Here Now….The Slews - May 29

From the top of the Phoenix to the bottom of the Victoria crater,, covering this flat world we stake our tiny lives in each day…This …Is….the….Slews!

P: Good evening Second nation, here now the Slews!

H: Good day mates! Here is the Low down!

P: That is in English Hydra!

H: I was typing with an Australian accent

P: This week Touched by a Phoenix, in an unprecedented event for the residnts of our metaverse we got up close and personal with mission control

H: With direct feeds from NASA we were kept on the edge of our seats as the full to the bursting SIm
registered waves of joy when we in real time witnessed the mars landing of the Phoenix

P: Like a movie, only better - Every avatar was experiencing chills as collectively from every corner of the globe, we saw heard & felt it happening

H: Sl on Mars? that would be some broadband connecton -NBC was in Sl filining as well, and some stations around the country mistook the Sl residnents (the ones with antennaes & wings) for extraterrestial life.

P: We had to issue a disclamer there was not a first Panda on Mars, as kat2 kit in his spacesuit caused some confusion.
The surface of mars was recreated, we drank special martian champagne and gave many thanks to NASA for this brilliant inworld experience.

H: In less stellar news, This week the toilet on the International Space Station got clogged . One source said it’s a “fabrication flaw” in the toilet’s compressor units. NASA said the equipment isn’t providing enough suction on a regular basis. No word on whether the Sim of the same name on SL will follow suit.

P: The high-tech toilet, with no gravity, cost $19 million! And NASA bought this from Russia, because they said it was cheaper than building their own.

H” Also, this toilet is also like a local municipal treatment center, because it recycles the urine into drinking water. So it’s definitely high-tech. On the rocks? Might need some of that martian Ice.

H: Sébastien Kuntz of A VR Geek Blog got some hands-on (in?) time with the Virtusphere recently. The Virtusphere is, as he puts it, “a 2.6m polycarbonate sphere used as a virtual reality locomotion device.”

P: Once a user climbs inside, this is possibly why the military is using it for training, at $50,000, the Virtusphere is about 20 times less than the omni-directional treadmill.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OKSodRhEvA8

H: Time to invest in those old VR headsets I think. The VW is becoming a backlot for may productions as well as places for seminal work. Gossip Gril during the writers strike began
fiming in the Upper East Side Sim

P: The show’s producers feel the audience would be interested in not only Webisodes, but machinima and Second Life–at least as long as its done professionally. “It has the feel of fan-fiction, but it’s not,”

H: Video online is expected to quadruple in the next few years and reach at least 1 billion worldwide by 2013,

P: In a study sponsored by the BBC looking at its world Adventure Rock, and aimed at kids 6-12, researchers from found that virtual worlds are a “powerful and engaging” alternative to passive TV viewing Clean up your room! Mommy how mundane! Adults resembling grown up children also exhibit the same behavior

H: The Chief scientist Of Accenture,in discussing virtual worlds recently said they don’t have much value yet. “I don’t think, two years from now, there will be a Second Life…,” “These worlds are ‘closed’ and have proprietary currencies. Perhaps open standards will make [virtual worlds] more attractive to companies.” There isnt any real world wide currency I know of yet either- but people still travel.

P: 85% of business inquiries are focused on enterprise–and that ease of use, access to existing tools and Web services, security, and reliability are more important.
But I want mystery, I want beauty, & inworld voice counts for a lot.

H: Unless you are a ventriloquist, haven’t seen any of those here yet though.

P: Hydra Network, an interactive advertising network specializing in cost-per-acquisition, has announced a partnership with UpSellit, an ecommerce and emarketing virtual-chat technology to engage customers.

H: . “With the UpSellit chat technology Hydra advertisers can speak directly to consumers and make online shopping as personal as entering a store,”

P:: CondeNast owned Reddit Plans a Weekly News Show With PBS The Site will be powering the news behind YourWeek, a new show on affiliates of the public broadcasting network & CoverItLive online.helps ordinary “citizens” with camera phones or SMS who capture media-worthy events first can make it easy for these citizen journalists to upload that content on existing news websites,

H: networks get fast, free news; and citizens get broader coverage than they would on their blogs

P: Redlasso.com, a site that collects TV and radio show clips for bloggers to upload to their own sites, has been told to stop this “unauthorized syndication” by NBC, CBS and Fox, as well as others. Redlasso, would not comment on whether the startup had permission to use the disputed content

H: So you can make up your own fact but not your own fiction?

