Disordered Cogitations

My friend Rob pointed me to this article on virtual terrorism from news.com.au.

"Just as real-life companies such as Toyota test their products in SL, so could terrorists construct virtual representations of targets they wish to attack in order to examine the potential target's vulnerabilities and reaction to attack," Jones says.

And Corinne pointed me to this MSNBC article on virtual missionary work.

Labels: missionary, religion, terrorism, virtual world

The TED blog pointed me to this great Business Week piece on making presentations. In short,

1. Build Tension
2. One Theme per Slide
3. Add Pizazz
4. Practice
5. Be Honest
6. Show Enthusiasm

Labels: Business Week, presentations, speaking, TED

I have a whole box of LP records with my favorite music from the 60's and 70's, including one from Bread! My friend Mark let me know about technology that can be used to digitize those LPs, so I can burn them to CD or put them onto my iPod. See this Chicago Tribune article. It is a record player with a USB output connection. Very cool.

Labels: digitize, LP, record player, USB

Irving Wladawsky-Berger has a great posting on why humans like virtual worlds. He says:

Maybe the reason I am so excited about the whole subject of Virtual Worlds is that in our own way we are beginning to have tools that let us make real the fruits of our imagination.

Just as word processors plus blogs empower our use of words, and digital cameras plus Flickr empower our use of images, creation tools plus virtual worlds empower our use of imagination.

Labels: imagination, virtual world

Here is an amazing visual presentation at the March TED conference by Jonathan Harris. His work is now on line at http://universe.daylife.com/ .

Labels: TED, universe, visualization

Scott Adams waxes eloquent on the power of the compliment.

Labels: compliment, dilbert

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=f390265dcbb9e1f1da97a69637e921d39b6c99aa

Labels: David Pogue, iPhone, NYT

Prediction Markets have been around for a long time, starting at the U. of Iowa. The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have issued a joint manifesto about Prediction Markets. The All-Star list of authors include at least two Nobel Laureates. They say . . .

We argue that U.S. regulators should lower barriers to the creation and design of prediction markets by creating a safe harbor for certain types of small stakes markets. We believe our proposed change has the potential to stimulate innovation in the design and use of prediction markets throughout the economy, and in the process to provide information that will benefit the private sector and government alike.

Labels: predicion markets

My friend, Daniel, pointed me to an O'Reilly Radar blog post about an ant simulation in Second Life by Tectonic Nabob. Way cool!

Labels: ant, Second Life, simulation, virtual world