DVD Format Research Articles

Convenient Resources for "An Inconvenient Truth"

Editor's Note: Before Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar for best documentary film, a member of the Electronic Green Journal's Editorial Board, Fred Stoss, traveled to Nashville, Tennessee. Fred was taught by former Vice President Al Gore and a group of scientists, educators, and communication specialists from The Climate Project to become change messengers and help spread the word about global warming across the United States. He was selected from thousands of applicants to participate in training sessions sponsored by The Climate Project. Attendees received presentation skills training and educational resources for sharing with others. They also received an intensive overview of the science of global warming. This training provides Stoss with the resources to conduct special versions of Gore's famous global warming slide show that is the basis for An Inconvenient Truth. As a librarian, he is frequently asked for resources to support the data and information described in the slide show. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on February 25, 2007 awarded film director, Davis Guggenheim, and the production team of Lawrence Bender and Laurie David the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film, An Inconvenient Truth. The Academy also awarded songwriter and lyricist, Melissa Etheridge the Academy Award for Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song) that accompanied the film. This documentary hit, An Inconvenient Truth, evolved from the popular slide show presented over decades of lectures, presentations, hearings, and other public venues by Al Gore, Jr., Vice President of the United States (1993-2001). The film is a gripping account of the battles undertaken to understand and combat one of the most scientific and technically complex, politically complicated, and strenuously controversial environmental issues with which humankind has had to deal: Global Warming. (1) The Climate Project was responsible for coordinating the initial training of the 1,000 presenters of Mr. Gore's slide show, and is coordinating presentations around the country and compiling useful resources. With the potential to affect biological, chemical, and climate cycles in the Earth's atmosphere, in its oceans, and on its lands, global warming demands worldwide attention and resolve. Gore wrote a book of the same title, as a companion to the movie. (2) Michiko Kakutani, book reviewer for The New York Times, cited An Inconvenient Truth, ...as a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, An Inconvenient Truth is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective. (3) It is possible to look at this endeavor of former Vice President Gore as an epilogue to his 1992 best selling Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Houghton Mifflin). An Inconvenient Truth presents a scientific perspective of the issue of global warming, known also as a component of global climate change, and represents a slide show and lecture Gore has been delivering to lecture halls around the world over the past several years. Much like Gore's earlier best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth does not pick up a political tone, but rather a tone of addressing global warming as a moral or ethical imperative. Needless to say, global warming and An Inconvenient Truth was 2006's hot environmental topic (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2006 was actually the hottest year ever recorded in the U.S. and December 2006 to February 2007 was the warmest meteorological winter ever recorded). (4) In mid-July, The Discovery Channel began airing a documentary, Global Warming: What You Need to Know, with Tom Brokaw, now available in DVD format with enhanced features. Later in the autumn, Stonehaven Productions of Canada released a completely revised and condensed version of its critically acclaimed three-part Discovery series, The Great Warming, as a major theatrical release on November 3, 2006. …

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA BRIGHTER SMILES PROGRAM: IMPROVING ABORIGINAL HEALTH AND BEYOND!

Background The University of British Columbia (UBC) Brighter Smiles Program, initiated in 2001, consists of a unique partnership between UBC health care professionals and remote aboriginal communities in northern British Columbia, Canada, and is now seen to be a successful community-based health and education program. The combination of implementing a school-based health program aimed to improve the oral health of children and also providing pediatric resident trainees with community clinical experience provides value to both the aboriginal communities and the specialty trainees. Purpose The purpose of this project was to produce and distribute an educational video to describe the value of the program for other remote aboriginal communities in British Columbia considering joining the program and to highlight aspects of the pediatric trainees9 experience for other university residency programs to review. The aboriginal community of Hartley Bay, British Columbia, Canada, being first to join the program and enrol all their school-age children in the oral health part of the program and first to complete the 3-year follow-up for the oral health program, was selected as the site for the video filming. Methods During a preplanned visit to the Hartley Bay community in September 2006, broadcast-quality footage for the video was filmed by Response Productions Inc. Interviews were obtained from aboriginal band council and community members, the school principal, teachers, the health director and the health coordinator of the Hartley Bay Nursing Station, and the UBC Brighter Smiles Team: pediatric resident trainees, program coordinator, and program director. In addition to documenting the oral health program for children, the video also describes the pediatric resident clinic and educational school session presentations by residents on various health and prevention topics. The completed video will be distributed in DVD format and a shortened version will be available on the Internet. Results Feedback of the video has been positive from both the Hartley Bay community participants and the Brighter Smiles team; the video is in postproduction and will be released in November 2006. Conclusions The continued success of the UBC Brighter Smiles Program partnering university and remote aboriginal communities in British Columbia is highlighted in this educational video to become available as a health education program resource.

