perspective as a mother of a young girl: "I’m definitely showing this video to my daughter."

[Via Boing Boing]

[Tags: bodyimage | photoshop | manipulation | representation | gender | realbeauty]

Links for Podcasting 101

2006-10-12T15:22:00.000+08:00

These are the links which accompanied my seminar on podcasting for the team at FTI.

Examples:
* Daily Source Code (Adam Curry)
* Battlestar Galactica Podcasts (Symbiotic audio)
* The Combat Information Center (Fan podcast)
* ABC Radio National Podcasts (Time-shifted radio)

Tools:
* Everyone: Audacity
* Mac: Garageband
* PC: Podcast Station
* Online: Odeo
* Microphones (or Mic Plugins like MicroMemo)

(Hosting? Free: OurMedia; or own/paid hosting.)

Blogs/RSS (RSS2.0! Enclosure Tags)
* Blogger + Feedburner (ATOM to RSS2.0)
* Wordpress

Re-distributable Music & Sounds:
* CCMixter
* Podsafe Music Network
* Internet Archive

Legal:
* Creative Commons ("Some Rights Reserved")
* CC Podcasting Legal Guide

Videoblogging/Vlogs:
* FreeVlog: "A step-by-step guide to setting up a videoblog for free."
* OurMedia Learning Centre: Video Section
* vlog 3.0 [a blog about vogs] (by Adrian Miles, probably the world's foremost vlog theorist).

iPodium: Student Podcasting and Participatory Pedagogies

2006-10-02T12:04:00.000+08:00

I'm back in Perth after spending most of last week at the Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences conference which was held by the Association of Internet Researchers. It was a great conference and I heard some thought-provoking papers (which I'll write more about in a day or two when time permits). The "Participatory Pedagogies: Convergence and the Extended Blogosphere" panel I was part of when well despite James Farmer sadly being unable to contribute as originally planned. Adrian Miles and I ended up with a whole panel which actually worked pretty well since his paper, "Networked Knowledge Objects (videographic pedagogy for new knowledges)", and mine shared a lot of ground, with my focus on podcasting and audio, and his on video more broadly. Partially to record the event, and partially to test the new Belkin TuneTalk microphone for my iPod, I've created an mp3 recording of my talk. I'll be writing up the paper on which the talk was based, but as I'll be making some changes based on feedback at the conference, that'll probably take a little to appear. For those interested, for now feel free to listen to a recording of my talk along with the powerpoint slides ...

Abstract:
The term podcasting is a combination of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ and describes type of syndicated digital audio that results in automatically downloadable files which are playable in portable media devices, such as (but not limited to) the iPod. Podcasting has proven extremely popular in the last year and a half, with many online citizens creating their own regular online audio shows. Australian universities have been making lectures available as streaming audio for some years now, but with learners anchored to a computer in order to listen. Podcasting has also allowed students to take lectures and other audio wherever they go, but this ‘coursecasting’ or ‘profcasting’ model still relies on the top-down structure of lectures as academic content for student’s to consume. However, in The University of Western Australia’s Communication Studies course, in an honours-level unit ‘iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture’ the tables have been turned somewhat and students are also podcasting in the tertiary setting. For their major assignments, students were asked to create an innovative audio podcast which engaged with the notion of participatory culture and the results ranged from a ‘pod play’ in the style 1930s RKO radio theatre to an alternative commentary for a Simpsons episode focusing on consumer culture and intertextuality. These podcasts are also cultural output themselves – they will remain downloadable indefinitely, allowing students to use them in future ePortfolios and also providing a resource (or entertainment) for others. Moreover, the same system which enables the creation of streaming and podcasted lectures, the iLecture or Lectopia system, is also been used to host and deliver student podcasts; in effect, students are stepping up to their own iPodium. With student’s having an opportunity utilise the iPodium, student podcasting acts as something of a leveling process, allowing two-way street for teaching and learning.

Extrapolating from the iGeneration experience, this paper argues that student podcasting can be usefully situated as part of a broader range of emerging participatory pedagogies wherein the socially-emergent tools and modes of participatory culture allow a more meaningful traffic between tertiary settings and the broader community. For students, podcasting can be far more than a content-delivery mechanism; it can be part of their ongoing participation in knowledge communities in both tertiary settings and beyond. Student podcasting also levels the playing field in relation to ideas of content-creation and can be part of the processes of helping learners develop the tools of cultural interaction, not just consumption, which are increasingly an essential part of digital literacy. This paper also focuses on student podcasting as something which can easily take place without reliance on institutional infrastructures. As such, student podcasting blurs the boundaries of formal educational settings and points to digitally enabled learning and teaching modes which link educational and social spaces via a nexus of creation, discussion and interaction enabled by digital tools and technologies.

The presentation: mp3 recording (with many other formats available); and the powerpoint slides.

The podcast and powerpoint slides are hosted by the Internet Archive using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Feedback is most welcome!

[Tags: aoir2006 | ipodium | podcast | studentengagement | socialsoftware | participatoryculture | learning]

iPhinisheD with Apple stylings!

2006-09-26T14:43:00.000+08:00

Since I started writing my doctoral thesis in the same year that the iPod first emerged, you would be right to imagine I've wanted to star in this little photoshop effort for some time ...

(Yes, that's me! Also, I promise this is the final mention of my recent graduation!)

[Tags: ipod | photoshop | iphinished | graduation | phd | uwa]

The Origins and Birthday of Podcasting

2006-09-24T16:00:00.000+08:00

According to Dave Winer, yesterday (23rd Sept) was the third birthday of podcasting in form, if not in name. Getting the exact 'origin' of podcasting (as a name or a form) is hard to be precise about, not least of all because the two people most commonly thought to be responsible for parenting podcasting -- Winer and self-anointed 'podfather' Adam Curry -- had a fairly major and quite public falling out (and have very different visions of the role and future of podcasts). Even Robert Scoble thinks he might have gotten it wrong in Naked Conversations.

Perth tech-guru Richard Giles recently mentioned that he was commissioned to write a longer book on podcasting, which was trimmed by the editors down to the Podcasting Pocket Guide. The unused segments have now returned to Richard's control, and he's just blogged the previously unpublished first chapter in three parts at Clique. The first part ends thus:

Over the years broadcasting has become a complicated and expensive business, with government restrictions, industry politics, large license fees, and expensive broadcasting equipment. Podcasting on the other hand is cheap; comparatively the cost is minuscule. There are no legislations that govern a podcaster, other than copyright, and for these reasons alone podcasting is a fascinating and fast paced medium.

Richard's done a great job at capturing that first year when podcasting really hit the scene (September 2004 - 2005) and if you're interested, I recommend Richard's version of the tale: part 1; part 2; part 3.

[Tags: davewiner | adamcurry | podcast | birthday | origins]

My Graduation

2006-09-21T12:39:00.000+08:00

Click to Play

After almost five years of writing, I completed my PhD earlier this year. Tuesday night (19 Sept) was my graduation and thanks to Jen and Emily I can share those 20 seconds of fame (or thereabouts) with the world (or, at least, the five or so people who might be interested)!

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv)

You can also see a few photos of my fellow graduates and I here in Flickr.

[Tags: uwa | phd | graduation | australia | perth]

Lonelygirl15 - The story so far ...

2006-09-14T21:09:00.000+08:00

If you've been anywhere near a blog or YouTube or MySpace in the last week, you've heard a lot about LonelyGirl15.

On the off chance you've not been paying attention, LonelyGirl15 is a videoblogging phenomenon which centres around a young girl named 'Bree' and her friend 'Daniel', both of whom post videos at YouTube. Bree's posts are creative, funny and also feature something of a bizzare backstory featuring some sort of strong religious beliefs (or, as many speculated, satan worship!) but the core is the almost-relationship and almost-romance between Bree and Daniel. However, the story was a little too good; the lighting and production values a little too high (even though there was jump-cut editing, shaky camera movement when outside and so forth for realism value) and many people started to suspect LonelyGirl15 (or LG15 for short) was actually a new form of media narrative emerging via videoblogging. Investigations and speculation about LG15 stretched from blogs to The New York Times to the extent that the search could actually be called a global media event.

As danah boyd notes, when the mystery reached a certain peak, rather than get 'uncovered', on September 7, 'The Creators' made this post to the LonelyGirl15 forum:

To Our Incredible Fans,

Thank you so much for enjoying our show so far. We are amazed by the overwhelmingly positive response to our videos; it has exceeded our wildest expectations. With your help we believe we are witnessing the birth of a new art form. Our intention from the outset has been to tell a story-- A story that could only be told using the medium of video blogs and the distribution power of the internet. A story that is interactive and constantly evolving with the audience.

Right now, the biggest mystery of Lonelygirl15 is "who is she?" We think this is an oversimplification. Lonelygirl15 is a reflection of everyone. She is no more real or fictitious than the portions of our personalities that we choose to show (or hide) when we interact with the people around us. Regardless, there are deeper mysteries buried within the plot, dialogue, and background of the Lonelygirl15 videos, and many of our tireless and dedicated fans have unearthed some of these. There are many more to come.

To enhance the community experience of Lonelygirl15, which you have already helped to create, we are in the process of building a website centered around video and interactivity. This website will allow everyone to enjoy the full potential of this new medium. Unfortunately, we aren't programmers. We are filmmakers. We are working furiously to complete the website, and hope to have it up and running shortly.

So, sit tight. You are the only reason for our success, and we appreciate your devotion. We want you to know that we aren't a big corporation. We are just like you. A few people who love good stories. We hope that you will join us in the continuing story of Lonelygirl15, and help us usher in an era of interactive storytelling where the line between "fan" and "star" has been removed, and dedicated fans like yourselves are paid for their efforts. This is an incredible time for the creator inside all of us.

These revelations sent YouTube, bloggers and the web-savvy media into something of a frenzy. YouTube video responses, such as those from bravesgirl5 and renetto, expressed dismay the Bree wasn't real; there was a vitriolic outpouring about how the Creators had misled the YouTubers and the wider web with a huge hoax (although renetto seems to be 'gaming' the YouTube communities as much as the LG15 creators!).

Given all the discussion and speculation about the fact that LG15 might be a media creation rather than a 'real' authentic home-schooled 16-year old, I've been amazed at how hurt, upset and, sometimes, nasty commentators have been since LG15 was outed as produced media (especially in the YouTube communities and blogs). However, Jill Walker points out that these feelings make perfect sense if you think of YouTube as social space where videobloggers interact with each other presuming a certain veracity which enables meaningful connections between vloggers. In a follow-up post, Jill points out that it might not even be the question of truth that angered YouTubers, but the sense that their community spaces were being invaded by produced media:

perhaps it's not just that lonelygirl's fans are upset that "she" was cheating by being a professional pretending to be an amateur like them - you could also read her fan's fury at her fictionality as an anger at a commodification of their social space for self-expression.

Perhaps that sense of a community or space being invaded explains why YouTube has had so many emotionally uneven 'exposed!' videos since Silicon Valley Watcher Matt Foremski uncovered the identity of the actress playing Bree: New Zealander Jessica Rose (NB: no, I don't think that's actually Jessica Rose's blog, simply one with a lot of pictures of her in it!).

Indeed, the creation of LG15 has been even further revealed with stories in the LA Times and NY Times featuring the three producers behind the phenomenon. For the NY Times, 'The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn't':

The discovery and the swift and subsequent revelation of other details surrounding the perpetrators of the videos and the fake fan site that accompanied it are bringing to an end one of the Internet's more elaborately constructed mysteries. The fans' disbelief in Lonelygirl15 was not willingly suspended, but rather teased and toyed with. Whether they will embrace the project as a new narrative form, condemn it or simply walk away remains to be seen. The masterminds of the Lonelygirl15 videos are Ramesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, Calif., and Miles Beckett, a doctor turned filmmaker. The high quality of the videos caused many users to suspect a script and production crew, but Bree's bedroom scenes were shot in Mr. Flinders's home, in his actual bedroom, typically using nothing more than a Logitech QuickCam, a Web camera that retails for about $150. Together with Grant Steinfeld, a software engineer in San Francisco, Mr. Flinders contrived to produce and distribute the videos to pique maximum curiosity about them.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the LG15 narrative ends now that it's clearly and plainly fictional; will fans interact beyond abusive comments on YouTube videos? That very question is actually one which Jane McGonigal has pushed even further. Jane has been behind some of the most impressive immersive alternative reality gaming experiences, so her thoughts about the over-reported sense of community in YouTube are definitely worth taking into account:

Today and yesterday I spent a lot of time reading through pretty much every single comment left on the lonelygirl videos, the space where the audience was purportedly invited to help decide and direct the course of the narrative. I would encourage anyone else interested in the currently much praised and hyped lonelygirl "community" to do the same. A great hub for doing this is here.

As the statistics on this traffic counter show, each lonelygirl video has roughly 1000-4000 comments, nearly all of them left before the puppet masters were unmasked. And I have to say this: the level of hate, mean-spiritendess, crudeness and often downright misogeny of the majority of them is impossible to ignore.

As we talk about the 'new art form' or 'participatory culture' aspects of this project, I want to be very careful that we don't fetishize the participation aspects of this experience that was had by a very few who may have intelligently, passionately and seriously investigated and responded to the texts and the media objects.

Some of the examples Jane cites of the comments that were made before LG15 was 'outed' make it plain that YouTube isn't often a 'community' fueled by meaningful conversation and deep connections! Indeed, a lot of the people who engaged most meaningfully with uncovering and exploring the extent of LG15 may not have been part of the YouTube community in any substantial sense at all. It's worth noting that the so-called "hater's" of YouTube have driven other 'real' vloggers away as well.

