A video from the Society for Geek Advancement:
A video from the Society for Geek Advancement:
Posted at 01:35 PM in Internet, Media, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Last night I was a guest on Nick Hodge's Ustream show, atNickHodge, where we discussed the Australian Constitution:
Posted at 04:54 PM in Australia, Australian Politics, Constitution, Internet, Microsoft, Online Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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On Monday Justice Kirby will retire from the High Court of Australia. In today's The Australian there are two pieces on Justice Kirby's contribution, one by Michael Pelly and another by Professor Michael Lavarch. Although only time will tell if the judicial philoposhy evident in Justice Kirby's judgments, many of which were in dissent, will be vindicated, what is not in doubt is his remarkable contribution as a public intellectual. One feature of this role has been his willingness to be involved in legal education; he has no doubt spoken at almost every Australian law school at one time or another (many on several occasions) and has always given his time, energy and insight generously. However, he is a hero to so many law students not just because of this generosity but also as a result of his progressive judicial philosophy, his clear and compelling writing style (which students particularly appreciate) and his good humour. One example of this is in his contributions to the University of Queensland Law Revue over the last decade, as James Tinniswood recounts:
To many, his Honour will be remembered for his liberal views, high rate
of dissenting judgments (and being damn proud of it) and advocacy of
gay rights.
For me, I'll remember him for doing some ripper cameos in the Revue for us. He was a great sport about doing this one in 2006...
"Hello, I'm Michael Kirby and welcome to the Law Revue. Sit up, pay attention and no messing about in the stalls. That's a unanimous decision of the High Court. No dissents.
Read more here. As of Monday Justice Kirby will no longer be a judge of the High Court of Australia, but I have a feeling he will continue to be a present and persuasive figure in matters of public importance for a consierable time to come.
Posted at 10:17 AM in Australia, Australian Politics, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Ted Chung's mesmerising short film, A Thousand Words, is deservedly beginning to go viral. Jeffrey Wells describes it in this way:
... an elegant, concise and very affecting portrait of big-city loneliness and instant connections that flare up and are gone seconds later. The emotions are halting and delicate but true. Beautiful piano score.
And here it is:
Posted at 12:38 PM in Internet, Media, Movies, Online Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
CNET's Chris Soghoian has a fascinating post on an under-reported early decision of the Obama administration:
The new Web site for Obama's White House is already drawing attention from privacy activists and tech bloggers. While the initial focus has been on the site's policies relating to search engine robots, a far more interesting tidbit has so far escaped the public eye: the White House has quietly exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites.
The new White House Web site privacy policy promises that the site will not use long-term tracking cookies, complying with a decade-old rule prohibiting such user tracking by federal agencies. However, the privacy policy then reveals that Obama's legal team has exempted YouTube from this rule (YouTube videos are embedded at various places around the White House Web site).
While the White House might not be tracking visitors, the Google-owned video sharing site is free to use persistent cookies to track the browsing behavior of millions of visitors to Obama's home in cyberspace.
No other company has been singled out and rewarded with such a waiver.
...
For the past 10 years, federal agencies have been prohibited from using tracking cookies on their Web sites, except in a few special cases. The Office of Management and Budget rule M-03-22 states that:
"Agencies are prohibited from using persistent cookies or any other means (e.g., web beacons) to track visitors' activity on the Internet except .... [when there is] a compelling need."
The question we must now focus on is this: Is the need for Obama to use embedded videos hosted by YouTube (and not, say, another company's video-streaming platform that does not force cookies upon its users) a use that can be reasonably described as compelling?
Presumably, this has been justified on the basis that YouTube forces cookies on the visitors of any Web site that embeds one of its videos. However, while Joe or Jane blogger has no bargaining power with YouTube/Google, the federal government certainly does.
In just the past couple weeks, YouTube has launched dedicated pages for both the House and Senate to show off their own videos, and the site also recently started allowing users to directly download copies of some videos. This latter feature has not yet been widely deployed across the site, and is seems to be limited to videos posted by Obama's team.
Given the famously close connections between Obama and Google, you'd think his tech team could negotiate for a cookie-less way to embed videos. At a technical level, this would be an easy enough change, even if it would deny Google the ability to collect even more information on millions of Americans.
Read more here.