Reconstructive Foot and Ankle Surgery

Mark S. Myerson. Philadelphia: Elsevier Saunders; 2005. 500 pages. $199.00. This comprehensive surgical textbook is a first-edition compendium of the author's approach to foot and ankle problems. The book is written in the first person, as if Dr. Myerson were talking to the reader. The list of foot and ankle techniques is very complete, and novel surgical solutions to these problems are included. Video clips in a DVD format serve as a supplement to twenty-nine of …

Duel of the Discs

Noted Japanese digital media reviewer and critic, Reiji Asakura, provides his views on the next generation of DVD recorders and players. Asakura demonstrates how the Blu-ray disc and the HD DVD formats stack up against the standard DVD. The demonstration highlighted how the video enhancement feature in the next generation players will be a bonus for early adopters and could encourage videophiles to buy early models despite such concerns as copy protection and future upgrades. However, despite the intrinsic appeal of the next generation players, consumers are discouraged from making purchase in the meantime

Film Scratches: Notes from the fringe

Film International invites film-makers and other related media artists to submit works particularly those that do not achieve mainstream distribution for consideration and possible review in this column. Please direct all (NTSC, VHS or any DVD format) submissions to: Liza Palmer, Review Section Editor, Film International, c/o University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-5616, USA. For more information or to suggest topics for future Film Scratches, e-mail Liza at palmerluncw.edu.

Film scratches notes from the fringe

THIS MARKS THE FIRST article for what will become a regular Film International column, highlighting film and media projects as well as the craftspeople and companies that produce these projects that reflect an independent or experimental spirit and motivation. Film International invites fi lm-makers and other related media artists, to submit works particularly those that do not achieve mainstream distribution for consideration and possible review in this column. Please direct all (NTSC VHS or any DVD format) submissions to: Liza Palmer, Review Editor, Film International, c/o University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-5616, USA. For more information or to suggest topics for future Film Scratches, e-mail Liza at: palmerluncw.edu.

Beyond the Bench: COEPs Contribute to Hurricane Relief

The conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita reminded us all of our commonality in the human experience and moved many to help. Among those moved to help were the staff at the Community Outreach and Education Programs (COEPs) of NIEHS Centers across the country. Responding to communities in need is one of the primary functions of the COEPs, so providing outreach to those areas on the Gulf Coast impacted by the hurricanes seemed a natural step to take. “When our director volunteered our COEP [to lead efforts], we remarked that if COEPs had never existed, they would have had to be invented on August 28,” says Pamela Diamond, director of the NIEHS Center COEP at University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. Adds Robin Fuchs-Young, director of the COEP of the Center for Research on Environmental Disease at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (UTMDACC), “All of us saw what was happening on television and felt compelled on a human level to help in whatever way we could.”

State of Denial. Directed by Elaine Epstein. South Africa, 2002. 82 minutes. DVD and VHS formats. Distributed by California Newsreel, www.newsreel.org. $195.00 (college, corporation, or government agency). $49.95 (high school, public library, or HBCU).

State of Denial. Directed by Elaine Epstein. South Africa, 2002. 82 minutes. DVD and VHS formats. Distributed by California Newsreel, www.newsreel.org. 49.95 (high school, public library, or HBCU). - Volume 48 Issue 3

Afro@Digital. Directed by Balufu Bakupa-Kanyida. 2003. 52 minutes. In French, Yoruba, Jula, and English with English subtitles. DVD and VHS formats. California Newsreel, www.newsreel.org. $195.00 (college, corporation, or government agency). $49.95 (high school, public library, or HBCU).

