Martha's IST 110H Blog

Hey, I haven't written in a while, but I thought this was necessary to share.

Maybe you heard what was really being said, I sure hope so.

This fall was my first semester here at Penn State. After having returned from my adventure abroad Kibbutz Na'an in Israel, I worked all summer, scrounged Craigslist for housing and moved into my first house.

The beginning of the semester was a mixture of excitement, loneliness and anticipation. The last time I was in college was in December of 2006, when I parted Ithaca in bitter-sweet fashion.

The subject of the photo above is my quiet and mischievous roommate, Velveteen. Having a rabbit at college is highly underrated.

Overall, IST 110H was somewhat of what I expected. The individual work and assignments were alright, although some were better than others (keeping a blog, tagging). Some of the assignments for the group work took up an extraordinary amount of time (video project, Second Life library analysis) while others didn't (Second Life sign, Flickr). I took a freshman seminar my first semester at Ithaca and completed similar assignments involving blogging, social networks, and Second Life. There were various topics that went much more in depth in this course than the one I took two years ago, as well as new technologies and socio-technical effects.

I also took SRA 111, CMPSC 101, ECON 002 and WRL 002. Most of these were vast lecture classes composed of freshman, which is quite different from the experiences I've had over the past year. My classes at Ithaca were all small enough that my professors knew their students and the students knew each other. I miss the sense of community in my classes, rather then the institutional feel that is imposed on us here at Penn State. The opportunities here are incomparable to the smaller, private university.

Some difficulties that I faced this semester were getting to class on time. In the fall, I would bike to campus and back, often more than once a day. As the weather grew colder, this reality faded and I became familiar with the lovely CATA buses. I live within walking distance of numerous bus stops, however the buses are often full and won't stop and/or late. There were times this semester where I yearned to roll out of bed and trudge my way to class, but living in a private house is incomparable. I love having my own kitchen, living room, dining room and backyard.

I look forward to having a month of from my academics. I'll be working over break with my amazing co-workers and seeing friends from home. Happy Holidays to everyone, and travel safely.

Blueprint for a Green Laptop

Five Labs That Make Going to Class the Best Part of College

Better Than Blood?

According to Time Magazine, the #5 Viral Video of 2007 is Prison inmates Thriller video..

Orange-jumpsuited accused murderers, rapists and drug dealers paid homage to Michael Jackson's Thriller in a dance performance filmed at the Cebu Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines. Questions arose about whether the 1,500 Filipino jailhouse rockers were enjoying some well-choreographed creative expression or suffering abuse at the hands of prison officials with MTV aspirations. The only thing certain is that Vincent Price was right when he said, "No mere mortal can resist the evil of the Thriller:" The video has been downloaded more than 9 million times.

Time Magazine's #4 TV Ad of 2007 is Dove, Onslaught.

Part of Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign, this commercial shows a wide-eyed little girl being barraged by ads promising to make a woman "younger, smaller, tighter" and ending with the line, "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does." It's a compelling 60 seconds that makes a gal want to lather up in gratitude. Unfortunately, Dove is owned by Unilever, which advertises its Axe body spray to men using a lingerie-and-stiletto-clad girl rock band called the Bom Chicka Wah Wahs. What do we tell our daughters about that?

This is the new way to find restaurants. FoodieBytes is a website that allows users to search for restaurants and menus by entering the type of food they want. Rather than the traditional search for restaurants, which typically goes by location, type or rating, this new search allows hungry users with specific cravings in mind to find just what will hit the spot.

This is the most recent list of cities that are available on the website, other than the five main cities, which include: New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston and Chicago. The site also allows users to search by name of venue and/or menu. Next location: State College

While my team, Wintermute was working on our last project (Second Life & libraries), Paul mentioned a new technology known as Photosynth, as evidence of how our current linear concepts of technology can be completely challenged. This new technology is changing the way we view digital photos and utilize visual imagery. According to the Photosynth website,

The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.

According to the New York Times, the Coca Cola company is opening an island called CC Metro in There, another online virtual world. There.com isn't as large or notorious as Second Life, but it attempts to filter out any non PG-13 material, offering cleaner content to its users- making it as family friendly as possible. Check out Coca Cola's promotional page on There.com.

