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Over the last month, I worked with Jesse Thomas of JESS3, to create a new graphic that helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web. The Conversation Prism is free to use and share. It's our contribution to a new era of media education and literacy.

Yahoo's Barry gave a fascinating presentation about what he variously called "connected television" and "the cinematic Internet." While my colleagues in the user-created media space often scoff at the notion that people will want professionally made video in the age of YouTube and other video sharing sites, I think there's no question that people will want to watch amateur content on their TVs and portable devices, but they will chiefly want to watch high-quality video on their plasma and high-definition televisions. Barry spoke about "enabling the cinematic Internet, merging television and the Internet in a way users will love."

In the next update to Valve's Steam client, which distributes and manages PC games, and is probably the best digital distribution setup around (other software companies wish they had a setup half as good), Valve will be throwing cloud computing into the mix. Called Steam Cloud, the update will let you store profiles, keybindings and all of your save games online, in addition to social networking features like calendars and stuff. The cloud storage is free. Why is this a big deal?

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is an online, open access academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research.

To celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth, Times Online have created an exclusive 100 year interactive Fleming and Bond timeline. Packed with articles and photography from the Times Archive and the original reviews of Bond novels and films, it shows how closely Bond's fictional life paralleled Fleming's

To celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth, Times Online have created an exclusive 100 year interactive Fleming and Bond timeline. Packed with articles and photography from the Times Archive and the original reviews of Bond novels and films, it sho

'Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films, says her creator, Image Metrics.Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology. Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated. She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

Brand Tags: A collective experiment in brand perception. The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is. 1.2 million + tags and counting. Feeling feisty? Try battle mode.

Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. We launched in July 2008 and we've been steadily growing and adding features. We love sharing thoughts, photos, audio, and files with our friends and family, but we didn't like how hard it was... so we made a better way. That's posterous. We're super excited to see what happens when blogging becomes as easy as email, and we hope you enjoy posterous as much as we do. Thanks for trying it.

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar.

A SYDNEY girls' school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to "phone a friend" and use the internet and i-Pods during exams. Presbyterian Ladies' College at Croydon is giving the assessment method a trial run with year 9 English students and plans to expand it to all subjects by the end of the year. An English teacher, Dierdre Coleman, who is dean of students in years 7 to 9, is co-ordinating the pilot which she believes has the potential to change the way the Higher School Certificate examinations are run.

The school at which I teach, PLC Sydney, was in the news this morning regarding a recent assessment task conducted by one of our Year 9 English classes. The article from the Sydney Morning Herald talks about how this class is pushing the “open book exam” concept into allowing students to use resources that take them beyond the boundaries of the classroom and enable them to draw on outside sources - the web, other books, their own personal networks - using whatever tools they choose - mobile phones, computers, iPods, PDAs, etc - in order to be assessed on their learning.

The school at which I teach, PLC Sydney, was in the news this morning regarding a recent assessment task conducted by one of our Year 9 English classes. The article from the Sydney Morning Herald talks about how this class is pushing the “open book exam”

The photo director for National Geographic, David Griffin knows the power of photography to connect us to our world. In a talk filled with glorious images, he talks about how we all use photos to tell our stories.

There has been a lot of hype in mobile media circles about how the Summer Olympics are signaling a watershed moments in broadcasting and media access on the fly. According to Nielson, 23 per cent US and 17 per cent of UK mobile internet users will be tracking the games through their phone browser, and 45 % of US mobile video users will watch the Olympics on their handsets.

McAfee is one of a band of would-be reformers who are trying to beat the high cost -- and, they say, the dumbing down -- of college textbooks by writing or promoting open-source, no-cost digital texts. Thus far, their quest has been largely quixotic, but that could be changing. Public colleges and universities in California this past year backed several initiatives to promote online course materials, and publishers and entrepreneurs are stepping up release of electronic textbooks, which typically sell at reduced prices.

use Skype on your iPhone!

SeeClickFix encourages residents to become citizens by participating in taking care of and improving their neighborhoods. We allow anyone to: See - see a non-emergency issue in your neighborhood Click - open a ticket describing the issue and what can be done to resolve it Fix - publicly report the issue to everyone for resolution We're working on more features for the future. Some ideas we have include better collaboration on ticket updating, SeeClickFix local for citizens to band together, and local government features. If you have ideas for how we can improve the website, please contact us. Why We Do It Imagine a world where every citizen feels empowered and part of their neighborhood. Imagine if everyone trusted and felt taken care of by their local government. We know there are already a lot of involved citizens and hard-working local authorities and service people. We seek to use the power of the internet to bring them closer together and reach even more people.

up to minute micro newswire from GigaOM network

This is a directory list of all known mobile social networks for cellphone and mobile devices. Well, known to me, Laurel Papworth anyway. I compiled a couple of hundred social network services for the cellphone and mobile devices in mid 2007 for a presentation at WebDirections on Mobile Social Networks. In 2006 ish I was posting on GPSLocationBasedService any gps mobile stuff on social networks I could find. In 2007 I used MyMobilePals. I’m now merging those two sites into this directory list of mobile social networks.

Some may have noticed the “Turbo” link in the upper right corner of the admin area. (Remember when computers used to have a Turbo button?) Behind it is a new feature of WordPress.com, support for Gears. Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the background to update them without slowing down the browser. Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon. On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic. The speed increase is most noticeable when Internet is slow or on high latency and makes everybody’s blogging experience more enjoyable.

Some may have noticed the “Turbo” link in the upper right corner of the admin area. (Remember when computers used to have a Turbo button?) Behind it is a new feature of WordPress.com, support for Gears. Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or Quic

Among the many interesting points of view and commentaries spoken today at WordCamp UK came some attention-grabbing news from Simon Dickson in his presentation about blogging and developments in government. The official website for 10 Downing Street is about to be relaunched, and it will be based on WordPress.

Among the many interesting points of view and commentaries spoken today at WordCamp UK came some attention-grabbing news from Simon Dickson in his presentation about blogging and developments in government. The official website for 10 Downing Street is a

Woopra is the world's most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. And it's free!

Adds a "Preview button" to Google Reader that allows you to view actual article in a frame. Clicking again on that button goes back to RSS view. Does work both in List view and expanded view. Here are some advantages of the script : - You can see and post comments right from Google Reader ! - You can read truncated rss feeds entirely. - You don't lose time opening a new window or tab in order to go on the website and see the article in its original context.

Akismet Auntie Spam is a maintenance script for WordPress administrators. One of the problems with the Akismet spam protection service is that sometimes it misidentifies a real comment as spam. WordPress has a spam recovery console that I like to call the spam inbox. Have you ever stuck your hand as far back at you can into the crannies of your couch and pulled out what you found? That’s kind of what going into the default Akismet spam inbox is like. It’s a dark and evil place, filled with things that will make your eyes burn. You only wanted to find the quarter you lost, but before you know it your hand is stuck and something is touching you back. Akismet Auntie Spam is a kind old lady who will come to your house and give it a thorough cleaning. She’s not afraid of the dark corners, particularly the spam inbox because she knows exactly how to handle the creepy crawlies hiding out of sight.