Afro@Digital. Directed by Balufu Bakupa-Kanyida. 2003. 52 minutes. In French, Yoruba, Jula, and English with English subtitles. DVD and VHS formats. California Newsreel, www.newsreel.org. 49.95 (high school, public library, or HBCU). - Volume 48 Issue 3

Kau La'au and Ma'ama'a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing (review)

Reviewed by: Kau Lā'au and Ma'ama'a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing, and: Viewer's Guide to Kau Lā'au and Ma'ama'a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing Mark A Calamia Kau Lā'au and Ma'ama'a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing, 28 minutes, DVD, color, 2005. Writer, editor, and director: Kate Sample; executive producer: Charles M Langlas; distributor: Pili Productions <http://www.pacificworlds.com/piliprod.cfm>, Social Sciences Division, University of Hawai'i at Hilo. US$9.00 (including US domestic postage); US$11.00 (including international postage). Includes Viewer's Guide to Kau Lā'au and Ma'ama'a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing, by Charles M Langlas and Craig Severance. Hilo: Pili Productions, 2003. 16 pages. I viewed a video version of this documentary, produced for teachers in Hawai'i's schools, but now being made available to the public in DVD format. This video documents the two traditional Hawaiian shore-fishing techniques used to catch the large predatory fish known among Hawaiians as ulua (Caranx spp, English Giant Trevally or Jack Crevalle). The documentary features three generations of traditional Hawaiian fishermen from Kalapana in the Puna District, east of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the southeast corner of the Big Island (Hawai'i), who demonstrate the making of materials for and application of the kau lā'au and ma'ama'a ulua fishing techniques. While these traditional Hawaiian fishing techniques date back to before European contact and have continued to the present day, they exhibit little change and are still being passed from generation to generation in a few Hawaiian families. The video also successfully addresses social aspects and ecological values associated with these traditional Hawaiian fishing techniques as discussed by the narrator and described by the fishermen themselves. Kau lā'au, which is locally referred to as "hang-baiting," involves the use of a stout pole of 'ōhi'a wood (Metrosideros spp), which is wedged into the crack at a shoreline cliff overlooking the nearshore ocean surge. At one end of the pole is a line that runs up along the wood and through a Y configuration at the tip of the pole; it then hangs down just above the crests of the waves below. To bait the hook, the tail of an eel (Hawaiian puhi) is used, while the head is pounded into a mash that is thrown in the water as chum to attract the ulua (Viewer's Guide, 2). The other technique, known as ma'ama'a, or locally called "cowboy style," is a hand-lining technique that is often used from the shore and away from the cliffs, especially when placement of the pole for the kau lā'au is not feasible. For the ma'ama'a technique, a hook is baited with a sewn eel tail and tied to a hand line. This line is twirled overhead, cast to the ocean, and pulled in to attract the ulua. Both fishing techniques were still commonly used by Hawaiians well into the first half of the twentieth century, though since the 1920s,many Hawaiians and other locals began fishing for ulua by slide-baiting. This technique requires the use of long stiff rods with reels and terminal tackle adapted for the ulua. Slide-baiting has caused a decline in the availability of ulua as well as changes in the fish's behavior. These factors have made it difficult to catch the ulua using the traditional Hawaiian techniques [End Page 510] (Viewer's Guide, 12). All these techniques are described in more detail in the accompanying Viewer's Guide, which also serves as an excellent educational tool to facilitate classroom discussion. Charles M Langlas, the executive producer, who teaches anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, notes that filming for this project began in 1995 (Viewer's Guide, 3). Filming took place at seven different locations, for a total of seventeen days, and over a five-year time span. The video focuses on the fishermen of the Hauanio family, spanning three generations in the Kalapana area: Ben Hauanio was born in 1928 and is originally from Kalapana village. Aku Hauanio, the son of Ben's older brother John Hauanio, was...