The Coca Cola Company was one of the first companies to start promoting itself in the virtual world. Five years ago, it opened its own world called Coke Studios. The NY Times reported the company's vice president for global interactive marketing stating that

about 112,000 people have visited Coke Studios each month and that the average visitor logged on three times a week for 16 minutes at a time. Coke consistently finds that some of its popular rewards offered from bottle cap points are digital goodies like virtual patio furniture for visitors' virtual rooms.

In class, we discussed not only the role and purpose of advertising in virtual worlds and social networking websites but also it's implications on the social-technical relationships between consumerism and technology. The Times reported

A number of consumer brands are designing virtual worlds that may resemble Coke's new island, said Reuben Steiger, the chief executive of Millions of Us, an advertising agency that focuses on virtual worlds.

Skeptics of virtual worlds point out that they have far less traffic than social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. And while people who frequent social networks tend to depict themselves truthfully (more or less), people setting up avatars in virtual worlds are probably creating fantasy figures so their actions may be less useful to advertisers.

Jewcy recently ran an article on the misinterpretations of the historical context and cultural crusade of the American national holiday known as Thanksgiving. A discussion of this is one of my fondest memories from sociology with Ms. Cooper, senior year of high school. The community that I grew up in is widely considered liberal, which was reflected in the everyday dialogue of my classes. Rather than stick to the traditional view of history as dictated by most textbooks, many teachers choose to open their students minds by showing them what is deemed the "other" perspective of history (from people usually in the lower socio-economic classes, women, people of color). Ms. Marshall, my American lit teacher, also strongly emphasized the importance of not necessarily accepting history for what is fed to us, but challenging the authenticity of the source and opening our eyes to a great understanding.

What is Thanksgiving? For those of us who went to American public schools, didn't we learn what this national holiday was about over a decade ago? Most of us were told the typical story reflecting the ideology of European settlers "making peace" and "civilizing" the Native Americans that were already living here in North America. It is a time where we spend time with our families and supposedly reflect, giving thanks for everything we have. Jewcy's Robert Jensen wrote,

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

The most common argument went something like this: OK, it's true that the Thanksgiving Day mythology is rooted in a fraudulent story -- about the European invaders coming in peace to the "New World," eager to cooperate with indigenous people -- which conveniently ignores the reality of European barbarism in the conquest of the continent. But we can reject the culture's self-congratulatory attempts to rewrite history, I have been told, and come together on Thanksgiving to celebrate the love and connections among family and friends.

Initially, the group dynamic was split in terms of how we felt about whether or not we should recommend investing in Second Life (to the Penn State Library). Before research on the subject of libraries in Second Life, some of the group sentiment was against Second Life in general, because of previous (negative) biases and experience with the program. Some of the group viewed the possibility of a library in Second Life as a waste of resources. The other group opinion thought a Second Life library contained the potential to stretch the limits of traditional library resources in a way that was impossible to see through traditional conventions.

While researching current efforts to create an Second Life Library, Paul found unconventional endeavors being employed.

The Alliance Library System (ALS) announced that the National Library of Medicine/Greater Midwest Region has awarded ALS a $40,000 grant to provide consumer health information services in the virtual world of Second Life in 2006. ALS is working on the project in partnership with the University of Illinois Library of the Health Sciences-Peoria, Central Medical Library, Unversity Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands, and TAP Information Services (Info Island website).

The current library efforts in Second Life are collectively known as Info Island. The ALS bought a large space of real estate in Second Life, and sublet pieces of that island to universities and libraries around the world for a small monthly fee. This was done to unite the digitalization efforts of libraries across the world. For example, one island in the archipelago is dedicated to the study of anatomy. Utilizing virtual reality, future doctors are being trained to study the human body. Instead of the traditional cadaver approach, Second Life provides the medium for virtual tours of external and internal parts of the body, from first and third person perspectives.

