About
Announcements and opinions from Digital Media students, interns, faculty and researchers in the UT Austin|Portugal Program, or CoLab.
CoLab offers PhD programs, research funding, public events in Portugal and professional internships in Austin. Read more.
Category Archives: Commentary
EC pushes for standardized phone chargers
The European Commission is planning to force cell phone companies to standardize their cell phone chargers so that all phones will use the same style of charger. The goal is to cut down on the amount of waste caused by … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Leave a comment
Millennials at work
While much of the generation-based research seems more likely to produce buzzwords than to actually provide a meaningful framework for thinking about social or cultural trends, a new report from Accenture on the tech habits of Millennials (people born between … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Research
Leave a comment
Virtual Campaign
This week, US citizens began noticing billboards promoting Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. This would be nothing new, except the billboards appear in the XBox 360 game “Burnout Paradise.” The Obama campaign has sunk a portion of its funds into … Continue reading
Ubiquity or broadband?
I’ve started to analyze our latest data from a few rural regions in the U.S., where small communities recently obtained broadband services. This is a five-year, USDA-funded study that should provide us with some insights about what difference broadband makes … Continue reading
FTC Reviews Behavioral Targeting Practices
An article today on the Washington Post site—FTC Wants to Know What Big Brother Knows About You–discusses the United States Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing review of behavioral targeting practices among companies such as Yahoo! And Microsoft. While many ad-supported websites … Continue reading
Gaming as Immigration Rights Project
Breakthrough, an organization that does human rights work in both the United States and India, has released a game, ICED (I Can End Deportation) to help players learn the ins and outs of immigration policy and rights. The game, which … Continue reading
Citizen Journalism on Trial
It might behoove the ACLU, or some organization devoted to civil liberties, to devote some resources to figuring out how to defend speech that is inconvenient to plaintiffs lawyers. Sandy Szwarc of the excellent blog Junkfood Science has a lengthy … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary
Leave a comment
Uwe Boll vs. the Web
There is a petition to convince director Uwe Boll to stop making movies. Boll has apparently said if the petition gets a million signatures, he’ll quit [story]. Now, the director has proven a bit quirky — challenging film critics to … Continue reading
Second Skins and Tiny Lives
BoingBoingTV presents the above short piece about the movie Second Skin, which premiered at SXSW. The film explores the impact of massively multiplayer online games on the people who play — including one self-identified gaming addict. The documentary looks like … Continue reading
U.S. Law and Video Games
A piece of news that should be of interest to folks both in industry and in the academy: A couple weeks ago, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a law that would have limited the sales and … Continue reading →