Just when I was sure that Joss Whedon could not get cooler, my pal Chivalrous posted a link to a YouTube video of the Buffy and Firefly creator giving a speech for the feminist group Equality Now. As always, Joss alternates between being profound and funny, often within the same sentence. Makes me think there…
Google Flight Sim: Hey, I can see your house from up here!
This is just silly and cool. Clever flash programmer Mark Caswell-Daniels has taken the Google Maps API and added a very simple flight simulator to it he calls Goggles. You can scroll through the listing of major cities to flyover, which is fun if you happen to live there. Or you can do a slight…
The Virtual Lounge : Where all the cool kids log-in
Yesterday I was reading a Clickable Culture blog entry about a pop music-oriented virtual environment called "The Lounge," developed by "adverworld" creators Doppelganger. I decided to go check it out.
Preservation Hall Band brings Bourbon Street to Manhattan
New York is always a great place to hear live jazz, from Julliard student trios in divey bars to full jazz orchestras at Jazz at Lincoln Center. But New Orleans kicks our ass in the jazz department (and blues, and zydeco, etc.). I had the enormous pleasure of seeing the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band…
Virtual ball-and-chain to free real slaves
After posting my blog entry about the Global Kids event on child sex slavery, I was corresponding with Global Kids staffer Barry Joseph ("GlobalKids Bixby" in-world). Barry and I agreed that it would be great if adult SL residents could benefit from the work that was done on the teen grid event. A few emails…
The Metaverse as Civic Space
Reflecting on last week’s Metaverse event at Eyebeam, it seems to me that one aspect that was barely touched upon was the idea of the metaverse as a new form of civic space. The virtual agora, if you will. Prokofy Neva got closest, talking about the need for gathering places and a common rule of…
Send in those machinima flicks to the 2006 Festival in Queens!
My buddy Paul Marino, president of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, sends out the news that the 2006 Machinima Festival has opened up for submissions. The Machinima Festival is the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences’ annual event showcasing Machinima works, producers and technologies. It takes place this year from November 4-6 in…
Notes from Metaverse Meet-up
As I noted earlier today, a crowd of 100-some people gathered for a “metaverse meet-up” at the Eyebeam Open Lab in Chelsea last night. Billed as “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Metaverse but Were Too Afraid To Ask” this event was an off-shoot of the Metaverse Roadmap Project, a “public ten-year forecast…
Pics from Metaverse Meet-up in New York
About 100 people crowded into the Chelsea office of Eyebeam Open Lab yesterday evening to hear a fascinating assortment of virtual world denizens, entrepreneurs, journalists and futurists talk about the present and potential futures of the “metaverse.” Billed as “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Metaverse but Were Too Afraid To Ask” this…
Second Life closes discussion forums
Robin Linden, VP at Linden Labs, dropped a bombshell yesterday when she announced that most of the discussion forums on the Second Life website will be closed down in the near future. As she explains: I know many of you feel passionately about the community you’ve built up on the discussion boards, and I can’t…