H: The new REC sim, actually a Japanese construction, was built to promote the film’s release in Japan. RC won’t actually open in RL cinemas in Japan until the 14th of June

P: Not for the faint fo heart though. this is not a sight seeing experience. On arrival you will find yourself in a dimly lit, blood-stained room. Help yourself to the movie camera, wear it (it is a HUD) and follow the arrows. This will place you inside the lobby of the apartment block - also dimly lit and dripping with
*cues scary music*

H: Sounds like the Blair withch project Yeah dont you wish the Blair Witch movie had cell phones?

P: JApanese Travel Bureau proudly announces the launch of Japan Travel Guide in “Second Life”. If it is anything like REC, I think I will stay home.
–Japanese television technology could render conventional television obsolete and transform the media landscape within years,

H: Japan is developing a new “internet television” set, which will let users browse websites and watch streaming programs at the touch of a remote control.

P: Japanese media reports say the new television, which is likely to run on the open source Linux operating system rather than Microsoft Windows to save boot-up time, could be on sale locally by next March.

H: The TV Portal Service Corp made up of Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), Sharp, Hitachi and Toshiba, may announce the standard as early as next month. With the backing of telecommunications giant NTT, it will lobby the International Telecommunications Union to adopt it for global use.

H: In other SL news University of Queensland arrives! Its first project a series of places of worship, including a mosque, synagogue, church, wicca circle and Freemasons Lodge that UQ Study of Religion students could visit. Do you have be a UQ student to worship there though?

P: Meanwhile, Queensland University of Technology launched an interactive program filmed in Second Life to teach law students the art of negotiation.

H: The story line is centered on the running of a fictional airline where students must negotiate buying an aircraft, contact staff and suppliers and expand the business to include an island tourist resort.

P: A tp is quicker and greener! speaking of green! an interactive designer in Austin, has started a Web site called Green Interfaces & uses Prious gas per terrain gallon “The competitive driving thing some people are doing means they are making a game out of it, and that’s a pretty good test for a good design — do people start to play with it?”

H: In what Telstra says is a national first, the telco yesterday beamed a mobile three dimensional image otherwise known as a hologram of its chief technology officer, Hugh Bradlow, from Melbourne to Adelaide to give a live business presentation.

P: the Musion Eyeliner System created the hologram which was delivered over Telstra’s powerful Next IP system – it could become commonplace but not for another 4 to 5 years.
A hologram delivered right to your living room

H: yes but will it deliver with anchovies?
In other eyeliner news… There.com, and teen magazine CosmoGIRL! have teamed up for a “Get Ready for Summer” event starting this week The event is a collaboration with Gillette Venus, Cover Girl, and Tampax Pearl. “I saw what you shaved last summer?”

P: Rumors are again circulating that Time Warner may buy NBC Universal, potentially financing the deal with money raised in shafting Time Warner Cable.

H: With opposition mounting, Larry Page co-founder of Google pushed to gain public access to white spaces, slivers of wireless spectrum between the broadcast channels used by TV stations.

P: These slivers were originally designed to prevent interference between over-the-air TV broadcasts. But with TV stations moving to new frequencies under a government-ordered switch sees opportunity in those white spaces Google & Microsoft Togethr again like never before screams the movie poster headlines!

H” And they have urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to turn this spectrum over to the public for free, unlicensed use—much like there are designated slices of the airwaves

P: Liverpool SoundCity! is a 4 day music event which will be steaming live into SL from the 27th to the 30th of May. Get the underground sound, the alternative and the DIY ethic – you might even find some Diy news.

H: Microsoft has released a statement informing users that Live Search Books and Live Search Academic will shut down this week. & at the smae time they will launch their Social Bookmark application.