On something of a tangent, science fiction author William Gibson noted some parallels between the lonelygirl15 phenomenon and 'the footage' which he wrote about in the novel Pattern Recognition. If you've not read the novel, you should. For those who have, LG15 certainly doesn't share the aesthetic or intent behind the footage, but the insight into how powerful the social and cultural connections made by those hunting for the footage is perhaps the most interesting point of comparison. The Fetish:Footage:Forum strikes me as a macrocosm of YouTube--or the meaningful sense of community we'd like to think occurs for YouTubers--and the related discussion/investigation of social media. That said I don't think Gibson's work is exactly a template for LG15 and I completely agree with Jane McGonigal's point made in the comments of danah boyd's post:

Hey anyone remembers William Gibson's Pattern Recognition? Whoever the 'artists', they are just ripping off Gibson's idea from the novel. And I am surprised that neither Boyd nor the comments make mention of it. Ignorance, or deliberate holding back of information, Ms Boyd?
[Posted by: Abu H Mallick at September 8, 2006 03:53 AM]

I'd hardly say that this project was ripping off Gibson's Pattern Recognition. For starters, Pattern Recongition was drawing largely on existing alternate reality game culture in describing the film strip mystery. Gibson didn't invent a fictional entertainment form that Lonelygirl brought to life-- Gibson was writing about and from interviews I've read directly inspired by the real-world emerging entertainment forms, like the ARG phenomenon. Indeed, the straightforward narrative videos of lonelygirl bear little in common with the completely deconstructed and inscrutable Pattern Recognition blips and stills. So it seems of little use to say that lonelygirl is derived largely from Gibson's concept, when it clearly has a very different aesthetic and moreover is definitely bubbling up out of a larger, immersive, distributed storytelling culture that goes far beyond and deeper than Gibson's fictive game.
[Posted by: Jane MCGonigal at September 8, 2006 07:08 AM]

I suspect that the story of LG15 is far from over, but as I said yesterday, I do think Bree's narrative has jumped the shark. One of the most interesting questions remains, what else might emerge from the ashes of LG15 and how will YouTubers, and others, react?

Personally, I think people may be more critical and wary of videoblogs, but that sense of scrutiny is definitely a healthy thing!

[Tags: lonelygirl15 | LG15 | bree | jessicarose | youtube | community | ethics | commodification]

Lonelygirl15 Jumps The Shark ... but Jessica Rose has a promising future career!

2006-09-13T17:26:00.000+08:00

The vlogging phenomenon, Lonelygirl15, has been a media project featuring actress Jesscia Rose. Of course, how could you talk about a YouTube event without ... a video.

There's a lot to write about this but I don't have time right now so read The Age article "Lonelygirl: a Rose by any other name" and I'll be posting my thoughts on all things Lonelygirl15 in the next day or two...

[Tags: lonelygirl15 | youtube | vlog | jumptheshark | ethics | jessicarose]

XTremeMac MicroMemo 5G Video iPod Microphone Evaluation

2006-09-11T19:04:00.000+08:00

Way back in November last year I got excited about the prospect of the increased recording quality allowed by the software in the (then) new 5G Video iPods. With three different microphone plugins fairly quickly announced, but more than half a year later, Belkin's page for the TuneTalk Stereo has been up for months, but still displays the disclaimer "Coming soon. Please check back for updates on availability", while Griffin Technology haven't even got an official page yet for their upcoming iTalkPro. Thankfully, the first microphone plugin to hit the market, the XtremeMac MicroMemo has arrived!

At first glance this is actually a pretty impressive little device. The MicroMemo plugs straight into the iPod Video (5G) with no fuss, and instantly the record menu pops up. There are two quality settings (16-bit audio at 22 kHz and 44 kHz) which can easily be toggled between and recording starts at the press of a button. Unlike past iPod mics, the MicroMemo has a microphone on a flexible lead, so it can be positioned easily for recording either one person or two in an interview setting (although, it should be noted, the recordings are not in stereo). The MicroMemo also has a switch to allow you to record line-in from any mini-jack (the bundled microphone can be unplugged, unlike the design of the iTalkPro or the TuneTalk). There is also an embedded speaker that's by no means loud, but is adequate to check that your recordings are working properly (this can be toggled on or off by holding how the single button on the front of the device). Even though it records in uncompressed WAV, with a 30Gb iPod as the lowest usable size, you can record more than the average interview (and far longer in low quality). The only major drawback is that the while recording the iPod's harddrive continuously spins, so the battery life is only a few hours for continuous recording (and, annoyingly, you can't charge while using the MicroMemo). That said, in usability terms, it's pretty smoothly designed and straight-forward to use.

In order to check the quality of the recordings, I conducted four tests of the MicroMemo with the microphone very close to my face (about 10 -15cm away) and also with the mic about 50cm away (which is the more likely distance if it was on a desk during an interview or similar circumstances). I recorded for roughly thirty seconds at both distances on the High Quality setting and the Low Quality. You can judge with your own ears, as I've posted these four tests, completely unedited (in their original recorded WAV formats) here:

[1] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - Low Quality - Close to Face (1.5Mb)

[2] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - Low Quality - Mic 50cm from Face (1.4 MB)

[3] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - High Quality - Mic Close to Face (6.1 MB)

[4] MicroMemo Audio Quality Test - High Quality - Mic 50cm from Face (5.9 MB)

While there was a notable difference in the volume moving the MicroMemo away even to 50cm, a quick tweak with Audacity or any other audio editor to increase the volume finds pretty decent sound quality. The low quality is a lot smaller in size, but more than adequate for playback and for most podcasting recording (unless working to professional production values). For more detailed tests of the MicroMemo, check out reviews at both iLoungeand The iPod Observer.

In a nutshell, I wanted to know if the MicroMemo would be a useful device for student podcasts, recording interviews and other audio production citizen media rather than professional media in nature. I think the MicroMemo is more than up the the task and I hope with all the iPod projects going on in universities across the world, this little plugin will make student podcasts (not just lecture recordings or coursecasts!) a more sizable part of university curricula.

My only major gripe is that the MicroMemo can't record directly to a compressed format like mp3 - that functionality would really make this device ideal!

[Cross-posted from my eLearning blog.]

[Tags: xtrememac | micromemo | ipod | 5g | microphone | plugin | evaulation]

The Battlestar Galactica Webisodes & The Tyranny of Digital Distance

2006-09-11T00:24:00.000+08:00

The Battlestar Galactica Webisodes ...

The television series Battlestar Galactica, re-imagined for the twenty-first century, has consistently been at the cutting edge of television and cross-media, with executive producer Ronald D. Moore and the Battlestar team utilising not just blogs and production-side videoblogs, but also episodic commentary podcasts, making deleted scenes available online, putting up two full episodes free for viewing online and was one of the first shows available via iTunes. So it should be no surprise that the latest Battlestar-related venture is pushing the boundaries of television as we conventionally know it (and, no, I don't mean the inevitable spin-off series Caprica). The Sci-Fi channel is currently releasing two 'webisodes' per week until the US launch of season three of BSG on October 6th. As Moore mentions in his blog:

We're very excited about the Webisodes and I think they're unlike anything anyone has done in this arena to date, so I hope you'll all take a moment to check them out. It's important to know that these Webisodes weren't done haphazardly or on the fly in between takes of the regular show. They had to be written, produced, shot and edited by a very specific group of people.

While SF fans might point out that the latest Doctor Who series was accompanied by the Tardisodes, these 30-second teasers may have contained original footage related to upcoming episodes, but they were exclusively targeted to mobile phone users ~~as a paid service~~ who had to pay mobile phone fees, even if the BBC didn't charge for the Tardisodes themselves. There were Real video versions released online, but these were of extremely poor quality and clearly illustrated that the media was created and intended primarily for small-screen portable media devices.

The BSG webisodes set a higher target, with the ten segments culminating in almost a full thirty minutes of original media or the best part of an original episode of one of the best written and produced shows currently being made. An article in the The New York Times, "Sci Fi Creates 'Webisodes' to Lure Viewers to TV", describes the webisodes thus:

The 10 Web segments, each just a few minutes long ... feature characters from the television show. And they have the same dark feel of broadcast episodes of "Galactica," a post-apocalyptic survival tale of humans on the run after their home planets have been destroyed. The mini-episodes will go online, one at a time, on Tuesday and Thursday nights until "Galactica's" season premiere on Oct. 6. ... These Web segments are a bit of a gamble. Sci Fi executives are betting that people who are only glancingly familiar with the series - whose story line may be too complicated to follow for those who don't know what happened in the first two seasons - will be able to follow the story told online.

"It was challenging on several levels," said Erik Storey, vice president of programming at Sci Fi. "Each of the Webisode chapters had to be close-ended, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and each of those chapters is going to be three minutes, four minutes. And there had to be a little cliffhanger ending for each one." ... The "Galactica" segments are part of a broader effort by NBC Universal, which owns Sci Fi, to make new, original video and audio material - content - available on the Internet. David Eick, an executive producer, has a video-blog, or vlog, that shows steps in the making of the show, and another executive producer, Ronald D. Moore, keeps a blog and prepares a weekly podcast designed to be listened to while watching the show. Sci Fi also has also posted podcasts of writers' meetings to hash out the plots of episodes of the television series and made it possible to watch entire episodes online. Mr. Howe, executive vice president and general manager of Sci Fi, said the network plans to augment online offerings for other shows in the future too.

The channel bills the Web segments move as a promotion to drum up interest in the third season of the series. "This is a way to get people talking about the show a month before it airs," said Craig E. Engler, general manager of SciFi.com.

The webisodes appear each Tuesday and Thursday on the Sci-Fi channel website. However, they only appear for people using computers inside the United States with a US ISP (or internet address)!

... and the Tyranny of Digital Distance

Clearly NBC Universal have elected to try and generate fan interest in BSG's third season premiere, but have decided to limit the webisodes to that segment of the internet nominally American (and only US, not Canadian, as pointed out by D'Arcy Norman). To some extent this might appear to make sense to the studio executives financing BSG since the release dates for season three will be later in other countries.

However, what they really seem to be failing to notice is that the very large and thriving fan communities built up around Battlestar (and similar shows) are global in nature. There may be arcane big media arrangements that mean the third season will debut later in the UK and later again (if ever!) in Australia, but the buzz about BSG, the communities which actively discuss and to some extent participate in the show (a sense heightened by Ron Moore's podcasts) and thus the interest is spread far further than the national boundaries of the US (or the ISPs located therein). By barring large segments of the BSG fan communities from seeing the webisodes is tantamount to a slap in the face to the very loyal fans in other countries who not only watch the series, but buy the DVDs, comics, soundtracks and other offshoots from the BSG franchise.

More to the point, denying the international fan communities (and others) access to the webisodes simply provokes the collective intelligence of knowledge communities in getting around such arbitrary (and difficult to maintain) restrictions in an age of digital distribution. Hours after its release, the first webisode appeared on YouTube, but have since been removed displaying this notice: "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner NBC Universal because its content was used without permission." Less easy to police, each webisode is also rapidly appearing on filesharing networks and as bittorrent downloads. Rather than providing that little extra sense of community and loyalty to the show, the decision to restrict the webisodes to the US has those international fans who might not have been using peer-to-peer networks now turning to them in order to get content which is supposedly free!

Last year I suggested the term "the tyranny of digital distance" when talking about the oddity a number of geographically-based distribution decisions in the face of the potential for high-speed digital distribution. I cited Ron Moore's commentary podcasts as an example since I could get the podcasts within minutes of their release but had to legally wait almost a year for the episodes which accompanied them to appear on Australian television. I further described the tyranny of digital distance thus:

In the late 1960s, conservative Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey coined the term "the tyranny of distance" to describe how the geographic gap between Australia and the centres of the Western world (US, UK) played a fundamental role is shaping the Australian psyche and character. Fast forward thirty something years into the future, the world is widely considered a global village; the web, email and a million other applications have made realtime information-heavy communication and commerce the expected norm. Today, however, the event of the last few days have given me pause enough to think about what we might consider the tyranny of digital distance insomuch as the potential and, indeed, expectation of synchronous global culture (at least for English-speaking countries) leads to a constant state of delay and annoyance when the promise isn't met. ...

The tyranny of distance was geographic with cultural effects. The tyranny of digital distance occurs when the geographic has been by and large supplanted by the digital, but the age-old national boundaries to legal media distribution will very soon lead to more and more people circumventing those legal limits unless big media admits that dividing the pie up in terms of national licenses (or the ridiculous DVD region zones) no longer makes sense when information is moving at the speed of light!

I think the webisodes illustrate this point even more clearly, since an arbitrary decision by NBC Universal studio executives has suddenly made Australian and other BSG fans feel ostracized from the officially recognised BSG fan community. Thankfully, fans themselves will always find a way if studios won't. However, the Battlestar Galactica team have often shown insight when respectfully dealing with fans everywhere so it would do NBC Universal well to listen to Moore and the show's creative team and let the fans everywhere enjoy the webisodes, reinforcing an international sense of shared media fandom rather than the tyranny of digital distance.

Anecdotal Update: The Blogcritics.org re-post of this post seems to have been well dugg!

[Tags: battlestargalactica | bsg | webisodes | crossmedia | digitalmedia | tyrannyofdigitaldistance]

What if the Whedonverse really was just one 'verse?

