ComputerWorld Article on Second Life

I just read an interesting article by Gary Anthes in the magazine COMPUTERWORLD (Dec. 3 2007) about his first experience trying out Second Life. The story was interesting because like myself he was brand new to Second Life and trying to figure out what it was good for and how to use it. Generally speaking he wasn't VERY impressed. He liked aspects of it and the potential that it had for the IT business (he talked about experiences at Cisco and IBM on SL... actually there was no one there but an avatar that looked like a Wolf) but generally thought it needed some improvement. He complained about server crashes, poor refresh rates, and a difficult to learn interface. Like myself, he thinks that it has some potential but needs a bit of work before the IT world embraces it for corporate purposes. If you can I suggest you check out the article!

Is Facebook Overrated??

Here is an interesting Time article on Facebook. Take a quick read. What do you think is it overrated??

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686825,00.html?cnn=yes

Dang it Second Life...

Well I tried spending some time on second life again last night and didn't have much luck. My connection would occasionally drop out and just generally had problems running the software (refresh/load times). I know its not my machine's hardware since I've got 2 gigs of Ram and an high performance video gaming PCI-E video card. DANG IT SECOND LIFE!!

CNN Second Life

Hey everyone here is an interesting story about a CNN hub on Second Life.


http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/12/second.life.irpt/index.html

Second Second Life

For those of you in class who are not "The Office" fans (I know that sounds impossible but I'm relatively sure there is at least one amongst us who does not regularly watch one of the best comedies on TV) tonight's episode contained a storyline that revolved around Second Life. Dwight was so depressed that he created an island in Second Life called "Second Second Life" for people who want to be even more removed from reality. I'm sure if that island doesn't currently exist it will by the time you read this post. Go check it out! Any way I think its funny how what we are talking about in class has worked its way onto an Emmy award winning comedy. I guess this Second Life stuff really is a big deal. Now if only I could get my avatar to actually have MY hair. Dang it.

Watch The Office w/ Second Life Here!

Capstone Project: Wiki Technology

For my group I'll be supporting the wiki technology section. Its really interesting how prevalent this information dissemination apparatus truly is. Its everywhere! And its growing in popularity because so many people love to use it. Imagine if google and wikipedia teamed up... They would rule the world!

Why Gmail is AWESOME

Has anyone noticed that gmail is providing more space for you inbox than ever before? Of course it always used to increase slowly but now its increasing in size by leaps and bounds! At present its at ~4010 MB per user. Remember 4096 MB is 4GB... That is just ridiculous. Google rocks!

Gettin' Political... Well not exactly

Hey guys I don't know how much you all are into politics (or not into politics) but this is a pretty cool website to give you information on where the presidential hopefuls stand on the issues. Well at least a small selection of the issues.

MSNBC Candidate Matrix

This website allows you to read up on what the republican and democratic candidates believe and also watch videos where they discuss the topic. Also its pretty cool because it allows you to indicate how strongly you believe or disbelieve in the candidate's views. After you finish voting the matrix will display a red/green chart indicating where the various candidates align with your beliefs. Its a good tool to help you decide. Don't forget to do your civic duty and vote in 2008.

I'll Trust You If You Trust Me... Maybe

In case you didn't see it on Dr. Ahmad's Blog:

Main focus is reasons why or why not people trust other people. The author discusses 10 specific items people consider when deciding to trust. Personally I find Alignment of Interests to be the most interesting topic. What you guys all think. Alignment of Interests is the most prevalent concern in business because people want to make sure they aren't going to be “screwed” by their boss or co-worker. There are always people out there looking to do whatever it takes to get to the top and those people are the reason why it is difficult to trust other people at work. I know that most of the time at work I follow the CYA principle (Cover Your A**) because I'm never sure what my manager is really trying to do.
Interestingly on the “how do you relate trust to communication” many people seem to take the silence is gold approach. People don't know who they can trust so it is better not to let too much slip or align yourself to closely with another co-worker.
One thing I'm not sure I entirely agree with this author is that the decision to trust comes down to these 10 thought processes. On page 4 of the case study, they give an example of a company laying off employees and then giving the CEO a bonus. I think this is the perfect example of why people don't trust the management. But sometimes there is just more to it. We as evolutionary creatures develop a sixth sense about things, we had to or we wouldn't have survived (survival of the fittest anyone...). Some people just rub you the wrong way and you know they can't be trusted. When I experience a feeling like that I don't ask myself 10 questions I go with my gut. Going with the gut hasn't failed me yet. What do you guys all think?

