Sunday 27 February 2011

Facebook 1976 « How to be a Retronaut

From Retronaut, a cool site I just found today
http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/02/facebook-1976/
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Saturday 26 February 2011

Monday 14 February 2011

WEB207 - Topic 2.4 - Spreadability

In order to get started thinking through this area, when reading, please consider:

1. What made the Old Spice campaign so effective?  What risks were there to the Old Spice brand in embracing participatory culture in the hands of a marketing team?
2. What does a ‘spreadable’ media actually mean? Does the vast array of options mean that ‘going viral’ is the only way to compete with ‘mainstream’ media, or does that distinction no longer make sense?
3. Have you ever participated in a conversation about spreadable media? If so, how did you participate? (For example, have you ever forwarded a funny email or shared a link at an hilarious ad or other video?)

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Saturday 12 February 2011

WEB207 - Topic 2.3 - Mobile Media & Apps

In order to get started thinking through this area, when reading, please consider:
1. Do smart phones, tablets and other highly portable devices fundamentally change our relationship to and with media? Are we now (and will we increasingly become) part of a nexus of perpetual web media creation and consumption?

2. While the iPhone and smart phones in general are iconic of black-box convergence (ie all technologies coming together in one device), on the basis of the reading and your experience, will one device ever be the ‘norm’?

3. How important are apps? Are these just programs for new types of computers, or is app culture a markedly different approach to buying software? Indeed, are apps just software or has the distinction between programs and web media forms become even less clear?


During the lecture there was some discussion about Apple's completely controlled environment where "they've done all of the thinking for you" and a user gets a "guaranteed experience", versus Android's open-source system that lets you get under the hood and tinker and do what you like.  The analogy that immediately sprang to mind was the old "Mac vs PC" debate, which had exactly the same parameters.  Poor Apple Tongue out


1. xx

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Thursday 10 February 2011

WEB207 - Topic 2.2 - YouTube Creativity & Participatory Culture

In order to get started thinking through this area, when reading, please consider:

1. Based on these readings and the unit so far, how would you define participatory culture? What are its most important elements?

2. While the YouTube slogan ‘broadcast yourself’ is emblematic of participatory culture and of web 2.0 technologies, are they two things separable? Do the tools enable the culture or does the cultural need drive the construction of the tools (or do we need a more complex question)?

3. The word ‘creativity’ is used a lot to talk about what amateurs and non-professional content creators are doing on YouTube, but what exactly is being created? What sorts of creativity are at work? Why do they matter?


1. We read a fair bit of Jenkins about participatory culture in MED104 - I would define participatory culture as culture where the general public participate by being content producers, not just consumers.


2. There is a difference between "participatory culture" and "Web 2.0 technologies" but I think they develop symbiotically - in simple terms, the technologies are the tools that enable the culture, but the tools are created as cultural needs emerge.


3. Burgess (2008) says "Viewed from the perspective of cultural participation rather than marketing, videos are not ‘messages’, and neither are they ‘products’ that are distributed via social networks. Rather, they are the mediating mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated, adopted and (sometimes) retained within social networks."  So I would say that there is content being created on YouTube, but it is also changing cultural values.

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Tuesday 8 February 2011

Monday 7 February 2011

Sunday 6 February 2011

Volkswagen Commercial: The Force

My kids loved this - very clever ad, no dialogue at all but so very effective.
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Saturday 5 February 2011

Julian Assange Speaks

The Wikileaks saga has transfixed the world, with politicians and punters alike stunned by the intriguing revelations from the leaked US embassy cables. At 6pm (AEDST) on Friday 4th Februar 2011 Julian Assange, Wikileak's founder, spoke via videolink to Australians at an event in Federation Square, Melbourne.

The man Sarah Palin said should be hunted as a terrorist and whose activities Julia Gillard pre-emptively judged as "illegal" is at the centre of the debate over freedom of speech. You can watch him speak on an internet video stream here.

With only 4 days before Assange faces court on extradition charges, this could be one of the only chances to hear directly from the man at the centre of the Wikileaks controversy.

EDIT: I previously had this as an embedded video but couldn't stop it from autoplaying when the page was loaded so I've changed it to this link instead:
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Friday 4 February 2011

Cyclone Yasi so powerful it blew Queensland 2000 km South!

@ChasLicc Cyclone Yasi so powerful it blew Queensland 2000 km South!

http://twitpic.com/3w989u
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