P: As long as they can search for The Slews.

The Slews - 5/22

P: From the top of your head to the tip of my tongue, covering the virtual and known universe 24/7 in ways they never taught yo in school..This…is …the slews..

P: Good evening Second nation, and here now The Slews!

H: Bonsoir et ici maintenant les nouvelles. yeah the French are here

P: In an extensive search of the relatively recent, local universe, half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, have been located

H: Its 10Pm do you know where your missing universe is?

P: yes hydra, In those spaces between the galaxies. This important component of the universe known as the intergalactic medium - extends essentially throughout all of space, from just outside our Milky Way galaxy to the most distant regions .

H: “Strands of a web-like structure form the backbone of the universe which intuitively might seem to be empty, is in fact a reservoir for most of the normal, baryonic matter in the universe.”

P: What are Baryons you might be asking? protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles that make up ordinary matter such as hydrogen, helium and heavier elements. Baryonic matter forms stars, planets, moons and even the interstellar gas and dust from which new stars are born,

H: Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with “dark matter,” a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull.

P: this just in! space-time is not a continuum! Instead, it is made up of individual building blocks, just like a piece of fabric, and though it appears to be continuous, it ’s made up of individual threads.

H: & the missing right here in your head! an area of the brain (the temporoparietal junction) lights up when people think about other people’s thoughts - something we do as we try to figure out why othersact like they do.

P: That finding is “one of the most astonishing discoveries in the field of human cognitive neuroscience,

H: And Older is wiser! Studies find the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

P: older adults, in retaining extra data, are better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”

H: A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,”

P: there was a word for what results when the mind is able to do that — wisdom.

H: Does that mean you have more mana than me, Pooky? Sorry, conan reference! Researchers at the University of Michigan, General Motors, and DTE Energy have been awarded a $5,000,000 US grant to study plug-in hybrid vehicles and how they interact with Michigan’s electrical grid.

P: University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute will study the potential for vehicle to grid (V2G) interaction by which the widespread use of batteries might help balance the load on utilities during peak times, - Tune in to find out how this might affect grid load and capacity requirements.

H: Think Globally. Act Digitally
Internet-ad revenue notched $21.2 billion in 2007, an annual growth rate of 26%,

P: That was good enough for the medium to top radio, which was expected, but the figure also puts internet ahead of cable’s $20.9 billion take.

H: Eight former executives from AOL were charged with fraud for the inflation of ad revenue by up to $1 billiion.

P: And leave no laptop behind -For One Laptop Per Child Microsoft knows best. Because of its ubiquity, knowledge of the Windows environment is a job skill worth learning, particularly in developing nations

H: Mountain Dew is using Zumobi mobile technology to release a widget featuring brand mascot Willy the Hillbilly.
——
P: The California Milk Processor Board has put a new spin on its irreverent got milk? campaign, adding a slew of interactive elements to its Web site.

H: Visitors to.GotMilk.com are greeted by a milk contraption, which shows a flowing stream of the beverage. People navigate through a series of interactive games, which highlight various health benefits of milk.

P: One of the web’s first video darlings, Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom fame, returns to her roots with Sometimes Daily, an “interactive variety show that is embedded into her life,” WB Amanda

H: Wello Horld, Inc. is looking for developers to help us build its Web-changing real-time social media application.
Please don’t be another hello Kitty World PLEEEEEEEEEEEASe In my local target there was a rack of Beanie Babies 2.0 with giant “play online!” tags hanging on them. It may be that this is the death of “Web 2.0,” when it gets co-opted for Beanie Babies.

P: EitaroSoft, inc., announced today that it had developed a 3D virtual world to run on Android, a platform for open handset development from Google. It compares itself to 2nd life okay….if you were a small anime figure on a business trip where the text is larger than your head.

H: Age of Conan has something like1,200,000 units in the pipe for day one, which is a definate sign that the barbarians are pillaging the village to their heart’s content. This could argueably be the largest launch of a a virtual world in history if current numbers hold. Wello Horcraft!

