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Digital Culture Links: February 17th 2010
Links for February 16th 2010 through February 17th 2010:
- Google admits Buzz social network testing flaws [BBC News] – “Google has admitted to BBC News that testing of its controversial social network Buzz was insufficient. The firm has had to make a series of changes to the service after a ferocious backlash from users concerned about intrusions of privacy. The BBC understands that Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers – used for many other Google services. Google said that it was now working “extremely hard” to fix the problems. “We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts,” Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News.”And the line that has everyone going “Duh*: ““We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”“
- The fear fades: legal downloads make sweet music for industry [SMH] – What’s that? Given actual legal options, people still buy music? “The very thing that has torn strips from the Australian music industry now looks to be driving a return to profitability. Digital music has experienced rocketing sales that appear – last year at least – to have more than offset the continuing drop in CDs sold, according to figures released yesterday by the Australian Recording Industry Association. Buyers’ increased enthusiasm for legal digital downloads has fuelled the industry’s first year of financial growth since wholesale earnings peaked in 2003. Overall revenue last year was up almost 5 per cent to $446 million on the back of a 72 per cent rise in digital-album purchases to almost 2.3 million.”
- A fight over freedom at Apple’s core [FT.com / UK] – Jonathan Zittrain on Apple’s philosophy shift from open (Apple Mac) to closed (iPhone/iPad): “In 1977, a 21-year-old Steve Jobs unveiled something the world had never seen before: a ready-to-program personal computer. After powering the machine up, proud Apple II owners were confronted with a cryptic blinking cursor, awaiting instructions. The Apple II was a clean slate, a device built – boldly – with no specific tasks in mind. Yet, despite the cursor, you did not have to know how to write programs. Instead, with a few keystrokes you could run software acquired from anyone, anywhere. […] Mr Jobs ushered in the personal computer era and now he is trying to usher it out. We should focus on preserving our freedoms, even as the devices we acquire become more attractive and easier to use.”
- Is ChatRoulette the Future of the Internet or Its Distant Past? By Sam Anderson Feb 5, 2010 [New York Magazine] – Accessible and human article about ChatRoulette (a service which connects random strangers to each other to ‘chat’ via webcam or text). ChatRoulette has many sides, with some amazing stories and people, but also an awful lot of things that are best left unshared (also, not safe for kids, not safe for work, etc). For one of the most human moments I’ve read about a ChatRoulette interactions, see Scott Heiferman’s Notes from hell.
- EMI Apparently Forgot Grey Album Disaster; Issues Takedown Of Wu Tang vs. Beatles [Techdirt] – “I’m beginning to think that EMI is trying to commit suicide, given many of its recent actions. Its latest move is to force offline a wildly popular mashup, mixing The Beatles with The Wu Tang Clan., despite it getting rave reviews and lots of attention… and despite a history of similar actions backfiring massively for EMI. Let’s take a look back. Apparently the folks over at EMI/Capitol Records have no sense of history. Back in 2004, DJ Danger Mouse put together “The Grey Album,” a fantastic mashup of The Beatles’ “The White Album” with Jay-Z’s “The Black Album.” EMI/Capitol, who holds the copyright on much of The Beatles’ catalog went nuts, and started sending cease-and-desists to pretty much everyone, leading to the infamous “Grey Tuesday” on February 24, 2004, where lots of websites posted the album in protest. Years later, EMI admitted that the Grey Album didn’t do any harm, but the company didn’t care, saying “It’s not a question of damage; it’s a question of rights.–
Digital Culture Links: February 15th 2010
Links for February 15th 2010:
- Google Buzz is About Protecting GMail’s Ad Dollars, Not Social Networking [The Steve Rubel Lifestream] – Does logging into a new website rather than just using a seamless app style interface change (or not sufficiently change) your user experience? Good question: “One of my chief issues with Google Buzz is that there’s no “there.” Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc all have destination sites or apps that allow the user to mentally switch contexts from one-to-one/one-to-few communication to one-to-many.”
