Blue Planet News You Can Use

I ditto the wishes for a great summer for everyone.

I landed a great job with The Ocean Project which now has approximately 800 international zoo, aquarium, museum and science organization partners participating in ocean-related community building. Did you know that World Ocean Day is getting to be a big deal? The Ocean Project owns the www.worldoceanday.org domain and promotes it year-round.

We have a monthly newsletter and almost two years of archives.

I am building the new Website to include the merits we discussed in class. Looks like a ten-year educational and introduction path as many of the institutions involved are long-standing public treasures that have to be thoughtful in any transitioning.

I'm still at the UW half-time, but spending all my days in Providence and Pawtucket here in Rhode Island.

If you are in the area, visit!

Mobile phone for protests

Hi class,
Hope you have all been enjoying the summer.
I just read this article in the Economist and thought about our similar discussions in class.

Read here

Video Games as Spectator Sports

Hi all! And, as Bruce said, congratulations to LaTasha and Janice!

This is a bit afield, but I think still of interest. You've probably read about the elite status of gamers in places like South Korea, where there's huge tournaments for large cash prizes.

There's a US video game league forming. The players are actually going to be drafted as in basketball, baseball, etc. The teams will take turn choosing their players and each will get a salary of $30,000. The tournaments will be broadcast on DirecTV.

Seems like another step in the mainstreaming of video games in our culture....

Congratulations to our Recent Graduates

OK. Our quarter is over. Let's divide and conquer and stay true to the promise of socially-mediated communications after we've seen how it can enrich our lives first hand. Keep in touch, OK?

Here Come the Big Boys

Seems Microsoft has been listening in on our discussions and is eager to simmer some buzzword soup. I am sure our two Google visitors got their ears burning. Their ecosystem model for enabling Web content, innovated via the help of their Popfly tool, sure sounds politically correct. By all means, give it a whirl and let us know what you come up with via an entry or two here.

In fact, anyone who stumbles on our awesome TC 505 blog who has any Popfly experience should leave a comment here (please).

Relevant TED Talks

The secretive, once-a-year TED talks that take place in Monterey, California, are finally being shared with the world via the video publishing craze. I find them strong contributions for stirring important debate in societal issues. Of course you can comment back to the presenter as well and read the comments while listening to the speaker. Three presentations I find most relevant to our time spent this quarter:

How a ragtag band created Wikipedia

How cooperation trumps conflict

Technology evolves like we did

Half of the other talks frame something or other from class with thoughts of the implications

Virtual Cities

Please take a look at my Virtual Cities site and provide any feedback you might have regarding the potential of a community-based, open source virtual city for a city's residents to use. The goal of the site is to motivate potential participants to generate virtual city content after a short demonstration session where the creation process is demonstrated. Before our class together, I would have just sent this link around to try and promote the idea. Now, I hope to get feedback through comments to my blog on the subject. Eventually, I'd convert these Virtual City Web pages to a Wiki once I had enough people interested in maintaining it.

I've started communicating with the Providence Waterfront Park Architects, suggesting a virtual Providence would help promote their project better. In June, I plan to meet with interested city and state government officials to pitch the idea. With so many creative college campuses in the city (more per capital than Boston even), I am hopeful to find a groundswell of interest. I'll demo in class but am providing the site ahead of time for those interested.