Posted at 12:00 AM in Internet, Media, Online Video, Privacy, United States, US Politics, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted at 11:33 PM in Copyright, Internet, Media, Online Video, Television | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Patrick Bristow's Freakdom of Speech is a satire of the diversity of dumb to be found in America. The first episode is America on Obama:
Posted at 10:10 PM in Distractions, Internet, Media, Online Video, United States, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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After reading my post earlier tonight about an Australia Day Blawg Review (see here), UK blawger Charon QC was inspired to put together this little video using Xtranormal. I don't think I've ever looked so good ...
If you want to listen to a real and somewhat serious conversation between Charon QC and myself, you can listen to a podcast we recorded a few weeks back here.
Posted at 09:55 PM in Australia, Blogs, Internet, Online Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Three days ago, YouTube permanently disabled the account of critic and commentator Kevin B. Lee, suggesting that YouTube is cracking down on critical video essays posted to the site:
Kevin’s video essays wed critical commentary or conversation to clips from copyright films in a “teaching” context, and most of them were created as part of his project to “view every film on the list of 1000 greatest films of all time, as compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don�t They?.” Kevin says he received a copyright warning earlier today in regards to his video essay on …And God Created Woman. It was the first time YouTube had ever slapped his wrist over one of the video essays, although they had contacted him about two unaltered clips in the past, one from The Sorrow and Pity and one from Dames. Three strikes, and Kevin’s out — YouTube has removed all 70 of his videos, including 40 original video essays. If you’ve embedded one of these in your own blog, that embed will now be unplayable.
Kevin has his own personal archive and can potentially re-upload the clips; he says he’ll investigate other online video sharing options. But YouTube is still the biggest game in town, and Kevin says he’ll miss it. “I’ll miss not only the unparalleled audience reach, but the cool stats that YouTube had to offer (like learning that viewers would rewind repeatedly to watch Bardot’s bare ass in my video essay for …And God Created Woman),” he noted in an email. “But that’s nothing compared to having the right to share my work in the first place.”
Kevin is one of a number of people producing film criticism via online video who have had trouble with YouTube of late. These videos represent the first real advance in film criticism as an art form in, at least, decades; other video sharing platforms may remain more friendly to copyright borrowers for awhile, but ultimately this practice may have to either move underground or disappear.
Read more here (from SpoutBlog). In a passionate (and lengthy) post on The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz thinks 12 January 2009 might be a decisive day in the history of intellectual property:
Read more here.
Posted at 08:32 PM in Copyright, Google, Internet, Media, Online Video, United States, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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Australia's answer to C-SPAN, now called A-PAC, will launch on 20 January. The website is online here, where you can watch a promotional (propaganda?) video that gives the impression that this channel was the most important outcome of Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit and that it has come "more than a decade ahead of that vision".
Posted at 11:06 PM in Australia, Australian Politics, Media, Online Video, Television | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Although I'd normally post this video to my tumblelog Freedom to Dither, I am such a fan of Arrested Development that I thought i'd post it here instead. So here The Gob Act: A Tribute to Arrested Development:
Posted at 10:20 PM in Australia, Distractions, Internet, Media, Online Video, Television, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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At The Crunchies, The Richter Scales debuted a brand new song, Heart. In a post at TechCrunch, Jason Klncaid says the song "depicts a hilariously overoptimistic startup and pokes fun at just about everything in the tech industry, from overhyped launches to ridiculous product ideas." Here is a video of the performance:
Other songs from The Richter Scales include Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Here Comes Another Bubble.
Posted at 07:27 PM in Distractions, Internet, Media, Online Video, Technology, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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When Larry Lessig appeared on The Colbert Report during the week to talk about this latest book, Remix, he basically invited people to remix the interview (see here). Here are two audio remixes: one from Sam and another from Jim Vanaria. Here are two video remixes:
And the audio to the show is available to be remixed on ccMixter here.
Posted at 07:11 PM in Copyright, Internet, Media, Online Video, Television, United States, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Stephen Colbert talks to Larry Lessig about this latest book, Remix:
Posted at 11:13 PM in Copyright, Internet, Media, Online Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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ZDNet has a review of MacHEADS:
Prominent sex blogger and renowned Apple fangirl Violet Blue declares passionately that she'd never sleep with a Windows user. Dozens of Mac fanboys and girls drink and dance together at an Apple-centric party, jubilant that, for another year, Apple still exists. Girls hug their iMacs before tentatively handing them over to be repaired, while another caresses her Cinema Display, gently offering up a kiss to her Mac Pro's tower.
