Sábado e Domingo e eu vou lá estar.

I found out about Zotero, in the CHNM site, Center for History and New Media, that produces Zortero, a Firefox extension, and I think it is one of the best tools to organize your web research: webpages, notes, bookmarks, pdfs, etc
You can even export a webpage to a formated (APA, Chicago style etc) bibliography entry!
And you can use it with the openoffice or word plugin too

There is been a lot of discussion about Wired leaving Second Life. The author of the “The Long Tail” was somehow disappointed with the small number of avatars (30) that showed up to his book signing. Chris Anderson says that the problem of Second Life is that “there is nobody there”.
Well, if you are fighting for a presence in Second Life you must think that avatars have a real person behind, so fighting for a presence means that you are fighting not only with other events in Second Life but with events in Real Life too. Because you can not be at a concert in Real Life and at book signing in Second Life at the same time. Yet.
The other issue missing in all this is that the fighting for a “presence” in Second Life can not be done with the same methods that in Real Life. It is a new environment with new rules.
I would say that the whole concept of “having a presence”, in Second Life, in order to sell your product it is all wrong.
Second Life is not about have something there or even about to be there, it is about interaction. Of course, you must have a place there, but putting a building there does not make people go to your building. Well, they might go for a first time, to see what you have there, but if your building or place has things that are just there it will be very difficult to have avatars returning.
Big brands are going crazy with the possibility of be in SL, they want to be be there mostly because of the hype. They pay huge sums of money to enterprises to build beautiful buildings but, IMHO, they are missing the point.
If you want to sell your product in SL, the best way to do it is to create a community around your product. Because SL is about communities, not about buildings. So beside the place, you need a team not only to guide your visitors, but mostly to interact with them, to create new challenges and activities to your visiting avatars.
One other thing that can help is seeing SL as one of the tools available, a blog about your product, an account on Youtube or Flickr with information about your product in SL could help to create the community.

É verdade, temos já uma nova moradora nesta casa. Cabe-me a mim fazer a introdução. Poderia falar-vos da admiração que tenho por ela ou da alegria que sinto por a conhecer há tantos anos ou ainda das coisas importantes para que me chamou a atenção o seu espírito perspicaz.
Mas não vou falar de nada disso. Vou deixar que vocês o intuam a partir da sua escrita.
Bem-vinda!

These monsters have four eyes and two mouths and they are the subject of one of my favorite films. Susan Buice and Arin Crumley are the directors. They published the film on the internet and you can watch it for free. You can help them by registering on Stout.com.
Really nice film
(Thanks to MindBoosterNoori that told me about it)

Awards & Achievements:
-Really Didn’t Speak for 4 months
-Created film in 14 months using credit cards.
-World Premiered @ Slamdance 2005
-Attended 20 film festivals in first 9 months.
-Special Audience Award @ SXSW 2005
-Best New Directors Brooklyn International
-Launched video podcast the day the video iPod was announced.
-Video Podcast promoted by MySpace & iTunes.
-In 1 year of posting episodes 1 to 8 over 1 million views garnered.
-Theatrical self release to 6 major markets using Google Map have fans sign up and pull film to their city.
-2 Spirit Award Nominations n 2006.
-Won Undiscovered Gems Showcase Sundance Channel Audience Award in 2006
-First feature film event in Second Life
-First Feature Film Uploaded to YouTube

Well, when you start to use Second Life, you start to discover a lot of places that you could use in your classes or that you just want to return to. Of course, you can add the landmark to your inventory, but soon you will find that your landmark folder will be your firefox’s bookmarks worst nightmare…
To solve this by tagging and comment the landmarks, you can register at Gridmarker.
Follow the instructions in the FAQ section in order to get your Gridmarker hud and start to tag your landmarks from inside SL.
You can search others landmarks in the site too.
Here’s mine

One of the big problems in Second Life is to get the discussions to read later. This is very important when we are talking about Education related matters. If you have a meeting with your students in SL, you certainly would like to have a transcript to read later, to delivered it to the students that couldn’t attend, to discuss it in the classroom and you can, of course. Just copy/paste the chat to a txt file.
But the problem is that txt will be very difficult to read and follow. I noticed that all discussions in SL begin with a bunch of “Hi, Are you there”‘s kind of thing and ii is very difficult to follow who’s saying what.
So, Kisa Naumova provided a very useful website where you can create a chatlog changing the look of that txt. You can search other chatlogs there too.
Don’t forget to get authorization from the participating avatars, the chatlogs will be public in that site!

