Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

What Web Wows You?

If you love web 2.0 apps like Viddler, MySpace, YouTube, Google Earth, Joost, Facebook, Jaiku or Twitter haven't voted for the 2008 Webware 100 Awards get on over there and start voting!

There are ten categories this year including:

• Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks.
• Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines.
• Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences.
• Communications: E-mail, chat, voice.
• Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware.
• Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites.
• Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping.
• Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests.
• Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection.
• Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

You can pick up to three apps in each category and the nominees are amazing. But time is running out. The last voting day is March 31st.

Click my "I Voted" badge to get your chance to cancel out my vote for Scrabbulous, 30 boxes, Viddler, Twitter and get your favorites some love.

It Says I'm Alive

I punched the button on a website tonight and saw a map of a year long emotional and physical journey into Community.

Thanks to the skill and generosity of Damon Cortesi and his smart website I can see beginning in the spring of 2007 my discovery of a new world thanks to twitter.

 
Pausing to Think

Before I found myself in a hospital bed with a stroke diagnosis the weekend of September 8th 2007, my twitter journey was all pretty predictable.

Looking back, and with the help of the graph which gives a clear picture of my reticence, it seems that I took baby steps and felt my way. Entering a new community, the pattern of colors says that learning about interaction and people came first.

The Opportunity of Association

Meeting people led to working with the Electric Sheep and the Metanomics Series in Second Life, giving me opportunities to interact more. I see that in red and purple bars in the chart.

It was a time of slowly opening up, forming loose associations, then deeper ones.

And then the stroke, as small as it was, made me doubt my abilities to do that.

That part of the picture is hard for me to look at but also hard to miss. The graph from tweetstats  plots out for me, I see a painful picture of myself.

Pulling Back

The struggle with misplacing words, using spatial skills and feeling scared shows there is a dismal grey blob - shrinking somehow on the graph like I felt at the time. And then just as clearly comes my increasing efforts to test my abilities in the month following.

I needed some time, And then I needed some practice. I needed to focus.

And through the fall the twitter community nurtured me in that, forgave my lapses, encouraged my efforts.

What Elephant In The Room?

And then it gets red. And all I see is RED. The big red block is called cancer. And that's undeniable.

It happened in January. And it was like a dam bursting.

Both the sudden cancer diagnosis I received on December 7th and the twitter community's reaching out to me in such a generous way had stunned me.

I tweeted answers to questions and messages of thanks.

I tweeted silliness to relieve the worry and updates to try to inform.

I tweeted to a seemingly endless array of good people during long nights.

I tweeted because I was alive.

I tweeted because people who cared were there.

It's truly a picture of the highs and the lows.

Graphic evidence never spoke to me this way before. A new world just showed its face. And the paths of our lives - divorces, births, job changes, moves, crisis, and joys - could be available to us all with the touch of a button. Truths and realities come in different wrappings in 2008.

How unexpected to see one's emotional life displayed in a graph that's really designed to show something else altogether.

So I'll be watching to see my future as it plays out by way of bars of color generated by an impersonal machine, but made possible by someone who cared enough to give us the gift.

For me - it's a sort of map of myself. And it's something I find oddly reassuring.

Upscoop Sifts Your Contacts

When writing about how you let your friends know what  social networks you participate in I could only tell you so much in one article. But there's more.

Including - upscoop - a service which identifies which friends are part of what network.

This puts the burden of finding you on your friends.

They - if they know about upscoop and are willing to give the program access to their friends lists - just let upscoop sift through their lists from various sources. Then upscoop provides an alphabetized list of friends links to their pages on whatever social networking sites they are registered with

Nifty? Yes. A little on the privacy-invading side?

Probably, There's a lot I don't know but it may go too far.

I think I'll stay with my practice of just showing icons with links to all my social sites for the time being, and I'll keep  a couple of aggregators running for the really nosy out there just in case.

That way you won't have to find upscoop to find me.  . . . But it was kinda nifty watching upscoop work.

"Work From Home" Generation Includes Me Too

In The "Work From Home" Generation writer  Alex Iskold  writes about the  good the bad and the ugly of working at home. Commutes, laptops, wifi, time with family, savings, flexibility - Alex has it covered.

"instead of putting on suits and driving to work, people are heading to the basement in their pajamas and turning on their personal computers. These are the early days of the new Work From Home generation..."