2006-09-09T15:22:00.000+08:00

YouTube and similar services are overflowing with fan mashups, trailers for films never made, machinima (both clever and decidedly not) but today Whedonesque pointed out a mashup trailer I'd think every Buffy, Angel and Firefly/Serenity fan will enjoy. What if the Whedonverse really were one 'verse? What if River was potential Slayer, unlocked by Willow's magic? What if Angel Investigations had to take her out but Spike and Buffy were in their way? Without further ado, The Buffy/Angel/Serenity Movie Trailer ...

The mashup trailer is by Holly Gilmore.

[Tags: buffy | angel | firefly | serenity | river | josswhedon | whedonverse | mashup | trailer]

Tracking the MySpace Generation

2006-08-29T14:50:00.000+08:00

The LA Times recently ran a fabulously detailed series called "Tracking the MySpace Generation" which is based on results of a wide-ranging survey of teenagers and young adults in California. Given recent debates and myths about social networking, the demise of cinema (or, at least, the multiplex), the rise of mobile content and the legalities and practicalities of digital media, I think this series of reports has a lot of interesting information. A few things which stood out for me ...

About half of young adults and 4 in 10 teenagers said they were uninterested in watching television shows or movies on computers, cellphones or hand-held devices such as video iPods. [Source]

Which leaves over 50% of teenagers who are happy watching portable context on teeny-weeny screens! That's a huge potential audience/market.

Despite the widespread belief that a sizable number of young people get their news from satirical programs such as Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” just 3% of teenagers and 6% of young adults surveyed said that’s how they found out about current events. [Source]

I'd be horrified to think The Daily Show was the main source of news about current affairs, but I do wonder how many people found it assisted them in understanding politics.

Myth: Kids run rampant on the Internet, evading the supervision of their parents, who are too old to figure out what their children are up to.
Truth: Nearly 7 in 10 of 12- to 17-year-olds said their parents knew how they spent their time online. Nearly 3 out of 5 12- to 14-year-olds said their parents restricted what they could download. About a third of boys and girls ages 12 to 14 are not allowed to go on social networking sites such as MySpace.com. Only 19% of boys and 13% of girls reported having no parental restrictions on computer use. [Source]

Given my last post about MySpace, DOPA and Australia, I was extremely heartened that so many of the iGeneration (or Net Generation, or MySpace Genration or whatever overdetermined generational tag you prefer) are being schooled about social networking by their parents. :)

Also fascinating was this chart comparing of what young Americans find offensive, broken down via gender and age (uses Flash).

[Via Henry Jenkins]

[Tags: myspace | youth | dopa | igeneration | copyright | digitalmedia | myths]

STM on MySpace, DOPA and Australia

2006-08-27T22:13:00.000+08:00

As Hourann mentions, there was an article in today's Sunday Times Magazine (STM) by Pete Kempshall looking at the growth and successful strategies of MySpace, particularly in Australia. I was interviewed for this piece and quoted fairly extensively. Although MySpace owners New Corp also own the Sunday Times, I think the piece was pretty balanced. I was particularly pleased that the article presented an opportunity to talk about issues of youth privacy, safe myspacing and DOPA -- the misguided US Deleting Online Predators Act -- before any such legislation is put on the table in Australia. (If you're unfamiliar with DOPA, check out danah boyd and Henry Jenkins' thoughts on the many problems with the act .) Sadly, the STM Magazine doesn't put its articles online (a point there for the citizen-journalism driven PerthNorg over News Corp-owned PerthNow). However, I've scanned an image of the 'breakout box' which looks at DOPA and thought I'd post it here:

To read the text clearly, you may just need to look at the large-sized image.

If anyone has any thoughts about the future of MySpace in Australia, and whether the Australian government might be looking into a DOPA-like arrangement, I'd be interested to hear your comments.

[Tags: australia | myspace | stm | sundaytimesmagazine | dopa | youth]

Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog - Documentary

2006-08-21T13:51:00.000+08:00

I've just watched "Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog" which is a pithy 15-minute introduction to a number of the issues relating to citizen journalism, blogs and vlogging. It was created at Cambridge Community Television for a class project on documentary making, by the following team: Jason Crow, Shaun Clarke, Darcie Deangelo, Amy Mertl, Buz Owen, Jason Ong, Matt Landry, and Mayana Leocadio. They've released their doco using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so others are free to view it so long as they give credit and don't make money off the screening. Having recently given a lecture on blogging and citizen journalism, I think this is a great resource. Take a look:

I'm also impressed with the general structure, services and layout of BlipTV who are hosting the doco file in various formats. The creators of the doco actually used BlipTV to post online early recordings and a rough-cut of their piece, which is really useful for others to see how the process of editing a doco works. A great teaching tool and a nice little doco.

[Tags: citizenjournalism | citizenmedia | participatoryculture | vlogs | bliptv | blogs]

[Via SmartMobs]

AFTRS WA Viral Marketing/Podcasting/Mobile Content Seminars

2006-08-21T12:00:00.000+08:00

This upcoming AFTRS event may be of interest of WA folk, espcially media/communications students ...

Keren Flavell is one of this country's leaders in new forms of digital marketing and mobile content production.

She is an award-winning producer with over 12 years experience in interactive media production, documentary, radio and print, taking projects from conception through to production to sales and distribution.

Keren will present 3 events (One of which is free) at the WA Innovation Centre

1 Viral Marketing - What it is & How to get started. (Friday Sept. 8th-6pm to 8pm ) FREE

2 Podcasting: new technologies of digital distribution (Saturday Sept. 9th, 9.30am to1pm )

3 Developing Content for Mobile Phones (Saturday September 9th, 2pm to 5.30pm)

DETAILS

1 Viral Marketing - What it is & How to get started?
Friday September 8th-6pm to 8pm
Networking opportunity after.
THIS IS A FREE EVENT

There has always been Word of Mouth to spread ideas and information. But now Word of Mouth has become turbo charged.

People are spending more time online, building identities and global communities. The question is "how can you harness the vastness of these connections to so many people, and turn them into commercial opportunities?"

This AFTRS Strategic Lecture will explain what Viral Marketing is, and the outline the key advantages of viral marketing over traditional marketing. The lecture will include a study of a variety of case studies. Hear what the key success factors are that make things viral.

Come along to this FREE AFTRS event.
* To understand the definition and varieties of viral marketing campaigns
* To understand the key success factors that contribute to the success or failure of a campaign
* To be able to seed a viral campaign to ensure it spreads rapidly through a key target audience
* To maximize the potential for success of a viral campaign through effective seeding strategies
* To understand what can go right and wrong with a viral campaign

2 Podcasting: Techniques & Technologies of Digital Distribution
Saturday September 9th
9.30am to 1pm
Fee: $35

The New Oxford American Dictionary declared "podcast" the 2005 Word of the Year. This is an indication of the rapid growth of this new technique to distribute and syndicate digital audio and video files to a global audience.

ABC Radio National is an Australian pioneer of podcasting, and in February 2006 they were averaging 175,000 downloads of their programs every week.

Since Apple launched their video iPod device in October 2005, video podcasting has been on the increase with popular podcasts, such as US-based Rocketboom, achieving up to 200,000 downloads per day. With many popular podcasts now including paid advertising, podcasting is emerging as a way for content producers to find new revenue streams or to increase their global visibility.

This event is an overview of the history of podcasting, and explores how it is now a significant channel for digital content distribution.

Through lectures and demonstrations participants will learn what software and hardware is required to make video and audio podcasts. Keren will cover a range of tips and techniques on how to make them an effective distribution tool, and to ensure your podcasts reach their target audience.

Come to Podcasting
* To understand the techniques and tools of podcasting
* To be able to locate and access video and audio podcasts
* To maximise the online visibility of video and audio podcasts_
* To make creative use of podcasts as a tool of cross media production
* To understand the key technical elements of RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication)

3. Developing Content for Mobile Phones- A Digest
Saturday September 9th
2pm to 5.30pm
Fee: $35

This half day event is an introduction to producing and delivering content for mobile phones.

It is for content creators wanting to understand the issues and opportunities surrounding the mobile platform. It will explore the practicalities of what can be created and how to reach an audience.

Come to Developing Content for Mobile Phones
* To identify the audience, market, and technology drivers of mobile content
* To identify the commercial stakeholders in mobile content and their business models
* To see examples of mobile content that delivers a successful user experience
* To identify aspects of the creation and delivery of a mobile content project
* to devise a basic pitch outline for a made-for-mobile production

Venue: All three events will be at
WA Innovation Centre
Enterprise Unit 3, 11 Brodie Hall Drive, Bentley, WA [free parking]

Profile Keren Flavell

Keren Flavell is an award-winning producer with over 12 years experience in interactive media production, documentary, radio and print, taking projects from conception through to production to sales and distribution. Presently she is on the Lab3000 steering committee and CEO of mobile entertainment network, OMG.tv. While heading up digital media production company, Springtime Productions, she won the prestigious Gold Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival - Best Entertainment Website for the ABC/Film Victoria Digital Media Fund Accord project Sounds Like Techno.

Keren has been a speaker at events such as the AIMIA conference, AIDC, Adelaide Festival FutureProof, and is a mentor for cross media projects with AFTRS_ Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP). She hosts a Podcast show called the Mobile Media Show and organizes a monthly networking event for mobile content creators in Melbourne.

Tom Lubin AFTRS WA

Space is limited for all three programs RSVP essential.

RSVP: tom.lubin@aftrs.edu.au For enquiry call 0410 416 799

The Wired Everyday III - Blogs - Lecture Links

2006-08-16T12:26:00.000+08:00

Hello 2006 Self.Net students. As promised, here are the various links I mentioned in today's lecture ...

I. We/blogs: origins, types and the hype.

[X] Tim Berners-Lee's blog: TimBL (quite a technical blog, but his recent post on Net Neutrality is a good read).
[X] Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere, August 2006 (this report includes the slides on the number of blogs in existence, languages bloggers use and frequency of posts). For the current state of the blogsphere, visit Technorati.
[X] A filter blog: Boing Boing: A directory of wonderful things.
[X] A journal blog: Wil Wheaton: WIL WHEATON dot NET: 1.5 and WWdN: In exile.

[X] Vlogs worth visiting: Rocketboom, Ze Frank and Galacticast.
[X] Podcasts of interest: Adam Curry's Daily Source Code and the podcast index Podcast Alley.

II. Meet the bloggers.

[X] Rebecca Blood's blog: Rebecca's Pocket
[X] Salam Pax's blog: Where is Raed? (on hiatus since April 2004). For more from Salam Pax being interviewed on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, you can read the full interview transcript.
[X] Also, the authors you read excerpts from last week both blog as well: William Gibson's Blog and Melissa Scott's blog.

III. Participatory Culture and Citizen Journalism?

[X] Russ Kick's The Memory Hole; also take a look at the specific post on military coffins from April 2004.
[X] An influential US political blog: the Daily Kos.
[X] For more on the 2005 London Bombings see my post on The Mediascape & The London Bombings.
[X] For more on the Adnan Hajj/Reuters photoshopping fiasco see commentary from Dennis Dunleavy here, here and "An undeniable truth: The Internet is keeping journalism honest".
[X] Finally, Steve Johnson's thoughts on blogs and journalism which I encourage to read are here: Five Things All Sane People Agree On About Blogs And Mainstream Journalism (So Can We Stop Talking About Them Now?)

If you have any comments, thoughts or questions about the lecture or related issues, please feel free to leave a comment on this post (which I will respond to) or to email me.

(For anyone else reading this blog, if you really want to pass 45 minutes of your life listening to my voice, you can hear a streaming recording of the lecture here.)

[Tags: self.net | lecturenotes | blogs]

Grand Theft Auto: Coca-Cola?

2006-08-14T17:14:00.000+08:00

From Hot Coffee to Hillary Clinton, the Grand Theft Auto games have been nothing if not controversial. That said, it's interesting to see Coke building on GTA's tarnished image (albeit, a fair while afterward) in a new advertisement which shows a whole different computer-(game)-generated world where life is much happier. Take a look:

As Waxy notes, this could almost be a machinimation done using existing game engines (although I'm sure Coke didn't go down that path). Is this Coke tapping into youth culture or a cynical attempt to exploit an existing media beat-up?

Of course, in China, Coke have been using gameplay ads for a while, such as their World of Warcraft(ish) effort.

[Via bits & bytes & pixels & sprites;Via Waxy]

[Tags: cocacola | coke | grandtheftauto | gta | advertising | parody | games | videogames]

Heathrow, Terror(ism), Blogs and Bush

2006-08-11T15:35:00.000+08:00

The blogosphere and citizen media responses to a foiled terror attack are vastly different to those when an actual attack occurs, but there have been some notable responses to the attempted UK attacks. The Globe and Mail has an article entitled Social media and the London terrorist plot but what it really boils done to is that there are a lot of shots of lines and security guards in airports on Flickr and some testimonies in blogs, but not a lot else to be found. Personally, I found Doc Searls semi-live blogging from Logan Airport as extra security swung into action, but before people knew why, quite evocative. There are lots of other personal tales being told about people's worries about loved ones on planes, and concerns about governmental reactions.

I think perhaps the most apt response I've heard from the blogosphere has been Ze Frank's recent vlog ...

the show with zefrank

In a far sillier tone, the reponse to the terrorist plot(s) has led to a WarOnFlyingLiquids and, of course, a Snakes on a Plane parody...