P: Remember when? during an Ansche Chung interview with CNET. Griefers triggered a script causing a rain of flying penises to descend on the crowd? Well. inworld griefing just got hacked!, chess champion Gary Kasparov was attacked by flying penises mounted on toy helicopters this weekend at an event speaking out against the Russian government.

H: In a classy move & with the wit of a Grandmaster–Kasparov noted that “I think we have to be thankful for the opposition’s demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate.
Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt.”

P: griefing, user-generated content, and loss of brand control aren’t virtual world or even Web 2.0 phenomena. Any time marketing or business takes place in a public space, real or virtual, there’s always that risk. Writing this movie stinks on the poster in the subway is the same thing

H: If nothing else, it seems like it’ll soon be easier to host your corporate virtual events behind a firewall than to protect against, as the Moscow Times has it, “a couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists.”

P: New Media Consortium announced acontest for open-source learning solutions that use virtual worlds. As many as 20 $5,000 prizes will be given. Acceptable projects must be made available under the Creative Commons license and are limited to Second Life and Wonderland this year. Review begins on June 16

H: Dr. Larry Johnson, NMC’s CEO said , “We are seeking immersive learning experiences in particular, as well as tools that support the craft of teaching.

P: Worlds.com. was and remains true “to its social networking”roots . They have Speilberg & David Bowie in their site promo spot- Bowie says ” not knowing who the other person really is in reality but giving only a sense of them its almost like a vision” I assume he means from another planet- space oddity?

H: Worlds, one of the oldest virtual worlds platforms, is going to release a new version , including an update to the rendering engine as well as the micro-economy platform.
—
P: When it first came out that AOL was looking to buy social network Bebo for $850 million, we noted that AOL and Bebo both had ties to virtual worlds. Gaia Online has been drawing users through Bebo

H: AOL closed down its presence in Second Life in December, only to hint that “you will soon be seeing more of AOL products and content across the metaverse.” , AOL is rolling Bebo, AIM, ICQ, and its community platforms into one division, the People Networks, with 80 million users.

P: I am Weblin68483 a lone tiny tiny avatar Now users can simply use Weblin lite as a portal. Enter the url of your destination, hit enter, and then browse throughwhatever site with a generic weblin that lets you chat, walk around , and interact with anyone else viewing the page as well.

H: Of course the only sites I really go to are SL, so the use of a weblin seems a bit bizarre, mascot or chia pet?

P: Nortel demoed its own virtual world prototype last week. Web Alive, a secure enterprise environment, The new world is planned to tie invoice integration, immersive presence, and a browser-based virtual world to third-party products like Sametime.

H: Great voice & communications are very important, technology is key Yes but what are they actually saying?

P: WeeWorld for WeemEEs it was only a matter of time… Users, however, are already taking it upon themselves to create activity hosting coffee shops and pizza parlors with little to work with in terms of tools or items.

HH: Live freemium or die? It’s a blend - free, currency and advertising sponsored. & for something not so completely different there is a newer world, social.prototerra.com/

P: Twitter Visits have more than doubled in the last three months, and have gone up 60 percent in the past month. Why? In part Its role in helping an American reporter get out of an Egyptian jail
—-
H: Fans of the Virtual Magic Kingdom refuse to let it go gently into that good night after Disney announced it would shut it down. The company says it was only intended as a short-term effort.

P: the numbers for Club Penguin have begun to turn down, coincidentally after Disney acquired-

H: The vast majority of virtual world projects launched by businesses fail within 18 months, but the impact of the collaboration technology on organizations could eventually be as big as the Internet,

P: Fully 90% of business forays into virtual worlds fail because organizations focus on the technology rather than on understanding the needs of the employees using it, Calling the Cisco Kid!

H: By 2012, Gartner estimates that 70% of organizations will have established their own private virtual worlds.

P: Some companies do make capital from the intelligent use of the Second Life environment. GAX Technologies in Luxembourg are hosting their second Working-Worlds conference in SL on May 29th, where European employers can meet and hire prospective workers.

