Last night at PMT Studios, my breaking performance group and I were the opening act for the Fall Dance Showcase. It was a packed audience — including a good 15 or so of my friends, family and co-workers, which was super awesome. It's both great and nerve-wracking going first in the lineup because you don't…
Month: November 2008
Playing with YouTube Annotations
I like the new "Annotations" feature on YouTube. Opens up interesting possibilities for contexualizing video content in interesting ways, from adding speech bubbles to highlighting certain parts of the shot for the viewer. Now anyone can create a popup music video! Here's my first experiment with using annotations, using a video of me getting body…
Cypher Time: Breaking performance tonight and Sunday!
Tonight's the night! wup wup! Tickets are certain to sell out for tonight's Fall Dance Showcase at 8pm at PMT Studios in the West Village. The Sunday show at 3pm is probably still going to have tickets at the door. So excited!
UN Foundation: Win a free “bednet observation trip” to Africa
The UN Foundation just sent me this interesting notice about a contest they are running with MTV called “Your Turn to Get Exiled.” Apparently this is associated with some MTV reality show called "Exiled." All that matters is that if you win you get to go on a "net observation trip" to somewhere in Africa…
New report describes how youth hang out, mess around and “geek out” in digital spaces
I've started reading the white paper "Living and Learning with New Media," a summary of the immense, three-year, multi-study investigation of how American youth are using digital media for learning. Funded by the Digital Media & Learning initiative of the MacArthur Foundation, it incorporates the work of 23 researchers under the overall guidance of Mimi…
Alas, poor Lively, we hardly knew ye
Despite not being in the best of moods myself, I will try and be as generous as I can about yesterday''s announcement that Google Lively is dead. They posted on their blog today that their first experiment in creating a virtual world will close its doors on December 31, 2008. There been lots of bitching…
Final stretch before PMT breaking performance this weekend!
So my little group of b-boys and b-girls are getting into the final preparations before another breaking performance at PMT Studios this Friday and Sunday. As usual we are doing everything in the last second, having barely worked out the choreography and blocking and the music still not finished mixing. At the very least I…
Global Kids seeking Second Life space for teen-created serious game
My colleague Rafi tells me that we are looking for a free plot of land so that we can bring over to the main grid of Second Life a social issue game called "Consent" that Global Kids' teens created last year: Last year, teens in Global Kids' "Playing 4 Keeps" afterschool program developed a Second…
HIV/AIDS education island opens in Second Life on World AIDS Day (December 1)
I got word from Ricken Flow about Karuna, a new space in Second Life focused on HIV/AIDS education. Karuna is holding a day of opening festivities on December 1st – World AIDS Day. The program includes keynote speakers Pathfinder Linden and Michelle Samplin-Salgado of AIDS.gov, a story writing workshop with Jenaia Morane, and musical performances…
RezEd’s first virtual world education conference a success!
I helped organize what I think was a very successful Second Life conference on education in virtual worlds yesterday. This was the first virtual conference sponsored by RezEd.org, the social network for virtual world educators. The RezEd conference featured a panel discussion with educators working in Second Life, Google Lively and Dizzywood; a "birds of…