Tech -- Culture -- Humour
An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, an Aussie, a German, a Yank, an Egyptian, a Jap, a Mexican, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Swede, a Finn, an Israeli, a Romanian, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian and an African went to a night club.
The bouncer said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in without a Thai”
1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Virtual pigs and chooks see payday for crooks: NSW Police. “Virtual worlds like FarmVille and World of Warcraft are being used by criminals to launder money, say NSW Police, who have discovered that buying and selling virtual items and currency is a growing new way of cleaning dirty money. NSW Police Detective Superintendent Commander Colin Dyson said the “relatively new” trend provided an “emerging opportunity for criminals”. “Any opportunity that is present on the internet for criminals to use they’ll obviously exploit it [and] take advantage of it” he said in a telephone interview today. “It’s certainly something we’re looking at.”
2. The Times Leader (USA) – Virtual worlds bring about ‘e’conomy, but where is it all headed? Tech Talk NICK DELORENZO. “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you sit at home and play games. So the wisdom goes. Unless, of course, you’re really good at it — and you happen to be playing in the brave new online world. The younger generation can tell you all about World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and the like — the so called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games — or MMORPG for short. People play these games obsessively — spending hours or even an entire day immersed in a virtual world where they fight demons, pilot spaceships, embark on quests, and perform other arcane tasks, all in pursuit of a bevy of achievements, badges, and rewards. These games also feature another aspect: a virtual economy.”
3. Search Engine Watch (USA) – Back to Basics: Linden Lab Releases a Basic Viewer. “There are a number of themes that keep recurring when you discuss Second Life specifically, and more generally, virtual worlds and Internet business itself. One is “How do you capture and retain new users?” This has been an especially large challenge for Linden Lab over the years, and more and more time and resources have been devoted to meeting that challenge. The latest effort on the part of Linden Lab comes in the form of a new viewer, simply called Basic.”
4. USA Today (USA) – 3D Voice comes to ‘DC Universe Online’ on Sony PlayStation 3 and PC. “3D is all the rage now. Nintendo’s 3DS handheld is in stores. Games such as Crysis 2 and the upcoming SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals are playable in 3D on compatible TVs. Now coming to games: 3D voice. Voice technology company Vivox, which already provides 3D voice to virtual worlds such as Second Life and games such as APB and Bloodlines Champions, is bringing the technology to DC Universe Online on the PC and, for the first time, the PlayStation 3.”
5. Education Week (USA) – Games and Simulations Help Children Access Science. “Want to know what it’s like to stalk elk, or a mate, from the vantage point of a wild animal? Educators at the Minnesota Zoo, located in a suburb south of the Twin Cities, created just such an online game a few years ago that has proved immensely popular—and educational. Called WolfQuest, it allows players to learn about wolf ecology by exploring Yellowstone National Park as that creature.”
6. Canada.com (Canada) – Nintendo’s 3DS portable game system as groundbreaking as the Wii console. “Heavens to Murgatroyd – the images are jumping right off the screen! Nintendo Inc. has done it again. Discounted by many as a has-been prior to its groundbreaking Wii gaming console, Nintendo now is ushering in a new era of three-dimensional (3D) video gaming with the release of its 3DS portable gaming console. The most appealing part of the technology? No glasses are required to see the video game characters leap to life. The 3DS, which is similar in size to the company’s popular DS console, uses something called “parallax-barrier” technology – a thin film coating the device’s screen does the work of a pair of polarized 3D glasses. The 3D effect is crisp, clean and superior to almost all of the 3D televisions on the market today.”
7. Bloomberg (USA) – Electronic Arts, Sony Use Crisp Thinking to Fight Cyber Bullies. “Adam Hildreth was a 14-year-old in Leeds, England, when he and six friends started Dubit, a virtual world for other teens, in 1999. The site, which makes money selling advertising aimed at kids socializing in cyberspace, grew quickly to 250,000 users. Dubit struggled to hire enough moderators to keep cyber bullies and other troublemakers in check, at one point needing 50 monitors a day. Human moderation “was never going to scale,†says Hildreth, now 26. Hildreth, who left school at 16 to run Dubit full time, began working on software to detect bad behavior in the game world. The idea became his next company, Crisp Thinking, which he co-founded in 2005. Crisp’s software analyzes users’ language and actions to identify harassment, spamming, or predators who may be “grooming†potential victims. The system can react in real time by automatically warning or banning people who violate a site’s terms of service, or referring them to human moderators.”