Reelpolitik: Political Ideologies in '30s and '40s Films, and: Reelpolitik II: Political Ideologies in '50s and '60s Films (review)

Beverly Merrill Kelly. Reelpolitik: Political Ideologies in '30s and '40s Films. Praeger, 1998. 194 pages; $22.95. Reelpolitik II: Political Ideologies in '50s and '60s Films. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. 284 pages; $27.95. Author Beverly Merrill Kelly, professor of communication studies and "novice" film scholar has produced two in her planned three volume series examining "reelpolitik's" or "political ideologies" found in selected popular Hollywood films. Ms. Kelly provides film scholars and their students with an articulate engaging writing style coupled with an expertly crafted, thoroughly researched analysis, examining films chosen for their presumed political ideologies. Volume one examines films from the 1930's and 1940's while its companion volume discusses films produced during the 1950's and 1960's. The author's much anticipated volume three focuses on political films produced during the 1970's and 1980's. Readily available on videotape, popular DVD formats and showcased on premier cable outlets such as American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Films, the current Reelpolitik series provides an excellent resource for scholars and students interested in political/ideological films. According to the author, the first two volumes, and including volume three, differ in their narrative discourse and film analysis but all will share a common theme crafted as textbooks for use by government, history, political science, and film scholars. The impetus behind the series lay in a film symposium organized by the author and her fellow colleagues at California Lutheran University that encouraged their students to examine the "reel" political/historical ideologies portrayed in 30's and 40's films. Amid student objections about viewing films in "black and white?" and "who are these actors?" the author determined that this "oppositional discourse" provided a perfect opportunity for analyzing the "reelpolitiks" found in Hollywood films. Ms. Kelley, and fellow contributors, chose eight films for Reelpolitik I that portray oppositional political ideologies to capitalism such as populism, fascism, communism, and military interventionism during a time when Americans were stunned by the Great Depression and wary of "foreign entanglements." Included are the films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Magnificent Ambersons (1948), Gabriel over the White House (1933), Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Our Daily Bread (1934), and The Fountainhead (1939). In an interesting counter analysis each film is also examined for "contrast[ing] ideologies" (pg. 3). This includes elitism, antifascism, anticommunism, and isolationism. …

Anime Fans, DVDs, and the Authentic Text

Anime Fans, DVDs, and the Authentic Text Laurie Cubbison An enduring question in media studies is how much economic and social power audi- ences have over the commodities they con- sume. A commodity like a DVD consists not only of the object, the disk itself, but also of the film or television program contained on the disk, and the market for the object depends on the market for the film or television program. Over the past twenty years fan studies as a field has examined fandom, a specific kind of deeply engaged audience behavior that media corporations must take into account when marketing film and television on home video. For a film genre such as anime, also known as Japanese animation, the audience may consist of a large group of casual viewers, each of whom may spend some money on a few DVDs, and a much smaller group of otaku, or committed fans, who may spend a great deal of money collecting many DVDs. The amount of influence either group has over the marketing decisions of the DVD makers will depend not only on their market share of the audience but also the audience group's ability to articulate what it wants from the product. Otaku who participate in online forums like Usenet and various web forums have learned to articulate for themselves and for anime home video distributors their product specifications. Strictly speaking, in Japanese, otaku is a pejorative term for an obsessive geek. The object of the obsession could be comics, cars, animation, sports, television shows, music—any set of objects that inspire an obsessive level of expertise. The obsession is likely to be accompanied by poor social skills and hoarding tendencies (Newitz; Kinsella 310). In short, this variety of geek is known as the fanboy or fangirl, but non-Japanese fanboys and fangirls have adopted the term to identify themselves proudly as obsessive fans of anime. The use of the word otaku by Western anime fans signifies a self-recognition of just those qualities of obsessive expertise and hoarding, qualities that have made anime fans into a market segment popular with home video retailers (Masters 44). The relationship between anime producers, distributors, retailers, and fans can be quite contentious, however, as fans have very specific ideas about the features they want on the products they purchase, features that may not matter as much to the large numbers of casual fans the corporation may wish to reach. In their discussions of anime fandom, both Annalee Newitz and Susan J. Napier examine the engagement of Western fans with Japanese animation in terms of cultural differences and globalization and the extent to which their engagement with anime can be seen as a form of resistance to Western popular culture. But at the time they were constructing their discussions of anime fandom, anime had not yet exploded on home video, and so their understanding of the experience of watching anime focuses on the club setting. Their discussions of the difference between anime and Western mass media concentrated on the extent to which fans engaged with the cultural origins of anime texts and less so with the barriers that the media format brings to viewers outside its original language community, given decisions made by commercial producers. In this article I discuss anime as both a work and a text, using Roland Barthes's distinction: "The work is a fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books (in a library for example). . . . [T]he Text is experienced only in an act of production" (157–58). While anime fans engage with the texts of anime through their interest in particular movies and series, in identifying themselves as anime fans they connect to the work as it appears in its tangible, mediated format—"the work can be seen (in bookshops, in catalogues, in exam syllabuses)" (Barthes 157). This distinction is important when discussing the relationship between anime fandom and the DVD format, for the anime DVD is the work, and the program contained on [End Page 45] the DVD is the text. And yet the form of the work affects the experience of the text. Just as the text's "constitutive movement...