[Click image to expand; via Boing Boing]

Parodies aside, terrorism is a serious thing, and the restrictions in place in UK and US airports are most likely well-intentioned (even if some airport and security personnel don't seem to be using any common sense in enforcing these new rules), but I'm with Ze Frank in wondering if the terrorists are winning when even a foiled attack might bankrupt airlines and stop thousands of people from flying and the leader of the so-called free world attempts to use the plot as a means to energise his own political and military agenda by calling yesterday "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

[Tags: heathrow | terrorism | waronterror | zefrank | snakesonaplane | bush | politics]

No iPods (or almost anything else) on UK Flights after Terrorism Scare

2006-08-10T22:39:00.000+08:00

After a major terrorism scare at Heathrow, the UK has introduced the most world's most restrictive policy on hand luggage. As the BBC reports:

Passengers may take through the airport security search point, in a single (ideally transparent) plastic carrier bag, only the following items. Nothing may be carried in pockets:

* Pocket-size wallets and pocket-size purses plus contents (for example money, credit cards, identity cards etc (not handbags)
* Travel documents essential for the journey (for example passports and travel tickets)
* Prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (eg, diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic
* Spectacles and sunglasses, without cases
* Contact lens holders, without bottles of solution
* For those travelling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger) and sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (nappies, wipes, creams and nappy disposal bags)
* Female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed (eg tampons, pads, towels and wipes)
* Tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs
* Keys (but no electrical key fobs). All passengers must be hand searched, and their footwear and all the items they are carrying must be X-ray screened.

Pushchairs and walking aids must be X-ray screened, and only airport-provided wheelchairs may pass through the screening point. In addition to the above, all passengers boarding flights to the USA and all the items they are carrying, including those acquired after the central screening point, must be subjected to secondary search at the boarding gate.

All Your Snakes All Belong To Us!

2006-08-09T08:09:00.000+08:00

The ultimate meme covergence: All your base are belong to us meets and mashes with Snakes on a Plane.

For a slightly more academic take on the marketing of Snake on a Plane, take a look at Ivan Askwith's guest post at Henry Jenkins' blog, "Building Popular Buzz: What To Do, What Not To Do"

(And, Jo, this one's clearly for you!) [Via]

[Tags: snakesonaplane | allyourbasearebelongtous | meme | mashup | youtube]

Macbooks (or: Pictures of Tama's Head That Are Really Weird!)

2006-08-05T15:42:00.000+08:00

There is a new Macbook in the family and it's a delightful little creature! The iSight camera is very impressive for its size and with the combination of Quicktime Pro for video recording or Photobooth for general messing about, the Macbook does seem pretty much ready to act as a personal micro-media and silliness production centre!

While Photobooth is a pretty simple piece of software, the filters are sure to keep everyone amused for a few hours. I had a play and discovered what I would look like were my face completely symmetrical...

I also looked at myself with big hair...

(I'm rather glad I don't wake up looking like that!).

With iMovie and Quicktime I even managed to record my talking head within a minute of turning the Macbook on. (~~Keep in mind, though, that you need to pay extra to get Quicktime Pro if you want to record video from the iSight camera.~~Update: Actually, you can record straight into iMovieHD without paying a thing!)

All in all, I think this is going to be a fun computer (and might just ensure a little bit more media creation on my part!)

[Tags: macbook | participatoryculture | media | sillypictures]

Day of the Long Tail

2006-07-29T12:56:00.000+08:00

YouTubers strike once more with a very clever little parody trailer for the Long Tail ...

For the background to this trailer, see Michel Markman's post about its creation.

[Tags: longtail | parody | waroftheworlds | trailer]

Marvel Comics 'Civil War' and the "War on Terror"

2006-07-28T20:06:00.000+08:00

I've been enjoying Henry Jenkins' wide-ranging posts in his new blog, but I've particularly been impressed with his look at the relevance of comic books in relation to September 11, 2001 and its ongoing aftermath (Jenkins' thoughts are in several posts: one; two; three). Jenkins points out that the immediate responses to 9-11 were very wide-ranging and far more balanced and provocative than in the mainstream news media. He also points out that the responses to 9-11 and the 'war on terror' have had considerable impact on comic books, not so much in a propaganda sense, but in terms of asking hard questions and exploring some very difficult issues.

In my PhD I also got a chance to explore the Sept 11 aftermath comics, especially those set in the Marvel Universe. (In my writing I particularly looked at how the attacks on the WTC impacted the first two Spider-Man films both in terms of their stories and their production). While I knew there were a number of special edition aftermath comics which directly engaged with the fall of the Twin Towers, I had presumed that the obvious parallels were no longer part of the Marvel Universe. However, the magic of the internets pointed me toward Marvel's summer cross-over series entitled "Civil War".

Apparently the story has been brewing for a while, but Civil War kick-starts when a group of teenage superheroes called the New Warriors are participating in a reality TV show where they take down super-villains. It goes horribly wrong, all bar one of the New Warriors is killed as one of the villains, Nitro, causes a massive explosion which kills 600 civilians including many children as the blast engulfs a school. There is a massive public backlash against superheroes of all flavours (not just mutants this year) which sees a SuperHero Registration Act pass into law (very much like the US Patriot Act in the immediate aftermath of Sept 11) which criminalises any unregistered superhuman activity (registered superheroes become, in effect, SHEILD operatives). The core Marvel superheroes are split down the middle: Iron Man (Tony Stark) with Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Mr Fantastic are the most notable pro-registration heroes, seeing the Act as a means of legitimating superheroes, regaining public support for their actions, and preventing the even worse excesses that could occur from unregulated superhuman conflict. On the other side the iconic Captain America sees the Act as incredibly unjust--penalizing those heroes who have always sought justice--putting masked heroes in grave peril by revealing their day-time identities and worse, putting their families and at risk. When the registered superheroes under the directives of SHIELD and led by Iron Man start to apprehend (or try to apprehend) unregistered heroes, a Civil War erupts between the heroes of the Marvel Universe.

One of the things that struck me looking at the first issue of Civil War was the similarities between the way the tragedy in that issue was drawn with the way the superheroes who visited Ground Zero were pictured in 2001. Compare these two panels from Civil War #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #36 (which was the black cover issue in which the Marvel heroes visited the WTC site):

[From Civil War #1; Click Image to Expand]

[From Amazing Spider-Man #36 (Black Cover, Sept 11 Special); Click Image to Expand]

The resonance between these two stories is far from coincidental. Indeed, Captain America's decision to stand against the Superhero Registration Act parallels Marvel's editorial stance against wars of retaliation in Amazing Spider-Man #36. However, the plot line I'm finding most engaging is the story of Speedball. After all the New Warriors are thoughts to be dead, he's discovered alive but supposedly having lost his powers after the explosion which killed his teammates and hundreds of innocents. Speedball becomes a focal point for public rage against the superhumans whose interactions caused so much loss of life. In the other major cross-over mini-series, Civil War: Frontline, Speedball - or Robert Baldwin - is arrested and given the choice to either admit to part of the blame for the tragedy and become a registered superhero working for SHIELD and helping them detain unregistered heroes, or be sent to prison. Speedball refuses to admit a guilt he doesn't feel as he believes the New Warriors were trying to stop the supervillians and shouldn't be punished for that. However, his refusal leads to a situation which directly parallels the 'war on terror' prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay; Speedball is not given a trial but rather treated as "an unregistered combatant" while his interrogator bluntly informs Speedball: "I define your rights."

[From Civil War: Frontline #2; Click Image to Expand]

Speedball's experiences have marked similarities with the experiences of 'enemy combatants' (as opposed to prisoners of war) held (illegally) in the US "facilities" in Guantanamo. As Robert Baldwin is carted off to jail, he's told that a purpose-built prison is being constructed to indefinitely hold superhumans who refuse to register and follow government directives, a plot point echoing the 2002 construction of the Camp Delta detainment facility in Guantanamo Bay. While the Civil War story isn't completely black and white--Peter Parker's own deliberations certainly give the pro-registration side a humane voice--the critique of many aspects of the current War on Terror and the illegal detention and torture of untried 'enemy combatants' is bold and blatant on the part of Marvel's storytellers. Personally, I'm heartened by Marvel's stance and hope empathy with their comic book heroes will give readers a moment to think further about politics in the wider world.

I'll certainly be interested to see how the Civil War story progresses (and concludes!) so watch for another post on this topic in the near future.

In the meantime, to catch up with the Marvel Civil War thus far, take a look at these two comic-book trailers from Marvel ...
[X] Marvel Civil War Teaser large

This sets the stage for the Civil War cross-over storyline, showing a number of images from the Civil War comics with a narrator putting the pieces together. (I particularly like the question "Is either side wrong?")

[X] Marvel Trailer - Previously in Civil War

This recaps the first month of the Civil War, starting with a nightly news story about the event which acts as a catalyst for the split between Marvel's iconic heroes.

Incidentally, it's great to see Marvel making the most of YouTube and making mash-up style promotions just like so many of their core readers!

For more background information you might want to look at:
[X] The 'Civil War' entry at Marvel Universe.
[X] 'Civil War: Frontline' on Wikipedia (with full issue summaries, so very spoilerish)
[X] 'Speedball' entry at Marvel Universe.
[X] 'Speedball' in the Wikipedia.

Update (Mon, 7 August, 11.22am): For those interested in the exact details, there is a very detailed chronology of Civil War (down to individual panels) at the Marvel Chronology Project. Sam Ford at the Convergence Culture Consortium blog has a solid take on Civil War in the context of political commentary in comics, while Henry Jenkins has finished of his four-post Comic Book Foreign Policy set by addressing Civil War in some detail.

[Tags: civilwar | marvel | superhero | speedball | robertbaldwin | guantanamo | waronterror | september11 | comics]

Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 Preview

2006-07-22T17:01:00.000+08:00

Season three of Battlestar Galactica looks like it could be the best season yet from this preview!

(NB: If you've not seen the end of season two, obbiously this is super-duper-SPOILERISH! There is still no information on an Australian television screening of Season Two, so you might want to grab the Season Two DVD Box Set which comes out Wednesday, 16 August 2006.)

[Download Better Quality Quicktime Version] [Via]

[Tags: battlestargalactica | season3 | preview]

Zune

2006-07-22T16:07:00.000+08:00

Microsoft's "iPod killer" or, at least, competitor finally has a name ... Zune. Details are sketchy still, but reports from the BBC and New York Times suggest that the product will probably include both portable devices and a related music sales service to compete with the Apple Music Store.

Showing signs that they listened to Scoble while he was on board, the proto-marketing and hype-building for Zune is already emerging the the world of social software, with the first voice of Zune coming in the form of the Zune Insider Blog described as "Music, culture, and the inside scoop from Cesar Menendez, a Microsoft employee working on Zune - Microsoft's new music project" in a format decidely unMicrosoft-like (and, thankfully, not using the clunky MSN Spaces Microsoft blog platform).

Scoble, however, thinks the ComingZune marketing website is rather Web1.0: "Getting people to subscribe to an email newsletter is sssooo 1990s."

[Tags: zune | microsoft | ipod | ipodkiller | apple | mp3 | music | portabledevice]

Microsoft WiPod?

2006-07-06T12:01:00.000+08:00

Okay, maybe not a WiPod per se, but rumours are flying that Microsoft's upcoming portable media device and related iTunes-store-like service will feature wireless technology. As Bloomberg reports:

Microsoft Corp. is planning to have a portable music and video player out by Christmas in a challenge to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.

The digital player will have a wireless Internet connection, enabling users to download music without being linked to a computer, a feature the iPod doesn't offer, according to people briefed on Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's plans.

It's well-known that Apple has a registered patent for a wireless iPod (yes, it would simply have to be a WiPod), so perhaps competition will force them to think about wireless technology for the market leader, too?

[Via iLounge]

[Tags: apple | ipod | microsoft | wipod | wireless | portablemediaplayer | itunes]

Amanda Completely Unboomed!

2006-07-06T01:30:00.000+08:00

Amanda Congdon, the well-known host of one of the world's most entertaining vlogs, Rocketboom, has been completely unBoomed! In a vlog entry on her occassional blog "Amanda UnBoomed", she tells the world that since Andrew Baron (her partner is Rocketboom, and its main researcher/writer) own 51% of Rocketboom (to her 49%), he can effectively ~~kick her off the Rocket~~ run Rocketboom without her. Of course, Amanda is already planning her own alternative vlog. It all seems a little sad since Rocketboom has been a something of a citizen media icon the past year, but it'll be interesting to see what Amanda does next (and how the Rocketboom brand survives without the personality that made it famous).

Update: Dave Winer adds a little depth to the story here while the main Rocketboom site has this note:

ROCKETBOOM ANNOUNCEMENT:

Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.

We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Rocketboom goes on.

Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.

While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.

After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.

It seems things may be a little more two-sided than it first appeared. I guess from Baron's point of view, it's extremely important for the Rocketboom name to ensure that viewers don't see him as "he who fired Amanda" but rather "he who was left in New York when Amanda went Hollywood."

Update 2: Amanda has a long post "For the Record" at UnBoomed, more clearly stating her side and perspective on the vlogging divorce!

[See Amanda's Announcement Here] [Via Ye Olde Scripting News]

[Tags: amandacongdon | andrewbaron | rocketboom | unboomed | vlog]

Superman Returns, Reboots and Resurrects

2006-07-01T00:01:00.000+08:00

The good news is that Superman Returns is a worthy continuation of the first two Superman films (1978 and 1980) and ignores the far less memorable III and IV. Indeed, director Bryan Singer almost seems to channel Richard Donner (who directed the first Christopher Reeves film) in a way that parallels Jonathan Mostow's fannish fidelity to James Cameron's vision when he took the reigns of the Terminator franchise. Amazingly, Brandon Routh is a worthy successor to Christopher Reeves' sizable legacy in the blue tights and red cape, with the right mix of over the top nerdishness in Clark Kent and boy scout certainty in the man of steel. Complementing Routh nicely, Kevin Spacey is probably the most enjoyable big screen (or small screen) Lex Luthor to date, taking over where Gene Hackman left off. Rather than starting from scratch with the Superman mythos as Christopher Nolan did in Batman Begins, Singer manages to bring a more contemporary feel to the man of steel and reboot the franchise for the big screen.

While Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), complete with fiance (James Marsden) and son (Tristan Lake Leabu), is an at times a little wooden, she nevertheless manages to bring a less certain and more complicated Lois to the film. The introduction of Lois' son is handled playfully, leading down a path which leaves some interesting doors open for future cinematic exploits of the world's most famous underwear-on-the-outside fan. Despite the hype surrounding Marlon Brando's synthespian resurrection, the footage and voice-overs from the doubly deceased Jor-El are tastefully handled and heighten the continuity with the earlier films. Of course, emotional connectivity with the 1978 classic is stirred early on with John Williams' original score again taking centre stage.

The story itself manages to be both a sequel in some sense and a remake of the first film in another, with a plot which simply adds years and magnitude (bigger body counts and ambitions for Lex, smoother special effects for Superman) to a remarkably similar plot. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times argues that "the Man of Steel has been resurrected in a leaden new film not only to fight for truth, justice and the American way, but also to give Mel Gibson's passion a run for his box-office money." In many ways Manohla is right as Singer has certainly layered the Christian (and Ancient Greek) symbols and imagery in a fairly heavy-handed way. Of course, these symbols are so deeply engrained in our popular imaginary that they, for the most part, heighten the films impact rather than diminshing it.

Overall, Singer does for Superman what he did for the X-Men: he's brought a fine film to the silver screen and ensured at least one sequel to follow. It would be nice if Singer's around to direct it.

[Tags: supermanreturns | film | review]

Spider-Man 3 Trailer is out!

2006-06-28T11:58:00.000+08:00

Henry Jenkins Blogs!

2006-06-25T16:24:00.000+08:00

To my great delight, Henry Jenkins has just started his own blog. Anyone who has ever taken a course I've written or contributed to has probably heard of Henry Jenkins, as have all reputable media scholars since Henry Jenkins has been setting the agenda for years with books like Textual Poachers in 1992 where he chronicled the intersections of fandom, participatory culture in a way which presented the parameters for understanding how media production and participation has changed, and continues to change, in the digital era.

The impetus for the new blog is Jenkins' upcoming book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide which sounds like it will be as groundbreaking and important as Textual Poachers was almost fifteen years ago. Here's a taste of the book, from the blog:

Reduced to its most core elements, this book is about the relationship between three concepts – media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence....

By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they wanted. Convergence is a word that manages to describe technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes, depending on who’s speaking and what they think they are talking about. In the world of media convergence, every important story gets told, every brand gets sold, every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms. Right now, convergence culture is getting defined top-down by decisions being made in corporate boardrooms and bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers' bedrooms. It is shaped by the desires of media conglomerates to expand their empires across multiple platforms and by the desires of consumers to have the media they want where they want it, when they want it, and in the format they want....

Right now, convergence culture is getting defined top-down by decisions being made in corporate boardrooms and bottom-up by decisions made in teenagers' bedrooms. It is shaped by the desires of media conglomerates to expand their empires across multiple platforms and by the desires of consumers to have the media they want where they want it, when they want it, and in the format they want....

This circulation of media content – across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders – depends heavily on the active participation of the consumer. I will argue here against the idea that convergence can be understood primarily as a technological process – the bringing together of multiple media functions within the same gadgets and devices. Instead, I want to argue that convergence represents a shift in cultural logic, whereby consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections between dispersed media content. The term, participatory culture, is intended to contrast with older notions of media spectatorship. In this emerging media system, what might traditionally be understood as media producers and consumers are transformed into participants who are expected to interact with each other according to a new set of rules which none of us fully understands. Convergence does not occur through media appliances – however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers. Yet, each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information we have extracted from the ongoing flow of media around us and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives.

In a culture which some have described according to information overload, it is impossible for any one of us to hold all of the relevant pieces of information in our heads at the same time. Because there is more information out there on any given topic than we can store in our heads, there is an added incentive for us to talk amongst ourselves about the media we consume. This conversation creates buzz and accelerates the circulation of media content Consumption has become a collective process and that’s what I mean in this book by collective intelligence. None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills.... Collective intelligence can be seen as an alternative source of media power. We are learning how to use that power through our day to day interactions within convergence culture. Right now, we are mostly using collective power through our recreational life, but it has implications at all levels of our culture. In this book, I will explore how the play of collective meaning-making within popular culture is starting to change the ways religion, education, law, politics, advertising, and even the military operate.

Exciting stuff! I suspect Convergence Culture will finds itself as a core textbook on courses across media studies, communications studies, culture studies and beyond. Also worth looking out for is Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture which collects a number of Henry Jenkins' occasional essays across the last decade. The books are due for a US release in August and September and I'll be getting them as soon as they're available and in the meanwhile will be enjoy the regularly blogged thoughts of one of the media scholars who has really inspired my own writing and teaching.

[Via Boing Boing]
[Tags: henryjenkins | mit | convergence | convergenceculture | fansbloggersandgamers | participatoryculture | fans | fandom]

Genpets?

2006-06-21T12:57:00.000+08:00

If Tamagotchis were the first step in socialising kids into embracing genetically engineered cute-as-hell pets, then the new Genpets are the next. Describe as:

mass produced Bio-engineered pets ... Each pet comes pre-packaged as a fully self-contained unit. Genpets? learn and adapt. They are fully living pets, but better, modified to be as reliable, dependable and efficient as any other 'technology' we use in our busy lives.

The posters certainly celebrate the 'alive' status of these little creatures...

And this picture just reminds me of the humanfarms in The Matrix ...

Of course, they look pretty unattractive to me! (But, then again, people have ferrets and rats as pets, so these will no doubt find a niche).

[NB: Yes, this is an art project, not a real product/creature/thing. Effective, isn't it? :)]

[Tags: geneticengineering | genpets | tamagotchi]

3 Laws Safe?

2006-06-20T13:08:00.000+08:00

It seems that state of the art robotics and artificial intelligence design is complex enough that Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, or some similar restrictions on our potential artificial progeny, are on the academic agenda. As The Australian reports (well, reprints) in "Robot rules make sure robots don't rule":

The race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a "code of ethics" for machines as they become more and more sophisticated. Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now, before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control. "There are two levels of priority," says Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. "We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots." Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include ensuring human control of robots, preventing illegal use, protecting data acquired by robots and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines. "Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen," Mr Verruggio says.

While the potential for sentient artificial intelligence, or artificial life, is probably a long way off, it's definitely a good thing to think about how humanity will relate to intelligent machines. (Which will no doubt have long-term utility for those involved in such fields, but may equally be useful in asking about how humans relate to other humans as much as machines!)

[Tags: artificialintelligence | robot | ethics | intelligentmachines | artificiallife]

Funniest USB Gadget Ever ... Decapitating Teddy!

2006-06-18T10:13:00.000+08:00

This is just too funny not to share! The Decapitating Teddy USB drive ...

[Via The Raw Feed]

Bad Apple?

2006-06-14T12:56:00.000+08:00

Reports that the hardware innards of Apple's iconic iPods may be made in extremely exploitative conditions in China have got a quick response from the Apple's PR people who claim that if such accusations hold merit, Apple was unaware of it. Apple representatives have pointed to their environmental policy which includes " a commitment to uphold the human rights of workers, and covers matters including: discrimination, harsh treatment and harassment, involuntary and child labour, working hours, remuneration and freedom of association."

Apple's success has been in large part through their outstanding promotion of the company image so I imagine they will distance themselves from these accusations (and possibly, these suppliers) quickly rather than loose face and become tainted in the eyes of the consuming public.

Update: You know it's bad PR when the story makes it onto the BBC News.

[Tags: apple | ipod | china | exploitation | globalisation | ethics | advertising]

Ourmedia's Learning Centre ... A Wealth of (Re)Usable Resources for citizen (and student) media productions!

2006-06-13T12:06:00.000+08:00

JD Lasica announced recently that the first public iteration of OurMedia's Learning Centre is open for your use ...

Ourmedia is proud to announce the unveiling of the Personal Media Learning Center as well as the Open Media Directory.

The Learning Center is an ongoing project with a simple aim: to help people engage in the participatory media movement by showing them how to create videoblogs, podcasts, screencasts, digital stories and other emerging media forms.

There are sections on Video, Audio, Multimedia, Images and Text. In addition, we have what will undoubtedly become a deep Topics section. We're starting out with the subjects of Personal media - Getting started, Citizen journalism, and Copyright & the law.

We have a lot of needs in fillng out these sections, so if you'd like to write a tutorial, share an article, or create a screencast, video or podcast that would be helpful to people, see our guidelines and contact me [JD Lasica]. This is media training of the people by the people.

Included is a major resource for students (and others) producing digital media is the directory of reusable music (and other bits) ...

The Open Media Directory is a clearinghouse of dozens of different sites where you can find legal, podsafe music, audio and video clips. For anyone who wants to add a music soundtrack to their online video or add music to a podcast, the Open Media Directory is a treasure. Thanks to the UK's David Holmes, the directory's editor, for pulling it together for us.

These resources centrally index a wealth of resources that well-informed students and citizen media producers can use and not have to fear (or violate) copyright laws. (While the laws are crappy, working within them means you can always use your own work rather than having fantastic portfolio productions you can't actually show anyone since you don't have permission to use your background music!)

[Tags: ourmedia | learningcentre | opendirectory | podsafe | creativecommons | studentresources]

Name That Film

2006-06-08T10:46:00.000+08:00

Flickr has lots and lots of interesting groups, but I just stumbled across one which I'm really enjoying. It's name that film! So many compelling stills from films across the world.

Do you recognise this?

Or this?

(Click on the images to go to their Flickr page and find their respective films.)

Why not join the group and play along?

[Tags: namethatfilm | quiz | trivia | flickr | socialsoftware | fun]

Malcolm Long on Screen Production: Navigating the Digital Market Place

2006-06-07T16:44:00.000+08:00

Last night UWA's IAS and AFTRS presented a public lecture by the director of Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Malcolm Long. The talk, entitled "Screen Production: Navigating the Digital Market Place" was very well presented and told the familiar story of the importance of diversity in media production in the digital age: the underlying ones and zeroes which encode most media productions (be they video, audio or interactive combinations) are ripe for redeploying across different platforms from the cinema screen, to the web, to mobile phones. Indeed, Malcolm's talk covered similar ground to the Understanding Cross Platform and New Media panel discussion at FTI three months ago. To a large extent it was reassuring that the issues that media creators are wrestling with are, by and large, the same issues that communication studies academics have been discussing. I suspect Malcolm put out a few noses by arguing that Australia's cottage-industry approach to supporting film production was too broadly spread and that more focus on sustaining talented individuals rather than producing many one-hit wonders was required to build a commercially successful Australian film (read: media) culture.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the talk from my perspective was the discussion of blogs, vlogs, podcasts and other participatory media. The point was made that there is a saturation of media entering distribution thanks to the likes of Flickr and YouTube, but that Malcolm argues that high production values built around the essential core of good storytelling will always have pride of place in the media industry. I'm sure he's right. However, the question was posed regarding how participatory media forms and producers will integrate or even relate to traditional media owners and producers (and, yes, the term heritage media was used, but that's a little unfair!). What surprised me the most was that Malcolm really had no clear picture of how that relationship will look. Issues of production, quality and, most importantly, ownership (read: copyright and IP) muddy the water to such an extent that no clear relationship has yet to emerge.

While I'm optimistic that participatory media will have a considerable role in the future of media production and distribution (most notably in extending and sharing the skillbase amongst the iGeneration while simultaneously expanding the ease of distribution for their personally created media), at the moment places like YouTube also tend to function as a huge online vetting and interview process for the potential media stars of tomorrow. I've written briefly on this before regarding Tasha and the Hey Clip, but I recently saw that one of the most prominent YouTubers, Brookers, announced that on the basis of her YouTube videos (which are quite creative and engaging) that she has been contacted by MTV (also mentioned here) and will have a role in some future MTV productions. (NB: that particular video appears to have been recategorised as 'Friends Only', but in summary basically announced the upcoming relationship with MTV and thanked everyone she's ever met...).

YouTube and participatory media opened the door, but it was still traditional media (albeit spread very widely in the case of MTV's many platforms) who have the means to build upon that beginning. Indeed, I wonder if the relationship between traditional media (which is increasingly digital and cross-platform savvy) and citizen media (which may not be indigenously digital, but is very close) will develop closer symbiosis across the coming years?

For those who were unable to attend and are interested to kickstart your brains a little in this area, a Lectopia digital recording of Malcolm's talk can be heard here.

[Tags: screenproduction | aftrs | malcolmlong | australia | digitalmedia | blogs | digitalculture | igeneration | youtube]

Eugene Thacker on Pop Culture

2006-06-06T17:08:00.000+08:00

FrontWheel Drive has a great interview with Eugene Thacker in the wake of his Global Genome book. Thacker writes extremely interesting things about the intersections of medicine, biotech and popular culture and I completely agree with his take on the relationship between SF and current thinking on biotechnology:

I wonder if you could expound on your closing thoughts in The Global Genome regarding pop culture being the site in which to understand biotechnology?

