Internet

Obama’s 'Never Gonna Give You Up'

Julien — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:59:34 +0200

Barack Obama "rickrolled".

A video of Barack Obama singing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” isn’t just funny, it’s part of an Internet prank phenomenon that’s sweeping the online world.

If you don’t already know what "rickrolling" is, then you’ve obviously never fallen victim to it.

The prank is simple. You click on a link you think is something else, but instead you get the video clip of Astley’s 1987 hit. It’s called a “bait and switch” prank, the first of which led unsuspecting surfers to a picture of a duck with wheels.

Rickrolling began on the 4chan site, and it’s estimated that now over 18 million people have fallen victim to the prank.

Various spin-offs have emerged and a quick YouTube search will bring up videos like “I rickrolled my entire school,” “Nazis get rickrolled,” and “Church gets rickrolled.”

But the best yet emerged on Saturday, with a video of carefully edited Obama recordings in which the presidential candidate appears to be singing along to the song.

Five days later, it’s number one on the viral chart, with already 1,091,020 views.

"Paranoid of new media" authorities arrest Facebook users

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:44:23 +0200

Joining an online social network group is risky business in Egypt. Twenty-six people were rounded up and arrested at a gathering organised on Facebook on Wednesday. The internet activists were attending a peaceful meeting on a beach in Alexandria when they were detained unexpectantly.

The meeting was planned to take place on the touristic Sidi Bishr beach. Attendees had got together via the "6 April Youth Movement" Facebook group. The group was involved in the organisation of the 6 and 7 April riots, which were held in protest of deteriorating living conditions in Egypt. The response from the authorities was severe. Three people were killed and around 55 arrested.

Wednesday's participants met to demand the release of those arrested. But the police classed the gathering as a violation of the country's state of emergency, in place now for 27 years, which bans the public meeting of more than five people.

Was AFP fooled by a fake?

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:13:08 +0200

A photo taken from Karadzic's alleged perosnal site.

Agence France Presse this afternoon released a dispatch about what they say is the personal website of Rodovan Karadzic. According to the site, the former Serbian leader spent his travelling in the name of health, and is now an advocate for alternative forms of medicine. A blogger explains why it could be fake.

The dispatch, which was picked up by French daily Le Monde's website at 1pm, explained that "under the name of Dr. Dragen Dabic, Radovan Karadzic (...) put a fictional biography online in the hope of diverting potential leads from the authorities". The news agency also took quotes from the site, including Chinese proverbs supposedly posted online by the former Serbian politician (e.g. "Behind every able man, there are always other able men"). The information does seem credible, as Rodovan Karadzic, a trained psychologist, converted to alternative forms of medicine and worked in a clinic in Belgrade under the name of Dragan Dabic.

European bloggers Kosmopolit however, say that it is in fact a fake. They explain that a quick search of the domain names database (Who's) proves that the site was created on... 22 July this year. Which was after Karadzic's arrest. According to them, the site was made by someone having a laugh, and AFP just didn't get the joke. This is not set in stone of course, but it does raise serious suspicions that the agency might have been fooled.

Faux-amateur videos - the new marketing weapon

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:55:14 +0200

They all follow the same format - an anonymous video, supposedly amateur, of an incredible act or experience appears online. Once a buzz has been created, the so-thought home-made footage turns out to be an advert. A successful marketing strategy indeed, but does it meet ethical standards?

The faux-amateur video has become an essential technique for advertisers. The bigger it is, the more web users fall for it. The latest to date is a clip showing a group of young people cooking popcorn with the radiation from a couple of ringing mobile phones. The video received over 10 million hits in ten days on YouTube, but the majority of its audience thought it was real.

Rumours soon followed that mobile phones were highly dangerous. When news came out that the scene had been faked, it was too late to completely eradicate the initial panic. The affair clearly demonstrates the dangers of viral publicity. Not only is it easy it is to start false rumours, but also to weaken the public trust in the internet, which is seen more than ever as a media fuelled by gossip.

New Radiohead clip is online sensation

Ségolène Team Observers — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:23:15 +0200

The music video for Radiohead's latest single "House of Cards" was yesterday the most watched clip on the web. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, but technologically mystifying too - it was filmed without a camera.

It's only been online since Monday (14 July), but the latest clip from Oxford's finest musicians has already received 1,277,013 hits. This, along with the fact that Radiohead is the biggest rock group in the world, is largely due to the fact that critics went into rapture over the new album, "In Rainbow". But equal praise is reserved for director James Frost, whose technical prowess, also having served the likes of Coldplay, Stereophonics and Norah Jones, reached new heights on the project.

