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Links for April 28th 2008
Interesting links for April 28th 2008:
- 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
Links for April 27th 2008
Interesting links for April 27th 2008 through April 28th 2008:
- 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 …”
Mayer and Bettle are back!
Anyone who has ever tried to explain the importance of Creative Commons licenses to a new audience has probably played them the wonderful CC Mayer and Bettle Animation which was created back in 2005 by Pete Foley and others gathered together by CC Australia. The video features two animated characters whose adventures in downloading, copyright and content creation lead them to explore the utility of CC licenses for creators and for audiences. It’s also quite funny (featuring “the best song in the world!!”).
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!
Update: For more info and a higher quality download, check out the official CCau blog. [Via Elliot’s CC Blog]
Links for April 14th 2008
Interesting links for April 14th 2008:
- 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.”
Nine Promotes Canal Road By Allowing Free Downloading of Episodes
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!
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