Well part of that is due to may background in cultural theory, and, I'll admit, my affinity for SF and horror. But in all my writing on biotech and the life sciences I've always tried to refuse any hard and fast distinction between science and science fiction as a way of understanding the different ways in which futures are extrapolated from a given present situation.

It?s pretty obvious, if one looks around, that the life sciences and biotechnology have pervaded popular culture. A great way of demonstrating this is to look at all of the re-makes of Cold War-era science fiction and comics: Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc. It seems to now be a requirement to somehow put genetics in the stories, even if it really doesn?t make any sense (which is often). I?m less interested in what the director ?intended? to mean by this than what it means culturally that genetics, biotech, and even nanotech are always found in SF. One thing it means is that these sciences and technologies are normalized in a way that the general public going to a film will 'accept' their inclusion as a matter of course. Certainly there are always SF-geeks who dispute the technical accuracy of how the genetic mutation actually creates the superhero or villain, but on a general level these technosciences have become a part of a certain cultural imaginary. So the question is ?what conditions had to be in place such that these particular technosciences could become normalized as a part of a certain world-view?? Perhaps this process is somewhat parallel to the normalization of medicine and public health practices themselves.

So I think that popular culture is relevant, not because I believe that films should educate and moralize, but because there is actually a great deal of ambivalence in pop culture's treatment of technoscience. We can't live without it, and yet it seems to be our downfall. The movies that moralize about the ineradicable human spirit do so using the most advanced computer graphics and special effects. There?s also a sense in many of these films, books, and comics, that we as a culture are not quite sure what to do with all of this information and all these gadgets. It's almost as if the greatest challenge posed to SF now is finding something interesting to do with all the technology that exists.

[Via MIT Press Blog]

[Tags: eugenethacker | biotechnology | sciencefiction | popularculture | representation]

Gwen Stacy returns ... in Spider-Man 3!

2006-06-02T12:32:00.000+08:00

I'd read that part of Spider-Man 3 would include Gwen Stacy's entrace into the movie version of the Spider-Man universe. I really don't know what role Gwen would have since a lot of the comic book characters of Gwen and Mary-jane were combined into the single character of Mary-Jane in the first and second films. Indeed, Gwen's death in the comic books was one of the most important moments in the Marvel Universe so I'm curious how the movie Gwen will be integrated into that story. I guess they needed to up the romantic tension now that Mary-Jane is pretty much Mrs Spidey, but for comic book readers, Gwen is his first true love so I hope they've got an exceptional script to justify her return. I wonder if Gwen might be overkill since they're introducing both the Sandman and Venom in this film.

Ain't It Cool News has more images and information on the shooting of Spider-Man 3 in New York. It will certainly be interesting to see how the film turns out!

[Tags: spider-man3 | spider-man | gwenstacy | film | 2007 | comicbook]

PerthDAC: The Future of Digital Media

2006-05-31T17:31:00.000+08:00

PerthDAC is coming! DAC, or to use its full name, the 7th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference is being held in Perth as part of BEAP. This is very exciting as I've always head good things about DAC but never been able to make it. Now DAC has come to me (well, Perth, but that's where they tend to keep me!). And what better theme that The Future of Digital Media? Very exciting!

The call for papers (and note that the dates are quite a long time before DAC so get thinking about those papers):

Papers are sought for PerthDAC 2007 that will illuminate both the near and long term Future of Digital Media Culture. Papers which present research outcomes, track trends or developments, describe case studies or works in progress, are speculative projection, challenge existing paradigms or record a history, are all welcome. Submissions are encouraged from any professional, craft or scholarly field that relates to communications art/design, cultural expression, practice and aesthetics, and the technical means by which they are enabled.

perthDAC 2007 accepts submissions from fields such as the humanities, social sciences, human-computer interaction and computer science studies, as well as those working both practically and theoretically in specific areas such as: digital/interactive art, digital/electronic literature, game studies, online communities, new media studies, affective computing, experience design, virtual environment design, etc.

Topics of interests may include, but are not limited to, computer games, hypertext theory and literature, new media narrative, streaming media, interactive and networked performance, digital aesthetics, interactive cinema, theory, art, bio-art, nano-art, augmented reality, cyberculture, electronic fiction, electronic music, electronic art, games culture, games system design, games theory, interactive architecture, cinema and video, MOOs, MUDs, RPG, virtual reality, virtual worlds.
Artists, early career scholars and PhD students are particularly encouraged to submit.

All abstracts and then full papers will be double blind peer reviewed by an international panel, and will be published in the proceedings. Some papers will be published as a special themed journal edition.

Dates for the submission of 500 word abstracts and then full papers are:

Abstracts: 14th August 2006
Full papers: 4th December 2006

X-Men: The Last Stand ...

2006-05-29T15:07:00.000+08:00

I'm not having a good run with films at the moment; after the disappointment of The Da Vinci Code, I really expected X-Men: The Last Stand to be rather good, especially after a very impressive opening was released online to entice viewers. Those six minutes, I should add, are not the opening per se, but rather a collage of some of the opening scenes and other bits which do look quite good ... better, I'd have to say, than the film overall. Before getting critical, let me start with the good: this film has some gorgeous special effects, including Bobby Drake turning fully popsicle at one point, and some very impressive fight scenes by lots and lots of mutants. This time round Kelsey Grammer does adds a very solid Beast to the cast, and Ellen Page is a decent Kitty Pryde. And while we don't get the firebird special effects one might have hoped for, when Jean Grey goes dark phoenix(ish), she does look convincingly evil!

However, Brett Ratner's direction just wasn't up to the job. While Bryan Singer's past two X-Men films certainly took dramatic license in terms of the history or Marvel's merry mutants from the comics, Singer clearly understood what worked and what didn't in adapting for the big screen - he made films accessible to new audiences, but equally exciting for comic book geeks (or even mostly reformed comic book geeks such as myself). In contrast, Ratner helmed a film which squished dozens of big comic book plots together into a story where too much is meant to be addressed and thus everything seems too superficial. Some things that occur to core characters don't make sense or get enough screen time to justify their inclusion. The re-writing of Jean Grey was just a bit dull and unnecessary; the characterisation suffered a great deal (without the past two films to rely on, the character development really wasn't enough to hold any story, let alone such a large one). Actors like Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart did the best they could with average material, while others such as Anna Paquin could do nothing to inject energy into bizarrely limp dialogue.

The politics of a "cure for mutants" certainly opening a number of interesting issues with political resonance today, but these issues really aren't utilised or pursued. Indeed, the US President in the film seems completely inconsistent as a character or as an icon of political power.

All in all, the weakest of the X-Men films by a long shot ...

Update: Despite the unenthused reviews, the film still managed to make $US120M in its opening weekend just in the North American market! By the way, if you do see the film, make sure you stay until the end of the credits. There is a hook to ensure the franchise is open for a fourth film!

[Tags: x-men | thelaststand | film | review]

Henry Reynolds announces postmodernism's demise ...

2006-05-28T18:28:00.000+08:00

According to Henry Renolds, postmodernism's impact on history has been and gone ...

A postmodern interpretation of history that analyses the use of language and challenges the truth of historical facts has had its day, influential historian Henry Reynolds said yesterday. Declaring himself to be "an old-fashioned historian", Professor Reynolds said postmodernism had provided an interesting take on the language of history but "it just goes round and round, with lots of lights and colours and doesn't get you anywhere". "I think the postmodernist movement has gone," he told a session of the Sydney Writers Festival. "We live in profoundly different times to 1980. We live in some ways in a terrifying world where old-fashioned history and truth continue to have their great value and virtue." During a discussion with fellow historian Ross Fitzgerald, Professor Reynolds said he believed history had a purpose, which was to search for the truth. "Truth is important. It always has to be partial, it always has to be as I see it, but that is what we have to search for," he said. After the session, Professor Reynolds said that school history courses were tending to preach rather than teach, which was inappropriate.

While postmodern interpretations may have been problematic when arguing for concrete outcomes (such as land rights), I fear Reynolds overstates the case. We may be post-postmodern (or whatever word we now use), but the lessons of postmodernism, if not its extremes, still very much inform our current critical thinking landscape, including the practice of history ...

[Tags: henryreynolds | history | postmodernism]

Henry Jenkins and danah boyd with some words of great wisdom for parents of the iGeneration (or: why MySpace is only bad if you let it be!)

2006-05-28T17:53:00.000+08:00

Henry Jenkins and danah boyd (who, I've finally noticed, does not capitalise her name on purpose) have released online a full transcipt of their interview regarding youth social software website and the problems with proposed US laws to deal with the potential of sexual predators online. Their Discussion: MySpace and Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) concludes with the following very sensible recommendations to parents of the iGeneration:

1. Communication with your daughter or son is key. Build a trusting relationship through dialogue. It is important to talk with them about your concerns; it is even more important to listen to what they have to say about their online experiences and why these sites are such an important part of their interactions with their peers. You need to recognize that some unfamiliar experiences look scarier from the outside than they are. Take time to understand what you are seeing and what it means to participants.

2. Create an account to understand how the site works, but not to stalk your kids. They need room to explore, but if you are familiar with the media and technology that they consume, you can provide valuable guidance and suggestions. Surveillance, while possible, damages a trusting parent/child relationship.

3. Ask your kids how they choose to represent themselves and why. Use MySpace as a resource to start a conversation about contemporary fashion, ideals, and media images.

4. Talk about private/ public issues with your kids. Help them to understand the consequences of making certain information publicly accessible. Get them to think through all of the possible audiences who might come into contact with their online information. Teens often imagine MySpace as a youth-only world. It isn't and they need to consider what the consequences would be if their grandparents, their teachers, admissions officers or a future employer read what they said about themselves. Helping your children learn how to negotiate such public environments is a great educational opportunity.

5. Talk through what kids should do if they receive unwanted attention online or if they find themselves the victims of cyberbullying. A growing number of sites provide useful information about how to confront such problems, including Net Family News , NetSmartz and SafeTeens. The "Safety Tips" section of MySpace also provides information for both parents and teens, including MySpace policies.

As always, I'm a huge believer in education as the key to overcoming and preventing many of the traumas in contemporary culture be it online or offline. I'd recommend all parents of under-18s read the interview and have a think about their offpsring and their online interactions.

[Tags: DeletingOnlinePredatorsAct | dopa | henryjenkins | danahboyd | myspace | socialsoftware | igeneration]

Happy Towel Day!

2006-05-25T10:58:00.000+08:00

Towel Day, remembering Douglas Adams, is today.

[Via BBoing]

[Tags: towelday | douglasadams | hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy | humour]

iDon't?

2006-05-23T14:32:00.000+08:00

In introducing their new Sansa e200 series as what they hope to be the competitor to iPods, SanDisk have learnt the lessons of culture jamming and adbusters to produce their iDon't campaign. An example:

A cynical re-use of culture jamming efforts, or a clever parody of one of the world's most iconic advertising campaigns? Well, both really ....

[Via iLounge]

[Tags: sandisk | idont | sansa | e200 | apple | ipod | advertising | culturejamming]

The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-22T18:31:00.000+08:00

I confess: I was one of the many, many people who despite many poor reviews still chose to see The Da Vinci Code over the weekend. Quite a few people, it seems, made that choice, with the film taking $US77 million in the North American market and globally over $US224 million in its first weekend.

What's worse is I now agree with most of the critics. The film is too slow, too long and for a film was so much potential for stunning scenery, really not enough of France or London is seen. More to the point, where the book makes you feel intelligent, as if you're figuring things out as you go, the movie makes you feel like a 5-year-old has taken you by the hand and has to explain every possible exposition point without having any skill in terms of joining these points together. All in all, not worth your time (but I bet you'll see it anyway, won't you?).

[Tags: davincicode | review]

10 Things I Hate About Commandments Mashup Trailer

2006-05-17T16:21:00.000+08:00

What happens when 10 Things I Hate About You meets The 10 Commandments? Why, 10 Things I Hate About Commandments of course...

A comedy 3,000 years in the making ...

"Ramses was the biggest player around ..."
"With Samuel L. Jackson as Prinicpal Firebush"

A very funny and quite clever little mashup trailer by Vayabobo.

[Tags: mashup | trailer | remix | participatoryculture | youtube]

X-Men 3: The Last Stand - Opening Six Minutes

2006-05-15T18:05:00.000+08:00

What's the best way to assuage fears that Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand won't live up to Bryan Singer's directorial shadow? Why, release the first six minutes online before the film's debut, of course ...

YouTube, it's just a godsend to youth marketing! And, I have to say, the film looks very, very promising!

[Tags: x-men | x3 | thelaststand | brettratner | footage | opening | youtube]

'game-art-interface' session at the CyberGames and Interactive Entertainment Conference ... in Perth!

2006-05-15T10:19:00.000+08:00

I heard about the CyberGames and Interactive Ent conference at Murdoch on Perth a little while back, but thought it sounded a little too technical for me. However, Andrew Hutchinson is organising a 'game-art-interface' session which seems specifically aimed at getting the arts and humanities perspectives back into the gaming conference. The details ...

'game-art-interface' special session of

CGIE2006 CyberGames and Interactive Entertainment, 4-6 December 2006, Perth, Western Australia.

CGIE2006 is the joint conference of the Third Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE 2006) and Cybergames 2006: International Conference and Exhibition on Games Research and Development.

The 'game-art-interface' special session at CGIE2006 will explore the intersection of art theory and practice with game design. Submissions are invited that challenge the past, present and future of game aesthetics and interface.

