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McConaughey's 'Surfer, Dude' Gets a Trailer by Erik Davis Jul 18th 2008 // 5:32PM Filed under: Comedy, Sports, Fandom, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips The first trailer for Surfer, Dude, starring Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson has just surfaced over on Moviefone, and, well, I suddenly have the urge to take off my shirt and run into the water. The film stars McConaughey as surfer Steve Addington, who, upon returning home for summer, discovers the waves have disap

It stands to reason that bullying happens in kids’ virtual worlds (e.g., Club Penguin, Webkinz, Neopets, Nicktropolis, etc.), because, well, it happens in school, instant messaging, and social-networking sites. But I hadn’t learned how it happened until Sharon Duke Estroff called me about it. The Atlanta-based parenting columnist, former elementary school teacher, kids’ pop culture expert, author, and mother of four spent a couple of weeks in Club Penguin to learn what her eight-year-old son m

Seeing lots of talk about the new .ME top level domain that you can register at various places online, notably Go Daddy. I decided to see if virtual.me is taken already and, of course, it is. A number of people using the service FriendFeed are saying their experience with GoDaddy has resulted in failure, so maybe whomever snagged virtual.me will get denied. I haven’t gotten that excited about nor used my walled for registering under any other TLD than .com, .net and .org. Must admit that a

Back in 2003 a company called Linden Labs invited people to start their Second Life.  The 3D entertainment company had created a virtual world where people could create a character to represent themselves, called an avatar.  Furthermore, you could buy land, create items and sell them, or just socialize in this new virtual world.  Real world businesses tested the waters by creating virtual storefronts which would offer a form of advertising and marketing to in-game personas who were controlled b

Small Worlds, Small Minds: How Brands Have Sucker-Punched Virtual Worlds 07.18.08 | No Comments The brand agenda has siphoned talent from the metaverse to create the equivalent of commercial candy, throwing a sucker punch at the idea of virtual worlds without even knowing it’s doing it. It’s OK, corporate collaboration and education can fill the gap, right? It’s the teachers who advance society not Coke, although it’s not for lack of trying - yesterday’s vending machine in the cafeteria is to

Small Worlds, Small Minds: How Brands Have Sucker-Punched Virtual Worlds 07.18.08 | No Comments The brand agenda has siphoned talent from the metaverse to create the equivalent of commercial candy, throwing a sucker punch at the idea of virtual worlds without even knowing it’s doing it. It’s OK, corporate collaboration and education can fill the gap, right? It’s the teachers who advance society not Coke, although it’s not for lack of trying - yesterday’s vending machine in the cafeteria is to

Within the next two to three minutes, you will uncover if you have had relationships based in reality or fantasy! I want you to recall a failed relationship and ask yourself one question, “Why didn’t it work?” Initially, you may answer, “They cheated, lied, changed, etc.” But be honest with yourself. Without honesty there cannot be any changes in your life. The truth may be you created a world in which this person could not live up too! “How is that possible,” is what you are thinking, “I wo

You’ve read our blog posts, the Tech Crunch article and our WebFlock product website and you’ve realized we are tackling fun and complex software problems! Building small worlds is fun and even The GOOG is wise to their potential. We are looking for talented ActionScript and Java developers to join our team and help us push the limits of what is possible for non-downloadable, web-based virtual worlds (big and small). Come join us at ESC and help us change the way people interact with the web.

You’ve read our blog posts, the Tech Crunch article and our WebFlock product website and you’ve realized we are tackling fun and complex software problems! Building small worlds is fun and even The GOOG is wise to their potential. We are looking for talented ActionScript and Java developers to join our team and help us push the limits of what is possible for non-downloadable, web-based virtual worlds (big and small). Come join us at ESC and help us change the way people interact with the web.

muvee announced a partnership today with Cyworld to let the Korean social network and virtual world's users edit and share videos. It seems like most of the video sharing will be done through Cyworld's hompies (or social network profile home...

I've been searching through the forums for a mention of the Metaverse Republic and I can't find any, which is strange because I think it is so your sort of subject. At the SLBA seminar the other night I met Ashcroft Burnham, who is planning to set up a judicial system for SL. Initially I assumed this was like a mock court, and meant for training up lawyers. But no... Ashcroft dropped a FAQ and an explanatory document on me, and it seems that theyhave decided to institute Judge Judy for S

A comment by David on my last post made me realise that there may be an opening for a new type of product. David says "Social networks- (like this one, Blogger) are nothing other than "the man" asking the sharecroppers to till his fields. That's right- if you don't own the server space, you are nothing but a digital sharecropper." Owning your own server space seems to run counter to the trend of web services and computing as a utility, however it does make sense from a couple of other angles.

This Sun BluePrints article describes how data center best practices for disk and network I/O translate into the virtual world. (One example is the configuration of multiple data paths to network and storage resources to increase availability.)

The Friday Round-Up By Joanna Higgins July 18th, 2008 @ 8:07 am 0 Comments | Permalink Email Share My BNET StumbleUpon Newsvine del.icio.us Google Digg Technorati Reddit My Yahoo Facebook Print Recomend 0 Categories: News, Strategy, Management, Workplace Tags: Financial, Aunt, Refuge, Andrew Charalambous, Robert Peston, Currency & Foreign Exchange, Financial Accounting, Finance, Joanna Higgins Let’s start with enterprise. Bad Entrepreneur explains the value of setting goals

Art to die for? by Eric While he claims to be seeking world peace, Waafa Bilal (creator of the Bush assassination video game that's generated controversy) strikes me as a seeker of pseudo-martyrdom for profit. In this interview, he claims that the Americans killed his brother and his father died from the grief, and that he's letting himself be shot with thousands of paintballs:WB: The idea here is to move (*bang*) my living room into the gallery space and to set up a system where you have

Writing for the Huffington Post (an online news outlet that regularly hosts pseudoscience and anti-vaccinationist ravings), Deepak Chopra seeks to inform us: Why the Paranormal is Normal. What he actually demonstrates is his ability to twist and abuse language in an attempt to distract and confuse his reader. At this verbal deception Chopra is truly the master. Language is important- words matter. Anyone who has studied a technical field should appreciate the need to use precise and unambiguou

Get ready for the lesbian-themed virtual world. Showtime’s “The L Word” is teaming up with multimedia developer Electric Sheep to create its own interactive experience. The service will begin testing next month with plans to fully launch in early 2009 — when the show’s new series begins — according to the Hollywood Reporter. The virtual world will use Electric Sheep’s Webflock platform. Webflock is Flash-based, thereby requiring no end-user downloads or setup prior to use. “The L Word” virt

Virtual Worlds are never easy to explain to people who are not involved already. Being a journalist, I am glad to write in the Belgian business newspaper De Tijd about the collaboration possibilities of virtual worlds, in business and education. I often feel a bit like an evangelist. I am always glad to see virtual worlds experts having the opportunity to practice their evangelism in mainstream media. You can read a very nice example in The Wall Street Journal, where legal scholar Benjamin Dur

The Second Life® Relay For Life Caledon Build in the Heroes 7 sim....

IBM's Metaverse Evangelist Roo Reynolds is heading to the BBC to serve as Portfolio Executive, Social Media, where, according to Reynolds' blog, he'll be "helping to define, develop and execute BBC Vision’s strategy in relation to social media." It seems...