Apple fans are passionate people, both with each other and with the company's products. MacHeads, a new Chimp 65 Productions documentary from writer/director Kobi Shely and producer Ron Shely, documents the history of these Apple-lovers, looking at what underpins their fanatical obsessions. At just under an hour in length, this unbiased, unnarrated documentary takes a balanced approach to peeling the onion of Apple fanboyism. With insightful commentary from the likes of Apple Inc employee number one Daniel Kottke and ex-Apple employee and Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, some of the compulsive fanboyism on display is mellowed by observations of what made an Apple fan an Apple fan in the first place.
Read more here. And watch the trailer:
Posted at 09:33 PM in Apple, Media, Movies, Online Video | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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History of the Internet is an animated documentary from PICOL that explains the major inventions of the internet:
History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.
Posted at 08:45 PM in Internet, Online Video, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Wired's Threat Level Blog reports on an important copyright decision out of the US:
Online video-sharing sites are scoring another major legal victory, as a federal judge is ruling that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects such sites from copyright violations if they abide by takedown notices as the DMCA prescribes.
The case was brought by Universal Music Group, which claimed that San Diego-based Veoh -- financially backed by Time Warner and Michael Eisner – engaged in wanton copyright infringement because it allowed users to upload and store the music concern's copyrighted videos. U.S. District Judge Howard Matz agreed with Veoh that its business model complied with the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called safe harbor provisions.
The case is similar to other suits targeting YouTube, MySpace, MP3Tunes and others. And it marks just the second time that a federal judge has ruled the DMCA protects video-sharing sites – even user-generated sites like Veoh that transform user-uploaded content into flash-formatted videos that can later be accessed by users.
...
Both rulings are not binding on other judges, however. And neither the U.S. appellate courts nor the U.S. Supreme Court has directly addressed the issue.
Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's take by Fred von Lohmann on the topic.
Read more here.
Posted at 08:33 PM in Copyright, Internet, Media, Online Video, United States, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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In a Power Recap, Slate V presents 20 of the best viral political videos of 2008. Congratulations to Australian Hugh Atkin whose video, John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd, was the number one viral video. Slate V says it was "a perfect metaphor for McCain's defeat and maybe the best mashup of the entire camapign on the internet". Here is Slate V's list:
Posted at 01:37 AM in Internet, Media, Online Video, United States, US Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Continuing my end-of-year wrap ...
What follows are the top ten videos I've embedded either here on Freedom to Differ or on Freedom to Dither this year. This list is very subjective - these videos are not necessarily the most viewed or most commented on, nor are they necessarily the funniest or the most original, but they are my ten favourite videos from 2008. However, before I list the the top ten, here are posts that contained the runners-up ...
Serious videos and videos that make a point - An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube (another fascinating video from Michael Wesch); From Little Things, Big Things Grow (GetUp's song for reconciliation); Music 2.0 (a video from music futurist Gerd Leonhard explaining what music 2.0 is and how the music industry should change to adapt to 'web 2.0' principles); Some EU politicians support file sharing (the Greens EFA party of the European Parliament publicly expressed their support for file sharing on the internet).
Political - Candidates on Colbert (Clinton, Obama and Edwards all on the same show); Some election themed videos (one funny, one a bit more serious); US election videos (my five favourite viral videos from the US election); A post on the US election (Slate V makes fun of CNN's election night holograms); Keith Olbermann's "homoerotic" obsession with Bill O'Reilly (Red Eye's Greg Gutfeld gets angry); Palin on Saturday Night Live (at least Sarah Palin was a good enough sport to appear on Saturday Night Live); It's just a flesh wound! (inspired use of Monty Python's Holy Grail to highlight Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign); A duet (a Juno-style duet between Clinton and Obama); Changes (Hugh Atkin's first big US political video).
Advertisements - Lenovo parodies MacBook Air ad (a send-up of the MacBook Air in favor of Lenovo's own X300); Levi's viral hit (an effective viral marketing strategy from Levi Strauss); My favourite Super Bowl ad (a great ad from Coca Cola); I don't get it (I was very confused by the advertising strategy of the Commonwealth Bank).
Funny - I want more porn (a ballad about porn, spam and pop-up windows); Four videos (a random collection of videos I found funny); JibJab 2008 Year in Review (no list is complete without one or two JibJab videos); Twitter's downfall (another very funny adaptation of the Hitler video); But That's Not My Point... (a funnt rant written, directed and starring Auggie Smith and Patrick Sauer); TubeDeeDo (a funny music video from the The Kings of Myspace); My Name is URL (a cute video parodying My Name is Earl); Happy Easter (this is one violent Easter Bunny); Corey Delaney's other party (another Hugh Atkin video); The Internet Party (what happens when Google leaves town for the weekend).