I would love to go to this conference, but for £795 + VAT ?! And that it is only the conference, because if you’d like to attend two workshops you will have to pay £2185! Incredible!
Maybe they put something on teh website afterwords…

Chegou-me assim à caixa de correio um convite de uma grande amiga,

É já no dia 11 de Agosto que a Trasfega vai inaugurar nova exposição
de roupa e acessórios.
Será no bar-livraria-galeria Cem Medos, em Lisboa, no nº 99 da rua da
Rosa, pelas 19h.
Gostaríamos, por isso, de convidá-lo(a), a estar presente neste
momento de cor e criatividade, um verdadeiro regalo para os olhos e
uma indiscrição para o corpo.

O colectivo,

Cláudia Ferreira
Sandra B.B. Ferreira
Susana Azenha
Manuela Brito

Some time ago I answered a survey about Second Life ( I got my first L$300 because of that) and now Prof. Marc Fetscherin, from Rollins College, and Prof. Lattemann, from Potsdam University, published the study.
Although I do not agree with the first figure that shows the evolution of Web like:
1995 – 2000 – Web 1.0 – Website, Text, Flash
2000 – 2005 – Web 2.0 – Weblog, Wikis, Podcast, RSS Feeds
2005 – 2010 (…) – Web 3.0 – Virtual Worlds, 3D Portals, Avatars, MUVE’s, Integrated Games, Social Computing

because if we think a little we will see that virtual worlds already existed many years before 2005, I found the empyrical study very interesting.

90% of respondents have less than a year experience on Second Life. 70% access Second Life from home, 54% with a desktop. 67% of respondents are not afraid of giving personal information. Almost 60% are very likely to buy virtual goods from Second Life, and 42% are willing to use their credit card. 70% perceive Second Life to improve collaboration, 69% it improves communication, and 61% it improves cooperation between people. 56% of respondents perceive Second Life as easy to use. [1]

But the conclusion that got my eye was:

“People are using Second Life not to change their identity, but rather to explore and visit new places and meet people” [2]

Of course we have to see this report with caution (almost 250 respondents from witch 29% with a PhD degree), but it is very interesting to find out that people are using Second Life not to change their identity. Some time ago, I read a story about a couple in Second Life that have there a house exactly as they have in Real Life and for some time I was thinking that the main interest on Second Life will be to know about places and to cooperate and collaborate with other people, rather than create a whole new life. After all, one is enough, right?

[1] page 12 of the study
[2] page 18 of the study

note to self: shift + alt + 8 (or 9)

(porque é daquelas coisas que me estou sempre a esquecer…)

Well, I am using Kmail and KOrganizer in Mac, via MacPorts. As I said before, there is no email client so powerful like Kmail. I couldn’t manage to put Kontact working, but I will wait until it is ported to Mac.
The only problem is when I need to copy things between KDE and Mac apps, but now I found the solution in macosxhints: use xclipboard from X11.

PS – A mamã continua aflitíssima com o enxoval, como se não tivesse eu enxoval de sobra!

Well, it is now possible to have voice on Second Life. As I told before I do not feel very enthusiastic about it. I will wait to see how things will develop (I am strating to imagine the confusion…) and I will return to this matter in a deeper article.

Lighthouse Hill
1927
oil
73.8 x 102.2 cm
Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Purnell

Outro dos meus favoritos, criador do Blow Up. Mas que dia o de hoje!!!

