Friday 23 May 2008

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.
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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
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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

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