:: Netwoman ::

:: Thursday, November 29, 2007 ::

Trigger Happy

Trigger Happy by Steven Poole is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.

You can get it for free under CC License for a limited time.

:: Netwoman 9:45 AM [+] ::
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World's first arrests for 'virtual theft'

This has been going on for awhile in Habbo - my son used to play this (pre-SL) and there were many incidences of thefts, account hacking and so forth...

By Bruno Waterfield

Dutch police are to charge five teenagers with "virtual theft" of furniture from rooms in the Habbo Hotel, a popular networking website for youngsters.

Officers believe that the arrest of one online thief, a 17-year-old accused of computer fraud and stealing, and the questioning of four other 15-year olds represents a first for policing on the internet.

An Amsterdam police spokesman confirmed that investigations began after one teenager was accused of stealing £2,800 worth of virtual furniture, paid for with real money but existing only as images on the website.

"We are trying to bring charges of theft. It is a little difficult and new. There has not yet been a judgment in a case like this," said a spokesman.

"The furniture may not be physical objects but because it represents a certain value we think theft is involved."

:: Netwoman 10:08 AM [+] ::
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Online avatars are helping the disabled fight back

By ROB STEIN, The Washington Post

After suffering a devastating stroke four years ago, Susan Brown was left in a wheelchair with little hope of walking again. Today, the 57-year-old Richmond, Va., woman has regained use of her legs and has begun to reclaim her life, thanks in part to encouragement she says she gets from an online "virtual world" where she can walk, run and even dance.

Roberto Salvatierra, long imprisoned in his home by his terror over going outdoors, has started venturing outside more after gaining confidence by first tentatively exploring the three-dimensional, interactive world on the Internet.

John Dawley III, who has a form of autism that makes it hard to read social cues, learned how to talk with people more easily by using his computer-generated alter ego to practice with other cyber-personas.

:: Netwoman 9:05 AM [+] ::
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Making 'Second Life' More Like Real Life

See now this is much more interesting, and in my mind - is a step forward (and useful evolution of virtual worlds).

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Take the new position-tracking system developed by Tokyo University, which uses a mat printed with colorful codes and an ordinary Web camera to calculate the player's position in three dimensions.

The user turns left, and the avatar turns left. The user crouches down, and the avatar follows.

"This technology lets you use take the actions you'd use in real life and transpose them to the virtual world," said research leader Michitaka Hirose. "It could make maneuvering much, much easier."

At a recent demonstration in Tokyo, researcher Katsunori Tanaka strapped a Web camera to his hip, lens down, and walked around on a large mat with specially coded patterns on it. On a large screen was the computer graphic-generated 3-D world of his avatar.

As Tanaka moved across the mat, the view on the screen shifted perspective. When he crouched down to peer under a virtual parked car, the image swerved to show what his avatar would "see" the vehicle's underside.

:: Netwoman 9:29 AM [+] ::
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Sociotown- web-based 3D Social MMOG

SocioTown is a 100% web-based 3D Social MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game). It’s playable in a browser with no downloadable client required. It utilizes Adobe’s Shockwave Player, which most browsers already have installed.
SocioTown is the biggest and most sophisticated browser-based 3D virtual world to date. Players can enjoy a fully immersive and persistent 3D environment such that hasn’t been seen on the web yet. Player data is stored in database servers, so users can play anymore from home, work, or school without skipping a beat.

There's also a video to show you a quick tour. Seriously though, this is a backwards step; the graphics remind me of Habbo hotel, the interface looks much more tedious then SL. I'm not sure what this virtual world contributes that is any different - or better - than others out there, other than you can run it from a browser.

:: Netwoman 9:18 AM [+] ::
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Virtual video-making in Teen Second Life spreads the message on child rights

By Rachel Bonham Carter

NEW YORK, USA, 20 November 2007 – To mark the 18th anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), a group of teenage videographers has given an online screening of their short videos made in the virtual world of Teen Second Life.

The children – from Finland, the United Kingdom and the United States – each made a one-minute video about child rights during a summer camp led by the New York-based non-profit Global Kids, with support from UNICEF.

The five-week-long project, which all took place in Teen Second Life, began with two weeks of workshops on the CRC using information provided by UNICEF.

:: Netwoman 1:01 PM [+] ::
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CITASA Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS
American Sociological Association
Section on Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) August 1-4, 2008 Boston, MA

This year's section sessions:
1) Community & Technology
2) Communications & Society
3) Sociology of Communications & IT
4) Roundtable Session

Accepted papers are eligible to be included in the 2nd annual CITASA special issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society (iCS).

