• From Atari Joyboard to Wii Fit: 25 years of “exergaming” [Boing Boing Gadgets] - A fascinating look at the ancestors of the Nintendo WIi Fit system, from excercise bike/game hybrids to Dance, Dance Revolution.
• US ‘cyber-bully’ mother indicted [BBC NEWS] - “A Missouri woman who allegedly used a fake MySpace profile to bully a girl who later committed suicide has been indicted by a federal Grand Jury. Lori Drew, 49, allegedly posed as a boy on the website to befriend Megan Meier, 13…”
• Google fuzzes out faces in privacy push [SMH] - “Google has rolled out a new technology which automatically blurs any human face appearing in street-level photographs taken for use in its mapping services by its fleet of camera-mounted vehicles.”
• Dr Who fan in knitted puppet row [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] - “A Doctor Who fan is embroiled in a row with the BBC after she published knitting patterns for the sci-fi drama’s monsters on the internet.” (Sicking the lawyers on fans? Never a popular plan. Dare I make the pun: it’s Ooderous!)

• Twitters scoops media in reporting China quake [The Age] - "The world had real-time news about China's massive earthquake as victims dashed out "twitter" text messages while it took place, in what is being touted as micro-blogging outshining mainstream news."
• Sightseeing in Liberty City [Flickr] - A fantastic set of shots by Matthew Johnston which compare GTA IV's Liberty City with New York City (on which it was based). The level of detail in the GTA modelling is just amazing!
• From Production to Produsage: Interview with Axel Bruns (Part One) [Henry Jenkins - Confessions of an Aca/Fan] - Very useful two-part interview in which Axel Bruns gives an overview of 'produsage' and the project behind his new book. (Part 2)

• TimeTube - “Creates a timeline for any YouTube keyword search–very handy for visualising the activity around particular topics–and iterations/transformations of particular videos–over time.” (Via Jean)
• Victorian Liberal staffers sacked for blogging [gatewatching] - Two staffers in the Victorian Liberal Party were fired after they were outed as the writers of a blog highly critical of the party’s leader. Jason Wilson: “blogs revealed once more as a politically disruptive technology”. (More from the ABC)
• Storm Troopin’ - a set on Flickr - An absolutely wonderful set which tells the convoluted tale of Star Wars StormTrooper (toy) TK-704 and his many adventures in our world, from his quest for love, the arrival of other Troppers, and their shared love of doughnuts!
• Grand Theft Auto IV smashes sales record [theage.com.au] - “Grand Theft Auto IV blew away video game and Hollywood records as its creators reported that it raked in an unprecedented $US500 million in its opening week.”

To explore, expand and expound upon the emerging Australasian Commons, the Creative Commons Australia team have organised a free one-day symposium which investigates a range of activities, programme and philosophies driving open access and the cultural commons across Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia.  I’ll be there, participating in a panel on the Creative Commons and Education, as well joining the team facilitating a workshop on ‘Building Knowledge: Open Education Resources (OER) and Research Materials’.  Here are all the details:

… are proud to announce that registration is now officially open for the Creative Commons ‘Building an Australasian Commons’ Conference. The conference will be held on Tuesday 24th June 2008 from 8.30am – 5pm at the State Library of Queensland, South Brisbane, and is proudly supported by Creative Commons Australia (http://creativecommons.org.au), the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (http://www.cci.edu.aau), and the State Library of Queensland (http://www.slq.qld.gov.au).

This event provides an opportunity for those interested in the free internet to come together to exchange ideas, information and inspiration. It brings together experts from Australasia to discuss the latest developments and implementations of Creative Commons in the region. The conference aims to be an open forum where anyone can voice their thoughts on issues relating to furthering the commons worldwide.

