Media: January 2005 Archive Page

Concerns have been raised, however, as to whether current copyright law imposes inappropriate burdens on users, including subsequent creators, of works for which the copyright owner cannot be located (hereinafter referred to as ?orphan?' works). The issue is whether orphan works are being needlessly removed from public access and their dissemination inhibited. If no one claims the copyright in a work, it appears likely that the public benefit of having access to the work would outweigh whatever copyright interest there might be. Such concerns were raised in connection with the adoption of the life plus 50 copyright term with the 1976 Act and the 20-year term extension enacted with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

The Copyright Office has long shared these concerns about orphan works and has considered the issue to be worthy of further study. --Orphan Works (Copyright Office, Library of Congress)

I chose the literary period 1920-1950 for my dissertation because, under the law at the time I entered grad school, works that were published during those years would come out of copyright one by one during my leisurely scholarly march towards retirement, and I imagined that I could while away the years producing inexpensive annotated editions (online, if necessary).

But the law changed.

The copyright office is calling for written comments as it considers what to do with orphan works.

It seems that 25 years would be a generous time period for all authors. To get another 25 years of protection, I think authors ought to make some non-token payment to get another 25 years of protection, followed by increasingly more expensive fees for increasingly short periods of time. My idea is that charging Disney a million bucks to keep its control over Winnie the Pooh for a sixth or seventh decade would support quite a lot of copyright title searches and the activities of quite a few common-domain lobbyists. There ought to be some cap, beyond which no amount of money would extend copyright. At present, the law designed to work for incredibly lucrative properties like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh is ridiculous when applied to obscure content without megabusiness value.

When I recently asked a group of librarians how they thought Google organized its search results, the first suggestion was that Google counts the number of clicks on the links, and adjusts its rankings accordingly.

Most of the people in the room seemed satisfied with that answer, but one person volunteered the clarification that Google counts the number of links pointing to a page. That second answer is closer to the truth.

We know our students use Google, and we ourselves use Google to prepare for classes. We should know how Google works, so we can accommodate its weaknesses. --Dennis G. Jerz --Assessing Google as a Teaching & Research Tool (Jerz's Online Resource Room)

This friendly and basic introduction to using Google for routine class prep and research seems to have gone over fairly well. I wish the copier hadn't jammed between classes, or I would have had handouts. Since the internet is not only a tool that I use but also the subject I teach, I was happy to have the chance to talk about it.

At any rate, I gave this presentation at lunchtime today, to a packed audience of faculty and staff (boy, that food went quickly). I started by asking my colleagues whether their students used Google. Just about everybody's hand went up. I asked whether they themselves used Google. Again, just about everybody's hand went up. I then asked whether anybody knew how Google worked. All the hands went down.

I'm sure that some of the people in the audience knew perfectly well how Google works, or at least had a inkling. But they were just playing along so I could have my dramatic little moment. (Thank you!)

One faculty member admitted to never having seen Google's home page. Plenty of others thanked me on the way out, or e-mailed me to request a copy. So I feel like I've been useful today. That's always a good thing.

And I certainly didn't mean to sound as if I were picking on librarians! After a year and a half on campus, the other day I had to ask where the fiction shelf was. So there's plenty I have to learn from librarians.

If you're a slideshow kind of person, here is the PowerPoint version (93k).

When a sheet of paper covered in doodles was found on Tony Blair's desk at the Davos World Economic Forum, handwriting experts delighted in analyzing it, concluding the prime minister was stressed and under pressure. Experts who examined the tangle of boxes, circles, loops and notes on debt and trade variously described Blair as "struggling to concentrate" or "not a natural leader" and "stressed and tense."

But there was a problem. --Doodle Mix-Up Confuses Blair with Bill Gates (Reuters|My Way)

I'm not a big fan of handwriting analysis.

"People who are savvy about how the Internet works don't even try to find breaking news on the Net." -- Richard W. Wiggins --The Effects of September 11 on the Leading Search Engine (First Monday)

Wiggins made this throwaway statement in an article published October 1, 2001. How quickly things change!

In his defense, Wiggins was very quick to publish a thoughtful analysis of the ways Google changed during the crisis, paving the way for the introducton of Google News.

Wiggins was not wrong. I didn't expect to be able to find breaking news on the internet until I first used Google News.

