Fleep’s Deep Thoughts

Live on Reuters island in Second Life, Adam Reuters interviews SL CEO Philip Rosedale, currently discussing entrepreneurship. Philip disagrees that there is a PR strategy problem, and says that transparency is the way to go, but pre-discussion of policies may be more damaging than just announcing policy changes when they [...]

Just the other day I watched a PBS Frontline episode about Kiva, a micro-lending non-profit that uses the web to connect lenders and borrowers. Individual lenders can see pictures and stories of loan applicants, choose which projects to fund, and track the borrowers progress on loan repayment. Even small dollar amounts can have [...]

Where does stuff come from, how does it get made, where did all this CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME madness come from?
This might be the best online video I’ve seen all year.
http://www.storyofstuff.com/video/

Dear Skin Designers of Second Life:
I am writing to alert you to a problem that you may not be aware of, since it has likely been a very long time since you were a newbie. I and many other educators are working with faculty and student populations to make them aware of the benefits [...]

On Saturday I drove through a snowstorm doing 20 miles an hour on the interstate. It was a horrible drive, my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, and the roads were in terrible shape. I must have seen 30 accidents along the way - tractor trailers jackknifed, cars over embankments, [...]

I’ve not watched a single candidate debate or speech, have seen almost no video coverage or news coverage, and generally have avoided consuming pre-election coverage of the Dems. But this morning someone sent a link to a live stream of the Obama rally today and since I’m sitting here doing research and filling out [...]

[Edit: Good grief, it's the State of the University, not State of the Union. (!!) Recovering political junkie reflex.]
Interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about big business and Second Life. Tackles the interoperability-slash-walled garden issue, and quotes Metanomics series host Professor Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University, who I recently met during [...]

After the last presidential election, I felt such a profound sense of despair that I don’t think I’ve recovered from it even still. It was such a disappointment, that I confess to being completely apathetic about American politics for the first time in my adult life. I managed to vote in every election [...]