I dropped in on the open house taking place on USC’s new Annenberg Island they have built in Second Life as a virtual counterpart to their real world Annenberg Center for Communication. (Thanks for the heads up, Hamlet.) The Annenberg folks did a nice job creating the virtual version of their center. However I assume…
Category: Information Society
Beyond Broadcast conference in Harvard next week
Fresh from my Yale "Access to Knowledge" conference a couple of weeks ago, I will be in Harvard next week for the "Beyond Broadcast" conference sponsored by my new favorite institution, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The goal of the conference is: to create an opportunity for interaction between active participants in traditional…
“Mixed Reality” events give me a headache
I just popped into a "mixed reality event" called "Virtual Worlds—The Rules of Engagement" taking place both on Innovation Island in Second Life as well as at the Computer History Museum in San Jose, CA. It was a pretty weird experience. I (as in my avatar pictured right) was sitting in a large auditorium with…
Blogging Beyond Borders: Global Voices Online
For those who are tired of the Ameri-centric nature of lots of the blogosphere (blah, blah, blah, George Bush is an idiot, blah blah blah, Tom Cruise is a freak, blah blah, "wii" is a stupid name…), Global Voices Online should be at the top of your list of aggregators. A project of the Berkman…
Trashtalk: virtual talk show skewers the world of computer gaming
My buddy Frank (aka Ill Bixby) and some of his creative cronies at Ill Clan productions have put together a hilarious virtual talk show using a 3D-rendering game engine call TrashTalk with ILL Will. The show features Ill Will and his sidekick / missile Mal, a comedy duo that poke fun at the world of…
On Anonymity and Community on Web Forums
Among my other pursuits, I am a moderator and administrator of a large community-based website devoted to swing dancing and swing music called Yehoodi.com. By far our most popular feature is our discussion boards, which brings together more than 9,000 registered users from around the world. Early on in the development of the site around…
My entry in Internet Marketing Contest: “Defend the Internet”
Ok, so here’s my brilliant idea for how to market "saving the internet" for Jeff Pulver’s viral marketing contest: Internet Defender. It’s a flash-based video game that highlights the increasing restrictions and bottlenecks being put up by ISPs. A side-scrolling shooter, similar to the classic game Defender, the set-up would be a web surfer trying…
“Save the Internet” marketing contest – $1,000 prize!
Jeff Pulver has decided to put his money with his mouth is, stop just blogging about preserving the principles of Net Neutrality and the end-to-end principles and do something. Jeff is sponsoring a viral marketing contest to save the internet. Here’s his pitch: We need to harness your individual genius and our collective genius (for…
Free Press launches “Save the Internet” campaign
The advocacy group Free Press has just launched a "Save the Internet" campaign website, as a major public push in support of the "Network Neutrality" principle. The campaign coalition believes: the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and democratic discourse. We are working together to urge Congress to take steps now to preserve…
Reframing IPR -> Access to Knowledge
I’m off in a couple of hours to the “Access to Knowledge” conference at Yale University this weekend, April 21-23. The goal of the conference is to come up with a new analytic framework for analysing the possibly distortive effects of public policies relying exclusively on intellectual property rights. Beyond this aim, the A2K initiative…