So I thought I’d have a go at writing up my notes from the first Technologies of Writing seminar yesterday. (This is the Folger Institute seminar, taught by Peter Stallybrass and Roger Chartier.) There’s no way I can do justice to the three hours, which included not only some terrific conversation but a long presentation of images. But here are some main themes to emerge from this first day. --Matthew G. Kirschenbaum --Technologies of Writing Seminar (1) (MGK)

I'm eagerly awaiting the next installments. Fantastic source material, and a wonderful report.

While it was once believed that Marxism would overhaul notions of ownership, the combination of capitalism and the Internet has transformed our ideas of property to an extent far beyond the dreams of even the most fervent revolutionary. Which is not to say that anything resembling a collectivist utopia has come to pass. Quite the opposite. In fact, the laws regulating property?and intellectual property, in particular?have never before been so complex, onerous, and rigid. --Righting Copyright: Fair Use and 'Digital Environmentalism' (Bookforum)

Web publishers and bloggers are already stealing readers, advertisers and classifieds. Particularly for young people, journalism has become, in the words of NYU professor and PressThink.org blogger Jay Rosen, more of a conversation than a lecture.

That conversation, at least for now, almost always begins with a traditional news story, which is then subject to annotation and dissection on blogs, which are now read by 27 percent of the U.S. adults online, the Pew Internet and American Life Project says.

The sovereignty of Big Journalism is eroding. --Frank Bajak --Memo to media establishment: Ignore blogs at your peril (SiliconValley.com)

1.) J-School as School of Theology
2.) The Journalist's Creed
3.) The Orthodoxy of No Orthodoxy
4.) Practicing Journalism But Not Understanding It
5.) The First Amendment as Press Religion
6.) The God Term of Journalism is the Public
7.) A Breakaway Church in the Press
8.) Interview at the Axis of Evil

--Jay Rosen --Journalism Is Itself a Religion: Special Essay on Launch of The Revealer (Press Think)

Another link for the journalism major who was considering a religion minor...

Rosen also has good coverage of a recent conference on weblogs, journalism and credibility.

"The ideal of objectivity, properly understood, is vital not only for responsible journalism but responsible scientific inquiry, informed public policy deliberations and fair ethical and legal decision. The peculiar Western attempt to be objective is a long, honorable tradition that is part of our continuing struggle to discern and communicate significant, well-grounded truths and make fair decisions in society," [UBC journalism professor Stephen J. Ward] writes in his book [Invention of Journalism Ethics].

Can these lofty ideals can be translated in the rough and tumble of the workaday world of journalism? --Judith Ince --Journalism's 'Ethical Vertigo' (The Tyee)

Thanks for the link, Jim!

Google greatly advances its web search by raising the word limit to 32 words. Previously, only up to 10 words were allowed. --Google Raises Word Limit to 32 (Google Blogoscoped)

The casual user probably won't notice a difference. It was really hardly any trouble to cut out some of the words in a string that Google truncated, but the blog entry notes some situations where the added capacity could be useful.

Sure, blogging can serve as a corrective to the ideological blind spots and commercial orientation of the corporate media monopoly, Fact Checking Their Asses and Working the Ref and restoring some semblance of balance in the absence of the Fairness Doctrine.

But bloggers who want to remedy what ails the corporate McMedia monopoly should grab a clue from Chris Allbritton and haul their larval, jack-studded flesh up out of their Matrix-like pods and do some goddamn reporting instead of just getting all meta about Instapundit’s post about The Daily Kos’s post about Little Green Footballs’s post about the vast left-wing media conspiracy’s latest act of high treason. It’s the Yertle the Turtle syndrome: Pundits stacked on top of pundits on top of pundits, all the way down, and, at the very bottom of the heap, the lowly hack who kicked off the whole frenzy of intertextuality: the reporter who dared venture out of the media airlock to collect some samples of Actual, Reported Fact. --The Being John Malkovich Effect (Shovelware)

Interesting how Derry uses references to two movies, Dr. Seuss, and McDonalds in order to make a point about the blogging echo chamber. Of course, Derry's pop culture references are part of the style that makes this rant amusing -- they're not the substance of his post. Still...

A great find from MGK.

A Columbia University study released Tuesday suggests that viewing fewer than four hours of television a day severely inhibits a person's ability to ridicule popular culture.

"An hour or two of television per day simply does not provide enough information to effectively mock mediocre sitcoms, vapid celebrities, music videos, and talk-show hosts?an essential skill in modern society," said Dr. Madeleine Ben-Ami, a professor of cognitive science and chief author of the study. "The average person requires a minimum of four to six hours of television programming each day to be conversant on the subject of The Apprentice or able to impersonate Anna Nicole Smith.

