In about a couple of hours, my office will be turning off all of the lights in response to the "Five Minutes for the Planet" effort launched by the Alliance for the Planet. Here’s the announcement, briefly translated: The Alliance for the Planet [a group of environmental associations] is calling on all citizens to create…
Category: Information Society
MTVu giving out $5,000 for best game idea to fight HIV/AIDS
MTVu (MTV has a university?) announces that they are holding a contest to come up with an online video game to teach young people about HIV/AIDS. Called the "Change the Course of HIV Challenge," the competition is for the best idea for an online viral video game. So you don’t have to be a game…
Coke re-creates GTA as “Help-Em-Up” Game (video)
I saw this amazing Grand Theft Auto-like ad for Coke at a movie theater last night. I love how it re-imagines the ultra-violent video game as a new kind of FPS — a First Person Samaritan. So awesome. Sadly, I think this…
Eventful.com: your personal event coordinator
I’ve been experimenting with the cool calendaring website Eventful.com. It’s an impressive online community-based calendar service with lots of Web2.0 goodness built into it. What’s innovative about Eventful is that any user can add events, tag them, and share them with others. Even better, you can export the events to all sorts of other scheduling…
Davos in Second Life: public engagement, Flavor of the Week or damage control?
Coming out of the first of many in-world interviews with some of the major personages attending this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I am left with the question, What’s the point? The WEF is an annual gathering of 2,000 of the most influential business and political leaders in the world to discuss important…
Pioneering legal scholar Jerome Barron on the First Amendment and the Internet
“Ideas matter and they have enduring power.” – Jerome Barron Today, Jerome A. Barron, legal scholar at the George Washington University School of Law, delivered a lecture to mark the 40th anniversary of a groundbreaking Harvard Law Review article he wrote in 1967 entitled “Access to the Press – A New First Amendment Right.” In…
ARIN: you read the RFC, now read the comic book
In Memphis I chatted with Richard Jimmerson of the American Registry for Internet Numbers . ARIN is a Virginia-based non-profit that "allocates Internet Protocol resources; develops consensus-based policies; and facilitates the advancement of the Internet through information and educational outreach" for the US, Canada and parts of the Caribbean. I already knew a bit about…
State Department sponsors Net Freedom conference on January 30
According to CNET, the US State Department is planning to hold a "Net Freedom" event on January 30 in DC. The goal of the event is to "preserve the Internet as being a conduit for the free flow of information," according to US Ambassador David Gross . The State Department already has a "Global Internet…
What the Dorgan-Snowe Net Neutrality bill means for gamers and virtual worlders
Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have recently introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act in an effort to legislate the principle of Network Neutrality. The bill would prevent any broadband internet service provider from "privileging bits" and blocking traffic on the basis of Internet content, application, or service, codifying Net Neutrality as part…
Call for papers for Conf on “Young People, New Technologies and Political Engagement” in July, Univ. of Surrey
Just got this Call for Papers for an academic seminar on "Young People, New Technologies and Political Engagement" at the University of Surrey from July 24-25. Here’s the seminar description: Against the backdrop of increasing concern about the disengagement of youth from politics and the public sphere, the relationship between new technologies and young people’s…