So this is the official word from Joss Whedon, the creator of short-lived, much-beloved scifi series "Firefly": Hi boys and odd, smooth, compellingly bumpy non-boys. I’m in Liverpool, on Alexis’ lap… sorry, laptop, checking in and seeing all sorts of nonsense about a sequel to something… There’s no sequel, no secret project regarding Serenity or…
Author:
Vox: Sweet jesus, I’m blogging about blogging
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but blog about Typepad’s new "Vox" blogging platform that they are previewing now. I got an invite — like the 11 million other typepad junkies — to try out the vox interface and I’ve been playing around with it this evening. It’s got some fun tools, I have to…
Rik’s Event Picks on New World Notes
The first installment of what will hopefully be a long and mutually beneficial collaboration is on Hamlet Au’s pre-eminent blog New World Notes: "Rik’s Event Picks." About once a week on New World Notes I will be featuring particularly interesting events coming up within Second Life, from art openings, to live music jams, academic lectures…
Alas, poor Ike and Tina, we hardly knew ye
I’m very sad to report that both Ike and Tina, the six-week-old kittens I was fostering for City Critters, have passed away. Sadly, they both succumbed to Feline Distemper , presumably because they were not vaccinated earlier. Tina was lethargic from the get-go, but we were very surprised that Ike also died since he was…
Parioli: immersive Italian-themed sim
Man, those folks over at Parioli sim have created some incredible 360 degree images of places in Italy that really make me wish I was there. I really wanted to walk over to the Coloseum and hang out in the bleachers. This panoramic photo of a plaza in Italy was so real it seems like…
Ban Ki Moon is next UN Secretary-General: share your views on the race
I’ve mentioned previously that my pal Tony Fleming runs a very well-done blog covering the race of the UN Secretary-General position in 2007. Tony tells me that he has been invited by the Washington Post to provide background material on the UN Secretary General’s race. Using this material, the Post asked leading editors, writers and…
Snow Crash HUD e-book available for purchase
Last month I mentioned that Penguin Publishers UK was releasing an in-world version of the classic cyber-punk novel Snow Crash (1994) by Neal Stephenson. I finally got a hold of the sampler HUD (heads up display) from the Rivers Run Red HQ in Avalon (225, 55, 37). The HUD is definitely a lot easier to…
John Bransford: let’s build an “innovation island” to develop learning environments
Here’s a few pictures from the excellent presentation on "Virtual Environments as ways to Reorganize Thinking about Research and Education" that Dr John Bransford, education psychology specialist affiliated with the National Science Foundation, gave today in Second Life. The complete transcript of the event can be found here. You can view the video shown during…
Avatars and humans stand up against poverty
In my previous job, I was responsible for promoting civil society activity on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a set of development targets agreed to by the governments of the world in 2000 at the UN General Assembly. It’s an important list of commitments to combat some of worst social ills — including poverty,…
Salon on the Net Neutrality and the “telecom slayers”
There’s a couple of nice quotes from my colleague Ben Scott, policy director at the media reform group Free Press, in a Salon.com story on Net Neutrality entitled "The Telecom Slayers": In his Capitol Hill office, Scott keeps a small framed photo from the movie "Cool Hand Luke." It is the famous scene where…