The San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science has a blog containing a passionate discussion regarding the use of Second Life in their program. Paul highlighted a post from Alynn, student in the university with limiting disability, who voiced her opinion that Second Life is a double edged sword. She has benefited from the virtual world that has allowed her intellectual and digital proximity to her classmates and work. However, according to Alynn, Second Life is unreliable in that it doesn't support technology required to bypass her disability. This puts her at a disadvantage with her classmates because effectively, this disables her within Second Life as well as real life.

Benefits that other current libraries have from their Second Life presence are publicity, expansion, workforce unlimited by location, resources unallocated by location, and the ability to share, collect and collaborate information globally. The scripting advantages that Second Life permits, creates the potential for information to be conveyed in almost any digital manner. This infinite capacity makes Second Life revolutionary.

The most imperative question that needs to be answered is whether or not Penn State Library's move onto Second Life will return profits or generate some source of income. In order to answer this question, one needs to have basic understanding of the Second Life economy. The currency in Second Life is referred to as Linden Dollars. Linden Labs makes the economy independent of pricing by freezing the exchange rate on a market-based currency exchange with US dollars and other international monetary currencies. Linden Labs reports that the Second Life economy generated about 3.6 million dollars in the month of September 2005. The 2006 Second Life gross domestic product (GDP) was 64 million US dollars. Estimates of the 2007 GDP are between 500 million and 600 million US dollars. If you would consider Second Life a country of its own, that would rank it at 166 just below Grenada. Second Life has a larger GDP that 20 other countries. The Second Life economy is no joke. The estimated economic activity in 2007 will create about 550 million US dollars. Money can definitely be made on Second Life.

Linden Labs has a very interesting exchange system set up. They call it LindenX. To control LindenX Linden Labs has set up "circuit breakers". They are market mechanisms that basically freeze the exchange levels if market acts in certain ways. If the average exchange rate in any given day increases or decreases more that 10% the Exchange market freezes for one hour. 20% for two hours. 30% until noon of the next day. These circuit breakers help keep the exchange rate stable. One thing to look out for is Linden Labs handling of monetary policy in Second Life. Linden Labs maintains a currency peg of about L$270 for $1. This is similar to what the Chinese do with Yuan. This practice could be argued to inhibit change in value. Currently, the exchange rate is US$1.00 US dollar for L$267. L$51 million changed hands today.

The Second Life market is a free market or laissez-faire economy. There are two types of costs to to be taken into account when doing business in Second Life: Membership plans and Virtual Land Use Fees (Tier Fee). In order to own land in Second Life, a Premium membership is required. A Premium account comes with advanced technical support and a 512m2 parcel (if you donate 512m2 to a group). These issues are really insignificant compared to the amount of space. If the Penn State Library were to move onto Second Life they would need at least a 1/4 Region or more. An entire region costs $1675 US dollars and an additional $195 per month in Tier fees.

From this brief economic analysis of Second Life, one can assume that the Second Life economy is growing at a stable rate, and under the eyes of Linden labs, the exchange rate between Linden dollars and US dollars has stayed the same over the past few years. This makes it a safe environment for the Penn State Library to do business on without having to worry about the Linden exchange market crash. The facts about increasing annual GDP also prove that profits and revenues are possible.

After examining the research and data collected, we decided that we would not recommend that the Penn State Library invest in Second Life at this time. Firstly, we believe a database would most accurately benefit that majority of students at Penn State. Many students researching for courses wouldn't opt to overcome the learning curve of Second Life to utilize a Penn State Second Life library. A database is more accessible to the Penn State community because not only is it accessible from any technology connected to the internet but also because its faster and much more efficient to access. The benefits a virtual world would bring to a library system don't necessarily align with the needs of a reference research facility at the present.

Throughout history, all innovative technologies have challenged the traditional methods that they are attempting to replace, reconfigure or enhance. The innovators responsible for those technologies had to think far enough outside the box past what has been considered effective. Virtual worlds have the potential to reinvent the way we interpret information. For example, instead of reading a piece of fiction, imagine being immersed in that work that is interacts with you engaging your imagination and senses. Instead of traditionally reading Dr. Seuss' Cat and the Hat to a six year old, envision having them hop on Second Life, and virtually walk through the story while they read and learn.

