Mashable contributor Doriano ‘Paisano’ Carta recently posted a “list of the best tools for researchers today” –

In addition to being able to saves text, audio, video and links during your research online you’ll also be able to share these collections of notes with colleagues, students or anyone else. You can also keep things private for your own research projects. Here are just some of the tools every modern researcher needs ….

• iLeonardo
• Google Notebook
• Zoho Notebook
• UberNote
• EverNote
• ClipMarks
• iLighter
• Twitterlights
• Dappad
• Scrapbook
• WiredMarker
• NetNotes

- Doriano “Paisano” Carta @ Mashable

Tower of Babel: The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas.

Babel seeks multilingual and multicultural writers, editors, bloggers and translators proficient in using web tools to continue building in over 250 languages what has been recognized since 2001 by the United Nations as one of the most import social and human sciences online periodicals.

There are over 250 subdomains of towerofbabel.com ready to be configured by those who are interested in taking the language-oriented subdomains and helping to build the tower ….

Design your language’s tower however you wish but continue what has already been pioneered as an attempt to build a tower aiming for the highest egalitarian, altruistic, philanthropic and humanitarian structures.

Tower of Babel: Link.

Babel English Blog: Link.

“In an online game called World of Warcraft, an unexpected error in the software has provided a ready-made laboratory for studying the effects of an epidemic.”

The discovery, revealed in next month’s issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, has been hailed as a significant step forward in understanding how a deadly virus could break out.

… In September 2005 what was intended as a minor hindrance for a small group of characters spiralled beyond the control of program-makers into a full-blown epidemic.

A new villain, a winged serpent called Hakkar, originally designed as a challenge for only the strongest characters, started transmitting its “corrupted blood” virus down the ranks until it affected almost every area and every player in the game.

[S]cientists were able to monitor how quickly the disease spread and where to, while assessing the players’ individual responses to the outbreak. The particular features of the game, such as the many hours players around the world dedicate to it and the emotional investment they put into their online alter egos, offer scientists a tantalisingly close match to real social conditions.

As the virus spread, very real challenges emerged, such as the failure of quarantine measures, further transmission by character’s pets and the existence of “immune” characters, who act as carriers, passing the virus to others while failing to succumb to symptoms.

[Times Online: Link]

Epidemiology @ Wikipedia

World of Warcraft @ Wikipedia.

Article @ BBC

Abstract @ Lancet (free registration required)

Post @ Boing Boing.

“Sears has launched a virtual closet, called e-Me, for the promotion of its back-to-school season …”

Sears has launched a virtual closet, called e-Me, for the promotion of its back-to-school season, partnering with Meez and Virtual Model, which powers Meez.

The site basically operates as a Sears-branded Meez. All the clothes to choose from are those that are being pushed for the back-to-school shopping season, such as The Cheetah Girls line and Canyon River Blue. Real photos are used for the items you can select for your Meez, though a digital representation is used for your actual avatar. All the other functions for Meez is included for the Sears-branded version, including backgrounds, pets, hairstyles, etc. There’s also a gallery for users of e-Me, where you can check out other users’ creations and rate them. Sears has indicated that it will be adding games and other user interaction in the future. Items can be saved to a closet and printed out for an in-store discount on clothes.

[Mashable: Link]

“Meez is a website that allows users to create their own animated avatars, or “3D I.D.” graphics, for the Web.” Wikipedia.

Further evidence that there’s money t0 be made in cyberspace … or that there’s money to be made selling cyberspace to Sears et. al.

“Curse Expands With $5 Million in Funding From AGF Private Equity”

Curse Inc., the premier gaming portal dedicated to massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and their fan communities, announced today that it has received $5 million in Series-A funding from leading French venture capital firm AGF Private Equity and angel investors. The deal helps to further secure Curse’s position as the leading MMOG destination, giving advertisers access to an in-demand and difficult to target demographic.

Prior to the Series-A funding, Curse raised more than $800,000 through an angel round of funding in December 2006.

Curse recently launched its newest version, V4 …. From image and video uploading, to blogging and social bookmarking, V4 brings Web 2.0 to the MMOG space in an unparalleled way. For more details, and to experience V4, visit www.curse.com.

[Link]

“The funding will be used … with a particular focus on advertising initiatives.”

Via paidContent.org.

Not current news, but I like the phrase “DARPA of Dissent”. Furthermore, techniques of dissent get repressed, again and again, generation after generation … can’t hurt to redundantly document the good parts.

PROF LEADS “DARPA OF DISSENT”
DefenseTech.net: August 27, 2004

[S]tarting this weekend, the machines put together here by Jeremijenko and her cohorts may get their biggest stage yet, by giving a guerrilla geek’s edge to the protests swirling around the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Months ago, it became clear that the RNC counter-demonstrations were going digital. But most of the gadgetry involved was household stuff — text messages to report cops’ whereabouts, or web pages to arrange housing. Jeremijenko and her group have gone beyond that, hand-crafting devices meant to level, just a bit, law enforcement’s technology advantage over activists.

Their devices include a 10-foot balloon, for counting crowds; a set of pirate transmitters, for taking over local radio stations; and 1,400 face masks that measure the level of pollution in the Manhattan air. Think of the group as a kind of Darpa of dissent — with Jeremijenko’s loft as the headquarters.

[Defense Tech: Link]
[Category = Dissent Tech]

slowLab states:

Natalie Jeremijenko is an inventor and engineer who focuses on the design and analysis of tangible digital media. Her work explores the transformative potential of new information technologies and alternatives to dominant IT design paradigms.

