I’ve been a loyal customer of Earthlink ever since they acquired the excellent Mindspring ISP back in the 2000. For the most part, I’ve been happy with their service. But for the past couple of years they have been harassing me about paying for an additional "premium email account" and dial-up fee, even though I…
Category: Information Society
“IRL” documentary explores geeky, fetid underbelly of online communities
As the moderator for the past eight years of the swing dance online community at Yehoodi.com, I’m always interested in studies and explorations of other online community sites. Stephanie Tuszynski wrote and directed a new documentary that examines one particular online community surrounding the uber-geeky show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": "IRL (In Real Life)" is…
16 BILLION pixel image of “The Last Supper” viewable online
Ok, this is incredibly cool. The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities has partnered with the firm HAL9000 (wasn’t that the computer in "2001"?) to provide on the interwebs a ridiculously high resolution image of Da Vinci’s "Last Supper." For incredibly fragile and faded works of art like this, providing high-resolution images online is…
Merge your Facebook & Second Life social networks with “Second Life Link”
So you have a problem: You’ve got your real life friends on Facebook and virtual friends on Second Life. How do you keep track of who is doing what in both worlds? Fire Centaur (pictured here), a Second Life resident who resides in real world Korea, thought about this conundrum and wondered if it would…
Flickr Folk debate Second Life versus real world photography
There’ s an interesting, somewhat heated discussion in a Flickr discussion forum about the merits of Second Life photographs being posted to the Flickr photo sharing site. For those who don’t know, Flickr has become a tremendous community gathering point for thousands of amateur, expert and professional photographers to share knowledge, feedback, suggestions and encouragement…
Yes, I’ve become one of THOSE assholes
I cashed in my $100 back from Apple for being a sucker early adopter and got an Aliph Jawbone bluetooth headset. Look for me yammering on self-importantly on a major thoroughfare near you.
Rainbow PUSH “Violent Media Fast” targets violent TV, movies, and video games
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ are co-sponsoring a "Violent Media Fast" from October 14-20, encouraging people, particularly parents and their kids, to refrain from violent TV, movies and video games for a week: Our children will see 100,000 acts of violence on television in the…
Special deals for non-profits on YouTube / Google
I was checking out the cool Nonprofit Communicators blog and found out that Google/ YouTube are offering some special deals for US not-for-profits that I thought others might be interested in. Here’s what you get: Premium branding capabilities and increased video uploading capacity Rotation of your videos in the "Promoted Videos" areas throughout the site…
Report calls for U.S. Universal Broadband Policy
The Center for Creative Voices in Media has just issued an important report on broadband access in the United States entitled "The Case For Universal Broadband in America: Now!" The report notes that three years ago, President Bush promised universal broadband internet access "in every corner of America" by 2007. Meanwhile, the United States has…
Avatars and virtual world interoperability
Reuters has a story today about IBM and Linden Lab’s announcement that they are working together on creating interoperability standards so that avatars can cross from one virtual world to another. This is welcome and important news, given the likely enormous proliferation of virtual worlds in the coming 12 months. But the Reuter’s piece doesn’t…