Sex, Pranks and Reality - Forbes.comThis is a good article, but I think the author misses the point somewhat. In fact, I am pretty sure she inadvertently plagiarized a bunch of articles that were written in 1994-1995 about the then-newborn World Wide Web. Is "being is Second Life" worthwhile for companies per se? No, not any more than using electricity within ones business is a competitive differentiator. As with the Web (or any other medium/business platform), the platform itself is not the point - it is what you do with it. VirtualAloft got shuttered because it had nothing to offer. Nissan Island, on the other hand, provides a place to drive your virtual car (which is actually somewhat worthwhile if you like that sort of thing.) IBM provides product seminars and demonstrations. Numerous universities have virtual classrooms. These are real business endeavors, not merely cool billboards.
...And You Press This Button To FlySteve McGookin has a much different take on the commercial possibilities of virtual worlds. He seems to imply that things like winged avatars and idealized body types will eventually go the way of cute signature lines, effusive smileys, and "kewl" email addresses (when is the last time you got a business card that had "cutie507@aol.com" printed on it?)
Real Men Love The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th DimensionPerhaps the greatest movie of all time - and you probably have not seen it. This review, discovered recently, says it all. If you have not yet seen this cult classic (and your head has not exploded as a result), run, don't walk to half.com or netflix and get it.
Disclaimer - the acting is weak, the story line is ridiculous, special effects were cheap even for the time period, and the sound track is campy at best. BUT if you keep all of this in mind when you see it, you will love this movie more than you love... some other things that you love a little.
Corps: New doubts about N.O. pumps - Yahoo! NewsIt has been forever since I last posted, but the good news (note the sarcasm dripping from your screen) is that nothing has changed. The exodus from New Orleans continues, city still isn't fixed, pumps don't work, and nothing looks to be improving.
I simply don't understand.
We Are Sinking
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| Funny video and good viral spread. Does this confirm that good viral marketing must equal humorous? |
Why I'm rooting for the Saints this year
Take a look at this article -
New Orleans Brain Drain
We've talked about it, and now the media is waking up to it. There are clearly more than a few ways for a city to die - losing its doctors, educators, and administrators is a particularly painful one. The late Milton Friedman would probably argue that any deficit created by the departure of the young and talented will be filled by the market, but the market may well adjust for this through attenuated demand. In other words, other folks will leave, too.
I wish I had the solution - maybe all of the construction firms and land speculators should start thinking about this.
Second Life: Your World. Your Imagination.I bought an island yesterday. It is about 16 acres in size, sort of rhombus-shaped, with a lagoon in the middle. I'm not exactly sure where it is, but that's OK since I can move it later on if I need to.
If you don't know what I am talking about, visit SecondLife.com and download their application. This thing is the latest online fad and is growing like a weed (from about 200k members this past Spring to over 2 million today), and like a weed it may well die once the seasons change. Somehow, however, I think this might just have legs.
The way this virtual world has been created is much more true to the "parallel digital universe" (my own term) described in Neal Stephenson's
Snow Crash from 1993. It has an economy, the design and function of objects and places are controlled by the users, and there actually seems to be stuff going on there that does not involve cybersex and porn. (gasp!)
Perhaps this is the next manifestation of a mainstream web? The way this works is that you can just visit SecondLife's world (insiders just call it "SL" not to be confused with "RL" in which we are all actually breathing air right now), you can build up your own little piece of it on somebody else's "island," or you can actually have an island of your own built just for you on which you can pretty much do as you please. This sounds very geeky and gamey - but replace the words "visit," "little piece of it," and "island" with "surf," "website," and "web server" and you start to understand that what this really is just a 3D version of the mainstream Internet! It is worth noting that at its outset, a huge amount of the bandwidth consumed by the Web was also driven by sex and porn-related activity.
So I bought an island. It is for my company, and we're planning at least one interesting experiment with it, but I am being very cautious about whether or not it really will mean anything in the future.
Those of you who read this (Alex) can really load up on your social currency in advance of holiday parties to come by getting this set up now and dropping mention of it in discrete circles. Sure, they'll think you are a big geek, but at our ages (and since we're all pretty much married now), let's face facts - we are big geeks.
See you in Second Life!
- Chime Bellman
1st Katrina insurance lawsuit opens today - Yahoo! NewsAll eyes on this case, most certainly. I wonder how many people have not filed a flood insurance claim because they don't want to invalidate their homeowner's claim? What about people outside the flood area - have they experienced problems getting their claims paid out?
Obviously money - flowing to the actual homeowners with a personal vested interest in their property - is critical to the rebirth of the city. Will it come?
