Month: February 2007

The wonderful Penguin UK and DeMontfort University have teamed up to create a massive wiki novel project. For the month of Feb (and beyond hopefully), anyone (including spammers you darn…!) can co-write a novel on a wiki. Here is their goal:

Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door? Typically, a writer will acknowledge in print the efforts of their book’s editor, copy editor and agent, since they each will have read the work in draft form. But such acknowledgments regularly include a disclaimer along these lines : “Any errors that remain are, of course, my own”. So the majority of published writers depend on collaboration, but only up to a point. After all, there is usually a single name on the jacket of a novel.

So is the novel immune from being swept up into the fashion for collaborative activity? Well, this is what we are going to try and discover with A Million Penguins, a collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise. We should go into this with the best spirit of scientific endeavour – the experiment is going live, the lab is under construction, the subjects are out there. And the results? We’ll see in a couple of months.

Check out aMillionPenguins.

INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL EARTH 3D VISUALIZATION GRAND CHALLENGE

How can we better experience this world of ours at the cross roads of human impacts and climate change?  How can we best communicate these experiences, particularly in light of the major changes Earth now faces, as one world?  How can we most compellingly understand and communicate those experiences and processes?  What 3D experiences or 3D tools can you share that might encourage the opportunity for a better world?  If you think you can do this in a way that demonstrates how people can more easily and effectively communicate, YOU COULD WIN BIG!

The International Digital Earth 3D Visualization Challenge gives researchers, creative programmers, community leaders, activists, and students this unprecedented opportunity for international visibility of their work.  Submit your entry by 1 April 2007 to be one of several International Digital Earth Challenge Winners!

Winners will be flown, with all expenses paid, from around the world to San Francisco for the June 5th to June 9th symposium. Six (6) finalists will receive their awards and prize packages at the Gala Awards Dinner on June 7th on the U.C. Berkeley campus.  Contest sponsors, including Google, ESRI, and NASA will be attending the awards ceremonies for the International Symposium for Digital Earth awards dinner.  Winners will be afforded the unique opportunity to interview with these industry giants for potential employment opportunities.

Runners-up will receive outstanding recognition by the International Society of Digital Earth, and the major geobrowser leaders; ESRI, GeoFusion, Google, and the NASA World Wind team.

Don’t delay.  Visit the Challenge Contest Rules today at http://dex.telascience.org/entry-form or on the conference web site at www.isde5.org!

Be recognized as a world-class Digital Earth Champion!  For the chance of a lifetime, accept the Digital Earth Challenge!!!

 

I recently attended and presented at the First Joint International Conference on CyberGames. I was asked to write an article on the conference for RealTime. Please note that the last paragraph has been incorrectly edited. The conference was not enjoyable in spite of Scot & my workshops! Read “Playing with Reality in Virtual Worlds“.

Also, RealTime published a pic and small paragraph summary of an installation and performance project in the online virtual world Second Life: Second Front: Online Performance Art. I previously reviewed that event here.