[...]

"Because the ridicule of pop culture comprises the bulk of today's social discourse, a non-viewer is at a distinct disadvantage in the workplace, on campus, and in the dating scene," Ben-Ami said. "An employee who can't participate in jokes about Ashlee Simpson's disastrous Orange Bowl appearance will sit dumbfounded while a more able coworker ingratiates himself to the boss by laughing. And just as the bird with the most colorful plumage attracts the most attention, so too does the bar-TV viewer who yells, 'Have a sandwich before you faint!' when Mary-Kate Olsen appears on screen."
--Study: Watching Fewer Than Four Hours of TV A Day Impairs Ability To Ridicule Pop Culture (The Onion [satire... will expire])

Once I was talking on the phone to my toddler, who said that Mommy was watching a TV show with ladies that sit around talking. When my wife came back on the phone, I said, "So I understand you're watching 'The View'."

We don't subscribe to cable, so there were only a limited number of shows that could have been on at that time. Still, I was fairly proud of myself for making that connection.

Blogs are my Cliffs Notes to television pop culture.

Until a few months ago, the attention paid to web logs, or blogs, focused mainly on politics and the media business.

However, many in academia followed the web-diary of Salam Pax, the famous Baghdad blogger during the build-up to the war in Iraq.

Now, the technology that has been an alternative source of news to many academics is being incorporated more fully into university life.

Blogs are giving departments, staff and students the freedom and informality of tone impossible in scholarly journals or even the student newspaper.

Blogging lecturers say the technology provides them with easy online web access to students and improves communication outside of the classroom. --Shola Adenekan --Academics give lessons on blogs (BBC)

There's nothing really new in this article, but it's still good to see the mainstream media acknowledging the fact that blogs aren't all about sex and politics.

In many cases, children's literature and game studies are growing in non-traditional ways by including an emphasis on the culture of their readers and players. As two emerging fields, children's literature and game studies have more in common than the two fields realize. --Taylor and Martin --E for Everyone -- A Call for Interdisciplinary Studies (IGDA)

See also the brisk discussion launched by Nick Montfort on Grand Text Auto.

Orality, Literacy, and Writing Technology (U Penn)

Images of Orality and Literacy in Greek Iconography of the Fifth, Fourth and Third Centuries BCE -- compiled by Andrew Wiesner, who also points to James O'Donnell's Some manuscript images of the technology of the word in the Middle Ages

I'll look through these in more detail later.

Buffy has introduced new slang terms and phrases in nearly every episode, many of them formed in the usual ways, some of them at the crest of new formative tendencies. The show incorporates familiar slang, too; the familiar and newly coined slayer slang together compose a particularly vivid snapshot of current American teen slang. --Michael Adams --Slayer Slang (Do You Speak American?)

I'm trying to incorporate more grammar and study of the English language into my Intro to English Studies course, and this website (the companion to a PBS show) looks very promising.

While acknowledging that the new nofollow tag will not do anything -- immediately -- to stop comment spam, I think most of the criticisms are off-base in one way or another. --More on the Google nofollow tag (Dave Does the Blog)

One blogger's reaction to the new "nofollow" tag, which is aimed at denying spammers the PageRank benefit they get when they bombard websites with links to the products they are hawking.

Also check out the pictures running down the left hand side of Dave's blog, showing him regress from a bearded, bespectacled man, to a moustached, bespectacled youth, to a bespectacled child, to a baby.

In probably the biggest break from tradition, the paper may solicit content from readers, asking them to write their own stories about topics that interest them, whether it be a Scout leader writing about a volunteer activity his scouts undertook or a local politician writing an alternative story about a government program the paper's reporters have already covered.

That breaks the traditional model where newspaper reporters and editors serve as gatekeepers, deciding what information actually makes news. In the virtually unlimited space on the Web, such constraints are no longer an issue. And with readers contributing content, the paper's Web content is no longer limited by the size of the staff. -- Mark Tosczak --N&R looks to break tradition with Web changes (The Business Journal)

Via Dan Gillmor.

--Web Site Usability (Mind Tracks)

A good collection of links introducing usability and web design. I'll keep it in mind for the next time I teach "Writing for the Internet".

The Internet has been providing people who have religious convictions -- the vast majority of Americans -- with a home long denied them in mainstream media. But there are signs of change in the MSM. --Daithí Ó hAnluainedia --Religion is Big News on the Net (Online Journalism Review)

The other day I spoke briefly with a journalism major who's picking up a religion minor... I recalled seeing this headline some time ago, and so I'm blogging this for her.

