Today’s top story in the New York Science Times is about a new digital game where the action is not blowing things up. In the new game Spore, things evolve.

. . . Spore [is] one of the most eagerly anticipated video games in the history of the industry. After years of rumors, the game goes on sale Friday. Spore’s designer, Will Wright, is best known for creating a game called the Sims in 2000. That game, which let players run the lives of a virtual family, has sold 100 million copies. It is among the best-selling video game franchises of all time — an impressive achievement in an $18-billion-a-year industry that is now bigger than Hollywood.

Spore, produced by Electronic Arts, promises much more than the day-to-day adventures of simulated people. It starts with single-cell microbes and follows them through their evolution into intelligent multicellular creatures that can build civilizations, colonize the galaxy and populate new planets.

Unlike the typical shoot-them-till-they’re-all-dead video game, Spore was strongly influenced by science, and in particular by evolutionary biology. . . .

[Note: I was unable to publish this weekly column last Sunday because of a software problem -- which is now solved. Roland.]

Virtual Worlds Get Real About Punishment

A virtual world for mobile devices, called Cellufun, has established a courthouse, where rule-breakers are indicted by their peers and tried by a jury of other community members. If found guilty of a charge, such as using profanity, users must carry out varying levels of sentences, from being mute for 20 minutes to being banished.
Source: Kim Hart, The Washington Post, August 20, 2008

How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People

If you live in a state bordering Canada or Mexico, you may soon be given an opportunity to carry a very high tech item: a remotely readable driver’s license. Designed to identify U.S. citizens as they approach the nation’s borders, the cards are being promoted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to save time and simplify border crossings. But if you care about your safety and privacy as much as convenience, you might want to think twice before signing up.
Source: Katherine Albrecht, Scientific American, August 21, 2008

Satellites track Mexico kidnap victims with chips

Affluent Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin so satellites can help find them tied up in a safe house or stuffed in the trunk of a car.
Source: Mica Rosenberg, Reuters, August 21, 2008

VoIP Goes Mobile

Scott Goldman uses his mobile phone to call friends and business contacts all over the world, from Britain to Australia. But the Southern California-based consultant doesn’t pay a dime in international tolls to his mobile-phone carrier, AT&T, the biggest in the U.S. Instead, Goldman places the international portion of the calls — roughly 100 minutes a month — through a service called Gorilla Mobile that relies on Internet-based technology to route wireless calls virtually toll-free.
Source: Olga Kharif, BusinessWeek, August 26, 2008

Road Tolls Hacked

A researcher claims that toll transponders can be cloned, allowing drivers to pass for free. Drivers using the automated FasTrak toll system on roads and bridges in California’s Bay Area could be vulnerable to fraud, according to a computer security firm in Oakland, CA.
Source: Duncan Graham-Rowe, Technology Review, August 25, 2008

The Internet’s Biggest Security Hole

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency. The tactic exploits the internet routing protocol BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to let an attacker surreptitiously monitor unencrypted internet traffic anywhere in the world, and even modify it before it reaches its destination.
Source: Kim Zetter, Wired News, August 26, 2008

Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master ?

In Vernor Vinge’s version of Southern California in 2025, there is a school named Fairmont High with the motto, “Trying hard not to become obsolete.” It may not sound inspiring, but to the many fans of Dr. Vinge, this is a most ambitious — and perhaps unattainable — goal for any member of our species.”
Source: John Tierney, The New York Times, August 26, 2008

Novelties - Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data

PEOPLE share their videos on YouTube and their photos at Flickr. Now they can share more technical types of displays: graphs, charts and other visuals they create to help them analyze data buried in spreadsheets, tables or text. At an experimental Web site, Many Eyes, (www.many-eyes.com), users can upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays. These might range from maps of relationships in the New Testament to a display of the comparative frequency of words used in speeches by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Source: Anne Eisenberg, The New York Times, August 30, 2008

Sheila Scarborough of Every Dot Connects highlights the usage of social media in preparation for Hurricane Gustav.

“The Web 2.0 world right now is doing what it does best; sharing information, passing links and exchanging ideas as we prepare for Hurricane Gustav to hit the US Gulf Coast.
A sample of some pertinent social media activity can be found here: Social media prepares for Hurricane Gustav “

Gustav Information Center

At around 5:24pm on August 30th, 2008 a storm of social-media activity was launched by Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s senior product manager for online communities.  Using “Ning” Andy was able to lay the foundation for the Gustav Information Center (GIC) social network to help in the coordination and dissemination of information relating to Hurricane Gustav.  The GIC community is very diverse and possesses volunteers who have come together in an incredibly short period of time through announcements on Twitter.  There are GIC volunteers from within Louisiana discussing potential ways to harness social media tools with colleagues from all points of the United States including many volunteers from the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and South America.

On behalf of Smart Mobs, I would like to encourage all our readers and community members to take a moment and think about how you can do your small part in this effort to help those affected by Gustav.  Join in the efforts of the Gustav Information Center, volunteer with your local American Red Cross Chapter or take action in any effort you feel comfortable being a part of.

Let us join together and harness the social-media tools offered us to open lines of communication and cooperation to make certain we are not unprepared for Gustav to prevent another disaster like we faced with Katrina.

Please visit the Gustav Information Center (GIC) and join other social-media activists in coordinating efforts to help our brothers and sisters who will be directly impacted by Gustav.