The current programme detailing the array of presentations, workshops and round table discussions can be found at http://creativecommons.org.au/australasiancommons. Attendance is free and open to all comers. However, places are limited, so if you’re interested in attending please register ASAP. Registration closes 9  June 2008. You can download the registration form at http://creativecommons.org.au/materials/ccauconf08/
australasian_commons_conference_registration.pdf and return it via email to Elliott@creativecommons.org.au.

The conference will be followed on the day at 6pm by the second CCau ccSalon, a showcase of Creative Commons music, art, film and text from Australia and the region.  This will be a great opportunity to mingle and relax after the day’s events while experiencing CC works in action. We look forward to welcoming you at ‘Building an Australasian Commons’.

Keep in mind, it’s a completely free event, so if you’re interested and can be in sunny Brisbane on 24 June, I’ll see you there!

[Image based on Them colors… by jurek d CC BY]

• Little Brother » Download for Free - Cory Doctorow’s new young adult novel “Little Brother” is out and is also available, in its entirety, as a free download. The novel explores issues of privacy and surveillance (among others) as they related to young people (with culture jamming ideas to boot).
• Apple iTunes To Sell Films On Day Of DVD Release [InformationWeek] - Apple’s iTunes store is to start selling feature film downloads on the same day that they are released on DVD.
• Internet serves up 30 years of spam [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - “Today marks the 30th anniversary of the computer phenomenon - spam email. Now a nuisance for tens of millions of computer users worldwide, three decades ago someone sent what is considered to be the very first spam email.”

[Photo by rmclic CC BY NC SA]

• Free game hopes to save gorillas [BBC NEWS | Technology] - “Campaigners hoping to preserve Rwanda’s endangered mountain gorilla are attempting to raise awareness of its plight by making a game simulating the lives of the animals free to mobile phone users.”
• Sweet Hollywood hoax with Aussie actors [TV Tonight] - All of the hype built for a supposed new TV show called Scarlet, complete with an over-the-top trailer starring Gary Sweet and Sharni Vinson, turns out to be a viral effort by LG to launch their new Scarlet line of TVs!
• Radiohead says no more music freebies [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - “It was a pivotal moment for the music industry which many thought sounded the death knell for recorded music sales, but Radiohead will not be repeating its initiative to let fans pay what they want for their downloads.”

However, one of the more interesting subjects to emerge in the press frenzy surrounding the game’s launch is the revival of the synthespian (or synthetic thespian) debate, which last raged seriously when Gollum and his contemporaries proved CGI folks could give their flesh and blood companions a run for their money. Nowadays, it’s videogame (anti-)heroes getting the limelight. As Asher Moses reports for The Age:

He’s the biggest name in entertainment but you won’t find him striding down the red carpet or cavorting with Hollywood starlets under the watchful eye of the paparazzi. No, Niko Bellic, set to become the most high profile Slav in entertainment since Borat Sagdiyev took the box office by storm 18 months ago. He is among the new breed of entertainment personalities who, rather than being cast, are built from scratch by a team of programmers and graphic designers. He’s the protagonist in Grand Theft Auto IV and, just days after hitting the streets, is already giving flesh-and-blood Hollywood stars a run for their money. Launched around the world at midnight on Monday, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is on track to become the biggest entertainment launch in history. Analysts have predicted the title, which has inspired near-perfect reviews from most gaming magazines, will sell at least 6 million copies in its first week.

Sure, the synthespian issue is wedged amongst hype about sales and violence, but it’s certainly an interesting question: to what extent do gamers ‘inhabit’ the characters they play and to what extent will they idolize these characters (provoking some interesting notions about the changing nature of celebrity culture … do we actually need celebrities to even have a supposedly ‘real’ version to idolize?).

For Australians, one of the other notable features of GTA IV is that, thanks to the fact that we still don’t have an R18+ category for games, our version of GTA IV has been toned down to get rating approval.

Update: Australian Game Pro reports that Australians attempting to import the international version of GTA IV (which doesn’t meet Australia’s MA15+ game rating limit) would be guilty of importing prohibited goods and could be fined up to $110,000!

