The Click Heard Round the World

The "Gadgets for Good" Gift Guide (G4)

Perhaps you have been asking yourself, what do I get my activist-geek boyfriend / girlfriend / life partner for Christmas / Kwanzaa/Hannukah?  Well, just in time for the holidays, here is rikomatic's Gadgets for Good Gift Guide (or G⁴, if you like).

Enjoy all the eco-friendly, social justice-y goodness after the jump...

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UPDATE 2PM 11/30/06: I just saw that Rocketboom has a cool video interview with Mark Torrone, senior editor of MAKE Magazine, talking about the MAKE Open Source Gift Guide. Worth a view.

There Film Festival announces winners... wait, they make machinima in There?

Mark at 3pointd.com sent along the news that the There Film Festival just announced the winners of their machinima contest. I was just "meh" about the winner, Wild Griefer, and most of the other entrants. But I really enjoyed the humor and clever set-ups in Machinima in There by Rick Slick.  You can see all of the winning films over on the festival site.

For those who don't know, There is is another virtual world whose closest corollary is the now defunct Sims Online.  The notable difference between There and Second Life is that There has much less possibilities for user-created content or control of their environment.  On the plus side, There has a very good physics-engine and voice chat built-in.

Bush renominates abrasive nationalist John Bolton for UN top slot

In a brazen display of partisanship, President Bush recently renominated the abrasive, staunch nationalist neo-conservative John Bolton to the post of US Ambassador to the United Nations. The Economist and The New Yorker both reported on Bolton's tenchy relationship with the rest of the diplomatic community. As Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker reports:

At the UN, Bolton has earned a reputation — in the not very diplomatic words of sixty-four former American Ambassadors and diplomats who recently signed a letter opposing him — for “egotistical intolerance,” “arrogant actions,” and a “hard-core, go-it-alone posture” that “has alienated the bulk of the diplomatic community and cost the United States its leadership role.”   

The Economist quotes an unnamed Western diplomat as saying, "He [Bolton] has succeeded in putting almost everyone's backs up, even among some of America's closest allies. His main achievement has been to break the unified coalition of the North and unify the previously fragmented South."

I've known since before his first nomination that Bolton was going to be disaster.  He's still the wrong person for the job. In an era where America needs as many friends as it can get, sending back in the jerkwad is just the wrong strategy.

"Global Kids Guide to SL Presentations": Thumbs Up!

Barry Joseph of Global Kids just sent out a link to their new "Guide to SL Presenting" that I think is enormously useful for non-profits and really anyone else thinking of holding a mixed real world / Second Life event.  I've already added it to the "Best Practices for organizing SL/RW events" wiki.  They cover a range of presentation-type events including:

• The Live Video Stream
• The Live Radio Show
• The Virtual Lecture
• The Virtual Performance
• The Interactive Experience
• Physics-free Presentations

Global Kids should know, since they have sponsored a number of interesting RW/SL events, including a recent exhibition at the US Holocaust Museum on Darfur.

Forex: New SL Currency Exchange Opens Dec 1

Starting at noon SLT on Friday December 1 there's a new currency exchange in town: the Forex comes to Second Life. The main ways that residents convert between real currency and Second Life Linden Dollars has been through the official SL Lindex market and the SLexchange site.  The difference with the Forex is that it seems particularly geared toward currency speculators looking to make short term profits off of currency fluctuations between the Linden dollar, and US, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, British and European currencies.

Hit the jump for the complete announcement on the SL events calendar...

Hot Japanese hoofer / drummer girls: Go COBU!

Cobu is one of the most entertaining dance companies I know. The group specializes in a strange and electrifying blend of Japanese taiko drumming and funk tap. They have a show coming up from December 15-24 in Manhattan at the Flanmboyan Theater. 

If you have a chance to catch them, don't miss it!

