Just read a Reuter’s article on C|Net (Link) about the Second Life security breach I mentioned earlier (reLink) and am once again amazed at the poor journalististic effort to get the facts straight. Here are some mistakes:

“Second Life,” the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online…

Not entirely true. This implies that Second Life is only about “fantasy lives”, yet many people – myself included – do not hide our real life identities and instead use Second Life as a testbed for ideas.

…letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised.

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Yesterday, while going through some bookmarks, I came across an old link to a Quicktime VR of the Hadron Collider at CERN (a really cool little toy – Link). Serendipity must be in the air because while stopping into the Digitally Distributed Environments blog today, I read an update to some panorama posts (Link) that have been going up there lately, and this one included a link to some Second Life QTVR scenes over on Panogames (Link).

I’m relatively certain I’ve seen these already; I’ve surfed through Panogames a few times. But I don’t think I’ve written about either of these. Actually, it’s the Google Earth tutorial that caught my eye, because it raises the possibility of creating environment spheres for rendering realistic CG images. Anyway, if you’ve not seen them or want to learn how to make them, check out the links for images and how-to’s.

And just last night I posted a comment on Fred Wilson’s A VC blog that advertisers would find more ways to get their usually-worthless messages to the masses. I’d say this qualifies: LED-embedded clothing.

The way this video plays, makes me want to move to the hills.

Put up a “No Trespassin'” sign.

And buy me a gun.

… 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