Price Discrimination and Copyright Law: Evidence from the Introduction of DVDs

This paper examines the welfare eects of market segmentation using the example of the video rental and sales markets (both VHS and DVD formats). I consider a market with two types of buyers: institutional and individual buyers. Institutional buyers rent the good to low-value individuals, while relatively high-value individuals purchase the good directly rather than renting it. Copyright law in the U.S. eectively prevents market segmentation according to use of the product. As a result, rental and sales markets for VHS cassettes are traditionally segmented by pricing VHS cassettes intertemporally: rst setting a very high price for the institutional buyers, and lowering the price six months later for sales to end-users. For selected products, especially children’s movies, this two-tiered pricing strategy is discarded in favor of an immediate low price to stimulate early sales to end-users. When pricing the DVD format over the past three years, rms have chosen to discard the two-tier pricing model completely. Using data on the rental and sales activities of video rental stores for both VHS and DVD formats, I estimate a model of intertemporal price discrimination which rationalizes the use of such dierent pricing policies for the same movie on two dierent formats. I use the estimated parameter values to predict whether or not the elimination of intertemporal price discrimination will remain the optimal strategy as DVD hardware penetration evolves, and to estimate the eects of the restrictive copyright law for rms and consumers.

Acoustics in a high school library

A new and up-to-date library is under development within a Mexican high school educational institution. Usually, libraries are supposed to be quiet places where people can read without disturbance, but nowadays with the new data storage technologies and their capabilities for storing much more than only text, where people can interact with the material under study, for instance, read the description of the words Water Fall, see the water sparkling, and hear the sound of the fall, plus the sound of the computers and proyection equipment, libraries tend to be more and more noisy. The approach taken for this project includes separate areas and acoustic absorption material distribution for different activities within the library, such as reading, computer consultation of texts, and computing consultation of multimedia stored books either in DVD format or by the network.

Three Seasons and the Aroma of Self-Realization

Following its status as a triple award winner at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, Three Seasons immediately gained a theatrical release before further distribution on video and DVD formats. Directed by Vietnam exile Tony Bui from a screenplay written by himself and brother Timothy Linh Bui, the film gained the honor of being the first American-produced film shot in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the official end of the Vietnam War and the relaxation of the economic embargo waged by the losing side for about 20 years later. The film is visually beautiful and lyrical in many ways, so much so that it has often received criticism for its superficial depiction of a post-war society lacking any mention of the Vietnam War itself. Although Tony Bui’s intentions were to move away from the usual cinematic representations of Vietnam, the very nature of his film is far from being a clichéd, escapist, Hallmark or Masterpiece Theatre, art house production. Many literary and cinematic depictions of Vietnam have recognized the centrality of the country’s essence involving a particular experential dimension in which aroma plays a key part. Such a representation is neither exotic nor non-materialistic but instead involves a particular narrative trope in which the sensory experience of a national culture represents a crucial aspect of this film.

Multimedia teaching CD-rom about energy sources

This paper introduces a new interactive teaching material developed in the Technical University of Catalonia for a multidisciplinary team of professors from different departments (electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering departments). This teaching tool has been created using the current technologies and will be offered in CD or DVD format This CD includes most of the actual used energies and analyses the state of the art of current and future energies sources (Fusion, Fuel cells, ....). In summary, this is a didactic and scientific reference material, where in a single CD-ROM offers a complete vision of present and future power sources.

Disc wars [DVD

Both sides in the recordable DVD format market aim to win. In recordable DVD, there's DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+R and DVD+RW formats in PCs, home cinema and media. The battle is becoming more heated. The author discusses the market issues.

