Gary Hayes, director of the Australian Laboratory for Advanced Media Production, filmed the video below during his virtual travels in preparation for some reports on the evolution of virtual worlds. I knew there were other virtual worlds out there and in the works, but I had no idea there were so many that look--at least from the brief clips--so good. In seven minutes, Hayes provides glimpses of forty virtual worlds, interspersed with some interesting and thought-provoking quotations. Visit Personalized Media and scroll down to read some of Hayes's initial observations.



Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill at Librarians Matter for the tip!

The folks at CommonCraft, who brought us the wonderful videos about different web 2.0 applications, have provided a peek at the tools they use to create their videos.

Lots of dry-erase markers, among other things. Neat.

What is Second Life? San Jose State Unversity School of Library and Information Science Robin T. Williams aka Greylin Fairweather answers some common questions about Second Life using a lovely metaphor:

I was excited to see a new video from CommonCraft in my Bloglines this morning. If you haven't seen their videos about RSS, wikis, social bookmarking, and social networking, I encourage you to check them out. They're great, fun introductions to the concepts. Last week I did a session for some faculty about web 2.0 tools, and the wikis and RSS videos got them laughing.

So, the new video. It's a little different, but a good reminder of some important safety tips for this time of year.

From the creator of The Machine is Us/Using Us, comes A Vision of Students Today. The production values and camera work leave something to be desired, but the concept is brilliant.



The first thing it brought to mind for me was the difference between the AALL Gen X/Gen Y Caucus meetings and the rest of the annual meeting events: we immediately, instinctively (I've never heard the suggestion for arrangement made out loud) re-arrange the chairs into an enormous circle. Granted, circles are impractical for many conference activities, but it's still interesting.

Expect to see this one circulating wildly. For more from this professor and his students, check out Kansas State University's Digital Ethnography site. (This is the URL that appears near the end of the video.)

Thanks to Chronicles of Bean for the tip.

My friend Cherie linked to this new Toyota commercial that has apparently actually aired:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_622w_ttiU]

Pretty funny, and I suspect it may be more effective advertising than a corporate presence in Second Life.

A bit of subsequent research, and it appears the commercial parodies this machinima filmed in World of Warcraft.

And video, at that!

The New York Times reports:

TheDailyShow.com, which launches in the fourth quarter, will archive the entire video history of the show including headlines, interviews and the "Back in Black" feature. The portal also will present the previous evening's episode in its entirety an hour or two after its broadcast.

For those of us who don't have cable, this is wonderful news!

Check it out at CNET:

Unless they do. Courtesy of The Dog's Pajamas:
And if you've got enough of a Broadway geek in you to enjoy that, don't miss Lecture Musical!