I could go on about the brilliant technical execution of the event, the heart wrenching video vignettes produced by CNN that Ms. Winfrey used to situate and tie each of the fictional stories to real life, the Facebook integration (which produced some really insightful comments) or the quality of the discussion facilitated by Ms. Winfrey, Anderson Cooper and Uwem Akpan.

But I won't.

No. Beyond the technical and digital excellence, this event was an opportunity for viewers to discover that these stories of Africa are also a mirror that reflect our own stories.

As Mr. Akpan points out, in Africa children sniff glue to fight off the pangs of hunger. He was shocked to find that in the US, children sniff glue as a way to escape their bounty of opportunities. The irony is tragic.

One of the most poignant moments, was when Ms. Winfrey introduced Corneille Nyungura, a musician and survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Corneille shared the story of how in the middle of the night a group of soldiers broke into his house, gathered his family in the living room and started shooting.

Corneille was the sole survivor of this massacre.

I have to admit that listening to Corneille share his story brought tears to my eyes. But Corneille's story doesn't end on that horrible night. He was able to eventually leave Rwanda and rebuild his life in Canada. Truly inspiring.

Towards the end of the webcast Ms. Winfrey thanked her audience for defying the conventional wisdom of the publishing world and embracing a book filled with unfamiliar names, life experiences and stories of Africa.

In his book, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander calls the invisible threads that hold us together "the WE story." As Zander explains:

By telling the WE story, an individual becomes a conduit for this new inclusive entity, wearing its eyes and ears, feeling its heart, thinking its thoughts..."

This webcast event illustrates how harnessing digital media to tell the "we story" can be leveraged to open hearts, move people outside their comfort zones and inspire them to be active participants in social justice issues.

This is what Ms. Winfrey has done for the last 25 years--shine a light the endless number of stories that surround us and then connect the "invisible threads" that transform a story from "me" to "we."

Three Things YouTube Has Learned From Pre-Roll Advertising: Once upon a time, YouTube was a site that didn't believe in pre-roll. My how times have changed. [AdWeek]

Why 70% of Facebook 'Fans' Don't Want Marketing: Among our findings was that 70% of consumers who visit Facebook at least once a month and are a "fan" of at least one company or brand don't believe they have given those companies permission to market to them. [MarketingProfs]

ABC Adding Social Commentary to Online Episodes: Fans can then log in through Facebook Connect and add their own comments. Although there are already many fan message boards for most television series, this is the first one in which fans will be interacting with people that are part of the show. [Examiner]

First Disney Parks Mobile App Now Available: Mobile Magic is bringing FASTPASS return times, attraction wait times for the park you are in, extensive information on character locations and more for Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks to your Verizon Wireless phone. [Disney Parks Blog]

Clicker Launches with Premium TV Content: Positioning itself as a “TV Guide for television content online,” Clicker has indexed over 400,000 episodes from 7000 television shows, making it a veritable one stop shop for finding legally-available TV shows online. [Mashable] 

Current Media Shifts to Outsourced Content: Current TV will shift away from short-form and daily in-house production to "proven 30-60 minute formats from a multitude of sources, including acquisitions, co-productions, outside studios, as well as Current developed and produced content. [Digital Media Wire]

How Experiences Are Becoming the New Advertising: Conventional wisdom holds that traditional media's grip on consumers continues to slip as they increasingly turn to the internet and their peers for entertainment and purchasing recommendations. [AdWeek]

Gen Y's Main Reason for Traveling? Bragging Rights: Generation Y and baby boomer travelers looking for a holiday "brag factor" are influencing a new shift towards weird and wonderful tourism experiences, a conference has heard. [The Age]

Five Reasons to Develop Computer Game Based Learning: There is a lot of debate particularly in the media about the pros and cons about computer use with children.  I believe that there are some fantastic potential benefits in developing computer games to teach children. [Dr. Jonathan Reed]

Why Comcast is Acquiring NBC-Universal: It's not just about those trendy cable network assets: Comcast's plan to acquire 51% of NBC Universal also is about seemingly boring things, including Video On Demand (VOD) and changing business models. [The Live Feed]

BBC Shows Off Project Canvas: BBC Future Media & Technology director Erik Huggers gave a sneak preview of the work-in-progress user interface that could power the Project Canvas open IPTV standard in all its interactive, cross-platform, content-sharing. [paidContent:UK]

Oprah's 'Say You're One of Them' Webcast: Earlier this week Oprah Winfrey partnered with Anderson Cooper and CNN for her first world-wide Book Club Webcast to discuss Uwem Akpan's collection of short stories "Say You're One of Them." I can honestly say, without equivocation, that this was one of the most inspiring and uplifting presentations I've seen in a very long time.

Even if you haven't read the book, this was a really phenomenal event and I urge you to take some time and experience it for yourself. [Barking Robot]

Tim Kring, creator of "Heroes" on NBC, talks about crafting stories that transcend a single medium, spreading across television, books, games, and online graphic novels.

The Commons provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

This printable guide provides an overview of how to use Creative Commons along with additional information regarding technical implementation on the Web. Introduction to Using Creative Commons

Additional Resources

• Creative Commons
• Flickr + Creative Commons
• Yahoo! Search + Creative Commons 
• Support Creative Commons

Overall comScore reports that among internet users in Turkey communications and entertainment activities accounted for much of the total time spent online. Among the key findings:

• Instant messaging, led by Windows Live Messenger, was the most popular online activity accounting for 25.9 percent of total time spent online during the month, followed by social networking (9.9 percent), online games (6.9 percent) and e-mail (4.6 percent).

• Google Sites was the most popular property in Turkey in September with 18.4 million visitors, reaching 93.0 percent of the total online population, followed Microsoft Sites with 17.6 million visitors.