Most instructors of USC's online editing and design courses rely on Dreamweaver for Web page production in their classes, as do most other online instructors I've met at industry conferences and in online discussions.

Instead, my students create their Web pages by hardcoding HTML and style sheets using nothing more than a basic text editor like Notepad. Yes, it's difficult. Creating Web sites takes more time without Dreamweaver, and students often get frustrated when a single keystroke renders their work unintelligible.

But the extra effort earns rewards. --Robert Niles --From the Teaching Trenches: Hardcoding is Harder, but Results are Worth It (Online Journalism Review)

I've been mulling over this possibility...

When I teach writing for the Internet, I teach blogging first, which I find gets students writing faster. When I then moved to HTML authoring, there was a terrible backsliding... that is, students who were initially nervous about the course's technical requirements were put at ease by the simplicity of blogging.

But when it came time to move to the next step, teaching them to make web pages with FrontPage Express, several students were very frustrated by some very basic things. I chose FrontPage Express because it’s free, and also because it doesn’t offer many of the distracting, non-standard bells-and-whistles that used to distract my technical writing students when they used Front Page 2000 or 2002.

But even using the simpler version of the program, some students couldn’t find the folder in which the program had saved their files, or when they accidentally downloaded a file from "subdirectory/index.html" over top of their root directory "index.html", they didn’t think of recovering the "missing" page by downloading a copy of the version they had most recently uploaded.

While saving frequently, working on one thing at a time, and working backwards to recover from a mistake are second nature to hackers, even they had to learn the importance of those techniques the hard way. Add to that the fact that some students in “Writing for the Internet” are also learning the basics of how to write, and suddenly the course content becomes overwhelming.

I started out giving them two weeks to publish a simple website, with plenty of in-class workshop time. As the semester progressed, I gave them shorter timeframes -- one week, then two or three days, and then finally the end of the class period. Most of this work was ungraded – that is, they got credit for doing their best and showing progress. But there was a long period when I felt some students simply weren't putting in the effort to learn these details.

Once it became clear the final exam would require them to use these skills on their own, that caused a few students to perk up. But there was still a lot of what I felt should have been unnecessary stress during the final, as students struggled with a skill for which I had spent months preparing them.

Of course, my class was mostly first-semester freshmen, who are generally not used to being responsible for their own learning.

Since Niles can be confident that his students will have plenty of opportunity in other classes to learn the stylistic and cultural details of writing for the web, perhaps he can better afford to spend more time on teaching raw HTML.

I do teach the basics of interactive fiction programming, using a set of example games that I've tweaked over the years... those classes are more like fill-in-the-blank exercises than programming, but the process does introduce students to the gory details that go into writing an interactive fiction game, which makes them more informed critics (and more helpful peer evaluators for those students who choose an IF term project).

When I next teach "Writing for the Internet" (in the fall of 2006) I'll have to think about all this.

A great introduction to a medium near and dear to my heart. --Writing Interactive Fiction (a.k.a. "Text Adventure Games") with the Inform Programming Language (IndieGameDev)

Then Jimmy Joe Jenkins's DNA proved he was the primary descendent of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. At first, Jimmy was satisfied with ten percent of the price of every KJV sold and 10 percent of every collection plate passed by any church that used the KJV. But when some churches switched to newer translations, Jimmy sicced his lawyers on all translations based on the KJV. That got him a cut of every Bible and every Christian service in English. Some translators claimed their work was based on older versions and should therefore be exempt, but none of them could afford to fight Jimmy in court. -- The People Who Owned the Bible - a story (it's all one thing)

The story needs some editing, but it's a good concept.

"He was keeping a journal of sorts to put together for future history," John Ellsworth told BBC News. "He wanted to make sure that his generation, as well as following generations, have actual words from somebody who was there."

But Mr Ellsworth Snr was shocked when Yahoo! turned down a request to release his dead son's e-mails, on the basis of privacy.

Recognising the emotions involved, Yahoo! says it must nevertheless honour the terms of service which all 40 million US Yahoo! account holders must agree to. These state that survivors have no rights to the e-mail accounts of the deceased. Yahoo! accounts are deactivated after 90 days if they have not been used. -- -- Who owns your e-mails? (BBC News)

I should really write down my passwords and such and leave them in a safe place, just in case...

A political party is dying before our eyes -- and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history. -Howard Fineman --The 'Media Party' is over (MSNBC)

Fineman's final point is the assertion that "Blogger Nation" is the new opposition party that replaced the American Mainstream Media Party.

