Second Life as your next browser
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 14:15Over on a mailing list of educators in Second Life, there is a raging discussion about the pros and cons of ‘web on a prim’. A prim is a basic building block of Second Life and people worry about all kinds of horrible things that could happen is Linden Labs enabled some sort of Web on a Prim technology. Obviously, there are all kinds of issues that could come up with griefers messing around with web-enabled prims. Yet the bigger issue is what this would do to Second Life as a space for innovation. People would be lazy and simply embed webpages into their Second Life spaces. Second Life would simply become your next browser.
Actually, I kind of like that idea. I hate clicking on a link in Second Life and having Firefox pop up as an external unconnected window. I would like Second Life to be my browser. I would love to see the next iteration of the web be three dimensional, immersive, real time and with a viable microcurrency.
On the NonCampaign Trail
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 09/16/2007 - 10:54September weekends in Connecticut are wonderful times to get out and view some of the beauty of our state. On even years, there are major state and federal political campaigns going on. On odd years, there are municipal elections, and the curious noncampaign trail.
Yesterday, Kim, Fiona and I went to three campaign events. The first two were sponsored by town committees to support the municipal candidates and the third was a CCAG barbeque. At each of these events, there were major figures not currently running for office, but sounding and looking a lot like candidates. Perhaps at these small gatherings we can see some of the themes for coming elections.
Dick Blumenthal spoke about fighting hard for the people of Connecticut. Susan Bysiewicz spoke about getting people more involved in elections and in their state. Chris Murphy was noted for his victory in the fifth congressional district and Ned Lamont was noted as the bellweather in terms of getting Democrats to stand up and talk about the issues that matter. Both Chris and Ned made comments thanking people for their support.
George Jepsen was on the noncampaign trail as well talking about key democratic values, and Audrey Blondin, who didn’t get any opportunities to speak that I saw, was constantly working in the background.
There are a lot of important municipal elections this year. Next year will be big elections as we elect a new president, have congressional elections and see how the new campaign finance laws affect state elections. There is a lot less mystery about these elections. The exciting races to watch are all the potential 2010 candidates on the NonCampaign Trail.
Online Surveys and Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/15/2007 - 11:36What is your opinion worth? This morning, I got an email from Survey Savvy offering me $1 to fill out a survey. e-Rewards offered me $4 to fill out their survey, and ZoomPanel offered me an unspecified number of ZoomPoints. Zogby doesn’t offere me anything for filling out their surveys, but I often fill them out.
With ZoomPanel, when you get to a certain level, you can redeem your ZoomPoints for something from their catalog. The dollars you get from e-Rewards can be exchanged for gift certificates. It is sort of like the good old shopping stamps from my youth.
Back then, we would get our stamps, put them in booklets and take them to the redemption center. The brand name I remember was S&H Greenstamps, and I wondered how they evolved. Now, you can earn Greenpoints online.
All of these are ways of doing micropayments online. Everyone has their own little currency, some of which gets redeemed into tangible assets. In many ways, the Linden Dollar in Second Life is another microcurrency that is particularly well suited to micropayments. There is an active market in Linden dollars to buy things in Second Life or to exchange Linden Dollars for U.S. Dollars. If I were S&H Greenstamps, or some other micropayment group, I would think about setting up a redemption center in Second Life. Likewise, there are some sites that provide for exchanging points between programs. They would probably do well to and Linden Dollars as another type of point that can be exchanged.
All of this takes me back to the online surveys. One way that people can make money in Second Life is shaking money trees. I visited a money tree last night. When I touched the money tree, it gave me a URL to go to. At this URL, I was given the option of filling out several different surveys. Each survey paid in the range of 50 Linden Dollars. This works out to be around fifteen to twenty cents. It’s a pretty poor payout. Looking at the survey’s they seem mostly to be simply trying to buy email addresses.
So, for my purposes, I’ll probably keep filling out e-Rewards surveys when I get an interesting one, Zogby surveys when they come and maybe a few others if I ever have more free time or if they ever are particularly interesting or have a good payout.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep my eyes open for good paying high quality surveys in Second Life. I expect one of these days, some of the redemption centers will find the value of the Linden Dollar.
The continuing quest for the teachable moment
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/14/2007 - 15:27I’ve been writing a lot about the Avery Doninger Civil Rights case over the past few weeks. Besides what I’ve placed on the website, I’ve also contacted various people around the state and the country that should have an interest in finding the teachable moments from this.
One such message was one that I wrote to Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.
Random reactions to this evening’s speeches
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 22:30Initially, I thought that that the windows in the background of President Bush’s address to the nation looked somehow eerie, sort of like images from a horror movie. I expected some black lagoon like creature to some through the window. As I got more used to it, I wondered if we would see Markos Moulitsas Zúniga’s head pop up with a bunch of supporters and then have him rush in.
My mind wandered to think about how much it reminded me of http://vietnam.vassar.edu/doc14.html >Nixon’s "Vietnamization," speech of November 3, 1969. Although I must say that Nixon’s speech was much better.
I then thought about some of the work I’ve been doing with systems like Second Life, and it struck me that Bush almost appeared life like. The biggest problem, however, was the speech itself. I suspect a good Markov Chain Generator could have done a better job.
As to the responses, Jack Reed did quite well. I also thought that Joe Biden did a good job, although I wondered if he has been sitting next to Mike Gravel a little too much recently. I hope neither of them were tapping their feet. Rudy Giuliani returned me to the initial horror movie motif. The way his eyes bulged as he spoke made me think that whatever had been lurking outside the window and already gotten to him.
For me, however, the only person who looked or sounded presidential was John Edwards during his paid advertisement.