The short film is made using an experimental animation technique that employs neither lights nor camera, but is shot in real time. The contours of singer Thom York's face are not reflections but the mathematical harnessing of his movements. Followed by 64 revolving lasers and scanned by a clever device made by Geometric Informatics, every move he makes is registered by the reaction speeds of laser beams.

And to boot, never missing the chance to get their fans involved, the group put a page on Google to let people try out the technique. Once finished, there's a group on YouTube waiting for your attempt.

China's 50-cent-a-piece propagandists

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:43:53 +0200

A search for "Tiananmen Square massacre" brings up no results on a Chinese search engine.

For the Chinese authorities, anything goes when it comes to controlling Web 2.0 - and that includes bribing the public into posting propaganda for 50 cents, says Hong Kong blogger Oiwan Lam.

Oiwan Lam is known for stirring up trouble with the super strict Hong Kong internet regulators. She became renowned on the blogosphere after facing charges for linking one of her posts to a nude Renaissance painting last year. In this amateur video, she talks to journalist and blogger Thomas Crampton about the Chinese government's latest scheme to control "alternative content" on the net. She says that writing a pro-government comment on an online debate will get you a reward of 50 cents (5 euro cents), which, if you have enough time on your hands, could amount to a second income.

It's best not to wave at the camera just after a massacre

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:43:02 +0200

Yesterday we published a post about a street massacre in Tokyo. Shocked Japanese web users have been poring over news reports recorded just after the tragedy, and they've noticed something that upsets them even more.

Even when the news is tragic, nothing stops people from crowding behind a TV reporter and waving at the cameras to say "hello" to their friends and family watching at home. It's not the smartest thing to do at the scene of a massacre, but you probably wouldn't expect the reaction these unfortunate fools have received either...

Screenshots of the culprits' faces have been taken from the videos and published on the enormous Japanese discussion forum 2-channel, attracting an angry mob of justice-seekers. These cyber "wanted" posters have even been included in a film which has been seen over 3000,000 times in 24 hours.

According to James from Japan Probe, numerous messages posted on YouTube or chat forums have called for the "stupid and uncivilised" perpetrators to be punished. The blogger does also say that some web users from the country have recognised that the online manhunt is an "over-reaction".

No Sex And the Suburbs

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:29:33 +0200

We Need Girlfriends is a series that you won't see on TV yet - so far it's been broadcast exclusively on the Internet. It tells the story of three recent graduates struggling to understand the complex world of the New York City dating scene, after all three are simultaneously dumped by their long-time college girlfriends.

So far each episode for the series has been produced for under $200 [€130]. But with a successful two million views so far, the show won't stay just online for long. The creators are currently writing the pilot script for a TV version with Darren Star, producer of Sex and the City...

In Kenya, hate media has found a new home

Julien — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:05:35 +0100

The message Mashada posted on their forum page

One of Kenya's most popular discussion forums had to close its doors yesterday (31 January) because of a barrage of abusive and hate-inciting comments left by web-users. James X runs the ‘Mashada' project. He explains that the site's once relatively peaceful discourse had taken a decisively violent turn since the elections. It seems that the internet is being used to fuel ethnic loathing. Could this media become the next Radio Mille Collines?

Everyone remembers the calls for murder broadcast by Radio Mille Collines during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. You can't compare the 800,000 massacres in Rwanda with the current one thousand in Kenya. However, James tells us that a renewal of ethnic tensions is more than visible on the web, and that it started even before the elections. And threatening behaviour on the internet will only mean one thing on the ground.

Everyone wants a piece of Jérôme Kerviel

Julien — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:58:33 +0100

Just hours after Société Générale revealed the biggest fraud in history on Thursday, we received a photo of the rogue trader at hand. It appears that one of his colleagues looked him up on the company's intranet and circulated his profile page by email. Using the internet, it took less than half a day to reveal the identity of the young trader and circulate it around the world. Jérôme Kerviel, ‘the man worth five billion', has since become a kind of icon on the web. A funny phenomenon, but worrying too.

The trader has a score of fans on Facebook. The funniest groups come under titles such as ‘If 5 billion people join this group & give €1 we save Jerome Kerviel's career'; ‘Give Jerome Kerviel the Nobel Prize for economy 2008!' and ‘Share the money Jerome Kerviel!'

Internet users have created a Wikipedia page for him tracing his whole life. You can also have a look at his CV online, as well as a photo of him on a social night out. Digging into people's private lives is found funny by many, but not all. This blogger supports Kerviel, and condemns the press and his past employers for ‘lynching' him.

Some of these links were found in this article.