The World Food Programme has really capitalized on its first video game Food Force by creating versions of the game in several languages, most recently Polish, and now launching a blog featuring one of the in-game characters “Joe”. The blog looks like it is going to be a curious mixture of real world examinations of…
Strong words from UN official on lack of US leadership
Mark Malloch Brown, United Nations Deputy Secretary General, gave a strong statement recently decrying the United States lack of support for the United Nations. In a speech to a conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation on June 6, Brown made a very "un-UN" speech, in his words. Brown noted…
Posters in Second Life on organizing effective multi-verse events
As I have blogged about previously, I have started a wiki page on the Second Life Education wiki on the subject of “Best Practices for RL/SL Events” . More ideas have been trickling in, and I’ve been making the page a bit easier to read. Now SL resident Milosun Czervik (that’s him besides me in…
Scam Spam from the “National Conference Against Racism Discrimination and Safety”
Oh fun, got a scam email today from the "National Conference Against Racism Discrimination and Safety." First off, how can you be against safety? LOL. It’s got the typical weirdness: bad English, a phone number that doesn’t correspond to the address, and an offer too-good-to-be-true-because-it-isn’t. In this case, an all-expense-paid trip to Dubai. The only…
Real places in Second Life: the Seattle Space Needle
I visited today a tremendous recreation of the Seattle Space Needle in Second Life created by Mattias Faulkner. It’s clearly the result of a lot of work and planning on his part to get the design and scale just right. It’s a lovely structure in real life, and no less so in simulation. The difference…
Art re-mixed in Second Life
Fresh from my first prim building class in Second Life, I found out about a new Free Culture / Creative Commons art re-mix event in SL. They are asking people to take art displayed at a couple of CC exhibitions at NYU and Harvard, manipulate and display the art in-world and take a picture of…
Second Life swallows the web
Now that the new version of Second Life supports an in-world mozilla web browser, we soon will be able to web surf without leaving the confines of virtuality. Like all things, there are new opportunities and potential problems associated with an in-world browser, i.e.: Con: Potentially new viruses and trojan horses being propogated in-world Con:…
Baby falcons falling from the sky!
Hanging out at Cindy’s place in mid-town, I peeked out the window and saw what looked like a little hawk standing motionless on the sidewalk. We headed out to check on the little guy, just as a small crowd was gathering around him. We debated about what we should do. Someone tried calling 311. Cindy…
“An Inconvenient Truth”: the most important slide show you will see all year
Cindy and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” last night. As someone who should be fairly well informed on these issues, with frequent contact with environmental activists and experts, I was surprised and appalled by the urgency of the ecological crisis facing our planet. It is indeed terribly “inconvenient” to face the reality that within our…
Negroponte’s $130 laptop versus Intel’s $400 laptop
According to ZDNET, John Negroponte announced a couple of days ago that the first iteration of the “$100 laptop” from the One Laptop Per Child initiative will be closer to $130 to $140 dollars. Even at $130, this computer still comes in at a pricepoint that governments like China, Brazil and South Africa could consider…