8. New Scientist (USA) – How will you cope, living with your avatar? “Hello, future. Gaming systems that drop you into another world, such as Microsoft’s Kinect or Nintendo’s Wii, are just the beginning of what virtual-reality technology has to offer. Get ready for virtual immortality, teleportation, time travel and the ability to be in two places at once. But everything comes at a price. There are those who already worry about how this technology is affecting our brains. And once the digital versions of us become indistinguishable from our real selves, what might this do to our societies? Two of virtual reality’s most prominent researchers have come together to sketch out the landscape of an emerging field I call psychotech – the place where psychology and technology collide to produce something new and exciting. Social and cognitive psychologists Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson detail the current research – primarily their own – and pose some fascinating questions, which have surprising and important answers.”
9. The Daily Mail (UK) – Number of college students having casual sex on the rise…but virginity makes a comeback too. “Rising numbers of college students are having casual sex – but more are remaining virgins too. Some 72 per cent of both sexes said that during their studies they had at least one ‘hookup’, or one-night stand. But at the same time a quarter said that they were saving themselves for the right person, up from 19 per cent in 2002. Experts said that young people were leading such busy lives they either wanted to wait for the right person or just have a throwaway relationship. But in a worrying twist they also suggested that even the chaste could be going online to have hundreds of ‘virtual partners’ – and still claim to be a virgin in real-life.”
10. Escapist Magazine (USA) –Man Let Son Suffocate Because He Was Playing WoW. “A bad situation is even worse than it sounds: A man on trial for the death of his infant son couldn’t tear himself away from WoW to keep the boy from suffocating. A sailor from King’s Bay is currently on trial for his son’s death because he neglected to notice that the infant was suffocating under a pillow. However, the reason for the father’s neglect is being laid at the feet of popular MMO World of Warcraft: the man claims that he was so engrossed with the game that he couldn’t be bothered to remove the pillow.”
I’m defintely in the huge cohort of people who loves Angry Birds. At least now one mystery is solved: who created them?
Like a lot of virtual worlds observers, I’ve written repeatedly on the need for virtual worlds like OpenSim and Second Life to be simpler to use – ideally web browser based. Kitely, a project underway since 2008, takes a big step toward achieving that by making the establishment of an OpenSim grid nearly as simple as it gets.
It took me under ten minutes to get set up in Kitely. Here’s how:
1. Log in via Facebook Connect.
2. Install the Kitely plugin (Mac users note: Safari or Opera aren’t currently supported by the Kitely plugin at present, you’ll need to use Firefox or Chrome).
3. Create a world and choose if you want to invite anyone from Facebook groups you are part of:
4. Type a name, optional description and type of world you want to start with.
5. Click on ‘Enter World’ and your SL browser will launch (Mac users again – there’s a known bug whereby your username and password are all entered in the Name field of the SL browser – you just need to type in that password and delete it from the end of your name)
5. Voila – you’re now on your own island / collaborative space:
6. Three minutes later and I had my venerable log cabin rezzed on my island:
Kitely is currently in beta, and the currency used is called a KC. As part of the beta you get 50 KCs currency to start with and it costs 1KC per day to keep each world you create. On the proposed maximum discount structure that works out at US ten cents per month. It’s an attractive proposition for someone not wanting the hassle of creating their own grid from scratch and its more than competitive with other providers. The support functionality is fairly well set up and responsive from what I’m seeing.
There’s still plenty of kinks to iron out but Kitely is a superb snapshot of what is going to be required for wider adoption of virtual environments: simplicity and integration with other platforms. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has experience in creating content in OpenSim as to your thoughts on comparability to other offerings. It’s also worth having a read through the Kitely FAQ, which covers a lot of stuff including the approach to intellectual property (essentially the same as Second Life) and the Terms of Service.
Thanks to a number of Metaverse Journal twitter followers for the heads-up.
Update: With thanks to reader Psx_kai, who pointed out a key fact I’d missed in the story. The pricing I described was correct but didn’t include the extra charge of US$0.20 per minute for each visitor to your world. That’s certainly going to get pricey after a while although it seems it’s going to be an option to earn a fair whack of free KCs. On the upside, the ‘pay for what you use’ model is something that can work well for those wanting intermittent events without the ongoing higher monthky costs on say Second Life.
Released in 2009, a short film called ‘the third & the seventh’ was released. Created by Alex Roman. it’s essential viewing for anyone in doubt about the future of computer-generated images in film. Computer-generated or not, it’s one of the most stunning pieces of work I’ve seen. Have a look for yourself (watch in full screen / maximised mode):
The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
The most exciting thing about this for the coming 5-10 years, is the ability for creative people with more limited budgets to be able to realise their visions in full. Does it get any better than that?
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked (after “Is Second Life still around?”), is what large businesses are still actively involved in Second Life. I noticed this afternoon while reading my RSS feeds that Daniel Voyager has compiled a list of those at the big end of town still involved.
They include Air France, Cisco Systems, Dell, IBM and Siemens (pictured). All businesses featured on Daniel’s list have SLURLs so you can have a look for yourself.
