… a request via WMMNA for submissions to an exhibition on, of all things, conceptual spying devices. The show is called SPYMAKER: The Science of Spying and is intended for children ages 8-t0-12. Why on earth they’re targeting kids when it’s the adults who are in most need of a good scare an education is beyond me.

Have to admit though, I’m tempted to submit a concept. They don’t ask for much; just a doodle and an explanation – a group of product designers will clean up the selected ideas and prep them for show. So even if you’re not an exhibitionist, you can still show off your … thinking processes.

There are professional productions that don’t look as slick as this little student project to create a movie trailer for the Half-Life videogame. Fun stuff.

via Blue’s News

About a week ago I was wondering about Multiverse, the one-size-fits-all platform on which developers can create their own virtual worlds. How were the first projects moving along? Would the beta open up this year as promised? What tools were necessary to develop content?

Turns out that things may be moving forward in fine fashion (you couldn’t really tell if you did a quick scan of the Multiverse public forum – at least I couldn’t tell).

So anyway, C|Net has a piece on the current state of Multiverse (Link) that’s worth reading for those interested in the platform. I very much like that Oregon forestation visualization project that’s discussed. In fact, it’s the variety that’s really of interest to me. Spice of life and all that.

Saw this coming. Authors are finally auctioning off naming rights to characters in their novels. It didn’t sound so bad when I emailed Stephen King the idea back in 2000. When I posted about it in January (reLink) it still sounded okay. Kind of. But now that it’s being done, it sounds so… crass . At least this time it’s for a worthwhile cause. Next time I don’t think it will be.

Imagine Tolstoy or Hemingway auctioning off naming rights. Imagine instead of “Frankenstein”, we got “Blaupunkt”. Instead of “Willy Loman” we got local furniture sales success story “Mark Stephens”.

Here’s a new prediction: authors, artists and musicians will get wealthy sponsors just like in olden times. The rich will get the good stuff (including live concerts, which will soon be so expensive the average person can’t attend) and the commoners will get sloppy seconds. Hooray for piracy and the selfish mindset it promotes; it’s the grease that’s helping these gears grind up our culture still further.

Aren’t we all proud of where this is leading us.

via Boing Boing

I suspect I’m not alone in saying this was bound to happen. From the Linden Lab blog (Link):

On September 6 we discovered evidence that an intruder was able to access the Second Life database through the web servers. The exploit was shut down on the afternoon of September 6 when we discovered it.

Detailed investigation over the last two days confirmed that some of the unencrypted customer information stored in the database was compromised, potentially including Second Life account names, real life names and contact information, along with encrypted account passwords and encrypted payment information.

No unencrypted credit card information is stored on the database in question. Unencrypted credit card information has not been compromised.

So much for anonymity. For anyone surfing the series of tubes, it’s largely a myth anyway. I just hope they didn’t get the plans for the Doomsday Device I was mocking up in SL.
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