Yup. That’s pretty much how it goes.

Ran into my first instance of a griefer on the Catamount Island in Second Life.
I logged onto the island, first time in a few days to check the progress of one of the projects.
I realized something was wrong right away.. there was a giant flashing box right in front of the courthouse. I went to go check it out and all of a sudden thousands of Mario Brother characters started bouncing around…
Great… just what i needed.
I went into the land controls and found that this guy had placed over 3000 objects all over the island. We had it opened up for a workshop with students and forgot to lock it back down. That was a mistake.
So, I returned all his content, banned him from the island and locked everything back down.
Things are back to normal, but it is sad to think there are people who only want to cause problems. Second Life isn’t any better than First Life in that respect, and probably worse.

Poor little blog needs an update. Currently working on a blog site for a friend – Wampler’s Wizarding Couples Counseling – heh, heh – and some assorted graphics and free templates. More to come.

I have been spending the last 2 months working on Catamount Island, the virtual campus for Western Carolina University. In that time, we have added multiple spaces for faculty to teach in this virtual world.

I have also been working with the faculty in the Criminal Justice program on a Courthouse and Justice Center.

I will be updating this blog with the progress of Catamount Island.

Apple computer has a great piece running in the Pro section of their site. It is about how the Washington Post is using new media including podcasts, blogs and video to enrich the content that they are delivering to their readership.

Enuf said.

According to this article in ars technica, Google is going to unveil a service by which you can buy just chapters of books, instead of the whole thing. Ars technica focuses on the advantages of this scheme for its audience of techies. For example, a web developer confronting a knotty ASP problem could just download a chapter of ASP in a Nutshell rather than plunking down $29.95 for the whole tome.

Of course, publishers and authors won’t be too pleased about this, in the same way that musicians weren’t very happy about the music industry becoming dominated by singles instead of albums. With iTunes, you don’t have to buy the whole album to get just the one song you like; with this new Google service, the same would apply for books.

However, this new business model in the staid publishing industry, if it succeeds, could lead to a whole new world for authors and readers. What if you could buy the first chapter of a novel from an unknown author for $1 instead of buying the whole book for $21.95? Wouldn’t that get you to try many more authors than you would’ve? If you don’t like it, who cares, you’re only out a buck. It’s like a McDonald’s Dollar Menu for readers.
Publishers could even bundle first chapters from new authors together, like a buffet of writers. Pay $5 and get first chapters from a publishing house’s hottest authors. If you like one of them, you could buy the whole book, in an e-book format, at a discounted rate. (Pricing e-books at the same price of a physical book makes no sense to me, BTW. A topic for another time.)

Most exciting to me is the thought that this rumored Google service could bring back the old-fashioned serial novel, like Dickens for the 21st century. You could buy a novel chapter by chapter as it comes out or perhaps subscribe to the novel of one of your favorite authors. Why should we, as readers, wait for a novel to sit on some publisher’s desk for six months, then get printed on paper, bound, galleys sent out and finally shipped to bookstores? This is a market that is crying out for Google to bring some efficiencies to bear.

How often do you get to chat with people from around the world while exploring new and exciting places? How often do those people appear to you as medieval warrior, or possible a small furry animal? If this does happen to you, then chances are, you have a Second Life.

Second Life is a little hard to describe. It isn’t really a game, but you can have adventures, it isn’t just a chat room, although alot of that occurs. It is a virtual world, where you can do pretty much anything your time and talents will allow. It is the perfect example of Intercreativity. People create buildings, casinos, cars, clothes and even customized skin for their avatar. SL even has its own currency, the Linden, which currently exchanges with the US Dollar at about $1=L$230.

Many universities are looking into creating a presence in SL, and there are already many Universities participating in the Eduisland commons.

The House of Representatives is also going to be getting involved there later this week.

But, just like in this life, there are some odd goings on in Second Life. The most popular places are the Casinos, Dance Clubs and “Adult” spaces.

So, if you get a chance, take a look at Second Life, but, be careful it doesn’t take too much time away from your Real Life.

Diaries were once something teenage girls hid from nosy little brothers. Now, they put them online for all the world to see. Just goes to show that people are willing to exchange their privacy to be just a little bit famous. Not Britney Spears-style famosity, but just well-known enough to have a diary online, as if being on the web conveys legitimacy.

Holidaysaurus Rex

We hope that you all have a very merry holiday and a wonderful new year!