Web series - If you don't include Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, the best web series of the year was The Guild.
And here is the top ten ...
10. The World Isn't Clear Cut - Perhaps it was because I was a high school and university debater, but I was very taken when this promotional video for the Griffith Organised Debating Society (GODS) aired on Q&A during the year. (See my original post here.)
9. John McCain gets Barack Roll'd - My favourite US political video from Australian Hugh Atkin. (See my original post here.)
8. Prop 8 The Musical - An all star video making fun of California's Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage. (See my original post here).
7. Goldfish funeral - a great ad for Channel Bee with a very funny twist you don't see coming. (See my original post here.)
6. Facebook in reality - Imagining what the world be like if Facebook played out in real life. (See my original post here.)
5. It's Just Gone - In South Park the internet disappears. (See my original post here.)
4. JibJab's Time for Some Campaignin' - Although not as good as JibJab's brilliant This Land from four years ago, it was still the best political video of 2008. (See my original post here.)
3. Yes We Can - The viral sensation of 2008 that captured the mood of America - and indeed the world. (See my original post here.)
2. The Censored Count - Everytime I see this video I can't help but laugh out loud. (See my original post here.)
1. Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon - Without a doubt the funniest viral video of the year. (See my original post here.)
You should also check out Jimmy Kimmel's response here.
Posted at 04:28 AM in Distractions, Internet, Media, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
JibJab's annual year in review:
Posted at 07:16 AM in Distractions, Internet, Media, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Mashable covers an easy way to download YouTube videos:
Downloading YouTube videos isn’t a feature supported natively by the site: copyright issues are the likely reason. And yet, often we find ourselves wanting to download a great video to our desktops for remixing or offline viewing.
KickYouTube serves up an elegantly simple solution: simply go to the YouTube video you’d liek to download and insert the word “kick” at the start of the URL. The final url would look something like http://kickyoutube.com/watch?v=39pZ1r3MG2Q, and options to download the clip are provided at the top of the page.
You don’t need me to tell you that having YouTube in your URL is blatant trademark infringement, however, so don’t expect this method to work for long. For more solutions, try our list of 20 ways to download YouTube videos…most of which have avoided the wrath Google’s lawyers.
[via Lifehacker]
Read it here.
Posted at 11:41 AM in Copyright, Internet, Media, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Over the past few days I've come across a few different top ten lists. The first was Oddee's list of ten of the geekiest graffiti. This was my favourite:
Next was Politico's list of the top ten political films of 2008, culminating with these two:
Read more here.
And the last list is Campaign's list of the top internet viral campaigns of 2008. These are my favourites:
2 SFW XXX Party Invitation
To celebrate Diesel's 30th anniversary, The Viral Factory decided porn was the only way to party with a bang. After collating clips of 80s porn, it animated the rude bits and added toned down sound effects to avoid any potentially inappropriate scenes and make it SFW XXX (an acronym for "safe for work"). So far, 6,497,507 have clicked, with an average of 116,387 hits per day.
6 Budweiser's ‘Swear Jar'
It was banned on TV because of the implied bad language, but Budweiser's ‘Swear Jar' has been a hit online with over 3.3 million views on YouTube. Part of Budweiser's online viral effort at Bud.TV, it shows characters in an office, swearing their way to make enough money for a case of Bud in boardroom meetings, announcements, and by the photocopier.
Read more here (from Brand Republic).
Posted at 08:43 PM in Advertising, Internet, Media, Movies, Online Video, United States, US Politics, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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During the week Keith Olbermann attacked the late night FoxNews Channel show Red Eye, sparking this priceless response from Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld:
Posted at 07:43 PM in Internet, Media, Online Video, Television, United States, US Politics, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: BillO'Reilly, FoxNews, funny, GregGutfeld, KeithOlbermann, media, television, US, video
Forty inspirational movie speeches in two minutes:
Posted at 09:32 AM in Internet, Media, Movies, Online Video, YouTube | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Although I'd normally post a video like this on my tumblelog Freedom to Dither, I thought it deserved a more prominent post:
Posted at 03:38 PM in Internet, Media, Movies, Online Video, United States, US Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)