He's got the picture of me 20 years ago when I literally went to my basement to paint and teach and to the kitchen to do what we then called guerrilla marketing

Luckily at that point there were six of us in the house and car-pools, committees, entrepreneur groups and clients to keep me from feeling alone. But Alex addressed this too when he writes

"The dynamics of an office work environment stimulate us in ways that are not going to be present when working from home.

"Each interaction brings in human subtleties and brings an opportunity for creative thought and innovation. When working at home these stimuli will not be there and everyone is going to get bored, sooner or later. The antidote is to get out of the house - work from a local coffee shop that has wifi, and once in a while go to the office and talk to your co-workers in person.

Luckily for me, I discovered Second Life for meetings and twitter for brainstorming and networking

Alex recognizes these tools and trends including

" . .basic software for virtual teams, as well as how to assemble an online office. . . .  From better brainstorming tools to video conferencing there are opportunities to innovate to make virtual collaboration smooth and painless."

I'm not saying either are smooth or painless, but what new technology is?  And we do have to show more of our work-at-home brethren the wonders of Second Life and Twitter as tools, not means to an end or amazing solutions to every issue.

I'm still working from home 20 years after I started. Now I've just got better tools and more company.

Sun Helps You Learn Java

Whoever said you can't get something for nothing hadn't met the people at Sun Microsystems.

They're running something called Java Technology Fundamentals (click image for enlargement) on Nov 29th at 9AM SL/Pacific (Noon Eastern) and promise to have information on other Sun resources not just about Java but about other platforms as well

It's just another way that rel life companies are using virtual worlds to create learning and networking opportunities for a wide variety of people.

Another plus - you can attend in your pajamas, or as we call them at my house, permajamas.

Events are held at the Sun developer playground and you must have downloaded the SL software and gone through orientation beforehand.

If you're brave, tell them my virtual self, Tynan Clary sent you.

Note - Don't try to accomplish orientation the same day as the event
Questions: email : sdnonsecondlife@sun.com

Nov 14, 2007: Vietnam Veteran's Wall Creators and Cisco Luminaries

You just can't say there's nothing interesting to do in Second Life, or no interesting people to meet, ideas to discuss and more

For example, here are just two that I'm looking forward to today.

You couldn't go wrong attending, listening, asking questions, having a conversation or two at either one. It would ne next to impossible to come out with something you didn't go in with.

Nov 14: at Noon PST/SLT

Second Life's Vietnam Wall

The Creators will visit with us in the Amphitheater area of Dr Dobbs Island and talk about how they came up with the idea, and managed the process of bringing DC's famed Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Wall to Second Life with dignity and honor

Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dr%20Dobbs%20Island/215/117/27  Amphitheater

To visit The Wall in SL before or after this event, teleport to this location

Download the wall welcome note.txt which will be helpful to you

Nov 14: also at Noon PST/SLT

Cisco Luminaries will be Talking Tech:

Alan Cohen, VP Enterprise and Midmarket Solutions, and Joe Burton, CTO, Unified Communications will discuss layered architectures, security, on-premises versus hosted collaboration services, and operational tools.

Location: cisco systems http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/66/28/22

References:

Cisco Virtual Environments Blog or Cisco Live at Networkers! Technical Sessions Online:

 

20071114 20071114 Vietnam Wall Creators

20071115 20071115 Virtual Worlds/ Social Gaming

 

Networking into 2018

What if putting on glasses that allowed you to access directions, information and virtual worlds was as normal as getting up in the morning? What if they were also available as contact lenses?

And what if you could ask questions of the man who dreamed up the world in which this happened, which is something Information Week's Mitch Wagner, in his Ziggy Figaro persona, gets to do, and wearing cool shoes like these. (click for the way out detail)

It's Easy

Each Tuesday at 8 a.m, Second Life time ([Pacific) Mitch meets with a guest, or a couple of them, at the amphitheater at Dr Dobbs Island in Second Life for Grid Talk.

The best part of this for me - besides getting to see cool stuff people find to wear - is that the open audience format is very casual and the company is put at ease.

Asking questions during the presentation is encouraged, chat is far from stifled, and all are welcome to stay after the event to interact with whoever is available.

Networking and networked

The future, networked technologies and their effect on out daily lives was on tap this morning in an open meeting with author Charles Stross,  focusing primarily on the world of 2018 he created for his sci fi novel Halting State.

Mitch admitted his prejudice about this particular novel before the event when he wrote

"Halting State is a well-realized and intelligent treatise about near-future effects of networked technology.

It's also an extremely entertaining, thrilling, and funny crime caper novel."

