I somewhat randomly came across the "World of Kaneva," a new multi-user online virtual environment still in development (i.e. vaporware.) Kaneva itself is a channel-based hosting service for videos, blogs, photos and other multi-media content, still in the beta-phase. They appear to be trying to dominate various kinds of e-business at the time, going up…
Public Access pitted against You Tube in Florida
Steven Clift linked me to an article in the Gainesville Sun out of Florida on a community’s failed attempts to get a public access channel on their local TV. The paper reported that Alachua County commissioners in June joined the Gainesville City Commission in declining to create a public station. What is interesting / dangerous…
Virtual Relay for Life nets $38,000 for American Cancer Society!
Tao Takashi reports on his blog that this year’s Second Life "Relay for Life" benefit for the American Cancer Society raised more than $38,000 this weekend! That’s a tremendous increase from the $6,000 raised last year! I was super busy this weekend, but stopped in briefly to check out all the fun and drop some…
Mokaflor coffee: it’s not just a beverage, it’s a racist caricature
Cindy was horrified and amused to find in a grocery store in Florence this package of Mokaflor espresso coffee, which depicts a frightening depiction of an African person with an insane smile carrying a cup of joe on a tray. The bow tie seems to imply that the person is supposed to be a waiter. …
Plone Magic!
I’m at “Plone Magic Camp” this weekend to learn about the Plone content management system, programming and designing in Plone. (For web geeks: Plone is an open source CMS built on top of the Zope framework which is written in the Python programming language.) Going to “Magic Camp” I was hoping to get a wand…
The future of tour guide technology, Part II
In my previous post, I blogged about how in the near future we might see the tour guide industry expand from a location-based vocation to one that might be expanded to include experts from around the world using ICTs. Beyond the use of distributed experts to serve as e-guides, there are many possible technologies that…
Cheryl is not dead yet
Lots of people would kill to be featured in The New Yorker. Cheryl Horsfall simply had to die. My lovely and witty friend Cheryl was recently profiled in the "Talk of the Town" section of this week’s New Yorker for not being dead. Apparently, in some Brazil-esque bureaucratic snafu the New York state government decided…
Small grants for media policy research available
My group the Social Science Research Council just announced a call for applications for a number of small grants we are offering to fund research on media policy and advocacy. The goal of the grants is to encourage collaborations between media activists and media researchers on research relevant to public policy. The first round will…
Media Justice position available at MEP
My colleague Saskia Fischer at the Media Empowerment Project recently announced that she is leaving as program manager of the MEP to move back to Europe. The MEP is currently search for a replacement. Here’s the description: Project Manager, The Media Empowerment Project of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Inc…
Pictures of bella Italia
Here’s some of my pictures of Italy, from Florence to Positano to Pompeii to Rome. I’ll spare you most of the boring tourist shots that everyone has and focus on what I think are the more interesting ones. Of course, I had to take the one of Cindy and I at the Trevi fountain, which…