November 26th, 2010 by Caleb Booker
If you haven’t seen this movie, you are missing out on a major piece of Internet culture’s history. Here’s the trailer:
We Live in Public – 2008, 18A, 88 minutes
Ondi Timoner’s documentary chronicles a decade in the life of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who instigated an “artificial society” experiment in which more than 100 artists lived under 24-hour surveillance in an underground compound in New York City. After FEMA broke up the project, Harris turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend. Timoner’s provocative film (winner of the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance) includes clips from Harris’s projects as well as her own original footage.
Keep it digital and catch it on Netflix. It’s scary and awesome, although the ending is a little weak. The point, through, is this notion that we are all encouraged to make our lives public. It is the way forward. “Web 2.0″, “User-created content”, “Social media”, assorted buzzwords yadda yadda…
Now that we’ve lived with these ideas for a few years, the hipster movement makes sense. After all, you can’t be cool all the time, and in an age of constant surveillance and recording you’re bound to do something stupid that people will take notice of. As a result, people claim it was “supposed to be ironic”.
That, or your idiotic status update was “just trolling lololollol”… sure, we believe you. No, really, I’m not typing sarcastically or anything.
The older generation got flinchy about public perception by doing what they always do: hiding behind “professionalism”. The number of dry, sterile public profiles that tell you nothing about the person in question is staggering. People have thrown themselves into mediocrity enthusiastically in order to keep the all-seeing eye of the Internet from making them look like an ass. So, instead, they look ignorable.
Now, if “ignorable” is part of the job description, then your resume is perfect. For the rest of us, its time to just be guileless and let the chips fall where they may. Either you’ll run your business yourself, or you’ll let the world run it for you.
Which one has your best interests at heart?
November 11th, 2010 by Caleb Booker
A few years ago I remember quite a bit of fretting over closed-door meetings about virtual world interoperability. None of the participants in those meetings are responsible for the current innovations in this area.
What does that tell you about “closed” vs “open”.
/soapbox
BOSTON, MA – November 09, 2010 – The Immersive Education Initiative (http://ImmersiveEducation.org) today unveiled iED 3D/VR™, the open and royalty-free cross-platform 3D/VR mesh file format that enables 3D and virtual reality (3D/VR) content to be created once and and experienced across a range of virtual worlds, games, simulators and mixed/augmented reality applications. The culmination of over 2 years of work conducted through the Open File Formats Technology Working Group (OFF.TWG), iED 3D/VR is aligned with the COLLADA standard and currently supported by official iED virtual world platforms realXtend, Open Wonderland, Open Simulator (“OpenSim”) and Open Cobalt in addition to the candidate iED platform Sirikata.
A range of hands-on workshops will be given at iED 2011 (http://MediaGrid.org/summit) to teach educators how to create cross-platform 3D/VR content using a variety of authoring tools, including Google Sketchup and Blender, and starting immediately virtual training sessions will be provided to Initiative members online and free of charge.
iED 3D/VR is designed specifically to enable 3D and virtual reality content to be exchanged between all official Immersive Education Initiative platforms. To this end, iED 3D/VR a functional subset of COLLADA that is tested across conformant iED platforms to ensure consistent content representation from platform to platform. The current baseline profile for iED 3D/VR features static 3D mesh models and textures. New features and capabilities, such as animation and skinning, are now being added as well.
Thousands of Members Worldwide at http://ImmersiveEducation.org
The Immersive Education Initiative is a non-profit international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Thousands of faculty, teachers, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative.
To learn more about the Media Grid, Immersive Education or the Education Grid visit:
http://MediaGrid.org, http://ImmersiveEducation.org and http://TheEducationGrid.org
November 9th, 2010 by Caleb Booker
I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but Rocketboom went from the hip edge of Internet culture to a symbol of everything lame in the universe. First Molly just started posting non sequitur word salad instead of content, mixed with an equal amount of her smiling for the camera and doing absolutely nothing. Things got worse from there. Here are 3 videos to illustrate.
Most recently, this error in judgment:
April 5th, 2010 by Caleb Booker
Laura P Thomas, Social Media Strategist, Dell
Events are a great way to create word of mouth marketing, but taking them to a worldwide audience is expensive. Using immersive virtual world technologies you can expand your local event to a global audience without breaking the budget.
Today at 2pm Pacific Virtual Worlds Keynote will be host to Laura Pevehouse Thomas, strategist for social media at Dell. Profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine, she’s worked in and around the Dell family for nine years, primarily in the areas of corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, branding and online communication.
Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.
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To join us in Second Life:
- Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
- Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
- Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.
March 29th, 2010 by Caleb Booker
Ernie C Young, Head Coach, SalesTeam East LLC
Want to know how to leverage Second Life to get new clients? Today’s guest is sales guru Ernie Young presenting: “Moving From Contact to Client in Second Life – Finding a Sales Process to Gain and Keep Customers for Life”. If you’ve ever had an interest in getting new clients, do not miss this rare opportunity to hear a true expert speak on the topic!
Today at 2pm Pacific Virtual Worlds Keynote will be host to the Head Coach of SalesTeam East, Ernie Young. He started his selling career by opening his own business at 12 years old and operating it door to door throughout his teenage years before leaving for college. Over the past 35 years, Mr. Young accumulated vast experience and accomplishment in professional sales, sales training, and management. He has consistently led his sales teams to record-setting company performances in both large and small business organizations, and has been repeatedly awarded recognition for his personal career sales performance and for the sales levels achieved by the sales professionals under his management.
His teaching of and adherence to the “3 Factors of Sales Success” formula typifies his ability to clearly impart an understanding of selling as both an art and a science. Mr. Young is certified by Integrity Systems, Inc. as a sales coach, trainer, and facilitator. SalesTeam East LLC is licensed by SalesTeam USA to deliver sales training programs utilizing its tool kits, including SalesMap©.
Before his long career in professional sales, Mr. Young served 10 years on active duty as a U.S. Naval Officer after which he continued to serve for 10 more years on a part time basis in the U.S. Naval Reserve. During his military career, he developed seasoned management skills, managing and training organizations of hundreds of military personnel. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Management from the U.S. Naval Academy and the rank of Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve.
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To join us in Second Life:
- Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
- Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
- Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.