[Photo by Rappzula CC BY NC SA]

Update: And what would Facebook be like in the “real world”?

• Viralcom [Joey and David] - Wonderful satirical series of high-end videos which look at user-generated content, looking at the imagined high-end producers behind each viral hit! (Boy puts mentos in sister’s coke doesn’t just come from nowhere!)
• Mobile phones outnumber Australians [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - “For the first time the number of mobile phones in Australia exceeds the population, with recent growth being driven by a dramatic increase in 3-G phones…. there are now 21.26 million active phone services in the country.”
• Uni chief lifted text from Wikipedia [Australian IT] - “Griffith University vice-chancellor Ian O’Connor has admitted lifting information straight from online encyclopedia Wikipedia and confusing strands of Islam as he struggled to defend his institution’s decision to ask the repressive Saudi Arabian Governme

• Nielsen Online: Produsage Trends in Australia and New Zealand [Produsage.org] - Using details from Nielsen Online, Axel gives an outline of how many Australians and Kiwis are using Web 2.0 tools, and how many are “produsing” (lowdown: a lot use, less make).
• Being a Researcher at a Liberal Arts College [Just TV] - Fascinating reflections from media scholar Jason Mittell and the pros and cons (mainly pros) of teaching in a US liberal arts college rather than one of the the larger, more prestigious, universities. (Esp useful for those of us outside looking in!)
• Israeli jailed for Facebook photo [BBC NEWS | Middle East] - “Israel has sentenced a soldier to 19 days in jail for uploading a photograph taken on his military base to the social networking website, Facebook. … The case follows widespread reports about the potential security risk of soldiers posting photos …”

The Blurb: From networked computers and Internet platforms such as blogging, YouTube, Second Life, and social software, through mobile phones, digital television and entertainment, digital technologies are at the centre of the dynamics of contemporary culture.

Disability is a pivotal part of this digital life. People with disabilities are playing an important yet under-appreciated role in the user-powered creative innovation coming out of digital cultures. At the same time old problems of accessibility and exclusion remain, while new forms of oppression and stereotyping are emerging.

In this lecture, Professor Goggin will explore this rich theme of disability and digital cultures, with case studies drawn from YouTube, Second Life, and mobile phones. He looks at the pressing concerns of accessibility, investigate what is distinctive about people with disabilities’ use of digital technologies, as well as considering how disability is being represented and constructed in new digital cultures. Finally, he will consider how these developments in disability and digital technology fit into the larger social, cultural and political arrangements of Australian life.

Biographical Note: Gerard Goggin is Professor of Digital Communication, and Deputy Director of the new Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communication, University of New South Wales. He has had a long time interest in disability, digital technology, and media culture. With Christopher Newell he is author of “Digital Disability” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and many other papers on technology, disability, and society. Christopher and Gerard’s second book “Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid” (University of New South Press, 2005) was awarded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Arts Non-Fiction prize. Gerard’s other books include “Global Mobile Media” (2009), “Internationalizing Internet Studies” (2008), “Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media” (2008), “Mobile Phone Cultures” (2007), “Cell Phone Culture” (2006), “Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia” (2004), and “Digital Disability” (2003). Gerard is editor of the journal “Media International Australia”.

This public lecture precedes a one-day Seminar on Driving Change in the Disability Sector, sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Studies, the Western Australia Disability Collective and Equity & Diversity UWA.

Update: For those interested, Goggin’s lecture is now available as either streaming audio or for download here.

The great news is that the two central characters, Mayer and Bettle are back, joined this time by a new player in the game - Flick - in a new animated tale. This one looks at CC licenses in more depth, with a focus on making money off content creation while still using CC licensing. You really need to watch the original animation first for this sequel to make sense, but it’s another fine effort from CCau, making CC licenses understandable and accessible to a general (non-lawyerish) audience!