• Social networking giant, Facebook.com, ranked third with 16.1 million visitors, having grown 26 percent in just the past six months.

• Dogan Online, which attracted 11.1 million visitors in September, led a total of seven Turkish-based properties that ranked amongst the top 15, including Milliyet Group (8.8 million visitors), Mynet A.S. (8.3 million visitors) and Blogcu.com (8.2 million visitors).

• Window’s Live Profile – which provides a gateway to Turkey’s most popular Instant Messenger, Window’s Live Messenger – ranked second with 7.8 million visitors, followed by Turkish property Mynet Eksenim (3.2 million visitors) and Netlog.com (1.8 million visitors).

via blog.nielsen.com

According to Nielsen's VideoCensus, Facebook generated more than 217 million streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers, up from 110 million streams to 23 million viewers in September. This phenomenal growth makes Facebook the number #3 video site behind YouTube (#1) and Hulu (#2).

Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee has put together an excellent analysis of the VideoCensus report along with some keen insight on how this may effect the race to win the social video war.

The article points to several indicators that video games have begun to make the transition from consoles to online and mobile gaming platforms. There are several indicators that social, mobile and casual gaming are the next wave of disruptive technology:

• In America, the industry’s biggest market, sales of games were down 12% in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2008.

• Gameforge, one of the biggest and fastest growing online-gaming firms, offers 15 games and has more than 85m registered players.

• The biggest area of growth for online gaming has been social gaming in social networks like Facebook. These games allow users to "join their friends for an online game of poker or Scrabble, or to create and show off virtual pets, farms and mob families."

• Zynga, the market leader, which had 22m users in January, now has more than 170m.

• Since they don't have to manufacture and distribute physical video game software, online social games are very profitable for game developers.

• The other big advantage for online gaming is that they don't have to spend as much money on traditional marketing, instead relying on "viral" and "word of mouth" among friends on social networks.

• The iPhone App store is also a leading source of mobile social gaming with literally hundreds of games available at the tap of a finger.

• The biggest monetization boon for online gaming companies comes from the sale of "virtual goods." By 2012, the article forecasts, annual revenues of virtual goods will have grown to $1.2 billion.

Despite these gains, there are signs that online gaming is already experiencing some potentially serious growing pains. This month Zynga and Facebook have come under fire for it's advertising practices. A potential class-action lawsuit asserts that "unauthorized charges imposed on Facebook and MySpace users who participate in social games like 'Farmville' and 'Mafia Wars.'"

Whatever the outcome of the Zynga lawsuit, social and casual gaming is here to stay. Electronic Arts (EA), the big dog of the console gaming era, recently snapped up Playfish, the second largest producer of social games for $400 million dollars.

The need to construct data-rich profiles of customers, personalize responses to their needs and smartly play in their social, mobile digital sandbox are themes that resonated in the opening-day keynote addresses and discussions at Forrester Research's annual Consumer Forum in Chicago Tuesday. [MediaPost]

Making the Connection Between Social and Mobile: A recent study by eMarketer predicts the number of mobile users accessing social networks from their mobile devices will reach 607.5 million worldwide by 2013, representing 43% of global mobile Internet users. In the US, mobile users accessing social networks will total 56.2 million by 2013, accounting for 45% of the mobile Internet user population. [VisInsights]

Holiday Web Shoppers Hit Social Networks: Sixty percent of consumers who plan to use social media in their holiday shopping will be looking for discounts, coupons and sales, according to Deloitte, while just over one-half will research gift ideas and check out friends’ and family members’ wish lists. [eMarketer]

InStyle Tries Augmented Reality Too: Fresh off the heals of the Esquire augmented reality experiment, InStyle Magazine has decided to also give it a go. Can augmented reality save traditional publishing? Doubtful, but it sure is fun! [Fishbowl NY]

Despite Economy, Entertainment Subscriptions Hold Up: While fewer Americans subscribe to newspapers and magazines, the subscription model continues to either maintain popularity or grow in areas including television, music, games and mobile services, according to a report from market research firm NPD Group. [Digital Media Wire]

Future is TV-shaped, says Intel: By 2015 more than 12 billion devices will be capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content, says chip giant Intel. It said its vision of TV everywhere will be more personal, social, ubiquitous and informative. [BBC]

Sundance Announces 2010 New Frontier Artists: A fully immersive media lounge environment will present a collection of digital art, film screenings, multimedia performances, site-specific installations and video presentations. [The Wrap]

Gossip Girl: A Real NYU Student Grades This Season: This season on "Gossip Girl," Blair, Vanessa, and Dan began their college careers at New York University. But from the very moment Queen Waldorf stepped into her dorm room, something felt a little off. As a seasoned (and current) student of school, I like to think that I know a little more about NYU than the TV producer. So let's review the truth behind the gossip. [Yahoo! TV]

Twitter, John Mayer & The Importance Of Internet Rule 17:  On my Facebook wall this week, a friend posted what, in my opinion, was probably the most pertinent album review I’ve ever read. The final line: Merely by existing, “Battle Studies” violates Internet Rule 17: Never let your Twitter account be more interesting than you are. [Ypulse.com]

When you're a kid, there are a few inexplicable truths that exist without question: 1. Ice cream is the superior food group. 2. Recess is the best education has to offer. 3. TV is probably the only thing that can get you to sit down and shut up, aside from maybe the "Dad Look." You know the one.

And while children's programming can be mesmerizing to kids, it obviously loses its luster (and your attention) by the time you discover MTV and finally debunk the cootie myth. Still, there are few kids' shows with more true staying power than the likes of Sesame Street...