H: Last year they had over 1000 visitors and 55 people ended up with real life jobs - not bad for a virtual conference!

P: Another post-mortem - The Sims Online virtual world which opened late 2002, as an extension of the popular The Sims game ran until the end of February this year, when EA closed the servers and replaced it with EA Land.

H: Technically, the world closes on August 1st, but many gamers are already leaving. Where are they going to go Pooky?

P: I think I might have a list somewhere, and that is the Slews

The Slews 5/15- P is for Pooky H is for Hydra

From the top of Microsofts new telescope (*hint its on your computer) to the bottom of the beast that lives inside of each one of us (*hint found in WOW)
Covering this tiny life as we know it 24/7 and without let up….This…Is….The…Slews

P: Good evening Second Nation and here now the Slews!

H: Goede avond en hier nu het nieuws! The Netherlands is one of the top three countries who use SecondLife

P: Microsoft launches a FREE resource, yes can you believe it’s FREE,

H: The news isn’t that Microsoft released a free resource it is what this resource is, this has actually made grown men cry!

P: So have my Microsoft updates!

H: Sky Watch is in effect -Launching its WorldWide Telescope to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before, http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
- Hide quoted text

P: Enabling your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe. Watching the sky is now as easy as viewing a Web site and is accessible to everyone with an Internet connection.

H: Yes but do they have a full moon every night like we do & 39 sunsets in a day?

P: Do they even have extra terrestrials like we do?

H: Ground watch -Seero.com, is a geo-broadcasting platform that allows for around the world seat of your pants travel. GPS mapping and ivideo with a platform that promotes exploration and geographical awareness.

P: So you can watch yourself on video watching yourself drive to work? Cool, I don’t even know how to drive. Maybe they can teach me Part of an enterprise 2.0 launchpad ideas competition see more of them at http://launchpad.enterprise2conf.com/

H: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab will begin pilot testing startup Socialcast’s software The space agency is interested in using Socialcast for knowledge transfer as Apollo-era employees retire.

P: interested in social networking as a way of sharing knowledge as it ramps up its Constellation Program, under which new spacecraft are being developed. Constellation draws from earlier programs such as Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle.

H: Like the Shuttle vehicles themselves, however, many veteran NASA employees are approaching retirement. NASA is hopeful that, with Socialcast their “silos of expertise” will be shared and stored for future generations.

P: U.K. network operator O2 has sold out of its supply of 8-GB and 16-GB iPhones. It has no plans to restock either suggesting that the 3G iPhone will soon be available. But could it Watch a thief?

H: Picture this? In White Plains, N.Y., this week a girl led the police to recover her stolen Mac after she took a picture of the thieves using the laptop’s “Back to My Mac” feature.

P: However If the thief was in the process of using Vidnik to make he getaway movie it might not have worked -

H: Tech and media companies are betting billions of dollars on the as-yet-unproved technology known as WiMax in hopes of the wireless Web

P: Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner, Clearwire, and Sprint, just announced a deal that some value at around $12 billion to build a nationwide, high-speed wireless network.

H: Watch out! The cable TV companies are looking for a wireless service to add to their TV-voice-Internet bundle to go against Verizon and AT&T,

P: Google sees this as another avenue for selling ads. Sprint and Clearwire have been big promoters of WiMax, but their on-again, off-again, partnership didn’t have the money or clout to make it happen.

H: : In another deal intended to create a tech services juggernaut, Hewlett-Packard agreed tuesday to acquire outsourcing giant Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion.
Nothing but NET!

P: Purdue University’s IT department put together in half a day a campus supercomputer to replace its existing research unit The new machine is estimated to be capable of 60 teraflops per second, or 60 trillion operations,

H: This places the Purdue machine as number 40 on today’s Top 500 computer list., the TeraGrid User Portal is at http//portal.teragrid.org.

P: They built it in half a day? It takes me half a day to decide what to wear & then change back into this outfit

H: Nintendo is focusing its latest Wii campaign on women. The newest game, Wii Fit, is a fitness game scheduled to hit stores on May 19 here come the working moms.

