Twitter Notes: Cliff Notes for Cliff Notes!

From the UK;s Daily Telegraph newpaper’s Matthew Moore:
“Great works of literature are being shortened into 140-character “tweets”, in the latest diversion to grow out of the popular Twitter website. Classics by Charles Dickens, JD Sallinger and Jane Austen are among the novels to have been boiled down to a sentence by bookish readers of the [...]

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Duke Nukem Forever – Well, Maybe Less Than That!

In 1997, the computer gaming company 3D Realms announced its new, upcoming game, Duke Nukem Forever. Based on the popular first-person-shooter format, the game promised to be a fun-filled, action-packed extravaganza of dark humor and bloody mayhem.

Sadly, the bloody mayhem came in the form of a bloodless winding up of the [...]

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UN Secretary-General Calls For Cyberspace Child Protection

In a press release on May 15th, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon called for better protection of children in cyberspace.
“As they surf through cyberspace seeking information and entertainment and building social networks, they are also among the most vulnerable to exploitation. Without safeguards, their precious lives are at grave risk in the vicious world of [...]

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Secretary Clinton and the Virtual Student Foreign Services Initiative

Virtual Student Foreign Service (VSFS) Internships, announced by Secretary Clinton at the 2009 New York University commencement speech, are part of a growing effort by the State Department to harness technology and a commitment to global service among young people to facilitate new forms of diplomatic engagement. The VSFS Internships will be developed over the [...]

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Playing Computer Games Enhances

European researchers have built a computerized play platform for elderly people. Field testing shows that the system keeps elderly players mentally sharp, stimulates socialisation, and can alert caregivers to developing problems.

The key “generic” objective of ElderGames project is to develop IST-based games using advanced visualisation and interaction interfaces with high preventive, [...]

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WWF Use Augmented Reality To Highlight Wildlife’s Fate

The WWF – that’s World Wildlife Federation and not the World Wrestling Federation – has opened up a new campaign aimed at getting China’s young people to be more aware of the fate of wild animals.
“We developed the world’s first mobile application where a virtual bear interacts with real environment, in real time. Through your [...]

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Google’s “Chrome” Browser To Air On TV Ads

Rather than rely on its internet presence as the world’s largest search engine to promote its new browser, Google is turning to TV promotion. The official Google blog for May 8th 2009 has the following:
“So today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re using Google TV Ads to run our Chrome ad on various television networks [...]

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World’s Luckiest Man Gets Island Job

A British man has been appointed the new caretaker of an Australian tropical island, a six-month position described as “the best job in the world.”
Ben Southall, 34, a charity fundraiser from Petersfield, Hampshire, emerged from a field of over 34,000 applicants.

His new job requires Mr Southall to live and report from [...]

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Ooh, That Smell – Can You Smell That Smell?

Among the biggest time savers for living in a virtual worlds are that there is no need to wash your clothes nor attend to personal hygiene. In fact, having a bathroom in your virtual home is merely an affectation.
However, researchers at the University of Birmingham in England are among the pioneers seeking to add that [...]

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