At the New York Comic Con a couple of weeks ago, I ran into my friend David Alan Mack, who has a job that sounds much cooler than it probably is in real life — he writes Star Trek novels. David was there to promote a couple of his new books, which by no coincidence…
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UN Millennium Campaign wants your ideas for games for the $100 laptop
I got a nice message from Amil regarding the UN Millennium Campaign’s effort to create games for the $100 laptop (aka OLPC) that would educate children about the Millennium Development Goals. The Campaign has set up a wiki where anyone can submit ideas for computer games suitable for children that could run on the tiny…
Free Press is hiring
I just got word that Free Press, an amazing nation-wide advocacy group focused on democratizing the media, are hiring for 11 exciting positions: Campaign Coordinator for SavetheInternet.com, Policy Coordinator, Campaign Coordinator (two positions), Communications Coordinator , Campaign Director (Public Media) , Development Director , Outreach Coordinator, Development Coordinator, Office Manager, and Finance Assistant . Most…
Virtual activism for real world change
I was contacted recently by a Joshua Levy (that’s his avatar on the right), a new resident who is interested in creating a documentary about progressive activism in SL. Joshua has created a blog to track his project and his journeys in-world. He asked me to respond to some of his concerns that he raised…
Registration open for YearlyKos in Second Life
It looks like plans are moving fast in preparation for the first multi-verse YearlyKos Convention taking place both in Chicago and in Second Life in August. YearlyKos is an annual convention gathering a thousand or so people from "the Netroots community," a non-partisan grassroots political action community that uses the Internet and blogs for political…
C-SPAN to make videos available online under Creative Commons-type license
This is quite exciting: C-SPAN has announced that they plan to making available on the web their video of congressional, White House and Federal events under a Creative Commons-type licensing structure. They are implementing a "liberalized copyright policy" which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution. I.e….
RIAA to levy new fees on net radio stations
The website that I help run, Yehoodi.com, has provided a free streaming radio show featuring the best swing jazz since 2001. So I was particularly alarmed to learn that the RIAA on Friday successfully got the US Copyright Office to accept a new set of exorbitant song royalty fees for netradio stations like ours (full…
Visiting Linden Lab and Techsoup
At Hamlet’s instigation, today I got a chance to visit the San Francisco offices of Linden Lab and Techsoup. Along the way I smet (There, you happy, Hiro?) a couple of prominent residents who I had only known in-world prior to today: Jeska Linden and Glitteractica Cookie. Jeska was kind enough to give me a…
Your World, Your Music: a study of music diversity within Second Life
Last month I announced that I was doing a quantitative study of Second Life music format diversity. I have completed an exploratory study of 838 Second Life music events that occurred over July 2006. Please find here my research, entitled "Your World, Your Music: An Exploratory Study of Music Diversity within the Virtual World of…
The New New York: makes me almost miss the graffiti in the subway stations
I just popped over to the New New York sim (teleport SLURL). It’s not quite finished yet, but I love the design motif so far. Sort of a mix of cartoony garishness and gritty realism. I swear I saw a virtual rat scamper down the street.