I was contacted recently by a Joshua Levy (that’s his avatar on the right), a new resident who is interested in creating a documentary about progressive activism in SL. Joshua has created a blog to track his project and his journeys in-world. He asked me to respond to some of his concerns that he raised…
Registration open for YearlyKos in Second Life
It looks like plans are moving fast in preparation for the first multi-verse YearlyKos Convention taking place both in Chicago and in Second Life in August. YearlyKos is an annual convention gathering a thousand or so people from "the Netroots community," a non-partisan grassroots political action community that uses the Internet and blogs for political…
C-SPAN to make videos available online under Creative Commons-type license
This is quite exciting: C-SPAN has announced that they plan to making available on the web their video of congressional, White House and Federal events under a Creative Commons-type licensing structure. They are implementing a "liberalized copyright policy" which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution. I.e….
RIAA to levy new fees on net radio stations
The website that I help run, Yehoodi.com, has provided a free streaming radio show featuring the best swing jazz since 2001. So I was particularly alarmed to learn that the RIAA on Friday successfully got the US Copyright Office to accept a new set of exorbitant song royalty fees for netradio stations like ours (full…
Visiting Linden Lab and Techsoup
At Hamlet’s instigation, today I got a chance to visit the San Francisco offices of Linden Lab and Techsoup. Along the way I smet (There, you happy, Hiro?) a couple of prominent residents who I had only known in-world prior to today: Jeska Linden and Glitteractica Cookie. Jeska was kind enough to give me a…
Your World, Your Music: a study of music diversity within Second Life
Last month I announced that I was doing a quantitative study of Second Life music format diversity. I have completed an exploratory study of 838 Second Life music events that occurred over July 2006. Please find here my research, entitled "Your World, Your Music: An Exploratory Study of Music Diversity within the Virtual World of…
The New New York: makes me almost miss the graffiti in the subway stations
I just popped over to the New New York sim (teleport SLURL). It’s not quite finished yet, but I love the design motif so far. Sort of a mix of cartoony garishness and gritty realism. I swear I saw a virtual rat scamper down the street.
The portable Quaker meeting
We had a beautiful Quaker meeting for worship in Second Life this morning with about 16 or attenders filling the benches . I had recently discovered that if you put your computer to sleep without logging out of SL, the program sort of freezes the last scene in place. When you re-open your computer, it appears…
Yehoodi Video Podcast #411 online
My buddy Spuds and I recorded the second video podcast of our long running swing dance program the "Yehoodi Talk Show" a few days ago. We talk about Christina’s latest swingin video, how to take care of your Aris Allen shoes, Columbian "boogaloo" salsa, and lots of other silliness. Check it out via direct download…
Lunch with Hamlet
I had the pleasure of meeting Hamlet Au of New World Notes today over burritos at Papalote’s on Valencia Street in San Francisco. It was cool chatting with him about Hamlet’s forthcoming book with Harper Collins that I can’t wait to read. We also discussed political action in SL, whether in-world voice chat is a…