Here at Cultured Tech we get some interesting press releases. One of the more interesting ones was released this week. Interesting as in being a little different from the bog standard “hey we’ve released a new gadget”. Although still a gadget, vibrators don’t tend to make the tech beat often, and it only really does this time because it looks a lot like a mouse. Called the The Be Be, it’s the creation of two women from Wollongong (Australia).
For your entertainment I’ve provided the full press release, all puns included:
It’s not everyday you read about two savvy mothers from Wollongong launching a ground breaking product aimed at the sensuality and well being of women, but then you probably haven’t met Kristine Morgan and Lisa Hughes.
These two friends were enjoying a morning run along their local beach in Wollongong when they started talking about women and their conversation turned to vibrators (as friends’ conversations sometimes do). ‘Do you think any of the vibrators out there are actually designed by women?’ Kris asked. ‘Seriously, why can’t we buy a vibrator that looks great and better still, feels great!’
The friends laughed. Kris had a point. ‘We’re women. We love beautiful things’, added Lisa. ‘So what’s with all the tacky imagery and packaging? Why can’t normal women, walk into a normal shop and buy a vibrator like it’s a totally normal thing to do?’ By the time they had finished their run, the girls were sweaty, buzzing with excitement and eager to get some answers. And so their research began.
‘We really wanted to understand what other women thought of this whole market,’ explains Lisa. ‘And who better to understand what women really want, than women who really want it?’
After talking to ‘real’ women everywhere – mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and girlfriends – Kris and Lisa’s company, Love Being Woman was born.
‘The brand is really about inspiring and empowering women from all walks of life,’ says Lisa. ‘We live by the philosophy that ‘when you feel good about yourself, you can give the best of yourself to others’.
After holding a series of intimate and fun focus groups Kris and Lisa knew they were onto something special. They had spoken to hundreds of women who wanted an intimate massager that was enjoyable to use and that they weren’t embarrassed to buy. They wanted something that suited their lives, their style, their needs. An intimate massager that was discreet, high quality,feminine, accessible and best of all worked!
From that moment on the girls spent every waking minute (when they weren’t being wives and mothers) finding out everything they could about vibrators. They even had their husbands on alert for any information that would help them with their mission.
After months laughing and looking, designing and experimenting, their work finally paid off and THE BE BE was born, Be beautiful, Be you! ‘This is all about making women feel confident in and out of the bedroom,’ explains Lisa. ‘This is not just about launching a new vibrator. It’s about saying it’s great for women to explore their sensuality. This is about their health and wellbeing and giving them the right to be in charge.’
‘We developed THE BE BE so women can feel empowered, not embarrassed,’ states Kris.
‘THE BE BE is about feeling sexy, not sex obsessed.
“Happy not inhibited, Frisky not frustrated.â€
THE BE BE is the first product from Love Being Woman and has been designed to embody the Love Being Woman philosophy. Kristine and Lisa live by the philosophy
‘When you feel great about yourself, you give the best of yourself to others’.
They hope you’ll discover this philosophy too.
For more information and pricing (currently around the AU$120 mark), check the Be Be’s website.
Two sisters, one blonde and one brunette, inherit the family ranch.
Unfortunately, after just a few years, they are in financial trouble. In order to keep the bank from repossessing the ranch, they need to
purchase a bull so that they can breed their own stock.
Upon leaving, the brunette tells her sister, ‘When I get there, if I decide to buy the bull, I’ll contact you to drive out after me and haul it home.’
The brunette arrives at the man’s ranch, inspects the bull, and decides she wants to buy it. The man tells her that he will sell it for $599, no less.
After paying him, she drives to the nearest town to send her sister a telegram to tell her the news. She walks into the telegraph office, and says, ‘I want to send a telegram to my
sister telling her that I’ve bought a bull for our ranch. I need her to hitch the trailer to our pickup truck and drive out here so we can haul it home.’
The telegraph operator explains that he’ll be glad to help her, then adds, it will cost 99 cents a word.’ Well, after paying for the bull,
the brunette realizes that she’ll only be able to send her sister one word.
After a few minutes of thinking, she nods and says, ‘I want you to send her the word ‘comfortable.’
The operator shakes his head. ‘How is she ever going to know that you want her to hitch the trailer to your pickup truck and drive out here to
haul that bull back to your ranch if you send her just the word ‘comfortable?’
The brunette explains, ‘My sister’s blonde. The word is big. She’ll read it very slowly…. ‘com-for-da-bul.’
The folks over at XKCD have created a brilliant comparative chart showing examples of key activities generating radiation and the levels to which humans can cope with them. The format provides an excellent sanity check for a lot of the hysteria around at the moment, whilst also showing some casuses of radiation that you’ll be less aware off.
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