I had the honor of being among a small of incredibly smart, dedicated researchers and practitioners who are all supported by the Digital Media and Learning Initiative of the MacArthur Foundation. About 70 of us gathered from Thursday to Friday at USC to talk about issues of common concern, share progress on our respective projects,…
Category: Information Society
Second Life Screenshots, the DMCA and Ad Extortion — I want a takedown notice!
My friend RubyMae, who is active in the Flickr community, pointed me to a discussion thread by another Second Life resident Ordinal Malaprop (who makes the most ingenious steampunk inventions). Apparently Ordinal has been encouraging SL residents to post to a Flickr group screenshots of particular ads being displayed on plots of land in Second…
CPSR Conference on Technology in Wartime at Stanford January 26
My friend Bill McIver send around info about this fascinating conference on "Technology in Wartime" put on by the find folks at Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. It takes place at Stanford Law School on January 26. Here’s the description: How will autonomous robots and cyberwarfare change combat? Does internet surveillance undermine the rules of…
YouTube Battle
True story: At our family Christmas party, my sister Cori is talking to my cousin Rafael, who’s a university student in California. She asks Rafael what he is up to. He mentions that he is part of a hip hop dance group. "Oh, my brother is in a breakdance group, too. You guys should battle!"…
XO Laptop versus Apple eMate
My XO laptop arrived in the mail today! From my first couple of hours experimenting, I can tell that it’s an impressive little machine. I look forward to playing with it for the next weeks, which I will be sure and blog about. One of the first things I did was put the XO side-by-side…
Review: Castronova’s Exodus to the Virtual World
I just finished my advance copy of Edward Castronova’s Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality (2007, Palgrave McMillan.) As anyone familiar with Costronova should expect, the book is provocative and entertaining. Costronova’s central premise is simple: as more and more people spend a larger percentage of their waking hours in…
Holiday cards and other emphemera in the digital age
By Dazed81, re-posted under a CC-license Sending out holiday cards is a favorite Christmas tradition of mine. For almost 20 years, I have gone to some effort to design, print and hand-write notes on the 50-plus holiday cards I typically send out. That said, holiday cards are starting to seem like an antiquated custom from…
Second Life Shaggy: combining viral marketing, social networking and virtual worlds
I just got word of an interesting marketing campaign for the pop star Shaggy involving Second Life, Facebook and viral videos. To highlight the release of Shaggy’s new single, Bonafide Girl, fans are being asked to join a Facebook group with the catchy title "If I Met Shaggy In Second Life, This Is What I’d…
I ordered two XO Laptops! Woo hoo!
I just got confirmation of some funds headed my way, so I went ahead and ordered a couple of those painfully cute XO Laptops from the folks at One Laptop Per Child. As I reported early, OLPC is offering a very special "twofer" where if you buy two XO laptops for $400, one of them…
Awesome Jonathon Coulton song featured on “Portal” Half-life game
Frankyboy sent me the link to a YouTube video of the song "Still Alive," which plays at the end of the computer game "Portal." The song is absolutely hilarious, twisted and infectious — which came as no surprise when I found out that it was written by uber-geek troubadour Jonathon Coulton. The singer is Ellen…