We found it necessary that the Penn State Library not only digitize their resources, but their collections of print books, encyclopedias, journals, manuscripts, newspapers, documents dissertations, media (music, video, audio) and more. There are current databases online where a two dimensional approach is taken- meaning that the data online is in PDF format or plain text. The Penn State Library as a collective whole should start formatting its resources digitally. When this happens, the Penn State Library will have a diverse set of options. Regardless of how the Penn State Library decides to proceed, this is the first step to making its resources available to its users digitally and requires a significant financial investment. It is our recommendation that any capital they have to invest be invested in this effort. The return on this investment is that the information is immortalized- it can be updated at any time and will outlast its paper form.

Our group opinion is that the current library efforts in Second Life are that they aren't returning the investments put into them. While exploring InfoIsland, we talked to various librarians in all parts of the island, asking to see what information was typically stored there. The librarians had trouble locating actual data for our avatar. Furthermore, other than InfoIsland, our investigative efforts were unable to discover another large library presence on Second Life, with the exception of a few individual libraries (extended versions of their physical forms). Therefore, we do not recommend that Penn State invest in technology that has yet to be utilized to the specifications proposed.

Somehow, I ended up at this site and thought it's message was worth spreading. And besides, who doesn't love potatoes?

The celebration of the International Year of the Potato (IYP) will raise awareness of the importance of the potato - and of agriculture in general - in addressing issues of global concern, including hunger, poverty and threats to the environment.

Over the next two decades, the world's population is expected to grow on average by more than 100 million people a year. More than 95 percent of that increase will occur in the developing countries, where pressure on land and water is already intense. A key challenge facing the international community is, therefore, to ensure food security for present and future generations, while protecting the natural resource base on which we all depend. The potato will be an important part of efforts to meet those challenges...

Potato facts that you can learn more about at the International Year of the Potato website.
- Potatoes are grown worldwide
- Potatoes feed the hungry
- Potatoes are good for you
- Demand for potatoes is growing

These are really clever, practical little things..

Solar charger? Sweet..

Some gorgeous algae

After my SRA class ended today, a man with a heavy Israeli accent and some professional cameramen came into the the Cybertorium and started setting up equipment. I saw the title of the presentation, Peacemaker, as well as the logo of the puzzle piece with the Israeli and Palestinian flags linked together.

Asi Burak, one of the founders of the game Peacemaker, developed by ImpactGames, spoke about the game, its impact and connection with social change. The purpose of the game is to create peace with the other side before the end of your term in office. It can be played in English, Hebrew or Arabic and has been sold in over 60 countries. Content experts on the history and political climate from Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, as well as user testing and the gaming industry all contributed to the design and implementation of the game. It was designed with the following assumptions in mind:

- You can make a difference

- Other side wants to make peace with your side

- Small concrete steps, not grandiose plans

- Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible

A thought to keep in mind when considering the game is that it assumes that the two-state solution is the only way to peace. This brings an interesting aspect to the game, because the potential audience that this game or game's publicity might reach will not agree, meaning they won't play or buy it. This multi faceted game has the potential to make a strong impact on the gaming industry, gaming audience and educational systems across the globe. The theory behind this game can be applied to many other situations and incorporated into curriculum. Using a game like this could be utilized by courses in political science, history, social studies, sociology, psychology, technology and many more.

Tutorial Demo
Full Demo

Gameplay Trailer
History Trailer

It is labeled as a strategic game where users can play as the role as an Israeli Prime Minister, Palestinian President or have their choice selected randomly.

Each role has different options, resources and capabilities, as true to the reality it is based off of.

Everything in the game is based off of real events.

Anytime a decision is made, there are consequences, and true to reality, there are things that happen that are out of the control of the leader.

Victory at the end of this game isn't one side winning. It's a peaceful, win-win situation for all parties in the game involved. Unlike the typical A vs. B structure of most video games, Peacemaker uses A, B, C & D theory to challenge the audience.

In Hebrew, IDF General Dani Yotom plays Peacemaker.. בעברית, צ.ה.ל חײַכ דני יתום משחק ממשלה ותעשו שלום.