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 16, 2008

COMMUNITY AND TECHNOLOGY
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania
khampton@asc.upenn.edu

Description:
Recognizing the diverse definitions of community, this session is open to empirical, theory, and design submissions related to the study of community and new information and communication technologies. Topics may include: virtual communities, communities of interest, geographic communities, community informatics, distributed communities, inter-organizational communities, learning communities, social networks, and ethnographies and case studies of community.

COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIETY
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania
khampton AT asc.upenn.edu

Description:
The sociology of communications at a societal or institutional level. The sociology of communications is framed broadly to include the study of mass media, interpersonal communication, entertainment media, broadcast media, mobile media, the Internet, verbal and non-verbal communication, and advertising. Examples of topics include: media institutions, media ownership, globalization, cross-cultural comparisons, learning intuitions, audiences, work, law, and identity.

SOCIOLOGY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND IT
Organizer:
Keith N Hampton, University of Pennsylvania
khampton ATasc.upenn.edu

Description:
Open session on any topic related to the study of new information and communication technologies. Quantitative, qualitative, conceptual, critical, and theory contributions are welcome. Topics may include: health, politics, work, relationships, virtual environments, social networks, teaching, software, hardware, the Internet, cell phones, mobile computing, etc.

ROUNDTABLE SESSIONS
Organizer:
Lee Humphreys, University of Wisconsin
lhumphreys AT asc.upenn.edu

Description:
Open to all areas within the sociological study of communications and information technologies.

ALL SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2008 PROGRAM MUST BE MADE VIA THE ASA ONLINE SYSTEM.
The deadline to submit a paper is January 16, 2008

Those submitting papers to a regular session are strongly encourage to indicate that they would like their paper forwarded to the Roundtable Session if there is not room for their paper in a regular session.

Authors submitting papers to regular section sessions will be will be notified of the acceptance of their paper by February 20. Authors submitting to the section roundtables will be notified by March 14.

IMPORTANT REMINDER
ANNUAL SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY
All papers accepted for presentation during a CITASA section session, the CITASA Roundtable Session, the CITASA Pre-Conference and Graduate Student Workshop (to be announced soon!), or any ASA session at the 2008 meeting, is eligible to be included in the 2nd annual CITASA special issue of the journal Information, Communication and Society (iCS).
More information on the special issue will be available soon.

:: Netwoman 12:45 PM [+] ::
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Academia or Industry?

Two articles I came across today - talking about the shortage of tenured faculty - and the alarming amount of adjunct faculty in the US. Not a pretty picture. In Canada, we're facing the same type of faculty shortage with people retiring. Given the issues with faculty hiring and departmental budgets - why would we (meaning those almost ready or on the job market already) want to go to academia given the problems?

Other issues:

What has not changed as dramatically is the representation of women in faculties, especially in some disciplines such as engineering, physical sciences, mathematics and computer sciences. Women are also far less likely to hold senior posts. Women make up 33 per cent of full-time faculty but hold just 20 per cent of full professor positions. They account for 36 per cent of associate professors, 41 per cent of assistant professors and 55 per cent of lecturers.

The study predicts that the turnover and expansion expected in the next decade will likely increase the number of women on faculties and in senior posts. Still, the gender gap among graduate students in some areas of study means that some disparity is likely to continue.

Why hire Tenure when you can hire part-time workers to help your dept budget?

Three decades ago, adjuncts — both part-timers and full-timers not on a tenure track — represented only 43 percent of professors, according to the professors association, which has studied data reported to the federal Education Department. Currently, the association says, they account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and universities, both public and private.

John W. Curtis, the union’s director of research and public policy, said that while the number of tenured and tenure-track professors has increased by about 25 percent over the past 30 years, they have been swamped by the growth in adjunct faculty. Over all, the number of people teaching at colleges and universities has doubled since 1975.

:: Netwoman 12:50 PM [+] ::
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Mobile move casts the social networks wider

DOUGLAS FRIEDLI

HAVING just got to grips with the intricacies of Facebook and Second Life, my heart sank when I learned that there is another revolution on its way in the form of mobile social networking.

The logic behind mobile networking is pretty straightforward. Almost everyone who uses these networking sites has a mobile phone, and these gadgets typically carry more computing power than early versions of the Space Shuttle.

Two workplace trends are pushing social websites onto mobile phones. The first is that employers are fed up with bored office workers who spend hours "poking" their mates on Facebook. And companies want their staff to do more work outside the office - for example on the bus on the way to work - so encourage them to use internet-enabled devices.