Video Game Cheating: That means you Second Life!

Here is an interesting story on cheating in the video game industry and a quick reference to a Lawyer here in PA that is suing Linden Labs for some issues in Second Life:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/01/videogame.cheating.ap/index.html

IT Seminar Project Discussion

Our team decided a few weeks back that we were going to investigate wikis for our research papers. We have been discussing this assignment offline but we decided we wanted to actually catalog some of our discussions so that we would have them for references. The first item to discuss is to decide exactly how we are going to partition the work (ie. how are we going to break the topic of wikis into three distinct topics). I think one potential idea is to investigate the use of wikis in the workplace. What do you guys think? Post comments!

Currently... Tech Support

Has anyone ever noticed that as soon as someone realizes you are an engineer or an IT person you immediately become their Tech Support POC? I am finally coming to grips w/ the fact that every member of my family uses me as their computer guru for just about every problem. Granted, I guess I bring some of this on myself by acknowledging the fact that I know a little something about computers and networking but I sure don't know everything. With that said if anyone knows anything about getting a Broadcom 440X 10/100 ethernet card working on a dell laptop give me a shout. The drivers all seem to be installed correctly but DHCP doesn't seem to initialize correctly and thus I can't get an IP address and ping out... Doh!!

C and C++ Here we go again...

I've just accepted a new rotation working as a SW eng and I'm going to be doing C and C++ coding. This is good because I'm ready to get back to doing technical work again but I definitely need a refresher. Gotta go back and review inheritance and all that good stuff in C. Oh yeah and pointers... I freakin hate pointers. And what the hell is a char* anyway. Time for review...

Virtual vs In-Person Discussion

Well yesterday we had an interesting debate in class about which method was superior for working and having meetings, either in-person or virtually. Of course this topic can be fairly charged and for a portion of the class it was. My group had to defend the notion that working virtually was superior to working face to face. I think we made some decent points about potential cost savings and increasing the potential labor pool. I found the discussion to be quite interesting. In the end everyone agrees that a combination of both methodologies is the best approach but that the real path toward expansion in the global economy is with virtual technologies... Oh yeah and be prepared for Generation Y or the Digital Generation or whatever they are called. They are going to screw up the way we do meetings like crazy!!

Topics for Project

Team we need to decide what our topic should be for our IT Seminar Class. Lets start that dialog here. We should try to pick something that is interesting to all of us and potentially applicable to what we do at work. More experience on items related to work are always a good idea. I was thinking that video teleconferencing technologies might be an interesting potential topic. Post some comments on what you think.

FYI HTML hyperlink

In case anyone doesn't know how to post a hyperlink to a blog here is a great site explaining:

HTML INFO

Second Life --- AHHHHH

Second Life more like Taking My Life... Yes, I'm frustrated w/ second life. It won't run on my laptop at all and that bugs me enough as it is. It runs alright on my desktop but once I'm in there I don't have any idea what to do. I fly around sometimes and I guess that's cool but then what do I do? Post a comment! Give some advice!

Second Life Website

Facebook vs. Myspace

After an interesting discussion in class last night I came to the conclusion that I far prefer Facebook as the social networking tool of choice. It has the features, simplicity, and psuedo-security that I'm looking for. Maybe it doesn't have the flexibility of myspace but that is a trade off I'm willing to make. What do you think? See the poll!

Picture Post

For those of you who don't know me. Here is a picture.

First Time Blogger

Well here is my first attempt to create a blog. I'm know its pretty sparse right now but hopefully in the near future it's going to look better. If anyone out there has any suggestions to make this blog look great let me know! Hope everyone enjoys what is to become of this blog.