"Gamers are everywhere and they?re everyone. They are your friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, and kids, they lead responsible and caring lives, balancing their enjoyment of interactive entertainment with many other activities important to a well-rounded lifestyle," said Douglas Lowenstein, president of the ESA, the trade association representing U.S. computer and video game publishers. "Indeed, those who continue to portray the game population as single-minded loafers are living in their own fantasy world." --New Data Shatters Video Game Player Stereotypes: Gamers Regularly Involved in Community, Church, and Athletics (Entertainment Software Association)

A press release from the Entertainment Software Association.

Aarseth, bringing up an overgeneralization in another recent article, his piece in First Person, goes on to admit that ?most proper narratologists, who actually have to think about and define narratives in a scholarly, responsible, and accurate way, are not guilty of this overgeneralization.? I have to wonder, then: Why is most of Aarseth'sNarrative across Media article devoted to picking off straw-man pseudo-narratological arguments rather than advancing his potentially interesting quest model or addressing how to improve the valuable scholarship that has been done on the relationship between narrative and games? --Nick Montfort --Aarseth's Anti-Quest (Grand Text Auto)

Montfort puckishly trolls for responses from the ludologists.

He suggests that Aarseth is "camping" -- a strategy employed by online players of massively multiplayer games, wherein the player stays in one well-hidden location, waiting for hapless victims to stroll by or resources to appear.

I don't generally approve of trolling (and certainly didn't intend to drive a wedge between narratologists and ludologists when I blogged about the absence of the ludological viewpoint in evidence at the Princeton videogame criticism conference). Montfort had to do some explanation and clarification in his comments, slightly adjusting the trajectory of his salvo after he fired it.

But I always find Montfort's ideas fascinating, along with his sometimes unorthodox ways of communicating them.

Ten years ago Eric Korte, vice president and music director at the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, was commissioning original music for 90 percent of the company's campaigns. This year, more than half of his workload involves licensing published songs, and the trend is only gaining momentum.

"The jingle," Korte says, "is dead." --Joan Anderman --The irresistible, singable, stick-in-your-mindable jingle is dead (Boston Globe)

Already under duress from years of budget cuts, poor ratings and reduced influence, CBS News suffered a crushing blow to its credibility yesterday because of a broadcast that has now been labeled as both factually discredited and unprofessionally produced. --Bill Carter --Post-Mortem of a Flawed Broadcast (NY Times)

This article describes the fallout from the apparently forged memos on Bush's National Guard service.

I had dinner with two big name photographers in L.A. recently. These are folks who’s name you might recognize even if you are not in the photography industry. I asked them both under what circumstances could use their images without paying them, they both immediately responded emphatically “under no circumstances!”--Jason Calacanis --Fair use of photos on blogs… the photographers speak out. (The Jason Calacanis Weblog)

The "fair use" doctrine indicates that it is permissible to use copyrighted material as part of a scholarly critique or review, so these photographers are mistaken.

I frequently encounter student web authors who use images without citation (let alone permission), despite my repeated reminders that this use is unacceptable for my course.

If I do reproduce a photo from someone else's site, the blog entry includes a link to the original source, and the excerpt on my site provides context that makes it clear I am not claming credit for the image. In addition, I am always discussing the photo and/or the site itself. This is completely different from, for example, snagging someone else's photo in order to provide atmosphere for the poem you have just written.

I also deliberately resize the image, so that the copy on my site is smaller, thus protecting the value of the full-size original. Of course, if the source image is a small graphic or only a thumbnail is available on the original poster's site, that's a different matter.

Something to think about the next time I want to use a picture for my blog...

The Bush administration paid an African-American pundit $240,000 (£127,000) to promote its education policies to the black community and urge other black journalists to do the same in the run-up to the presidential election.

In an effort to promote its controversial education reform programme, No Child Left Behind, the education department paid Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts" on a nationally syndicated television show.--Gary Younge --Bush paid TV pundit to push education plan  (Guardian)

Celebrities like Michael Moore, Richard Gere, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and former Minnesota governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura shamelessly use their celebrity clout to advocate their political agendas, none of them pretend to be objective.

While Armstrong was a columnist, not a news reporter, and thus was never expected to be unbiased, this is still a very awkward situation.

I love the quote from the education department official who referred to the pay-for-content program as a governmental "outreach" effort.

The problem with Italy's antiquities and culture is that there is simply too much.