Here you go:

Update: For more info and a higher quality download, check out the official CCau blog. [Via Elliot’s CC Blog]

• TV takes the online challenge [The Age] - ‘”The reason people are illegally using P2P [peer-to-peer] networks is simply because content isn’t available elsewhere,” says Ten’s general manager, Digital Media, Damian Smith.’ (So give me a legal way to download Battlestar Galactica today and I will!)
• Exploring Fantasy Life and Finding a $4 Billion Franchise [New York Times] - “… Electronic Arts, the Sims?s publisher, plans to announce that the series has sold more than 100 million copies (including expansion packs) in 22 languages and 60 countries since its introduction in 2000. All told, the franchise has generated about
• Australia’s YouTube stars to get paid [Australian IT] - The YouTube Partner Program provides money to YouTube content creators in exchange for displaying banner ads on their videos, has been launched in Australia today.
• Parents angry at violent school bully game [The Age] - From Rockstar Games, the people behind Grand Theft Auto, comes the hugely provocative Bully: Scholarship Edition in which you play a rebellious school kid, and runs the risk of (purposefully?) provoking cyberbulllying to normalising school-yard shootings.
• ABC’s digital push for channels, radio [The Age] - “The ABC wants to triple its number of television channels and radio services over the next 12 years as it seeks to increase Australian content levels and cement its place in the digital media age, its managing director, Mark Scott, has flagged”

• The new digital paparazzi [On Line Opinion - 14/4/2008] - Peter Black discusses “the new digital paparazzi” which are more likely friends, family, or even ourselves, posting photos online with little concern for personal privacy. Black argues that this is evident of a shift in the way privacy is thought about.
• Civil liberties expert slams email spying plans [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - “The head of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, Terry O’Gorman, says tighter laws to protect Australia against cyber terrorism threats are not needed.” (In the wake of proposed laws which would let certain employers read their employee’s email.)
• Study: Pirated Web Video Peaks 12-18 Hours After Broadcast [WatchingTV Online] - “Unauthorized viewing of popular TV shows on video-sharing Web sites like YouTube peaks between 12 and 18 hours after an episode is broadcast, according to a study conducted by Akamai Technologies and content-identification service provider Vobile.”

Following on from my previous post about Mars and the wonderful work of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) project, I just had to post the image above which is of “Marshine” (sunlight reflected off of the surface of Mars) on Phobos, one of Mars’ moons.  You can see more of Phobos at it’s HiRISE page, but just take a minute to look at that amazing image.  For me, at least, it really captures the imagination and a sense of wonder about our wider universe! [Via]

WEB 2.0 is well established, and sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Digg have turned the internet from a static source of information into a huge, interactive digital playground. But where to next? What will the next stage of web culture - which some people call Web 3.0 - be like? The expectation seems to be that profound changes are on the way. If Web 2.0 is about generating and sharing your own content, Web 3.0 will make information less free.Privacy fears, new forms of advertising, and restrictions imposed by media companies will mean more digital walls, leading to a web that’s safer but without its freewheeling edge. […]This openness is one of the defining features of Web 2.0. But software specialist Nat Torkington, of high-tech publishing house O’Reilly Media, predicts a backlash. He argues that one serious leak or theft of private data could change opinions overnight.”It could be a Three Mile Island of the net,” he says, referring to the 1979 accident that turned the US public against nuclear power.

While this story is more about a more locked-down web being forthcoming rather than present, it’s been noteworthy that the same paper has since run stories about the ease of hacking computers via browsers thanks to Web 2.0 technologies, the fact that stolen identities are being sold cheap by criminals since they’re so easy to obtain thanks to poor web security, and one more nasty tale about 6 teenage girls who lured another girl to one of their homes and then beat her viciously before posting a video of the beating online (or, as The Age called it “an ‘animalistic’ YouTube attack”).

