links for 2007-04-19

Two New Zealand teenagers have discovered the downside of Happy Slapping (beating another kid up and post the videos on YouTube) when they were arrested by police yesterday.

“Ismail Ax,” two words reportedly written on the arm of Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter, spark a huge number of web searches.

Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has started full-video (if only 320×240 sized) of its documentary and issue-debate style shows Insight and Dateline. Both are quality viewing, so I recommend this feed!

Dan Gillmor: “Once again, horror has given us a glimpse of our media future: simultaneously conversational and distributed, mass and personal.”

“Like most youngsters these days, victims of Monday’s senseless massacre had Facebook and MySpace pages. At risk of being too voyeuristic, here’s a few of their pages, some now updated with heart-rending messages from friends…”

Friday, May 25th, 2007, a 24hour Second Life Teaching, Learning and Research Conference, including papers and eventually Conference Proceedings. (Possibly a good time for academics to try out Second Life!)

“Students from poor backgrounds are just as likely as those from wealthy families to finish university, once they make it into tertiary education. Whether they attended a private or public school also seems to make little difference to their chances of co

“Last year I raised the question “Is Second Life sustainable ecologically?” This question was picked up by Nick Carr, who found that an avatar in Second Life consumes about as much power as the average Brazilian.” (That seems a lot!)

“Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui sent what NBC Anchor Brian Williams referred to as a “multimedia manifesto” to NBC between shootings. NBC’s Pete Williams reports.” [Streaming Video]. (More @ Boing Boing.)