[slowLab: Link]

Google: Natalie Jeremijenko

Wikipedia: Natalie Jeremijenko

Previous post: Natalie Jeremijenko

Kevin Berger @ Salon.com writes: “She is an intellectual and emotional storm. Her renowned public artworks are reshaping the ways we think about science. Activist, environmentalist and former rock promoter Natalie Jeremijenko turns the art world upside down.”

Jeremijenko, 39, explains that her work is “all about creating interfaces that draw people into the environment and get them to reimagine collective action.” She cracks open her laptop and displays an image of 100 polycarbonate tubes or “buoys” that she’s engineered to glow when fish swim through them in the Hudson River …. Did you know the fish were on Zoloft? All the antidepressants that New Yorkers take are flushed through their urine into sewage treatment plants, which overflow into the river …. Go to the Whitney Museum and see one of her drawings hanging on a wall by a bathroom …. It asks, “Why are the Hudson River fish and frogs on antidepressants?” Printed on it in tiny letters are actual studies that attest to the chemical drug compounds in the waterway consumed by the unsuspecting bass, sturgeon and crabs.

When the buoys light up, you can feed the fish food treated with chelating agents to help cleanse the PCBs from their blood, planted there from decades of General Electric dumping waste into the river. The fish food, in fact, will not be much different from the energy bars we’re always eating on hiking trails. “The idea that we eat the same stuff is a visceral demonstration that we live in the same system,” Jeremijenko says. “Eating together is the most intimate form of kinship. By scripting a work where we share the same kind of food with fish, I’m scripting our interrelationship with them.”

[Salon.com: Link]

Thanks, EB.

See also Natalie Jeremijenko: DARPA of Dissent

If spam keeps getting smarter and smarter — reading and analying and exploiting our email habits, reading and ditto our blogs, reading and ditto our social networks — will it display artificial intelligence …?

New Scientist reports:

[The] National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
[Link]

Via Waxy.org

See also:
AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF
State Secrets Privilege

I signed up for Second Life today.

Premium account — bought my First Land!

Here’s a snapshot of my First Land, an aerial view.

The dark red objects mark out my patch.

The gray rectangular panel at ground level, inside the red border lines, that’s a billboard — currently nothing on it, but in due course I’ll upload my sketches and other stuff.

Surrounding objects belong to other subscribers. This is a First Land area, subdivided into small lots, all the same size.

Okay, so it’s not much to look at yet. I’m still coming up to speed on the Second Life editor — first, learn how to build better stuff, then learn the scripting language so I can animate that stuff. Virtual menagerie? Simulated living art gallery? Stay tuned for further developments ….

Visit me! If you don’t yet have a Second Life account, go get one — basic accounts are free.

What if your corner bar operated like a stock exchange? Well now it can, thanks to The Unstabalizer:

The Unstabalizer is an interactive, social application system, to be used in bars, clubs or any other location or event which sells different types of alcohol. Unlike regular bars where the prices of drinks are static, the Unstabalizer can turn a bar into a dynamic, self-organizing system similar to a stock exchange – The price of a drink (a “stock”) is set based on demand – The more people buy a certain drink, its price will rise, causing the prices of other drinks in this alcoholic stock market to fall. The owners and organizers use the system to set the initial prices and can also set minimum prices, to avoid loss due to “market dynamics”. But it is during the bar’s activity period that the real drinking interaction occurs as prices fluctuate based on alcohol consumption – Sometimes beer will be low and Whiskey high, but then as people rush to buy beer, it’s price will rise, causing the price of Whiskey to drop.

The system is built as a distributed Flash application. It consists of one central “Exchange” component, which centralizes the price dynamics, and several “Broker” components, which are placed next to the registers. The “Exchange” component’s Flash interface is used to input the initial prices and later to display the dynamic alcoholic stock market using engaging graphics and Flash animations. The “Broker” components’ Flash interface is used to accept requests based on people’s alcoholic desires. The requests are sent to the “Exchange”, which in turn recalculates all alcohol prices, refreshes the stock market screen and sends back the current price, which is then printed on a receipt. The receipts are handed at the bar in exchange for drinks and the dynamic price on the receipt is the one punched in the real register. Then money is collected and change is returned. The “Exchange” component can handle simultaneous “Broker” updates and synchronize prices accordingly.
[Link]

Via We Make Money, Not Art

Game designer Laukosargas Svarog has created a virtual ecosystem in Second Life:

She’s noticed some limited forms of emergence (the holy grail of artificial life developers) particularly in the development of her plant life.

“It’s very sensitive to very small changes,” she says, “like if a gene emerges which gives a plant an extra seed in its lifetime, that can cause huge growth in its locale. And the opposite of course, one less causes thinning growth. I’ve also seen the same color become a dominant gene so all the meadow cup plants became blue once. Simple things like that emerge quite often.”
[Link]

Via boingboing

Business Week reports on emerging game-based economies –

Online game Second Life is drawing legions of eager players — and big bucks from VCs who see hard profits in a booming fantasy world

Some 165,000 people roam the online virtual world Second Life through their “avatars,” or onscreen graphic characters. But it’s a good bet most of them don’t realize that in their midst is an avatar controlled by the chief executive of Amazon.com. (AMZN). Now, as part of a new $11 million funding of Second Life’s creator, San Francisco-based Linden Lab, Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos is also an investor in this growing online phenomenon.