As the 2007/08 academic year gets into full flow here is a round-up of some interesting new media projects. Students at Pitzer College join community members in Claremont, CA in a practice-based media studies class "Learning from You Tube".  The course, called a "pedagogic experiment focusing on the potentials and limits of digital media culture" encourages the public to watch the class or participate.
 

Learning from You Tube lecturer Alexandra Juhatz is another of the growing number of academics using the Future of the Book facility to create drafts of a new texts. Add your comments to her project on the media commons.

"Wherefore Art Thou R3579X?" out of Cornell University won the award for best paper at the 16th International World Wide Web Conference for providing evidence that there is no anonymity or privacy in social networks even if you never provide any explicit information identifying yourself. While 37% of Internet users are in Asia social networking sites scramble to establish identities in China where sites like Xiaonei dominate. Meanwhile the jury for the Deutche Welle sponsored International Weblog Awards has the daunting task of wading through 7000 nominees nicely presented on their interactive map. But the clusters in predictable regional areas remain. And finally the next time you get annoyed by a failing internet connection or software malfunction consider needing to dress up like a tourist in your own country, speak German and spend two weeks wages just to get a posting up on your blog.