Jamming the Reception: Ken Burns, Jazz, and the Problem of "America's Music"

INTRODUCTION In 2001 the nation paid more attention to jazz than it had for a long time. With its first aired episode on 8 January, Jazz, a film by Ken Burns, (1) continued the filmmaker's string epic documentaries on American life. The project stands as Burns's most ambitious. (2) The film's ten episodes (nineteen hours film) were broadcast on the PBS network over four weeks, with an estimated thirteen million viewers on the first day alone. (3) Since then, the film has been distributed in both VHS and DVD formats, along with a companion book coauthored with Geoffrey C. Ward (4) (henceforth, the Ward book), and several compact disc sets, including a five-disc set culled from the series, a best of compact disc, and twenty-two disc-length anthologies featured performers. A coordinated onslaught Jazz images, sounds, and products, as well as the enormous marketing effort accompanying them, did more than just purvey a set products that year: it fostered Jazz (and jazz) as a topic national discussion--in print, on television, at the dinner table, and on the Internet. In this study I examine Burns's penetration into the national consciousness, and how his version jazz history is received and critically evaluated. Reception studies generally do not include the Internet as a site criticism. Along with more traditional reception media, I pointedly include the World Wide Web's role in several types reception that I call quasi-official, submerged official, and indie. The Internet has changed an important aspect the critical apparatus. The exchange information and opinion is dramatically speeded through this easily shared medium. The resulting ease communication tends to momentarily blur critical hierarchies, increasing the exchange between expert and aficionado. Reception studies can benefit from this opportunity for an enriched perspective. The Jazz project is a case in point: this widely dispersed critical pool raises a cluster objections to Burns's version jazz history. JAZZ AND ITS IMPORTANCE Judging by the marketing effort that supported it, it is not surprising that Jazz was no ordinary miniseries, but rather a cultural event. A few provocative news items illustrate the effort and its rewards. First, the film trade publication Hollywood Reporter announced in November 2000 that Amazon.com had created a partnership with Burns to launch an online store with a catalog thirty-five thousand items related to Jazz. (5) Second, a USA Today article in January 2001 announced that halfway through the showing the ten-episode series, sales related merchandise had already topped fifteen million dollars. (6) (Contextualizing this point, Carolyn Kleiner estimates total domestic jazz album sales in 1999 were roughly twenty million dollars. (7)) Third, nine months after the series aired, two the anthology albums from the Burns collection were still on Barnes & Noble's Top Fifty Jazz List. (8) Fourth, elsewhere on the same Web site, interest showed up in the print version Jazz, too. On that same date the Ward hardcover book was still the second-best-selling jazz book title for Barnes & Noble--the soft cover was fourth. While sales figures for the Burns-marketed albums are not public, the fact that nine months after the film's initial broadcast two them remained on the Top Fifty list highlights the staying power the Jazz package in the jazz market. The popularity the Burns project may have been predictable, given the large-scale marketing effort behind it as well as a core related factors: (1) Burns's established reputation for well-produced, engaging historical documentaries; (2) the nationalistic portrayal jazz as uniquely American, as America's Classical Music; and (3) Burns's portrayal jazz as sophisticated African American music, a music conspicuously successful as art despite its race-torn surroundings. …

Do Your Links Stink? Techniques for Good Web Information Scent

Comment faire en sorte que son site web sente, autrement dit repande un fumet informationnel fonde sur le reseau semantique et les associations mentales des utilisateurs, de facon a faciliter leur navigation ? Il s'agit d'inciter l'utilisateur a cliquer sur les bons liens, en choisissant pour ces liens des etiquettes et une signalisation claires et parlantes. L'A. livre quelques recommandations pour le developpement, l'evaluation et le soutien d'une bonne odeur informationnelle sur son site Web.

Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: the Fight Club DVD as digital closet

–The DVD format has emerged as the dominant digital means of repackaging films for home consumption. In this essay, we theorize this new viewing experience and identify some of the challenges it poses for the media critic. We argue that the additional material DVDs typically offer, coupled with the format's interactivity, constitute a rhetorically powerful means of directing the consumer's viewing experience and protecting the commercial viability of the product. To illustrate, we offer a critical analysis of the DVD release of the controversial film Fight Club. Our analysis suggests that Fight Club's DVD “extra text” dissuades the viewer from acknowledging the film's homoerotic elements as representing homosexual experience.