'game-art-interface' seeks to expand the awareness and potential of creative practice as applied to the cultural phenomenon of digitally mediated games. Submissions that address un-conventional notions and interpretations of the term 'games' are welcome.

A special international refereeing committee specifically experienced with the intersection of games and art will supervise the 'game-art-interface' special session of Cybergames 2006.

Submissions:
Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings. Please submit paper in
PDF format, 8 pages maximum. Paper format should follow the ACM

Proceedings format and template can be downloaded from
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

Critical Dates

* Full Paper Submission Due: 15 June 2006
* Early Bird Registration Due: 31 July 2006

Please contact special session chair Andrew Hutchison with any enquires.
Email: a.hutchison@curtin.edu.au
URL: http://www.cgie2006.murdoch.edu.au/

So come along to Perth and talk games in December!

[Tags: game-art-interface | perth | cybergames | conference | interactiveentertainment]

YouTube: Thoughts, Gems and a very rare Star Wars deleted scene!

2006-05-10T18:06:00.000+08:00

Pretty much everyone I work with has been hit by the dreaded flu in the past two weeks and it finally caught up with me in the last few days so I've been at home with cups to tea and a fuzzy head today. For an hour or so I explored YouTube since I've only superficially parted their digital curtains to date. There's a lot of crap, but also some quite interesting clips and characters (albeit with very teenangst/provocative names). There are some very nasty teen flamewars about featuring youtube micro-celebs such as EmoKid21Ohio (angst and emotional angst...), FilthyWhore (whose name is provocative, but whose clips are far more mundane) and even Nornna (who seems to post about a dozen clips a day, documenting a very ordinary life which includes even the vacumming, but is made fascinating by how much of it now lives online in youtube clips).

One of the more interesting clips was the Hey clip (" heya all! dancing stupid is fun") which was made by a 21 year-old Israeli girl called Tasha (with a MySpace profile, of course) and her friend. Their creative lip-sync effort seems to have struck an audience, with hundreds of similar clips (both homages and parodies). The clip has even spawned its own fan site and fan blog. I suspect Tasha might be an iconic representative of the digital native generation whose creative work builds upon digital samples (both music and film - she has a re-edit of a Donnie Darko trailer online too). YouTube, in its early incarnation at the moment at least, appears to foster a mashup culture where personal expression, creativity and samples are all part of daily interaction.

Moving away from the digital natives (which really isn't the best generational term ... I think I'll stick with the iGeneration for now) I came across two gems that I had to share ...

[X] Avenue Q Meets World of Warcraft in a very funny machinima music video ...

[X] And a lost, rare, deleted clip from Star Wars featuring Luke and Biggs on Tatooine which really would have changed the tone of the film ...

(I have the feeling this clip might disappear from YouTube at some point. Lucasfilm are (in)famous for enforcing their copyright, even if they've not released the clip themselves!)

[Tags: youtube | clipculture | mashup | participatoryculture | heyclip | digitalnatives | igeneration | machinima | avenue | worldofwarcraft | hey | starwars | ]

N. Katherine Hayles CTheory Live Interview

2006-05-03T11:18:00.000+08:00

The latest in the CTheory: Live interviews features N. Katherine Hayles in Conversation with Arthur Kroker and provides a good overview of her work and objectives stretching from How We Became Posthuman to My Mother was a Computer. Worth a listen ...

[Interview Page] [Download 72Mb Quicktime Movie]

[Tags: nkatherinehayles | posthuman | howtobecomeposthuman | mymotherwasacomputer | ctheory | interview]

VideoDownloader for YouTube et al

2006-05-02T21:33:00.000+08:00

While the rapid emergence of clip culture epitomised by YouTube is both fascinating and often enjoyable (after sifting through so much rubbish!), by far the most annoying thing has been the difficulty in saving the video clips for replay later if you're not going to be online on a broadband connection 24/7. Well, for Firefox users, that just stopped being a problem with Javi Moya's VideoDownloader 1.0 extension for Firefox. One-click saving of YouTube and a horde of other Flash-driver-driven clip culture websites! Nice one! (Here's a quick screencast to show you how it works.) [Via BBoing]

Now you can enjoy and download mashup delights like the wonderful C is for Cookie mashup trailer from Steve and LowLevelRebel which mushes Sesame Street with V for Vendetta.

Of course, you can still embed the clips, too ...

[Tags: cisforcookie | vforvendetta | sesamestreet | youtube | firefox | extension | videodownloader | clipculture | mashup | trailer]

Save the Internet!

2006-04-23T20:08:00.000+08:00

As the United States Congress is attacking the core of the internet -- it's neutrality as a collection of communicative platforms -- it's great to see that SaveTheInternet.com is spearheading a campaign of information and protest. Their mission statement:

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is a group of grassroots organizations, bloggers and concerned citizens that are banding together to protect a free and open Internet.

The Coalition believes that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and democratic discourse. We are working together to urge Congress to take steps now to preserve network neutrality, the First Amendment for the Internet that ensures that the Internet remains open to innovation and progress.

From its beginnings, the Internet has leveled the playing field for all comers. Everyday people can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions of people. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition ? representing millions of Americans from all walks of life ? is working together to ensure that Congress passes no telecommunications legislation without meaningful and enforceable network neutrality requirements.

While primarily a US initiative, Net Neutrality is of key importance for free and open(ish) communication across the wired globe. For a quick primer on why Internet Neutrality matters, check out this simple but effective clip from YouTube:

[Tags: netneutrality | ethics | politics | usa | congress | internet | digitalculture]

Happy Slapper Slapped!

2006-04-20T14:31:00.000+08:00

The London-spawned fad of Happy Slapping where anonymous people are slapped by an assailant and their accomplice(s) who record the event on video or video-enable mobile phone has consistently seemed one of the dumbest behaviours I've heard of. It comes as no surpise to hear that the tables have turned somewhat as the Time Online reports in "Happy slapper . . . . slapped":

A happy slapper’s mobile phone recording of an attack took an unexpected twist when his victim retaliated, flooring his assailant with a single punch. In footage that is rapidly gaining cult status, an athletic young man in a white vest is seen plotting the attack on a stranger, filmed on his friend’s mobile phone. The British man, on what appears to be a foreign street beside the entrance to a shopping arcade, addresses the camera and, as if he were preparing to sing on the ITV1 show Stars in Their Eyes, says: “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be. . .a happy slapper.” The cameraman, also British, can be heard encouraging his friend, saying: “OK, the next person who comes out.” [...] A passer-by emerges from the shopping arcade: a smaller man, wearing a leather jacket, a bag slung over his shoulder. The happy slapper runs towards him, drawing back one arm to swing and catch the man full in the face. The victim recoils in pain and drops the bag. He sees his attacker turn and walk back to his friend, who is laughing and still recording the scene. Incredulous, he screams with rage. He asks his attacker what he was doing. Judging by his accent, he appears to be from Liverpool. The victim then approaches the youth and throws a fierce right-hand jab, punching him on the chin and knocking him unconscious.

He is perhaps the first recorded victim to turn the tables on his would-be attackers since the slapping craze began. It is thought to have begun in South London but has since spread across Britain and Europe. Incidents have ranged from minor assaults to the killing of Soho barman David Morley in a gang attack on the South Bank in London in October 2004, all recorded and circulated on mobile phones. Coverage of the phenomenon in the press has been mirrored by constant chatter in internet chatrooms and on online message boards. Some attackers post messages boasting of their slaps, some request new footage to be sent via e-mail. Others condemn the craze.

And the happy slap that back-fired:

A search for Happy Slapping on YouTube pulls in around 250 results today ... I wonder if the ease of clip culture will contribute to more acts of digitially recorded stupidity? [Via Smart Mobs]

[Tags: meme | happyslapping | smartmob | cameraphone | mobilephone | london]

The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler

2006-04-17T19:24:00.000+08:00

When Lawrence Lessig offers this sort of recommendation, I think it's time to buy (or at least read) this book.

Titanic Two the Surface - Excellent Mashup Sequel Trailer

2006-04-13T10:49:00.000+08:00

Ready for Titanic: Two the Surface? Derek Johnson has done a fine job...

How many different films can you spot clips from? From The Shawshank Redemption to The Hulk there's plenty to be found!

[~~Download 15Mb Quictime Version Here~~] [Download Here Now] [Via Waxy]

[Tags: titantic | trailer | sequel | titanictwo | mashup | participatoryculture | clips]

Union Jack(s)

2006-04-11T09:47:00.000+08:00

Early drafts of the union jack.

According to a BBC article, the union jack has an interesting history

Four-hundred years old this week, the union jack is one of the world's oldest national flags... if you overlook the fact it's only meant to be flown at sea, the proportions are wrong and no one can agree on its name.

Read more... [Via]

[Tags: unionjack | uk | britain | flags | history]

Citizen Justice Revisited ... Smarter Mobs?

2006-04-10T22:25:00.000+08:00

You may recall a story last year about Thao Nguyen who was flashed on the New York subway and in retaliation pulled out her cameraphone and posted online the picture of the guy who exposed himself. While an immensely satisfying story in itself, it got more complicated when the image was run as the front page of the New York Daily News which, in effect, had a rather trial-by-media effect. In this particular case, Nguyen seemed well within her rights, but I was worried about the potential abuse of this style of vigilantism (especially in the era of photoshop) and explicated my fears in my post Citizen Justice or Opening Pandora's Box? in which I concluded:

Before getting too drawn into the story, lets look a few steps into the future. Pictures, as we all know, can easily be manipulated. Pictures tell 1000 words, but which thousand can be readily manipulated by whoever takes or contextualises the image. I'm not suggesting that Thao Nguyen did either of these things. But, if this becomes a trend and a cameraphone-enabled trial-by-Flickr gains a odd sort of credibility, the potential to abuse such a system is virtually limitless. What if after a nasty breakup photos that were taken with consent within the bounds of a relationship were re-contextualised and posted online as a form of revenge? What if a particularly effective photoshop effort was posted online? It's probably the case that either of these cases would be shown to be untrue give time, many people would probably never see such a clarification/retraction. Newspapers, if they pick up the story, have a nasty trend of giving accusations page one treatment and retractions two lines on the bottom of page forty-seven. So, while I commend Thao Nguyen for her quick thinking and wish her every luck in prosecuting the man who appears strongly to have abused her, I simply want to add a few words of warning to the digital ether and ask you to think about the ramifications of digital images becoming a form of citizen "justice". We need to be wary in such cases, or our new digital resources may indeed open a seductive but ultimately unjust hi-tech pandora's box.

Adding to the story, Boing Boing reported the other day that Dan Hoyt, the flasher in question, had been tried and was awaiting sentencing, but in an interview with The New York Metro seems entirely oblivious to any wrong he may have done. Boing Boing adds further:

On a more positive note, Thao Nguyen -- the woman who snapped an incriminating phonecam photo of Hoyt's wank in progress -- inspired a group of fans to start Hollabacknyc.com, a blog where women “holla back” at harassers by taking their pictures with phonecams, then posting them online.

Holla Back describes itself as:

Holla Back NYC empowers New Yorkers to Holla Back at street harassers. Whether you're commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking, or sunning, you have the right to feel safe, confident, and sexy, without being the object of some turd's fantasy. So stop walkin' on and Holla Back: Send us pics of street harassers!

While I fully support the idea of empowering women--indeed, anyone--who has been harrassed, abused and so on, I have reservations about the Holla Back blog or other such websites. They amount to a trial-by-media or, in this case, trial-by-blog and the potential for abuse is extremely high. Smart Mobs hits the nail on the head with this insight:

Clearly, phonecams plus Internet equals a whole new way for people to fight back -- and, from these early indicators, probably a whole new way for mobs to get ugly, too

The Easter Bunny Hates You!

2006-04-06T09:58:00.000+08:00

For some reason, this made me laugh ... a lot:

The Easter Bunny Hates You

[Download 9.5Mb .Mov] [Via]

Also, have a read of the Top 9 Signs the Easter Bunny Hates You, including: 'Your brother: chocolate bunny with blue bow tie. Your sister: chocolate bunny with pink bow tie. You: headless chocolate bunny with sign reading “YOU!!”'

[Tags: easterbunny | videoclip | short | mov | humour | silly]

"Games Made Me Do It"

2006-04-04T16:59:00.000+08:00

GamePro reports that a US court has decided to continue with a case which basically makes the "games made me do it" defense a reality:

The Alabama Supreme Court has dismissed a motion for an appeal by Take-Two Interactive and video-game sellers, ruling in favour for a $600 million lawsuit to move forward, which sets the stage for a trial over killings blamed on the Grand Theft Auto games.

In 2003, then 18-year-old Devin Moore shot and killed two Fayette police officers and one dispatcher. Moore's defence was barred from linking the shootings to violent video games, and he was ultimately sentenced to death last year for the murders.

Relatives of the victims, however, suggest the killings are to be blamed on Moore's repeated playing of the Grand Theft Auto games. The victim's families filed suit against the maker of GTA, Take-Two Interactive, as wells as Wal-Mart and Gamestop, the two stores where Moore bought the games.

After his arrest, Moore told investigators: "Life is a video game; everybody has to die sometime."

The trial could start as early as January 2007.

Even the court which convicted Moore dismissed "the game made me do it" argument. Seriously, if watching or interacting with media made you do the things you simulated I'd have to (a) spend a lot of time stopping people trip on banana peels; (b) run around consuming a huge amout of small white pills which, when I take a large one, alter my perceptions of other people; and (c) hack of several heads daily as I chuckle "weelcccoooome to BARBARIAN!'.