Informed opinion

Stross has published 14 novels, including Accelerando,the Merchant Family series,
Singularity Sky, and The Atrocity Archive

Thus alone may seemed to qualify him to opine on effects of artificial intelligence on human society by way of his research for writing,

This morning I was delayed by a sick spouse so was late getting to the event, which makes it even better that for those who missed the discussion in Second Life there will be a downloadable
audio file or a podcast.

The details I have are that it will be available at the Information Week site within a short time of the presentation.

Group Photo: the sci-fiesque audience was colorful, complete with horns and little green men

Next week? I don't know what's on the schedule, but I'll try to be prompt because it's never, ever boring.

Mashmaker Creator Presents at Intel in Second Life

I just came from the presentation at Intel's Second Life Conference Center, where Rob Ennals, creator of MashMaker gave an overview hosted by SL rep from Intel Software Peretz Stine.

Sounds like a great tool - and one even I could get a grasp on - at least in theory and demonstration. Here's the overview.

Mashmaker is: a browser tool that enables the creation of mashups on the fly with no programming or scripting.

From my paltry barely-geek understanding you teach Mashmaker what you want it to learn and it then displays icons representing mashups that it thinks you might want to apply to your current page. 

Could this include items you'd like to sell via showing he page you made to others? I hadn't thought of that. But one of the group asked the question and Rob said Yes, it did give me some ideas.

Maps, events, wish list items?

All the stuff related to a baby shower? Or a potential trip? Aha, this could be interesting.

Watch the Mashmaker Videos from Intel and then here's where you can get in on the Beta Preview plus don't forget to tell us - and Intel - what you think.

Audience member pictured is Jim Giles (Second Life's Prius Carr) an Embedded Software Engineer at Southpark Systems. Other photos at http://tynanclary.tumblr.com/

Link Love for Socialmeter

Tip: Try the socialmeter tool to determine what kind of love you're getting from social media hot spots.

They didn't tell me I'm a Social Media rock star - or much I didn't suspect already. But it did give me some indication about where I'm doing well - and not so well.

Not a bad investment of sixty seconds or so.

Cisco and the Search for Employees in Virtual Worlds

Before I go on to yet another post talking about twitter <insert readers' groans> Just a quick one about Virtual worlds, If you wondered how people get hired to work in the Virtual World field, here's a tidbit.

I attended an event in Second Life this morning at which Mitch Wagner of Information Week - Ziggy Figaro in Second Life and @ziggyfigaro on twitter - talked about the Virtual Career Fair Cisco is holding today with their partner companies.

Cisco has done amazing work using Second Life and other VWs for business, and this was a chance to get a feel for what the recruiting effort was about,

The guests were Christian Renaud the chief architect for networked virtual environments and Randy Sisk who is the Cisco's new markets and technologies scout.

(as an aside, we decided we all want to have "scout" in our titles)

Christian explained that

"Back in the spring when we had the Channel 2.0 event with VAR BUsiness magazine we were really overwhelmed at the quantity of our channel partners already in SL so this was a logical fit, they are here, we are here, smart folks are here that are looking for new jobs. Win.

Like the great interviewer that he is, Ziggy wanted to know if this meant there were companies present who were the right fit or were there individuals looking for jobs. Turns out the answer was both and in fact the event that Cisco had done in the Spring "drove some in as companies that had been lurking."

Ah - we knew there were lurking companies, sending avatars in to get a lay of the land and evaluate how they might use Second Life and other WVs for business purposes. I've long contended that attending meetings of all kind are the perfect excuse to make the leap.

If I had to bet, I'd suggest that this is just the beginning.

Attend other Grid Talk sessions by

   - learning how to walk and talk in Second Life,

    - put some clothes on and show up at Dr Dobbs Island  (that link will transport you so you won't be forced to fly)

    - be there any Tuesday morning at 8AM Second Life time (pacific).

Say Hi to Tynan Clary while you're there, It's really me.

Although I am unable to help you with the details of your appearance the day of any event, I'm glad to do so if you contact me at least 48 hours advance. Next Tuesday is just around the corner.

.

Note: Learn more about what Cisco's doing in virtual worlds and in today's Cisco fair here. Today's fair was designed to provide a virtual forum for European engineers and the companies who are partnered with Cisco and who need to connect with candidates for IT jobs are: Dimension Data UK, Belgium, Germany, Luxemburg, NetDesign, Alliant Technologies, Affinity, Voice Tech, Touchbase, Telindus, and BBNED.