So, the two broad possibilities you’d garner from reading The Age this week are either that Web 2.0 is the root of great evil and needs to be secured immediately, or that someone editing the technology sections of The Age is trying to push for a dramatic change in online culture. (Or, possibly, some middle ground between the two.) What do you think: are the freedoms of Web 2.0 going to be curtailed due to rampant misuse?

Photo by Darwin Bell (CC BY NC)

After the recent debacle with Nine’s Underbelly series becoming a star of the peer-to-peer downloading circuit, the network have taken an entirely different approach with their new offering Canal Road, making the initial episodes available as free downloads.  From NineMSN:

After battling illegal internet downloads of its hit program Underbelly, the Nine Network will offer up free online access to its new series Canal Road. Viewers will have the opportunity to download the first four episodes of the new Aussie drama for free before it debuts on national television on April 16. […] Ninemsn will make the first two episodes available for download on April 7, with episodes three and four following on April 14. Every other episode will be available to download immediately after it airs on the Nine Network.

Nine said in February it was considering taking legal action after thousands of people started downloading leaked episodes of its controversial gangland drama Underbelly, which was banned in Victoria. This time around the network is keen to stress that viewers will be able to get a preview of Canal Road legally. “All downloaded episodes of Canal Road can also be legally shared with family and friends by saving them onto a DVD or through the existing peer-to-peer file sharing programs,” ninemsn said in a statement.

Kudos to Nine: while streaming video of episodes and the occasional downloadable-but-expires-within-a-week episodes have been tried by Australian broadcasters in the past, Nine’s Canal Road episodes can be downloaded, kept, played offline and won’t “expire”.  Indeed, this new ‘Catch-Up TV’ service sports the following message regarding Canal Road:

You can also copy, share and burn each episode to DVD or even distribute the files via file-sharing applications, such as Bit Torrent.

In actually encouraging Australia TV watchers to use Bit Torrent, Nine is finally trying to build on what they know a reasonable segment of their audience are already up to.  However, that notice is a little disingenuous: yes, users can download and redistribute the episodes, BUT in order to play the episodes back, you must have the Hiro Video Player Plugin (which works with Windows Media Player on PCs and Quicktime on Macs) and Hiro inserts advertisements into the downloaded episodes.  So, in order to play the episode, each computer must have Hiro installed.  More to the point, “burn each episode to DVD” sounds like the file can be either converted to a DVD format or can be played in DivX compatible DVD players but this simply isn’t true.

So, while Nine have made leaps and bounds in providing downloadable episodes for their viewers (and certainly Canal Road will be benefiting from the press surrounding such an experiment), they’ve still made claims (such as the episodes being burnable to DVD) which, while not completely untrue, are a little deceptive.  That said, if you are willing to put up with a few ads you can’t fast forward to rewind — Hiro doesn’t seem to insert that many ads (I got three single ads, all around 30 seconds in the 45 minutes playback of the first episode of Canal Road) — then the episodes are of a very decent quality (720×576) although for some reason they did play back on my PC in 4:3 when it was clearly shot in 16:9.

A few solid steps in the right direction here, but still a few more steps worth taking to get legal downloads right!

[Via Across the Mediaverse]

• Why Academics Should Blog… [Confessions of an Aca/Fan] - Henry Jenkins makes a powerful argument as to why academics - and postgraduate students - should be blogging. Connections, networks, exposure and clarity are among the themes!
• “I love a sunburnt country” [Flickr Blog] - Australia’s Powerhouse Museum becomes the second cultural heritage institution to place part of their collection online via Flickr’s Commons with 200 photos from its Tyrrell Collection featuring Sydney around 1900!
• Bloodcell - Coming Soon - Jessica Lee Rose (of LonelyGirl15 fame) is heading back to the web in this online drama/horror series.
  [Via Jill]
• Perth Zombie Flash Mob [Richard Giles on Flickr] - A great photo set from the Zombie Flash Mob which descended upon Perth on Saturday, 5 April 2008!

