Over The Hill

RSS Presentation

I'm making a presentation next week on RSS. This posting is going to be used as an example of the changes that happen in the back end feed.

If Second Life is not a game, "What is it?"

So this is the big question for the 30+ something crowd. Best analogy I can make is that it's a 3-D chat room, with virtual islands/buildings taking the place of the old chat "channels".

MSNBC has an article (with some nice links) posted, which is where the title of this post comes from. It can be found here .

Novel search engine matches molecules in a flash

New Scientist Tech has just posted an article regarding a new Molecular Search Engine. A step in the right direction for Knowledge Mining.

Fund Raising in Second Life

Well, I mentioned previously that Business Models in Second Life were a new beast.....apparently that also includes fund raising.

I saw this today on the Edtech Island....it's raising sponsorship money for the American Cancer Society.

I assume that the Virtual Dollars collected will be sold for Real Life Money.

New Islands popping up at an increasing rate!

I just did a quick survey of the InfoIsland cluster, and while some of these are not recent, new islands seem to be appearing at an increasing rate. Some of the new Island additions include

• ALA Arts island
• Cybrary City II
• EdTech - Boise State University (and others?)
• Imagination Island
• Info Architecture Island - The Information Architecture Institute. Their website can be found here
• Info Island DK
• Mohawk College
• The Newseum
• SJSU SLIS - San Jose State uUniversity School of Library of Information Sciences Research and Development Laboratory (took this off their sign...not sure where punctuation should go!)
• UPMC - University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

A couple of these are still closes (Infoisland DK and The Newseum), but the rest can be visited.

Taxing Second Life comes up again.

For our US friends, it's mandatory for the IRS to require taxes on all real money earned from virtual environments.........wonder if they have a Second Life account that is going to tax the virtual money too :-)

CNN Money article on Taxing Second Life

InfoCan Group in Second Life

Well, A little late, but still relevant. The first meeting of the InfoCan group took place in Second life January 3, 2007. The InfoCan group is an informal group of Canadian Institutions (Government, Universites) put together to explore Canada's "Library/Science" presence in Second Life. This group is new, and most of the work is done on our own time (i.e. no official Government endorsement has been given ....yet). I'll be posting updates here as "stuff" happens"

The group for the first meeting consisted of:

Dinnie Devonshire - Donna Dinberg, Library and Archives Canada
Danu Dahlstrom - Krista Godfrey, McMaster University  
Medium Helvetic - Wayne MacPhail, prez of w8nc inc
Jillianna Suisei -  Jill Hurst-Wahl (Corporate Librarian) 
Thudjhg YellowJacket - John Glavine, Canada Institute of Scientific and Technical Information
Rakerman YellowJacket - Richard Akerman, Canada Institute of Scientific and Technical Information

One outcome: the Canada House in Second Life is now offically called Canada Nexus; its purpose is to act as a focal point for "all things Canadian"....in Science and Libraries anyway!

Institutional Repositories for profit?

There was an article yesterday from NetworkWorld talking about making Academic Research more mainstream. As opposed to most startups, iBridge is a non-profit organization. Their "selling" point is that Academic institutions may be able to market this research to each other for a profit.

Might be something to keep an eye on.

Virtual reality, virtual memories

Interesting posting about false Virtual Reality memories from the New Scientist Blog. The posting suggests Second Life would be an interesting case study, to see if interactions that take place in Second Life are recalled correctly. Seeing that companies are investing in Second Life to promote themselves, this seems like a good idea!

Eduisland is starting to grow

Eduisland is starting to see some new growth. The official board in the commons area shows:

Organizations List
============================
1. University of Delaware & Cochise College
2. New York University (SCPS/McGhee Div.)
3. ARISEnet Teachers Group
4. G D Hines College of Architecture (Univ of Houston)
5. Glendale Community College, Maricopa CCD
6. Empire State College, SUNY
7. Fiction Alley (NYC)
8. Education Media Lab, Montana State University
9. George Washington University
10. Center for Advanced Technology in Education, Univ. of Oregon
11. International Society for Technology in Education
12. University of Hawaii at Manoa, School of Communications
13. Otis College of Art and Design
14. Johnson & Wales University (Charlotte, NC)
15. NC State University (National Extension Initiative)
16. Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (New Zealand)
17. Loyalist College (Canada)
18. University of Cincinnati (affiliated)
19. Stanford University Libraries

Some of these locations are already built.