Citizen-Generated Media (CGM)

‘Tis the Season of the List #2

The end of the year fast approaches, and with it, a profusion of opinion masquerading as “The Best Of . . . “ lists, anthologies, and collections.  Here are a few amusing (and sometimes profound) ones that I have run across in the last couple of weeks.

1) Best music tracks;

2) Best Excuses to Watch YouTube;

3) Robert Birnbaum’s idiosyncratic Best Books of 2006;

4) Evolution of the National Christmas Tree, with Photos since 1963;

5) Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2006;

6) Slate’s Best Human Nature Stories of 2006;

7) Global Language Monitor’s Top Politically Incorrect Words for 2006:

8) Popular Mechanics’ 10 Tech Concepts You Should Know for 2007;

9) Twelve “Tipping Points” of Global Warming as seen by Mother Jones;

10) 40 Best Celebrity Rumors Ever;

11) Media Errors and Corrections of 2006;

12) Plagiarism Roundup for 2006;

13) Best Jazz Albums of the Last 35 Years;

14) Top 25 Food Preparation Oddities;

15) The Medical Illustrations of Jose Perez;

16) 33 Names for Things You Never Knew Had Names;

17) Worst Album Covers of All Time;

18) NASA’s Top Exploration and Discovery Stories of 2006;

19) Top Ten Literary Websites of 2006;

20) Kuro5hin’s Predictions for 2007;

21) Addictive Online Time Wasters;

22) Time’s 50 Best Websites;

23) Hollywood Reporter’s Top Women in Entertainment;

24) Lip Sticking Announces ItsTop Ten Business Books of 2006;

25) Syntax of Things Lists Underappreciated Writers;

26) 10 Cultural Implications of Social Software;

27) Biggest Technology Disappointments of 2006;

28) BBC News Lists Best Tech for 2006;

29) Ten Top Myths about Iraq and the Iraq War;

30) Sure Bets for 2007;

31) Java Developer’s Journal 2007 IT Predictions;

32) Seven Search Engine Evolutions for 2007;

33) Best and Worst of the Hi-Def Offerings;

34) Top Viruses, Worms, and Malware;

35) Digital Media Winners and Losers;

36) Wired Lists Its Annual Vaporware Awards;

37) Technology Review’s Best Q & A Sites;

38) PC World’s 20 Most Innovative Products

39) Top Ten Apple Rumors of All Time;

40) 100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year;

41) Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006;

42) BoingBoing’s Most Popular Posts of 2006;

43) Seven Web Philosophers Peer Into the Future of Tech; and

44) Best and Worst Movie Posters of 2006. 

‘Tis the Season of the List

It’s December and annual lists are sprouting like truffles in pig excrement.  Here are a few to tickle your palate, your funny bone, or perhaps your cerebral cortex.

1) 81 Movies for Geeks that Do Not Suck

2) Sites That Top Diggers Read

3) Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2006

4) 33 Names of Things You Never Knew Had Names

5) Ten Best Reference Works

6) Songs for Aliens

7) Best American Stores that Specialize in Chocolate

8) The Seven Wonders in Each of America’s Fifty States

9) Twenty Unique Uses for a Post-It Note

10) Aggregation of All the Lists Fimoculous Could Find

11) Fifty Top Music Videos of 2006

12) Fifty Works of Art You Should See Before You Pass This Mortal Coil

13) 2006 Weblog Award Nominees in Many Categories

14) Best Political Books of 2006

15) Ten Most Popular Typefaces for Newspapers

16) Best Books According to Slate

17) The Economist Looks into the Crystal Ball for 2007

18) The Christian Science Monitor Selects the Best Fiction of 2006

The Power of You

EDTime Magazine has either brilliantly captured the changing global nature of communications, or copped out entirely, in its recent choice of “You” as its annual person of the year.  All us bloggers should bask in the reflected glory of the collective you, and polish up some smartass line on how being named Time’s “Person of the Year” was the culmination of a career’s efforts at breaking the logjams that plague communications modalities. By the way, “you” (we) narrowly beat out the runner-up, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not a North Korean or an American politician in sight! But Time failed to mention the way-more-brave Iranian bloggers who are pressuring their own government.

This Would Be Hilarious If It Were Not Tragic

The Indian Council of Medical Research has been busy lately, measuring the penis size of over a thousand Indian men, volunteers all, chosen for their representative demographics.  Indian men are, well, under-endowed, only by a few millimeters, but then again, every millimeter counts.  This is more than a passing amusement, because condoms are manufactured in one size, and if there is greater slippage occurring among sexually-active Indians, this could be a factor in the rising HIV rate on the subcontinent.  So, are you listening, condom manufacturers?  We need sizing in penis sheaths, just like we do for gloves and shows.  Obviously, size matters not regarding birth rates, even if those happy sperm have to swim a few mm. farther.  For a comprehensive history of condoms throughout the centuries, visit Avert.org.

The Dead Don’t Just Vote, They Also Sign Petitions, While the Living Sue

The United Kingdom has proposed overhauling the existing copyright laws, predictably empowering the Gowers Commission to look into the state of intellectual property (IP) in the U.K. and recommend legislative remedies.  While the recommendations call for tougher enforcement of IP infringement (and the allowing of music transfer from one device to another (e.g., from a CD to an MP3 player), it rejects the idea of extending copyright protection for recorded music beyond the current 50-year term.  A group of musicians, 4500 strong including such impecunious artists as Sir Paul McCartney and the Irish band U2, took out an ad in a recent Financial Times arguing for the copyright term to be extended from 50 to 95 years.  This controversy has been simmering for some time.  Lawrence Lessig, an American IP lawyer who opposes such extensions, with pen dripping in irony and sarcasm, has “admitted” he was wrong after finding musicians signing the petition who had been dead for a few years.  “I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire,” a bemused Lessig wrote. Lessig has also argued this same thing in a more direct fashion.  Incidentally, the British Library has published an IP manifesto that attempts to balance equities in this area.  This manifesto does not address the current debate, but tries to lay down principles under which dispute resolutions could occur. Meanwhile, on our side of the Atlantic, the head of the Library of Congress, James H. Billington, is calling for legislation to protect those intrepid souls who reverse engineer Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes to expose the flaws contained therein. After the Sony rootkit fiasco, DRM schemes have come to be disfavored and some have predicted their swift demise. Recently, the anti-DRM movement was profiled in Newsweek. This is a classic case of greed killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. And it will continue to be a hot story, because Microsoft has embedded DRM into its upcoming new Vista release.  While those possessing decorum make their arguments in decorous ways, the wild wild Internet takes on the task of attack through humor and derision.  Jinx has come up with a unique product aimed at those people who hate the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group that has become reviled for suing grandmothers who wouldn’t know a mouse from a rat, or a rootkit from a rutabaga.  RIAA bumwad is so popular that their stock of it is sold out! For the sake of balance, here is an article explaining, if not exactly supporting, the RIAA’s position. And another that chronicles RIAA’s counterintuitive request to reduce royalty payments; is it a public relations strategy or the dying gasp of the formerly relevant? By the way, DRM is not the only entity declared nearing death recently.  The demise of the VHS tape is almost at hand, according to Variety.

Best Blogs of 2006

A fimoculous is a micro-organism that consumes its own waste for sustenance. Fimoculli are therefore a self-perpetuating ecology.  So says Rex Sorgatz, the proprietor of Fimoculous, a blog that feeds on itself, which recently created a list of thirty under-appreciated blogs that deserve places on your RSS reader.