Foi ontem que se soube, mas eu só soube hoje. Na verdade, deveria ter sabido ontem, que vi nas minhas feeds este post. Mas não associei, nem ao título! O olhar desviou-se logo para a foto e daí para o sétimo selo, para uma lição de amor, para as lágrimas e suspiros, e para cenas de um casamento, e tantos outros que vi e sobre os quais (ainda) não escrevi.
Quando comecei a descobrir os filmes do Bergman rendi-me imediatamente, porque neles não se encerra apenas o cuidado com a linguagem visual. A escrita está sempre muito presente. Ler os filmes do Bergman é tão delicioso como os ver.

No sábado, torci o pé numa rua de Coimbra. A coisa não seria digna de registo se a causa não fosse um buraco no passeio. E como é natural passei a olhar mais para o chão. De facto, há vários sítios em que as pedras dos passeios foram retiradas, deixando buracos com dimensões jeitosas. Ontem, passei o dia de pé refastelado com gelo em cima. Que faço? Processo a Câmara?

Antes demais, um muito obrigada ao Diogo Gomes, pelo link deixado no coment anterior, que me possibilitou assistir à conferência sobre o projecto e-Justice Center.

A conferência serviu de mote à abertura do e-justice center, uma parceria entre o Ministério da Justiça Português, a Universidade Nova – responsável pela gestão do centro, e a Universidade de Aveiro – responsável pela construção do edifício.

À primeira vista, a ideia parece interessante. Na minha opinião pessoal, o ponto mais interessante é a abertura do Governo a projectos no Second Life (enquanto lhes interessa é certo, mas já me parece positivo que lhes interesse).

As perguntas colocadas no final não foram, infelizmente todas respondidas. Uma das que fiz tem a ver com o processo:

Qualquer avatar do Second Life que tenha um conflito com outro avatar, relacionado com um contrato celebrado no Second Life, pode utilizar o Centro de Arbitragem do e-Justice Center para dirimir este conflito.
O processo inicia-se com a apresentação de um pedido junto do centro. Em seguida, este pedido será transmitido à outra parte para que esta declare se aceita resolver o litígio neste centro ou não.

Se a “outra parte” não aceitar, o que acontece? É como se não tivesse havido um pedido ao centro ou fica registado que o “outro” avatar não aceitou resolver a questão via e-justice center?
O site tem uma secção de processos. Esses processos vão ficar visíveis?
Como é que os mediadores vão proceder em casos com pessoas de diferentes países? Que regras ou leis vão servir de base a essa mediação? As dos países do e-justice center, as americanas (onde estão os servidores) ou todas juntas?

Concordo que a divulgação da mediação e arbitragem seja uma boa opção, mas daí até transpor as coisas para um mundo virtual, da mesma forma que se passam no mundo real…
Quando esteve em Portugal, a vice-presidente da Linden Labs colocou algumas questões sobre esta matéria, que já falei em post anterior, este centro pode ser uma resposta. Mas resolverá efectivamente as coisas? Será que um avatar que seja contactado pelo centro, por outro avatar, vai aceder a resolver o litígio e a pagar uma caução a este centro?

Aceitando resolver o litígio neste centro, as partes procedem ao pagamento da taxa de utilização do centro (1% do valor do pedido) e caucionam o montante equivalente a 5% do valor do pedido (como garantia do cumprimento do acordo obtido na mediação ou da decisão arbitral).

E se não aceitar? Fica tudo na mesma? Ou o avatar que não aceitou vê o seu nome na lista dos processos? E com que direito o centro poderá fazer isso?

Porque não deixar os mundos virtuais auto-regularem-se, como comunidades online, que efectivamente são?

Desde a decisão da Linden Labs de banir os casinos, por pressão do Governo Americano, a comunidade educativa começa a ficar receosa das restrições e regulações que começam a surgir. Há universidades a trabalhar activamente com os seus alunos no Second Life e mesmo a utilizar o Second Life para recrutar novos alunos, oferecendo visitas virtuais às universidades.

Mais perguntas e mais opiniões.