The Digital Life Show

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YouTube is 5 yrs old

From this Mashable artilce – YouTube, which serves more than 1 billion videos per day, is a mere five years old today. The domain name YouTube.com was registered on February 14, 2005. But the first video was uploaded 5 years ago yesterday, on April 23, 2005. It was a 19 second take of Jawed Karim, one of the three guys who founded YT, at the San Diego Zoo in front of the elephants.

On October 9, 2009, the third anniversary of the acquisition by Google, Chad Hurley announced in a blog posting that YouTube was serving “well over a billion views a day” worldwide

According to wikipedia – YouTube was awarded a 2008 George Foster Peabody Award and cited for being “a ‘Speakers’ Corner’ that both embodies and promotes democracy.” Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, “best-of” list, saying, “Providing a safe home for piano-playing cats, celeb goof-ups, and overzealous lip-synchers since 2005.

HOWEVER; YouTube is a rogue out there, we haven’t learned to live with the effects of it….

Here’s how a 20second video taken at a high school dance can ruin your life
2 Teachers 1 chair - cost them their jobs.
Or make you a star…
Susan Boyle her ‘offical’ web site (check out her new look)
over 91 million view for the Brittan’s Got Talent video
Venitian Princess
The #1 most subscribed female on YouTube, globally. She has over 788,000 subscribers, and has had over 200 million video views.
Or a fake star..Lonelygirl15 – faked video blogging / actually a marketing idea / – finally outed Sept 06 but created a sensation as the first youtube based webcast ‘hoax’. Many spin-off series launched world wide.
Or a star educator and philosopher
Michael Wesch – the machine is us/ing us
10,923,540 views

A list of YouTube ‘Personalities’

South Park summary video of the YouTube sensations:

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The ‘Downfall’ Hitler Parodies

YouTube’s Advice: Dispute Hitler “Downfall” Parody Takedowns

Each parody video takes a scene from Downfall, (2004) an award winning German film starring Bruno Ganz, in which Hitler throws a tantrum when he learns that he cannot win the war. Fake subtitles are then applied to make it appear as if he’s having a tantrum about something else. The topics have ranged from Michael Jackson’s death, the ipad’s lack of multi-tasking to Hitler Ordering a DMCA Takedown of the parodies.

In the news this week, as Constantine Films, the copyright owners initiated a massive removal of the parody videos on YouTube even though fair use clearly allows for parody. Of course, this move is only encouraging even more Hitler parodies to be produced.

Here’s a list from RobboMills’ blog of several hilarious Hitler Parodies about the Constantine Films takedown.

The rise, rise and rise of the Downfall Hitler parody

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New Privacy Concerns on Facebook

The Changes at Facebook: The Good, The Bad and The Very Ugly

This week Facebook implemented some new functionalities to the site allowing for more information sharing across the Web. Facebook is aiming for a more social and accessible web, and that can be a good thing. But at what cost to privacy?

The new feature is called “Instant Personalization”. It shares data with non-facebook websites and it is automatically set to “Allow.”

To switch off: go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites> Instant Personalization and uncheck “Allow”.

The problem: i do want to share SOME of my info with other sites (easier logins, shared features) but i dont want my personal info sold to commercial companies who will then use it to sell me their products, or worse.

And as writer Navneet Alang mentions, ” i want my social networks separate… Facebook are trying to tear down walls between social groups that are not only normal and common, but healthy.”

Get ready for the blowback Facebook.

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Green iphone apps – for Earth Day (which was 40yrs. old this year, 20 in Canada)

My faves:
Greenpeace Tissue Guide – ranks tissue and toilette paper according to their ‘greenness’. Over 100 products in four categories. Ratings include: recommended, could do better and should aviod.

Lable Lookup: Label Lookup enables users to check the validity of label claims using a rating system of zero to three.

What’s On My Food (by pesticide action network): review the pesticides that are used on common foods. a searchable database designed to make the ins and outs of pesticide exposure visible and more understandable to the non expert. not all pesticides are the same, some are very toxic others arent so bad. get the facts.

Mission Zero: mission zero.org – an online community whose mission is to improve the global environment through collective action. The app is a news resource that tracks sustainability issues in 14 different categories from more than 300 sources. A great tool for keeping up to date on the latest green news.

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CRTC Hearings on Community TV

Community television supporters are celebrating a development at the Quebec National Assembly this past week, which unanimously adopted a motion in support of the “fundamental role that independent community television plays for communities and for television.”

The motion comes in advance of the commission’s week-long hearings, beginning Monday, to examine the state of community television in Canada.

Currently, cable companies that have more than 20,000 customers are required to pay a broadcast levy that amounts to two per cent of the revenues collected from subscribers. Last year that figure amounted to some $134 million dollars. This money is supposed to go to ‘public access programming’ meaning, anyone can produce it. Instead, in many cases the money is kept by the broadcasters who produce their own ‘community’ programs, often violating CRTC regulations around publicity and access.

CACTUS (Canadian Association of Communtiy Televion Users & Stations) wants to use the levy to create a new fund called the Community Access Media Fund (CAMF). Under the CAMF, the levy would be redirected to establish new community-run multimedia training and production facilities in 250 communities across Canada.

Follow the action from April 26th to 30th on CPAC (which is actually way better on the Internet than on TV!)

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Second-hand copiers can spill secrets

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive–like the one on your personal computer–storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or e-mailed by the machine.

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MUSIC

Love and Happiness | Al Green | Definitive Greatest Hits
Sorte |Cesaria Evora | Café Atlantico

The Digital Life Show Theme: Glacier | Chris Zippel | Genuine Horizon