Giving Thanks

Things to be thankful for:

• My Beautiful Girlfriend: So supportive of all my nerdy pursuits and so good at making me happy.
• My Health. I realized this summer that I needed to get over my aversion to gyms and force myself to go at least a couple of times a week.  Surprisingly, I don't hate it as much as I thought I would. It feels good to be more in tune with my own body.
• Dancing.  At least 2-3 times a week.  I'm rarely happier than dancing with friends to music that I love.
• Second Life.  It's been not a replacement but a wonderful addition to my "real" life.  SL has helped me embrace my inner geek more while also exposing me to what I see as the next generation of ICT-empowered civil society.
• My Job: That I get paid to work on progressive media/telecom policy and media activism is such a blessing. I've learned so much in my nine months at the SSRC and the work has hardly begun.
• Living in the City: There's nothing like living in Manhattan -- from Wall Street to Central Park to Chinatown to Harlem -- I love it all.

There's so much more to give thanks for.  But that's what's on my mind right now.  Feeling very blessed.

Apple Store coming to SL!?!

I got a tip from a posting by Dedric Mauriac on BlogHUD that a new Apple Store was opening in SL.  I TPed over this morning to investigate. And sure enough, there was all the plywood prims laying about that indicate a store in development on Skegemog (Teleport SLURL). 

An Apple employee aptly named "Apple Revolution" was busy running about setting up the shop.  I didn't pester the obviously harried avatar for details, but he confirmed that Apple was on-board for experimenting with Second Life and that the store is opening up sometime in December. 

Already there are tee-shirts on offer, which your avatar can use to proudly display their love for the mac.  I got the classic logo cause I'm old skool like that. (Macintosh SE forever, baby!)  They have the modern logo on a Job-style turtleneck as well as a girl's baby-tee available.

Apple is going to have to do some cool shit to match the very sweet Dell computer islands.  I'm thinking: in-world tutorials, iMovie classes for machinimators, Garage Band re-mix parties, in-world appearances by Apple celebs, etc.

A storefront with clickable prims that take you to www.apple.com just ain't gonna cut it.

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UPDATE 9/24 9AM: Dedric reports that the Apple Store seems to be much more barren since yesterday and wonders if they have already left SL. My own guess is that this was the enthusiastic independent effort of one Apple employee that was subsequently quashed by the higher-ups.  But I'll investigate further and report back.

Fantasy Congress : "gaming" the legislative process

My pal Tony just invited me to join his "Fantasy Congress" league.  I was a bit dubious about this effort to make the US legislative process into a game, but it seems actually quite well thought out. From the FAQ:

Fantasy Congress™ offers you the power to "play politics." As in other fantasy sports, you - the Citizen - draft a team of real-life legislators from the U.S. Congress and score points for your team's successes. Join a league and compete against other Citizens, or form a league of your own! Play against your friends, family, bloggers, fellow politicos, or even a sitting U.S. Senator (one could be playing incognito, you never know!). On weekends, move Members of Congress into your active line-up or off your team to strategize for the upcoming week of legislation!

Points are scored in the game by actual real life bills moving through the legislative process. Point values range from "introducing a bill" (5 points), getting it past mark-up (15 points) to getting it signed into law by the President (50 points.)  The scores are updated daily from the real Congressional record.

Never having played any of the fantasy sports league games, I don't know how well Fantasy Congress compares. But it does seem like an interesting new way of getting people to pay attention to how effective their legislators are at getting laws passed, which is certainly an important barometer of their success as politicians.  And it's an instructive tool for showing how the legislative drafting process operates in this country.  Certainly could be a really cool classroom exercise for civics and government teachers.

I have this image of Fantasy Congress players poised around their TVs tuned into C-SPAN as a bill is marked up in Committee, rooting for their favorite junior senator as she defends her draft text.  Cheers erupt as the chair announces that the bill is being passed on to conference with the House.  Boo-ya! 

"Real Life Places in SL" HUD

I just finished playing with the new open-sourced TourHUD created by the Electric Sheep Company for the GSD&M ad agency.   The Tour HUD ("heads up display") is a very easy-to-use tool for creating your own custom tours of various spots in Second Life. There are already two -- one for newbie-friendly areas and another of women's shopping venues.

It took me about an hour to create one focused on my own pet-fascination: real life places simulated in Second Life. Right now the HUD takes you to the Second Life versions of Dublin, Amsterdam, Venice, Hollywood, Egypt, and Rome.  IM me in-world (Rik Riel) if you would like one to try out. Or head over to Idea City to get your own.