ENGL303 Spring 2010

I'm sure by now most college students have heard of chat roulette. Before reading on, I will warn everyone that before you click on the link, there may be some offensive material. Anyways, chat roulette is a website that allows people with webcams to speak through microphones, or type in a chat bar, with anyone in the world that has also has a webcam. There has been recent coverage by the media concerning the innapropriate material that some users have been filming. However perverted some users may be, chat roulette is an interesting new way to communicate with people via the web. There are two things about this website that I think are interesting. The first is that the site is run by a 17 year old in a European country. The fact that at any given time, there are over 30,000 people connected to the site makes this a potential goldmine for advertisers. The second thing I find interesting is that while the site is meant for communication, almost nobody uses it to speak to other individuals. It is mostly used to satisfy the curiousity and voyeuristic tendencines that lie within most of us. The average user will just click through random people without speaking to anyone. This says something about the way the internet may be breaking down communication in some aspects, instead of uplifting it

This is a wiki - so anyone can edit - that provides collectively authored and accessible free tax advice. An excellent example of collective effort.

This is a study about how online magazines are not always as thorough with their research as print is.

YAY! I finally found an article about the fight that print magazines are putting up against online magazines.

Looks at the law of copyright infringement and how it should or should not be changed due to the right of creativity and free speech.

This discusses copyright cases and specifically mentions Harry Potter.

This is an article that discusses some copyright issues of Harry Potter. This specifially mentions how other countries have adapted the story for their own countries versions.

This is an article that describe a situation where the lines of copyright got blurred between internet and print.

Digital billboards change images every 6-8 seconds, no research yet reveals the impact this has on drivers.

A social networking site enabling artists and other creators to get a "kickstart."

A collective artwork run. The work is charming, poignant, as is created and maintained by amateurs...

A social networking site for discovering and sharing content.

A social networking site for people making Lego mods. The point is the sheer diversity of social networks. They are intensely local but available globally.

Meetup facilitates meetups. That's it, but it's tremendously effective. It's a perfect example of publish then filter. And it is dedicated to the potential of groups.

Copyright/information piracy is much older than the net, as a new book shows. There was copying and distributing centuries ago - and the people were responsible were called pirates! The current copyright regime didn't arrive until the 18th century and it entered into an existing culture of copying and pirating.

A perfect example of "publish then filter": Italian courts convict Google executives of defamation and piracy for not removing an offensive video

Another online photoediting tool (lik Picnic). Very useful. You can upload photos and edit them, or you can create you own.

If you are easily offended do not open this link. It's like "Found Magazine" with all of the collection of random items people find and send in to Davy Rothbart, however, the items on this Web site are more explicit and geared toward an older audience than foundmagazine.com itself.

Video of Davy Rothbart, author of Found Magazine, talking about his favorite "finds" and other things related to Found.