kathleen forden

my son turned me onto a blog written by a young student at Cambridge

Alice and Kev is the name of this blog and i’ve been completely blown away by it.   if the following is of interest to you, i say read away and learn dear reader – experience, read and learn….

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

Enjoy as you recognize how you can return to when you thought everything was possible.

NEW YORK Until recently, augmented reality existed mainly in movies like The Minority Report and computer science labs at universities, where technologists grappled with comically clunky headgear.

Now, however, several new Web and mobile applications are changing minds and helping to bring AR into the mainstream.

In essence, AR holds the promise of marrying the digital and physical worlds by taking complex data and overlaying it with views of the real world via Webcam technology and multiple screens.

“The last thing I can [recall] getting this much hype is Second Life,” said Matt Szymczyk, CEO of Zugara, a Los Angeles-area digital agency. “But I think there will be more practical uses to this.”

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i4d0a69ad29e1cca5eb27fa6d2f367326

5 Socio-Technology Trends

Great presentation with a very cool interface

Thank you Gerd Leonhard for this video and content

Don Tapscott- the Wikinomics guy – is just a great speaker, with seemingly endless knowledge, and one of the people that constantly inspire me in my own work (check out the new Futerati.com for all the others…) This video has so many great pieces of wisdomin it that youll just need to watch the entire 62 minutes! The new keynote “Rebuilding the World” by Don Tapscott from Sander Duivestein on Vimeo.

time of my life
what a blast – no pun intended
meet and greet

funny
down to earth
for space alumni

it was a Tweetup
so see below for
my tweets during

NASA Tweetup 7/21/09

panel presentation rocked
when astroMike pulls
off handle on hubble

hours of screw removing on mission
but lots of laughs tell us about it

no carbonated drinks in space
burbing can really be hazmat related
stuff space alumni can’t do for 2 wks
after return growing with each mission

no shopping and mowing lawn added
by crew of the sts-125

after tweetup ended
warm, down to earth, mingling
handshakes, laughs, hugs, photos
chat, more photos, swag bags

twitter folks from NASA rock
really get the whole So Me thing

interview of brandon who went
with me to DC
then they turn to me
i fumble and stutter and i’m
the one quoted in the blog

last day of visit
old stomping grounds
dupont circle near the zoo
love the little shops
felt like home again except for

humidity – which stinks
wet rag feel and look all visit
go to get off plane and twist knee
bad
really really bad

finally hobble outside
103 degrees
i’m perfectly dry – even
after hobbling to car

blog for APS.org – Physicists
http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=4331474373085228145

next post – photos and videos

by Thomas Bartlett
The Chronicle of Higher Education

John G. Sperling, as he often reminds those around him, is running out of time. At 88, he is in relatively good health, despite a weak kidney and back problems. He still walks the dog, drives himself to meetings, and seems to have no shortage of nervous energy: Forced to sit still for any length of time, he twirls his cellphone between two fingers or distractedly peels the label from a bottle of water, leaving it in shreds on the table.

Even so, he feels the tug of mortality, and he has a lot left to accomplish. Like, for instance, saving the world.

He’s had big ideas before. In 1974, at the not-so-tender age of 53, he left a tenured position at San Jose State University with $26,000 in savings to start an academic program for working adults. In the beginning, he ran the operation out of his house. It soon outgrew those humble digs and later relocated to Arizona, adopting the name of that state’s capital. Now the University of Phoenix has close to 400,000 students, more than 200 campuses and 26,000 faculty members, and is valued at roughly $10-billion.

http://www.phoenix.edu/news_room/releases/2009/07/phoenix-risen.html#

Acrossair has developed an amazing augmented reality app for the iPhone 3GS, New York Nearest Subway which helps you find the nearest subway lines as you move and tilt your iPhone.