• Study: Violent Games Relax Players [Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News - Home of Edge Online] - “People who play violent videogames online generally feel more relaxed and less angry after they have played, according to a new study by psychologists at Middlesex University” (Lets see if this one gets mainstream news coverage!)
• Battlestar Galactica: Join the Fight | Battlestar Galactica Social Network [SCIFI.COM] - The SciFi network have launched the “Battlestar Galactica social gaming experience” … you can be either human or Cylon (oddly enough). The “game” seems a little clunky in the layout and interface, but I’ll have to give it a try…
• The art of the teleprompter [Presentation Zen] - Some interesting thinking about the art of using teleprompters (esp looking at US politicians). John McCain doesn’t fare very well!
• How does the new, free online Photoshop match up with its free competition? [OJR] - “In summary, I didn’t find any functionality in Photoshop Express that Web users didn’t already have available to them in Picasa, Picnik and Splashup.”

• Bringing the cloud with you [Official Google Docs Blog] - Google edges even further in Microsoft’s heartland as Google Docs becomes available offline!
• Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore [Google Blogscoped} - A round-up of Google’s extensive April Foos offerings. The best one, of course, was the Australian based: “gDay with MATE technology to ?search content on the internet before it?s created,?.”
• YouTube’s Video Identification in Action [Google Operating System] - What options go content owners now get if YouTube detects others using their copyrighted material? They can either “block (no exposure and no money) or track (exposure, but no money) or monetize (exposure and money).”

• Police take a tip from YouTube [Australian IT] - “Call it BlueTube. Citizen-supplied video evidence of crimes appears set to take off with police forces around Australia.”
• Embracing the torrent of online video [BBC NEWS | Technology] - Very positive piece from Michael Geist on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s decision to make one of their shows available for free, without DRM, via peer to peer Bittorrent networks.
• Decline Of US Newspapers Accelerating [Tech Crunch] - “Figures released by the Newspaper Association of America show that the decline of newspapers is more rapid than previously thought, with total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunging 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006…”

In a stunning revelation today Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has won exclusive rights to the use of 0’s and 1’s in perpetuitity. In a statement released earlier today Gates was quoted as saying: “Yeah… all that Anti-Trust hoo-hah was just a furphy while we were sneaking this one under the radar…” Not content with owning virtually everything in the known world, Microsoft has now, effectively bought up the rights to all software, hardware “wetware” and in fact, the entire universe including black holes and stars.

And that’s not all! Yes, in Australia it’s already April 1st!

• Getting Started [Photoshop Express] - Great set of simple explanations (in video) for making the most of Photoshop Express.
• Adobe Photoshop Express - Adobe’s push into online applications continues, this time with a (very) scaled-down version of Photoshop as an online tool. Adobe are clearly getting into the web 2.0 side of things, too, with online galleries and a few basic community-building tools.
• An Example of Creative Commons Not Working [Aaron Landry] - An interesting post by Aaron Landry who was disappointed to see Cory Doctorow inadvertently violate a CC license. The issue has since been resolved, but the post raises some important issues about CC, fair use and understandings of ‘non-commercial’.
• Jobs to go in ABC production shake-up [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - Looks like Aunty is centralising in the Eastern states even more, and shrinking infrastructure under the guise of use new technologies and “maximising creativity” while minimizing costs. (Why does this sound so ominous for our national broadcaster?)
• Legal battle over Warcraft ‘bot’ [BBC NEWS | Technology] - Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of Glider bot which can ‘play’ Warcraft, on the grounds of a very technical copyright breach.
• Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief [The Age] - Feel-good crowdsourcing/collective intelligence story about Jesse McPherson whose X-Box was stolen, the police couldn’t help much, so he turned the clues he had over to Digg and mobilised a smart mob who found the theif and his lost goods!
• Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On [New York Times] - “According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well ? sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks.”

Do the Test. [Via Graeme’s Training Wheels]