- The hole in their bucket [Inside Story] – On iiNet & film/music futures: “…the debate about copyright tends not to acknowledge the importance of this informal consumption. Nor does big media, which is suspicious of any activity from which they do not directly benefit. Yet informal circulation, generally unlicensed and unmanaged, is one of the foundations of paid consumption. It is absolutely vital to the long-term sustainability of cultural industries. This is why we now need to expand our view of what constitutes media business. A teenager who listens to illegally downloaded MP3s of her favourite band may also be a proudly paid-up member of their fan club, own several items of legally purchased merchandise, and be a paying regular at every gig. Yet the music industry’s refusal to acknowledge the role of informal circulation means that it can’t acknowledge these other potential sources of revenue. This studied ignorance does little to help record companies out of their current structural crisis. The same is true of film. “
- How to confuse a Facebook user [Technology | guardian.co.uk] – Huh? “… sometimes your worst fears are given a real form – when you see the responses what is a browser, for example, or as shown by a little incident when the site ReadWriteWeb wrote about Facebook…. with hilarious consequences. Yesterday RWW wrote a post about how Facebook was partnering with AOL, in a way that would make the site’s login procedure more powerful than ever before – headlining the story “Facebook wants to be your one true login”. Suddenly, thanks to the magic of Google, that post became the most heavily-featured result for searches like “Facebook login” – which caused all kinds of confusion. It looks like a number of users clicked on the top result, expecting to be taken to Facebook’s login page (also known as, erm, facebook.com) and instead being presented with this ENTIRELY DIFFERENT site. The post now has a comment thread of around 300 posts, many from disgruntled Facebook users who have clicked and can’t work out what’s happened to the site they know and love.”
More Buzz on Buzz
Kudos to Google; after a lukewarm reception and provoking privacy concerns, Google have stepped up and made some quick changes to their new Buzz social tool. The most substantial change is making it possible to easily and visibly add your Buzz contacts to your public Google profile (if you have one); they’ve also made is easier to see who is and isn’t going to appear if you use a public profile to share your Buzz, and the ability to block people is easier, too (which is important since Google auto-creates your initial Buzz contact list).
Buzz has a long way to go before it’ll compete with other popular micro-blogging services, or Facebook, but Mashable has a useful feature request list and they do note for a service getting so much flack, Buzz had already had 9 million items of content created or shared (“meaning that it’s getting over 160,000 comments and posts per hour”). Perhaps buzzing will join tweeting in our social media vocabulary soon.
Of course, if you’re completely over all this buzzing about Buzz, you’ll probably enjoy this:
Update (Feb 14): Only four days after Buzz was launched, Google are already making a second round of feature changes to address the massive privacy backlash to the original launch. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis is pondering why Buzz was one of the few Google products to skip the beta phase but for those of you sticking with, or at least testing out, Buzz, Google Operating System has a good list of useful but not-so-visible Buzz features you’ll want to know about.
Digital Culture Links: February 11th 2010
Links for February 11th 2010:
- Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming [Techdirt] – How to encourage music piracy 101: “A few years back, it seemed like Warner Music actually had a better handle on where the music industry was heading than its 3 major label rivals. In the last two years, however, it seems like WMG has consistently gone further and further in the opposite direction. It may have hit a new low today with the announcement that it will pull out of all free streaming music licensing offers. Yes, Warner Music just told the one thing that was effectively competing with unauthorized downloads to shove off. Brilliant.”
- Google baulks at Conroy’s call to censor YouTube [SMH] – Google tells Stephen Conroy it won’t be filtering YouTube for him! Australian “Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally. Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy’s comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not “helpful or relevant”. Google has recently threatened to pull out of China, partly due to continuing requests for it to censor material. “YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” Flynn said.”
- WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw [Business Insider] – The privacy problems with Buzz defaults: “There is a huge privacy flaw in Google’s new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz. When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow. A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail. That’s fine. The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile. In other words, before you ever touch any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most. In my profession – where anonymous sourcing is a crucial tool — the implications are terrifying. But it’s bad for others too. Two obvious scenarios come to mind: imagine if a wife discovering that her husband emails and chats with an old girlfriend a ton. Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor”
- More Fun than Blackboard – A satirical blog which documents things which might be “more fun that Blackboard’s discussion board system”. So far, blog entries include root canal surgery and running with scissors!
Digital Culture Links: January 29th 2010
Links for January 29th 2010:
[Source]- iPad DRM endangers our rights [DefectiveByDesign.org] – The petition against Apple’s iPad (and other) DRM: "DRM will give Apple and their corporate partners the power to disable features, block competing products (especially free software) censor news, and even delete books, videos, or news stories from users’ computers without notice– using the device’s "always on" network connection. This past year, we have seen how human rights and democracy protestors can have the technology they use turned against them. By making a computer where every application is under total, centralized control, Apple is endangering freedom to increase profits. Apple can say they will not abuse this power, but their record of App Store rejections and removals gives us no reason to trust them. The iPad’s unprecedented use of DRM to control all capabilities of a general purpose computer is a dangerous step backward for computing and for media distribution. We demand that Apple remove all DRM from its devices."
- Hitler responds to the iPad [YouTube] – Yes, it was inevitable that the iPad would attract the Downfall meme!