[Tags: videogames | games | politics | media | representation | law]

Understanding Cross Platform and New Media Notes...

2006-03-30T18:04:00.000+08:00

Quick notes for tonights at 'Understanding Cross Platform and New Media' at FTI...

Rocketboom: NYT: 200,000 daily viewers; $US40,000 1-week RBoomed Advertising [TRM] ; Made by 2 + Sml Team; Edited with iMovie; on CSI; Rocketboom with Ad Example. From Rocketboom's About:

We differ from a regular TV program in many important ways. Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs. Also, Rocketboom is distributed online, all around the world and on demand, and thus has a much larger potential audience than any TV broadcast. However, we spend $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive. While TV programs have traditionally been uni-directional, Rocketboom engages its international audience in a wide range of topical discussions.

On TiVO;

Battlestar Galactica: Ronald D. Moore: Blog; Podcasts (Ep Commentaries +); Season I Finale LEGALLY Online; Official Website.
Fans: Battlestar Wiki; CIC Fan Podcast; Unofficial BSG Blog.
(Flipside: most downloaded tv show ever!)

(Other examples: The Signal and Serenity/Firefly; Kong Is King with PJ's video diaries; Lost online presence ...)

The 5G Video iPod Microphones are almost here ... (finally!)

2006-03-30T10:43:00.000+08:00

iLounge reports that Griffin have finally got around to an iTalk equivalent for the 5G iPods which can take advantage of the CD quality recording potential built into the newer iPods. Details of the iTalkPro from iLounge:

Substantially redesigned from the company’s earlier, popular iTalks for 3G and 4G iPods, the glossy black iTalkPro now boasts twin internal microphones for recording in CD-quality stereo, taking advantage of the 5G iPod’s superior stereo and monaural sampling modes, and a bold red recording light around its one-touch recording button. It also features a unique on-screen gain adjustment menu and a bottom-mounted port for an external microphone of your choice. Predictably, the new iTalk connects to the 5G iPod’s bottom Dock Connector, and is not compatible with earlier iPods. A release date and pricing have yet to be announced.

According to Griffin, iTalkPro will be able to record for 3.5 continuous hours on a fully-charged 60GB fifth-generation iPod, or 1.5 hours on a 30GB model before the battery runs out, a limitation based largely on the 5G iPod’s need to spin its hard drive all the time during recording. These recording times also assume that the iPod has sufficient hard drive space for recording; Apple’s firmware saves files in high-bitrate WAV format rather than in compressed MP3 or AAC.

The iTalkPro joins the much-hyped XtremeMac MicroMemo...

... and Belkin's TuneTalk ...

... all set to enter the market in the near future (release dates range from a vague "late spring" [which would be late Autumn for those of us in Australia) to no date at all, but you can pretty much guarentee they'll all appear in quick succession).

Given the far greater audio recording quality inherent to the 5G iPod Video models (44.1khz stereo), the owners of the latest iPods are (finally) about the become (potentially, at least) the creators of high-quality podcasts (and numerous other digital audio products)! At a higher education level (and, indeed, a K-12 level, too), this means that buying iPods can simply be supplemented with a microphone plugin to turn them into a high quality recording device and separate devices won't be necessary for a wide range of audio recording tasks.

Bring on the student-created podcasts!

Update 22 Aug 06: The first of the iPod Video microphones has finally arrived!

[Cross-posted from my eLearning blog.]

[Tags: podcast | microphone | apple | ipod | ipodvideo | 5g | italkpro | tunetalk]

Understanding Cross Platform and New Media

2006-03-27T13:22:00.000+08:00

This Thursday (30th March), I'm participating in a panel and seminar at Fremantle's Film and Television Institute (92 Adelaide Street, Fremantle) so any local readers of this blog who might be interested, please come along (it costs $18/ $9 FTI Members ... worth being a member for, methinks!). The outline:

Understanding Cross Platform and New Media

Want to find out about the latest trends in new media and cross platform development? Want to gain a greater understanding of how the use of broadband internet is already changing the way documentaries, television and films are being created, developed and distributed?

Don't miss this exciting seminar at FTI on Thursday 30th March at 7pm. Our panel of presenters will discover, discuss and debate what the world of the filmmaker of tomorrow will be like.

Guest speakers include Tama Leaver from UWA, Arron Kennedy from the award winning innovative animation company Raging Pixel and Alison Wright from the ABC.

To find out more contact FTI on 9431 6700 or email ftitraining@fti.asn.au

Podcasting Reaches 25% of Britains!

2006-03-26T19:46:00.000+08:00

According to Podcasting News, podcasts are rapidly hitting the mainstream in the UK:

The British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) reports that a quarter of all adult internet users will listen to a podcast in the next 6 months.

“The findings suggest that up to 7.9 million adults could be downloading podcasts in the next 6 months, which represents a massive opportunity for advertisers and media owners alike,” said BMRB marketing director Steve Cooke.

The report is based on a national (UK) survey of 1,000 adults in February 2006.

Among adult internet users, 17% have downloaded a podcast in the last 6 months (rising to 28% among 16-24 year olds) and 24% are likely to download a podcast in the next 6 months, according to BMRB. Those owning an MP3 player are more likely to have downloaded a podcast (28%) with up to 38% likely to download a podcast in the next 6 months.

The BMRB found that podcasting is more likely to be a male activity, with male internet users almost twice as likely (22%) as females (12%) to have downloaded a podcast.

Read more...

[Tags: podcasting | uk | audience]

Australia/US "Free" Trade Agreement: Robbery Under Arms

2006-03-20T14:06:00.000+08:00

First Monday has an very interesting (and rather disheartening) article by ANU law lecturer Matthew Rimmer called "Robbery under arms: Copyright law and the Australia-United States Free Trade Ageeement" which examines the Free Trade Agreement in terms of Australia's copyright laws and how they'll mutate under the agreement. The abstract:

This article considers the radical, sweeping changes to Australian copyright law wrought by the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement 2004 (AUSFTA). It contends that the agreement will result in a "piracy of the public domain". Under this new regime, copyright owners will be able to obtain greater monopoly profits at the expense of Australian consumers, libraries and research institutions, as well as intermediaries, such as Internet service providers. Part One observes that the copyright term extension in Australia to life of the author plus 70 years for works will have a negative economic and cultural impact - with Australia's net royalty payments estimated to be up to $88 million higher per year. Part Two argues that the adoption of stronger protection of technological protection measures modelled upon the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 (U.S.) will override domestic policy-making processes, such as the Phillips Fox Digital Agenda Review, and judicial pronouncements such as the Stevens v Sony litigation. Part Three questions whether the new safe harbours protection for Internet service providers will adversely affect the sale of Telstra. This article concludes that there is a need for judicial restraint in interpreting the AUSFTA. There is an urgent call for the Federal Government to pass ameliorating reforms - such as an open-ended defence of fair use and a mechanism for orphan works. There is a need for caution in negotiating future bilateral trade agreements - lest the multinational system for the protection of copyright law be undermined.

Gibson on Vendetta

2006-03-18T11:39:00.000+08:00

William Gibson: "Just back from V FOR VENDETTA. More thumbs up than a Chernobyl pianist. Superb. Splendid. Heartening. Go see."

Now that's a recommendation I'm taking to heart. Can't wait. (Opens Thursday, 30 March 2006 in Australia).

[Tags: vforvendetta | williamgibson]

Authorised Bribes

2006-03-16T16:49:00.000+08:00

History Wars in Latin: Terra nullius Vs Territorium nullius

2006-03-15T09:36:00.000+08:00

There has been a great deal of debate in the past months about the applicability of terra nullius as the term which captures the colonial position on indigenous land rights (ie none) which was overturned by the Mabo decision. Henry Reynolds' work fundamentally underpinned that judgement, but has recently been attacked by conservative historians, most notably Michael Connor's work which argues Reynolds was completely inaccurate in sing terra nullius as a term, or representative term, of the colonial position. However, Andrew Fitzmaurice in The Australian today makes a powerful counter-argument, reinforcing the political utility of both Reynolds' work, and the Mabo decision:

The judgment sits in a 500-year tradition of the negative use of natural law arguments to defend indigenous rights. Rather than overturning the "doctrine of terra nullius", the judgment was keeping alive a tradition of using the tools of natural law and, in this instance, terra nullius, to argue against dispossession. By arguing that Australia had not been terra nullius at the time of colonial occupation the judges were acknowledging the natural law argument that Aboriginal property rights existed and continued to exist where a relationship to the land was maintained. This continuing relationship between Aboriginal people and land means that the history of colonial occupation is not simply a fait accompli, as historian John Hirst has recently argued, but a part of the present. Mabo is not good history, but it is clearly continuous with a Western judicial tradition that attempted to rescue liberty (or in this case liberal democracy) from the threat posed by the dispossession of colonised peoples.

This is what makes the attack on the Mabo judgment by several commentators on the Right particularly misguided. Out of an ignorance of the complex history of Western political thought, these opinion writers are in effect attacking the liberal tradition that they valorise.

The Caffeine Curve

2006-03-09T09:51:00.000+08:00

So very close to true...

[SOurce] [Via]

[Tags: caffeine | coffee | humour | graph | silly]

Oscar Winners

2006-03-07T11:40:00.000+08:00

The Oscars are done for another year. Of the nineteen I took a stab at predicting, 12 paid off. I'm surprised Crash took best film when Ang Lee took best director, but haven't actually seen Crash so it'll definitely be on the To See list now! Other than Crash's Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, no major shocks this year. I've not actually watched the show yet, just seen the results online, and I'm still really looking forward to seeing Jon Stewart at the helm tonite!

My predictions, and the actual winners where I got it wrong:

[x] Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain [Winner: Crash]
[1] Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote.
[x] Actress: Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice. (Winner: Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line)
[2] Supporting Actor: George Clooney, Syriana( or Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain).
[3] Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener.
[4] Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain.
[5] Adapted Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain.
[x] Original Screenplay: George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck. (Winner: Crash - Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco)
[x] Animated Feature Film: Howl's Moving Castle. (Winner: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit )
[x] Art Direction: King Kong. (Winner: Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) - John Myhre, Gretchen Rau)
[x] Cinematography: Brokeback Mountain. (Winner: Memoirs of a Geisha - Dion Beebe)
[6] Sound Mixing: King Kong.
[7] Sound Editing: King Kong.
[8] Original Score: Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla (I guess ... I really didn't think it was a brilliant year for film scores.)
[x] Original Song: Travelin' Thru from Transamerica, Dolly Parton. (Winner: Hustle & Flow (2005) - Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman, Paul Beauregard("It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp")
[9] Costume: Memoirs of a Geisha.
[10] Documentary Feature: March of the Penguins.
[11] Makeup: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
[12] Visual Effects: King Kong (interesting to see Episode III didn't even get a nomination in this category!)

Update (11.40am, Tuesday 7 Feb 06): The production of this year's Oscars has to be one of the worst ever. Crap editing, poor camerawork, very poor sound. Jon Stewart made a pretty valient attempt to keep things interesting, but his wit didn't necessarily hit home in the Kodak Theatre (although worked well for me as a viewer). However, the blatant in-your-face "go to the cinema; don't just buy the DVD message" of the Academy President and others (including a very awkward looking Jake Gyllenhal) really, really annoyed me. And the montages ... bloody hell ... could you say "we lack faith in this year's films to draw and audience so hear are some you might remember" more loudly and with worse edits? *sigh*

[Tags: oscars | academyawards | predictions | results | winners]

South Dakota: Abortion Illegal!

2006-03-07T09:36:00.000+08:00

Sometimes battles won in the past can get lost in the future ...

The BBC reports that South Dakota has decided women shouldn't have control over their bodies:

The South Dakota law - approved by the governor on Monday - makes it a crime for doctors to perform terminations. Exceptions will be made if a woman's life is at risk, but not in cases of rape or incest. Many believe new appointments to the Supreme Court may have tipped the balance in favour of anti-abortionists.

Disheartening to think that as feminism slips further and further from the mainstream media radar, moves like this are more and more likely to get through conservative councils and governments.

[Tags: abortion | choice | southdakota | conservatives | rights | womensrights]

Steampunk Transformers!!

2006-03-06T18:03:00.000+08:00

I used to love The Transformers, so you can imagine how impressed I am by Steampunk Transformer designs ...

Shockwave!

Megatron!

And apparently new Transformers comics are coming, too:

[Via BoingBoing]

[Tags: steampunk | transformers | morethanmeetstheeye | 80s]

Australian Schools To Be CHARGED TO USE THE INTERNET?!?

2006-03-01T11:41:00.000+08:00

The Australian Copyright Agency seems to be determined to make sure students don't get a decent education by trying to charge schools to use the internet:

Schools have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website. Teachers said students in rural areas would bear the brunt of cuts if the Copyright Agency was successful in adding internet browsing charges to the $31 million in photocopying fees it rakes in from schools. [...] Negotiations between the Ministerial Council on Education Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, representing the schools, and the agency have broken down over plans to change the scheme to include a question in the survey on whether teachers direct students to use the internet. "If it turned out we'd have to pay them, we'd turn the internet off in schools," the council's national copyright director Delia Browne said. "We couldn't afford it; it would not be sustainable. How on earth are we going to deliver education in the 21st century? How are taxpayers going to afford this."

Cory Doctorow's take:

This is a way to transfer Australia's tax dollars from its education system to its copyright sector.

My take: Leave the schools alone!!!

[Cross-posted from my Edublog]

[Tags: copyright | australia | schools | fairuse | ]