:: Netwoman 11:20 PM [+] ::
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Ten Reasons You Should Buy Everquest II

From Clockwork Gamer, a nice little piece on on why EQ2 is great - better than ever. I really like this game for many reasons; but what I really like is that it appeals to a wide demographic, and wide skill set. My son and I often play together and really enjoy it, and he's a much better gamer than I am!

I have two characters that I play; Kirahh a Kerran Ranger; Antonio Bayle (Qeynos) and Tyrannys, a Half-Elf Defiler; Antonio Bayle (Freeport).

For those of you unaware, Everquest II released on November 9, 2004. It was three years ago today when Everquest II launched and at least a quarter of a million gamers began to anxiously patch the new incarnation of SOE’s flagship product.

Now, we can rehash the mistakes and missteps that SOE’s development team took in those early, heady days of yesteryear, but I’d rather concentrate on the present. Quite frankly, the Everquest II of 2007 is very different from the game it was at launch. And that’s a good thing in my opinion.

:: Netwoman 10:58 PM [+] ::
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Few Parents Playing Games With Children

From Gamasutra

A new poll from AOL Games has found that 81 percent of children and 38 percent of adults play video games, with near parity between men and women, and that only half of parents responded that they played games with their children.

The poll, conducted by AOL and The Associated Press, found that "while conventional wisdom holds that adult gamers are predominately male, the poll finds that 45% are actually female."

It also said 43 percent of parents claimed to never play games with their children, and another 30 percent saying that if they did, it was for less than an hour a week.

I must be one of the unusual parents who games with her son...and frequently!

:: Netwoman 4:24 PM [+] ::
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Female, Male Gamers Equally Competitive

From Gamasutra

Online game competition provider WorldWinner, a Fun Technologies subsidiary, has unveiled the results of a survey it conducted that indicates men and women are equally matched when it comes to their competitiveness in casual competition.

According to WorldWinner, the 2007 WorldWinner Gender and Competition Survey, which examined the attitudes of men and women toward informal contests, revealed that an equal percentage of men and women – 73 percent – describe themselves as "competitive" or "very competitive".

:: Netwoman 4:17 PM [+] ::
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The Potential of Second Life

Interesting article from Computer World, talking about some of the benefits of Second Life:

* The ability to simulate real-life objects in three dimensions.
* Letting users build 3-D models based on "blue-sky" concepts, ranging from "sandbox" experiments to giant building or product sims that let companies test their ideas without having to make major real-world investments in land, equipment and human resources.
* Structured activities in 3-D spaces, such as orientation islands and tours of museum sims.
* A shared, real-time space that can host widely distributed groups of people.
* Interpersonal communication that incorporates body language and visual cues.
* A safe space that protects the privacy of users while letting them project real or ideal identities.

:: Netwoman 2:38 PM [+] ::
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:: Netwoman 12:06 AM [+] ::
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Port 25 : A Socio-Cultural Exploration: Geekus Unixus Microsoftus

Here's a research project I did with the Port 25 folks over at the Open Source Software lab @ Microsoft

"In uninhabited areas of web a new clan of hybrid technologists have been spotted: the Geekus Unixus Microsoftus (GUM). As the prevalence of interoperability between platforms and between commercial and open source software continues to grow, this report provides a socio-cultural overview of the GUM clan – a hybrid group of UNIX individuals working at Microsoft. An investigation of cultural habits, social customs, and personal experiences in a previously uncharted terrain is documented. It is hoped that technologists (from whatever platform) may better understand this new clan and endeavor to co-exist peacefully with them so that we can all benefit from their initiatives."

:: Netwoman 12:21 AM [+] ::
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Female Gamers: A closer look at the 'non-traditional' gamer

This is my Microsoft Presentation - Aug 2007

Video games are big business, but can they be much bigger businesses? To do so requires the retention of existing players and the expansion of the player population beyond its historically core constituency of young men. Getting other demographics to engage the console experience may require modifying the product to fit the needs, interests, and issues of non-traditional players. The success of the Wii is an indicator of this shift away from technical superiority to more inclusive play experience. In this talk I will review our research conducted in the homes of a number of video playing households. These visits highlighted several important aspects about the use and conflicts that emerge around the console. Complementary research drawn from data generated by an online game discussion board offers additional insight into the challenges non-traditional gamers (such as women) face when engaging with male-centric content.

Slides are on my slideshare.

:: Netwoman 12:09 AM [+] ::
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