Sunday, May 21, 2006

(Two from) Roland's Sunday Smart Trends #111. Virtual nightclub offers teens alter egos School dances were once the training grounds for teens to learn to interact with the opposite sex. [But if] Andrew Littlefield has his way, young people will hone their social skills within his virtual nightclub, which features all the trappings of a trendy hotspot: dim lights, Jacuzzi and bouncers. Littlefield is the architect of The Lounge, an Internet nightclub that threw open its virtual doors on Monday. Source: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com, May 14, 2006 Winning (and Losing) the First Wired War The Iraq war was launched on a theory: That, with the right networking gear, American armed forces could control a country with a fraction of the troops ordinarily needed. But that equipment never made it down to the front lines, David Axe (just back from his 6th trip to Iraq) and I note in this month's Popular Science. Which is a problem, because the insurgents using throwaway cellphones and anonymous e-mail accounts to stitch together a network of their own. [Note: the full article is on Popular Science.] Source: Noah Shachtman, with David Axe in Iraq, Popular Science, June 2006 8:23:17 PM    comment []

Magritte mashups (flickr-Flash-500pix) .... Magritte mashups (flickr-Flash-500pix) [robot wisdom weblog] 8:22:00 PM    comment []

Javascript adds reflections to images. This little Javascript library -- reflect.js -- lets you add reflections to the images on your site. Comes as a standalone or a Wordpress plugin. Link (via Digg) [Boing Boing] 8:21:02 PM    comment []

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source. Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source: A courageous young notebook computer committed a fatal, self-inflicted execution error late Sunday night, selflessly giving its own life so that professors, academic advisors, classmates, and even future generations of college students would never have to read Jill Samoskevich’s 227-page master’s thesis, sources close to the Brandeis University English graduate student reported Monday. ——- another example of how heros are found everywhere. [Too many topics, too little time.] 11:18:32 AM    comment []

Concern in Iran After a Scholar Is Held 3 Weeks [New York Times: International News] 11:18:20 AM    comment []

The Future of Media Arts. Ally #1, Bruce Sterling, has laid down another phenomenal rant, this time on the future of media arts. It's a lovely stroll through ubiquitous computing, how the Internet of things maps to the 3D world, and why the art world has a critical role to play in understanding how this new blending of smart places, spimes, and systems for making visible the invisible come together, an exploration of what art becomes when the actual is the new virtual. If you have no idea what we mean when we use these phrases, it's even more worth your time. You can listen to the entire talk here. It ties into a ton of stuff we talk about on Worldchanging -- walkshed technologies, reputation economics, participatory panopticons, product-service systems -- but adds a wonderful dash of Bruce's predict-the-present futurism. (via MAzine.) [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here] 10:55:25 AM    comment []

Hoping to Get on the Fast Track, Students Turn to Career Coaches. Entry-level job coaching has emerged as an offshoot of traditional career coaching, which is usually reserved for midcareer professionals. By EILENE ZIMMERMAN. [NYT > Education] 10:51:48 AM    comment []

Pineapple Ends Reign in Hawaii: One-Time King of Fruits Abandoned for More Profitable Crops, by Mark Niesse, Washington Post. With the industry facing stiff foreign competition, specialized crops such as noni, papaya and macadamia nuts are filling the void. "We're losing what Hawaii once had, but we're moving forward to a better time," said Wong, a well-known local chef and the owner of several restaurants, including the Pineapple Room in Honolulu. "If you want a taste of Hawaii, you can have it in ways you never had before." 10:48:37 AM    comment []