How do you conserve ancient and priceless artefacts at the same time as letting people come and see them? --David Reid --Technology rescues Italy's art (BBC News)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

I've toyed with using VR to reconstruct the interior of a chapel that was destroyed in WWII...

Adventure - based on the classic text game of the same name - was the first game ever to contain an easter egg. --Is That A Dragon or a Duck? (Metafilter)

It's great to see Adventure get a mention, but no, the Atari version was a graphics game that really shared nothing besides the name with the Crowther/Woods text originial.

I see that Metafilter credited Memepool.

--The Blogosphere By the Numbers

Nothing terribly quotable, but a good source of statistics relating to weblogs.

IF as a genre, fundamentally unchanged for more than twenty years, evolved in a world of gaming where graphics were non-existent and words were the sole medium of expression. The game described locations, objects, and actions in text, and the player controlled the story's protagonist by typing commands in English (or any other natural language in which the story was written). As a player, you had to rely on your imagination to fill in the gaps.

In the time since, technology has allowed designers to create games that realize their visual ideals. And many of these games have captivating stories and excellent puzzles, just like good IF games. --Frank Pape --Interactive Fiction: Words vs. Pictures (FrankPape.com)

A good introduction to interactive fiction.

--Weblogging Software Leader Six Apart Acquires LiveJournal (Biz Yahoo)

There's really nothing quotable in this rather dry press release, but I'm linking to it as a reference anyway. SixApart is the company that makes MoveableType, the software I use for blogs.setonhill.edu. An increasing number of my students are familiar with the LiveJournal style of personal blogging before they start learning how to use blogs as an academic tool. There is some friction between the two modes of blogging, and some students who have thrown themselves into the SHU blogosphere also feel the need to maintain a more personal blog elsewhere.

LiveJournal's nickname is "teenangst.com", since many of the users are adolescents who blog about personal topics, rather than professionals or college students who might write about academics, current events, technology, etc., in stead of (or in addition to) keeping a personal diary.

After checking blodgex, I see that this posting on apophenia resonates with many bloggers:

Movable Type is a product; LiveJournal is a community. Six Apart is seen as a community that provides tools, not culture. I suspect that if LJ goes to SA, there will be discontent from LJ users even though the media and blogosphere will hail it as an exceptionally [insert business rhetoric here] deal. Even if Six Apart doesn't change a damn thing, i suspect that LJers will feel wary, unloved and co-opted by The Man. I can't imagine them going anywhere fast but i can't see them being happy either, nor can i see them continuing to contribute economically.

At the Marine base several miles southeast, high-speed wires snake down hallways, through doors and out windows. The Navy engineers play "Half-Life 2." At the gym, where seven Playstations get heavy use, Marines wage "Madden NFL 2005" tournaments. "Neverwinter Nights" reigns in the public affairs office. --Troops stationed in Iraq turn to gaming (MSNBC/AP)

While the number of new blogs is rising, readership is growing even faster. --Dan Gillmor --A Medium Coming Into Its Own (Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism)

Gillmor is commenting on a datum from a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Ultimately, it became very clear that the most active and influential members of the project--beginning with Jimmy Wales, who hired me to start a free encyclopedia project and who now manages Wikipedia and Wikimedia--were decidedly anti-elitist in the above-described sense.

Consequently, nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia, because they will--at least if they are editing articles on articles that are subject to any sort of controversy--be forced to defend their edits on article discussion pages against attacks by nonexperts. This is not perhaps so bad in itself. But if the expert should have the gall to complain to the community about the problem, he or she will be shouted down (at worst) or politely asked to "work with" persons who have proven themselves to be unreasonable (at best).

This lack of respect for expertise explains the first problem, because if the project participants had greater respect for expertise, they would have long since invited a board of academics and researchers to manage a culled version of Wikipedia (one that, I think, would not directly affect the way the main project is run). But because project participants have such a horror of the traditional deference to expertise, this sort of proposal has never been taken very seriously by most Wikipedians leading the project now. And so much the worse for Wikipedia and its reputation. --Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism (Kuro5hin)

One of the creators of Wikipedia reflects on some of the serious flaws of the mass-edited encyclopedia.

Leading British computer games maker Peter Molyneux has been made an OBE in the New Year Honours list.

The head of Surrey's Lionhead Studios was granted the honour for services to the computer games industry. --Call of honour for UK games maker (BBC)

OBE = "Order Of the British Empire".

The article's last paragraph:

"Being an absolute geek I've got no idea what I'm going to wear when I go and pick it up," he said.