- 12 Key Features Apple iPad lacks [SMH] – It’s 1, 2, 3, 8 and 9 which will stop me buying the first release iPad (I suspect much of this will be fixed by iPad 2.0!):
"1. iBooks is initially US-only
2. No built-in camera
3. No USB ports
4. No memory card read
5. Keyboard dock sold separately
6. No multi-tasking
7. No Adobe Flash support
8. Can only run Apple-sanctioned apps
9. Can only access iTunes videos and music
10. Lacks HDMI port
11. Screen is 4:3 aspect ratio, not 16:9 widescreen
12. No full GPS support" - New page in publishing turns on Apple’s offering [The Australian] – eBooks, eBooks, eBooks, OI, OI, OI: "The use of e-book readers is in its infancy in Australia but Apple’s iPad will be the harbinger of a change in the way Australians read books, says the nation’s largest independent publisher. Allen & Unwin’s digital publishing director, Elizabeth Weiss, said: "There is a buzz around. We think iPad will further stimulate interest in e-books." E-book sales – either via a PC or readers such as Amazon’s Kindle – are statistically insignificant in the $2.5 billion book market in Australia, but the industry is expecting a similar pattern to the US where, in less than two years, and during a deep recession, digital books have captured about 5 per cent of the market. "You’ll see a rapid take-up over the next six months," said Australian Booksellers Association chief executive Malcolm Neil. But he said that could result in some smaller booksellers losing market share and being forced to close."
- Microsoft Releases a Study on Data Privacy Day [Microsoft Privacy & Safety] – More evidence that your web presence doesn’t ever just stay on the web: "Our study found 70% of surveyed HR professionals in U.S. (41% in the UK) have rejected a candidate based on online reputation information. Reputation can also have a positive effect as in the United States, 86% of HR professionals (and at least two thirds of those in the U.K. and Germany) stated that a positive online reputation influences the candidate’s application to some extent; almost half stated that it does so to a great extent. What we hope people take away from this research is that an online reputation is not something to be scared of; it’s something to be proactively managed. That means not just removing (or not posting) negatives, but also building the online reputation that you would want an employer (or friend or client) to find."
- Google Routes Around App Store On The iPhone… Others Can Too [Techdirt] – Apps want to be free, too: "I was just recently suggesting that the massive focus on "apps" and "app stores" may be a red herring, as eventually many of those apps can be built via the web (especially as HTML 5 moves forward), without having to go through any kind of app store approval process. So it’s worth noting that, in fact, Google has done exactly that with its Google Voice app for the iPhone (doing so because of problems getting a client-side app approved by Apple)."
Digital Culture Links: January 7th 2010
Links for January 6th 2010 through January 7th 2010:
- New Video: Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English [Common Craft] – Great new Common Craft video looking at reputation management, especially in terms of thinking about what poeple share today and what that means tomorrow!
- Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook by Kate Raynes-Goldie [First Monday 15.1, Jan 2010] – Timely look at Facebook, privacy and young adults: “This paper explores how 20–something Facebook users understand and navigate privacy concerns. Based on a year–long ethnographic study in Toronto, Canada, this paper looks at how “” contrary to many mainstream accounts “” younger users do indeed care about protecting and controlling their personal information. However, their concerns revolve around what I call social privacy, rather than the more conventional institutional privacy. This paper also examines the somewhat subversive practices which users engaged in to enhance their own social privacy, and in some cases, violate that of others. Finally, this paper examines some of the reasons that users may continue using the site, despite privacy concerns.”
- Rogue Marketers Can Mine Your Info on Facebook [Wired.com] – Another reason Facebook’s new privacy settings suck: “Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each “” such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you’re looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list. But as Klein points out, a marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected “” and upload those through a dummy account “” which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook’s ubiquity and most people’s reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich.”
- The MLA, @briancroxall, and the non-rise of the Digital Humanities [academhack] – An interesting follow-up to the social media prominence of Brian Croxall’s MLA paper: “two observations: 1. The fact that Brian’s making public of his paper was an oddity worth noticing means that we are far away from the rise of the digital humanities. 2. The fact that a prominent digital scholar like Brian doesn’t even get one interview at the MLA means more than the economy is bad, that tenure track jobs are not being offered, but rather that Universities are still valuing the wrong stuff. They are looking for “real somebodies” instead of “virtual somebodies.” Something which the digital humanities has the potential of changing (although I remain skeptical).” [Via Chuck]
- Pocohontar [Boing Boing] – Yes, James Cameron’s Avatar is very similar to Disney’s Pocahontas and here’s the script treatment to “prove” it.
- Apple’s App Store Downloads Top Three Billion – Just as Google unveils their Nexus One phone, Apple reminds everyone that their App store will be a hard one to beat: “Apple® today announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone® and iPod touch® users worldwide. “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months””this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”” 3 billions apps … wowzers!
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