P: It will offer 40 activities and exercises, in categories including aerobics, balance, strength training and yoga, Look for ads in bus shelters across the country where people don’t ride their bicycles to work.

H: Court Watch : Bragg sued Linden Lab for property theft after they froze his game account and resold his land, Bragg worked out how to enter URLs on the Second Life site to purchase the virtual land before it entered auction, thereby breaking SL End User Licensing Agreement

P: The court was concerned that the arbitration clause in the EULA was too costly and was such a deterrent that nobody would challenge Linden Labs, and since the court refused to enforce that clause, it continued in court as a settlement.

H: the lesson is in fact your agreement can be too good — if it’s too one-sided the court will just ignore it.” Linden had to make the EULA a bit more flexible.

P: In Familles de France v. Linden Lab. Familles de France complained Second Life gave access to minors to inappropriate content. but Linden Labs prevailed,
“The law states that if this is a platform, the platform isn’t responsible for the content until the platform becomes aware of the content. Then they have to take action.

H: With MMOs for instance, they all seem able to be aware of the illegal activities of their users, but in practice it’s hard to find.

P: According to this news story, a (so far) anonymous hacker was able to somehow mine personal data pertaining to about six million Chileans. The data allegedly was pilfered from government Web sites and posted to show how vulnerable people are.

H: the hacker’s reasoning for the breach and subsequent publishing of the private data was “for the whole world to see … (to) show how unprotected personal data is in Chile …
Gee couldn’t he have just sent an email?

P: Will the social networks live up to their prices? “You can’t have a $15 billion market valuation based on advertising alone,

H: It’s the single most-asked question in this field.

P: Brands too often consider social network campaigns as an extension of their mass media campaigns, Someone get me Accenture on the iPhone

H: Google will launch a set of APIs bundled as “Friend Connect.” And Facebook is launching Facebook Connect, which incidentally also lets people import profile information ao that no matter what new networks people explore, they will use their Facebook profiles Secondface?

P: WordPress was again up - an impressive 162 percent from March ‘07 - increasing its unique audience to 17.3 million.

H: -IRS Rules Electric Sheep’s Second Life Greeters as Part-Time Employees
I actually think that this is an interesting precedent - that part-time workers in a virtual world, and using their own equipment, schedule, and judgment to perform tasks, have been ruled as employees.

P: Watching you die? With $2.6 million the Army plans to develop an avatar-based, 3D training environment for war games hosting thousands of players around the world. Avawar anyone?

H: With a pained look of infinite horror on your face. Image Metrics’ technology is breaking new ground in facial animation for driving more realism into CG faces.

P: & at last! A 3d classroom for the Department of Homeland Security a 3D secure social network for on-line/ virtual world training and education.

H: What if they gave a virtual war and nobody logged on?

P: Make Love not War? Playboy also announced an intent to build its own virtual world sometime this year
Dealing with Knockoffs in Second Life or is SecondLife dealing with knock offs from Playboy?

H: Science in World of Warcraft! There might be no SLURLS for World of Warcraft so You have to make your own way there; on foot, by magical mount or via a flightmaster’s gryphon. The first WOW science conference was proposed by John Bohannon, who creates the Gonzo Scientist feature for the AAAS journal Science, and HE made it happen this past weekend.

P: After running from Grom to the entrance of Booty Bay, the scientists stopped for a photo opp and to celebrate by dancing. The science guild members rode the zepplein and held a meeting in the underground sewer too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb2rFd2Orvc&feature=related

H: Although healthcraft amongst the guilds might be a step too inner world for me, papers with very respected & credible members of the VW community can be found here. http://convergentsystems.pbwiki.com/Working+Papers

P: And last but not least this was said by some CEO about some VW he was planning on bring to market Sometime soon-
“That’s going to be key where we go next,” he explained. “We want the world building the world, but we also want the world to use the world.

H: whatever move you make, whaterver road you take every single day I’ll be watching you. Pooky, is it possible to be an exhibitionist and a voyeur at the same time?

P: Yes watch this show on slcn.tv and find out! And that is The Slews