In the 2004 Presidential election, PowerLine.com earned fame for the emerging blogging phenomenon, and for itself, by leading the collection from the crowd of material about Dan Rather’s coverage on 60 Minutes of George Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War. A respected conservative political blog, Powerline also covers the hosts’ home state of Minnesota, with Miss World and Miss Universe coverage mixed in for spice.

How have things changed for blogging in the new election cycle? In a post yesterday, one of the three Powerline principals, John Hinderaker, describes a trend he has been watching:

The Power of Google Images

In a relatively short time, Google Images has become a huge source of internet traffic. A substantial percentage of our traffic comes from Google searches, and a rapidly growing segment of that comes from image searches. I was reminded of this once more when I checked the numbers and found that over the past 12 hours, nearly 18,000 people have found their way to Power Line by searching “Sarah Palin” and linking to the “Miss Wasilla” photo that you can see below.

Over the years, we have also gotten an astonishing number of hits from people doing Google Images searches who link to this post, and this one. Beyond that, various Miss World and Miss Universe posts have garnered large numbers of Google Images referrals.

It’s never occurred to us to post photos to troll for Google Images, but it may be something to consider.

Blogged here last week that I started ‘bliin-ning my life’ and promised to keep you posted about the experiences.

From the hands on experience I pretty much endorse the Bliin concept. This despite the trouble that a bug on Windows Mobile 6 (build 18120 and later) gave initially on my device. The bug prohibited sending the GoogleMaps coordinates. Thanx to the intervention of Tomas of the Bliin team the Windows Mobile bug was properly dealt with. To celebrate that occasion you see one of my first pictures bliinned Live,

Twittering about my interest in location based social network services like Bliin prompted Gabriela Avram to send an invite for the beta of Rumble

[Thank you Gabriela !!]

Rummble is a location based social search and discovery tool, enabling users find recommended content for a location more easily, without a traditional keyword search. Instead, Rummble’s algorithm provides personalised results based upon a trust profile it builds for you and the content in your social network.

Rummble works globally and has been in closed Beta since September 2007. In April 2008 the Rummble service went into limited open Beta.

What I appreciate about Rumble is the connection to some other social networks you signed up for. A posted picture from my mobile device to Rumble is published with the same effort on Twitter and Flickr. It should not be necessary to upload on the spot to different social network sites. I will keep you posted about any further findings.

The Daily ‘Dog online periodical for public relations professionals recaps a Gartner report of where different emerging technologies are. The report shows a curve which moves through these phases: Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, and Plateau of Productivity. Predictions set in this context include:

Web 2.0, although placed in their Trough of Disillusionment now, is tipped to emerge within two years to have a transformational impact on business as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications.

Virtual worlds, which are suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest.

Technologies and trends at or around the peak of the Hype Cycle in 2008 that will reach the plateau in two to five years are:

Social Networking platforms - the MySpace, Facebook model. Companies are examining the role that these sites, or their enterprise-grade equivalents, will play in future collaboration environments.

Microblogging - The Twitter phenomenon has caught on among certain online communities, and leading-edge companies are investigating its role in enhancing other social media and channels.

Institute for the Future, let by Jane McGonigal “Resident Game Designer” is experimenting with Superstruct, “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game,” starting in September — and you are invited:

This fall, the Institute for the Future invites you to play Superstruct, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future. Everyone is welcome to join the game. Watch for the opening volley of threats and survival stories, September 2008.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Humans have 23 years to go

Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens.

PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the “survival horizon” for Homo sapiens - the human race - from “indefinite” to 23 years.

“The survival horizon identifies the point in time after which a threatened population is expected to experience a catastrophic collapse,” GEAS president Audrey Chen said. “It is the point from which a species is unlikely to recover. By identifying a survival horizon of 2042, GEAS has given human civilization a definite deadline for making substantive changes to planet and practices.”

University of Reading scientists have developed a robot controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons. And this is a world’s premiere. Other research teams have tried to control robots with ‘brains,’ but there was always a computer in the loop. This new project is the first one to examine ‘how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data.’ As life expectancy is increasing in most countries, this new research could provide insights into how the brain works and help aging people. In fact, the main goal of this project is to understand better the development of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheimer or Parkinson diseases. It’s interesting to note that this project is being led by Professor Kevin Warwick, who became famous in 1998 when a silicon chip was implanted in his arm to allow a computer to monitor him in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled. But read more…

Links: ZDNet, Primidi

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) has been sponsoring an online discussion of participatory learning.

Welcome to this discussion about participatory learning. You can stop the video widget below from playing (and start it again, if you wish), by hovering your mouse over the video window, which will make the clickable controls appear. Note that one of the controls is “reply.” If you click on that, and you have an account at http://www.seesmic.com (it doesn’t take long to register, and accounts are free), then an authentication form will pop up. Enter your Seesmic login info and you can reply to the video with your own video. See the small horizontal strip of thumbnails at the bottom of the video? Hover and click on those to play the replies. The replies are displayed in chronological order, with the earliest videos at your right — you can scroll through them in either direction, stop and click on any one, and stop it the same way, by hovering over the controls. At the same time that we invite you to join the discussion “horizontally” through these videos, you are invited to enter plain old text comments by way of the comment thread that scrolls vertically below this post.