Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Media’ Category
Moon Landing
17 July 2009
As you can imagine there’s an incredible amount of overage online for the anniversary of the first lunar landing. On the 20th of July 1969 Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind and 40 years on its the perfect time to discover more about that incredible event.
ABC Science have a wonderful resource of stories and programs devoted to the moon landing. You can find them all at abc.net.au/science/moon and Radio Australia has a special feature online on the latest space-race in Asia at radioaustralianews.net.au
The Smithsonian and NASA themselves are of course covering the anniversary, the latter has a feature on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and newly restored HD footage of the first step (much better than the youtube version above!). The Guardian UK also has excellent coverage, as does the BBC with their special report on the moon landing and access to their archives. And CNN Tech has a story on how private firms are getting ready to offer flights into space. A new frontier indeed.
Tech Stream 018
19 June 2009
Listen and download: MP3
PNG school children in Gaire, outside Port Moresby, trying out their new OLPC laptops in June last year. Photo from Flickr.
In the Tech Stream this week: Twitter connects the world to the post-election protests in Iran; the latest mobiles on display at CommunicAsia in Singapore; online vigilantes shutdown racism on Facebook; ICANN’s Dr Paul Twomey on the future of internet domain names; the One-Laptop-Per-Child scheme expands in the Pacific; and Bajo from Good Game joins us to chat about Infamous, the latest ‘open-world’ video game. Listen with the MP3 link above, full details after the jump…
Iran: Activism and Social Media
16 June 2009
ABC News Online has just launched a special feature with coverage of the political unrest in Iran and how social media tools like Flickr, Youtube and Twitter are being used to broadcast eyewitness reports of violence and protests. But internet users and activists in the country say that the government is blocking access to these kind of sites and disrupting transmission of SMS text messages. There’s more at ABC News Online, including integration of twitter and flickr streams.
Social web blocked in China
3 June 2009
China is blocking access to social networking and social media websites ahead of the 20th anniversary of a bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Sites like Twitter, Hotmail and Flickr were blocked on Tuesday and Microsoft also reported that access was blocked to their new Bing search engine.
The story is being covered today by Radio Australia News who report that internet users filled chatrooms with protest after access to Twitter was denied on Tuesday. And Reuters reports that “Access to video-sharing site YouTube, owned by Google, has been blocked in China since March, after overseas Tibetan groups posted graphic footage of China’s crackdown on protests by Tibetans in 2008.”
The Tech Dynasty blog on CNET Asia also covered the blocks yesterday and says that “anyone in China who spends any amount of time online has weathered these blocks before” and so has recommended some good sites to overcome them. There are also unconfirmed reports on Twitter that the #gfw (great firewall of China) has been removed from the ‘trending topics’ section. We’ll have more in the Tech Stream program, on Radio Australia news and on our own Tech Stream twitter feed.
UPDATE 05/06/2009: Connect Asia covered this on Thursday morning, you can hear Steve Holland’s story from this link, and ABC News Online provided excellent coverage of the anniversary.
The future of copyright in a digital age
29 May 2009
Phillip Adams interviews Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Lessig says says that in this digital age where young people’s culture is the media, they are being criminalised because copyright laws haven’t kept up with digital technology and the way it’s being used. You can download the MP3 radio interview and there is more on the Late Night Live website.
There are some great resources on copyright and fair use at the Centre for Social Media including the video below:
Life Matters: To Tweet or not to Tweet
8 May 2009
The Life Matters program this morning had an interesting discussion, and some talkback too, on the growing interest and media attention given to social network tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. One of their guests was Iggy Pintado, a former marketing manager with IBM, and a self professed Super-Connector. He’s also the author of the book Connection Generation which argues that “connection determines our place in society and business – and if you’re not online you’re off the scene”. His dad and son also join in! You can follow the conversation as it evolved on twitter (using the #lm tag) or download the audio from this link, or the Life Matters website.
Remix the ABC’s genes
1 May 2009
2009 is the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and across the world special projects and events are taking place to mark the anniversary. The ABC, here in Australia, is opening up its archival material to the Gene Pool. You can use the archives for inspiration – or adapt, recombine and remix them any way you like. Gene Pool is a collaborative project, sitting within the Pool – a social media project developed by ABC Radio National. You can also use the Pool to upload music, photos, videos, documentaries, interviews, animations and more. Anyone from around the world can take part and contribute to its ongoing evolution, and feel free to share your efforts with us here in the Tech Stream.
More stories on the 200 year anniversary since Charles Darwin’s birth can be found at ABC Radio National.
#amazonfail
16 April 2009
I had it on my agenda to include something in Tech Stream this week about #amazonfail. What is it? Well the # (hash tag) at the beginning indicates that “amazonfail” is a twitter search label, allowing people ‘tweeting’ to categorise the content of their post. It implies that somehow Amazon, the online retail store, has made a monumental blunder (ie “fail”). Over the Easter weekend a story started breaking that the company had removed the “sales rank” from hundreds of books with gay and lesbian themes, essentially burying them from view. Fail.
Unrest in Fiji and blogging in the Pacific
15 April 2009
Our In The Loop program is starting a new segment looking at blogs and bloggers in the Pacific. You can listen to the first interview that Clement and Isabelle have done with Dennis Tokunai from the tubuans and dukduks blog based in Papua New Guinea. Follow this MP3 link to hear his thoughts on blogging about political and cultural issues, some of his own favourite blogs and how you can learn more about a place by reading the blogs created there.
Twitter for breakfast
9 April 2009
Listen and download: MP3
I’ve found myself becoming a reluctant evangelist for Twitter in the past couple of weeks, and I’m not the only one. Many people in the media, marketing and technology industry seem to be in the same boat. This will change, and in fact it already is as more people start using the service. But being able to clearly define what makes it such an interesting and effective communication and networking tool is still a little hard to do.
