Facebook addiction: there is moderation

A little over a month ago, Ross Gardiner posted the video shown below, addressing his thoughts on Facebook. It’s well worth a watch if you’re a fairly heavy user of Facebook and wonder about whether it’s a good use of time. That said, the video does take the well-worn path of abstinence, which is overkill for the large majority who use Facebook a few times per week.

I’m endlessly amused at the black and white approach to anything like this: you’re either a heavy user or you don’t use at all. It’s a shame that approach misses out the huge majority that fall squarely in the middle. Anyway, if you worry about your level of Facebook time, have a watch of this:

Thanks to a Facebook friend, Anna, for the link.

Auto-correct embarrassments turn to gold

I love me a good humour site. Whether it’s Awkward Family Photos, Cake Wrecks or the now over-hyped S*#t My Dad Says, there’s plenty of places to get a laugh.

One I hadn’t come across is Damn You Auto Correct. It’s a regular update of screenshots of awkward, humiliating and just plain funny SMS messages on smart phones, where the phone has auto-corrected words.

Aside from providing lots of laughs, the site raises one big question: why the hell don’t people read the message before hitting send?

Thanks to a fellow musician forumite, Botch, for the link.

Wordnik: the best online dictionary?


Wordnik is best described as an online dictionary with context. Type in a word, and it spits back not only its definition, but example sentences, related pictures on Flickr, a thesaurus listing for the word, an audio pronunciation, it’s most recent appearances on Twitter, its occurrence per million word, how many times it has been looked up and its etymology if known.

Take a cultured word like ‘arse’ – Wordnik gives you the full picture of the word, including some great pictures of fruit and vegetables shaped like a rear-end. That beats the old Oxford dictionary any day of the week.

Environment education via a virtual mine

Virtual Mine is “an educational 3D environment, game, and educational curriculum for teachers, students, and anyone who’d like to learn more about mountain top removal, coal fired power production, alternative energies, and the amazing music and culture in the Appalachian mountains”. Which sounds a little staid on the surface, but the reality is an engaging and immersive education experience. I attended the launch tour this morning alongside around 35 others, mostly educators and developers, to see what was on offer.

Funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Independent Television Service, the Virtual Mine consist of an entire island in Second Life. After equipping a hard hat and HUD, a series of processes can be controlled and viewed. Whether it’s tree-clearing, the removal of the mountaintop for mining, or balancing the nearby town’s energy needs with the environmental impacts of the mining and cola-fired power station, it’s all covered.

Have a brief look for yourself:

This is the sort of build that tends to shine a very bright spotlight on the opportunities virtual worlds provide for education, including environmental education. That said, one of the tour participants made a humourous comment during the ‘turn off all the unnecessary lights in the town’ exercise, asking that we shut down the region’s server in the process to truly save some power.

Some of my other snaps from the launch tour:

Tree clearing simulation


The blasting begins


Coal-fired power and its town impacts


Turn off the damn lights!

Congratulations to the developers of Virtual Mine and the wider support team. You can find out lots more information on the project here.

[Originally posted over at The Metaverse Journal]

Mobile devices: a new life for the disabled

It’s really easy in the tech field to look at new products within the prism of the average consumer. Take the iPad for example – it’s a common route to discuss cool apps that have been released and to debate future developments. It’s also easy to forget the enormous benefits these devices can bring. A superb illustration of this is the piece below from the New York Times.

Now, there just needs to be a way of funding the distribution of devices like these to families who can’t otherwise afford them. Perhaps that’s how Steve Jobs could get his name up in lights alongside Bill Gates as a leading philanthropist….

Largest Star Wars model ever?

As a child who spent hundreds of hours playing with Star Wars figures, I still get a little excited when I see them in shops.

In the lead up to Christmas, you can now buy what I believe is one of the largest Star Wars models ever. Straight out of The Empire Strikes Back, the 2-foot high AT-AT holds up to 20 Star Wars figures. What’s not to like?

via [Geek Alerts]

Need to copy a floppy disk?

I still get a warm fuzzy glow of sentimentality when I think of floppy disks. It reminds me of Castle Wolfenstein loading on an Apple II from a 5.25 inch floppy, or backing up MIDI files to a 3.5-inch floppy.They were the super-cool step-up from the cassette drive, and I could carry them anywhere! Ok, I’d better stop now before I start reminiscing about Jupiter Lander on my Vic 20.

Believe it or not, there’s still plenty of people out there wanting to duplicate floppy disks, and with PCs of all flavours not containing floppy drives anymore, it’s a process with some challenges. If you’re really keen, you can use this online service to either buy new disks if you do have a drive, or you can pay them to do the duplication for you.

Of course, before you go to such lengths I’d recommend checking if the application / files you want to duplicate are online anyway – there’s no shortage of applications that have been ported over to Java / Flash etc that make the need for the floppy version redundant.

via [Dan Warne]

iLife 11 announced: iMovie returned to its former glory?

Mr Jobs had another one of his announcement extravaganzas today, announcing a slew of new hardware and software. Australian Macworld have a great wrap on it all (Disclosure: I am a contributing writer for Australian Macworld), but aside from the understandable excitement on the Mac App Store and Mac OSX Lion, I was most taken by the update to the iLife suite.

Like a lot of iMovie users, I loved the 06 version, which was then arguably devolved to iMovie 08. I’ve actually gotten used to the 08 version but it still doesn’t make the grade in a lot of ways. It seems that Apple have actually heeded the outcry, with the 2011 iteration looking a little more like its grandfather. There’s also a bunch of new features such as storyboarding and simple trailer creation that will reflected in thousands of online video uploads.

I’ve got a review copy of iLife 11 on order, so watch this space, and the Apple guff on iLife can be found here.

In the meantime, a prediction: the new Mac App Store will see iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband plugins / add-ons for sale.

iPhone as complete band: Atomic Tom prove it

I’ve been writing about the iPhone and music for a number of years now, and I’ve never ceased to be amazed by the quality of the music apps created.

A lot of people get excited by the newer apps released, but there’s plenty of life in the older ones too, as demonstrated by New York outfit Atomic Tom. Using four iPhones and some amplification, they shot a video on the New York subway. The video itself was shot by four people just using the iPhone’s video capture capabilities. The drum, vocal and piano apps are all evergreens, I’m unsure on which specific guitar and bass apps are used.

Enjoy:

via [Gus Lozada]

Who hasn’t played chess on a rollercoaster?

Well, to be honest I haven’t, for two reasons. First, I’m a crap chess player. Second, I get motion sickness on a merry-go-round, so a rollercoaster is an open invitation to three days of my head in an ice-cream container. However, most people enjoy said rollercoasters, and there’s even a very dedicated cohort who enjoy having their picture snapped playing chess at the same time. Have a look for yourself right here.

It’s now inspired me to create my own meme. Send in a photo of yourself dressed as a Star Wars character while playing the Nintendo Wii on a bus, and you’ll get a lifetime Pro Subscription* to this site. I can already hear doors slamming as people run to the bus stop.

* A Pro Subscription consists of free access to this site 24/7, including the page your photo will be displayed on that everyone’s laughing at. Conditions apply.

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