Martha Beck's advice on failure

The timing is just right for reading this article. It is the way to end one year and begin another year.

clipped from www.oprah.com The Woman Who Fell to Earth To Fail Is Divine by Martha Beck clipped from www.oprah.com This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun. With time-killing games, where the stakes are very low, pretty much everyone's willing to risk failure. But when it comes to things we think really matter, like creating a career or raising children, we hunker down, tighten up, and absolutely refuse to fail. Anyway, that's the theory. The reality is, we are going to fail. Then we make things worse by refusing to accept this.

"Ah-ha" moment for the big brands

and the all the residents in Second Life said "Amen"

clipped from www.clickz.com Virtual World Marketing Gets Reality Check in 2007 "A lot of the problems with marketing in virtual worlds stem from brands and their agencies thinking you can just parade into a virtual world and take it over as if you belonged there all along. The 'a-ha' moment happened in 2007 when some of the big early brands that entered the virtual space pulled out," he said. "People did a lot of stupid stuff in virtual worlds that they shouldn't have been doing."

Being nice in social networks

...um...guys? are you over thinking this?

clipped from www.ericrice.com How Being Nice Impacts The Value of Social Networks Clarence - In my particular case, I am simply grateful they have added me. Nine times out of ten, I will take a look at their profile, their content, and get a brief snapshot of their presence online. Sometimes I will add them. Most times I do not. What it says to the people who I don’t follow? It depends on the individual, right? Some might think of me as pretentious, while others might simply be checking me out to see what it means when I say I do Me. You can’t control what people think about you — all that matters is that what you say and do reflect exactly who you are and how you get down.

Virtual Skills = Real Skills

I hope the use of the word "virtual" here is not meant to imply less value or inferior to "real" life skills. The social skills, work ethics and friendships are very real in a virtual world.

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clipped from www.techlearning.com Raising Virtual Children These are places of learning. This student is learning to look for symptoms; earlier in the article, she was flipping burgers to make money for a scooter. She needed 50 bucks so she could buy a scooter. This is a place of learning, learning virtual social skills, virtual work ethics, and making virtual friends. This is all stuff you and I do not understand, but to these students, this generation., this is their playground

Can Second Life be an educational tool?

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clipped from www.techlearning.com Surfing Second Life Second Life is often described as a 3-D version of the Web because it adds a rich visual aspect to Internet activities such as socializing, fact finding, and doing business. Since it is technically not a game, there is no intrinsic goal to playing, and the range of possibilities is almost infinitely wide. At the Pyramid Club, for example, a fox-like virtual character (or avatar), a man with 40-foot-tall wings, and a girl in black jeans dance on an electric-blue platform while a killer whale cruises by under the glass floor. Far away, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Science on a Sphere island, a tsunami simulator puts avatars waist-deep in water and a submarine ride lets them view algae-covered reefs and dolphin pods.

Seasons Greetings!

Hoping your holidays are the happiest!

Interesting Stats about Second Life

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clipped from rezzable.com Second Life Market Size ? Growth is Slow/Flat LL Leaves Door Open for New Virtual World Competitors Looking at November Linden data on SL market activity and have some analysis: ** Also interesting to see that despite 3.0 million new residents from July to Nov total month hours are not increasing that much, in fact are flat to down: july — 23.6 million hours online, aug 23.4, sep 24.1, oct 25.9, nov 24.6 ** Anecdotally, Linden still seems to have a very weak/non-existent marketing effort. General news on SL seems downbeat, several mainstream press call is SL Fatigue. Not a bad story in BBC, but good news still dogged by uncertainty over Cory CTO departure. Add that to Pontiac, AOL leaving and CSI delivering way under expectations and seems like SL growth will be sluggish into early 2008.

Future Podcasts needed improvements

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(This blog post was commented on by yours truly)

clipped from www.massively.com Catherine Smith presents Inside Linden Lab Maybe I'm fussy, but it felt a little over-scripted, like some of it is being read aloud - there's also some reverberation from the room, so some people may find it difficult to listen to or to understand if you have hearing difficulties or problem processing speech.

Real Life Medical training in a Second Life environment

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clipped from www.massively.com Second Life to become largest medical school in the world? JuniorDr.com talks a bit about what Second Life is, and covers several places where it is being used to provide bioscience and medical training, including Genome Island, Health Info Island, The Ann Myers Medical Centre and the Heart Murmur Sim (Disclosure: Some of the materials covered I have provided to the people running the exhibits). Meanwhile the Student British Medical Journal covers training from Coventry University in some depth and mentions a range of other universities and their activities in the medical field.

Are Second Life Users Sticking with It?

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clipped from www.massively.com Peering inside - Second Life's user retention The really interesting thing is the lack of change in the retention figure itself - despite everything done to improve user experience - it's not budging, so far as we've been told.

Cory Linden left Linden Labs

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clipped from nwn.blogs.com New World Newsfeed: Ex-Lindens on Cory Linden's Leaving; Philip Linden Responds In Cory's leaked internal e-mail, he states that "Philip and my visions for the future of Linden Lab are divergent enough that he decided to lead in his own way." Considering all the people who now have a livelihood that depends on Second Life, what assurances can the Lindens give them that Philip's path is the correct one? Or to put it another way, what if Cory was right?

Virtual Worlds Conference Anouncement

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clipped from terranova.blogs.com Virtual Worlds and Social Science: Conference Virtual Worlds and New Realities in Commerce, Politics, and Society 11 February 2008 Emory University, Atlanta GA

Ongoing theorizing on virtual worlds

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clipped from terranova.blogs.com A Virtual World Winter? While I'm still bullish on virtual worlds and MMOGs for a number of reasons, that doesn't mean we won't necessarily go through a deep winter before we find spring again.    I'm often asked about what comes after World of Warcraft?  Can this market be sustained?  Is it possible that we could find ourselves in a situation where we have to say about our entire customer base that "those who came, left"?  And if so, how do we prevent that from happening?

Blogging: An Educational Tool

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clipped from www.techlearning.com Getting Started With Blogging in the Classroom In other words, scholars need to read blogs! I cannot overstate this fact enough. If you really want blogging to be transformative and you want it to sustain itself as a powerful piece of the classroom environment, it starts with seeing the philosophy of this genre as authentic literacy: critical reading, connecting and synthesizing ideas, communicating publicly, creating, contributing, community linking and building, and moving cyclically.

Embracing Blogging

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clipped from www.techlearning.com Blogs are not the death of writing but the evolution There are those who believe that blogs are the death of all that is good and noble about writing... and represent some sort of weakening of the mind. blogs are a medium. Just as paper can hold poetry or pornography, penmanship or im-speak, blogs can do the same.

Parents, kids & how to handle media

The Data Digger: This is what I am reading.

clipped from www.pta.org Media and Technology Learn about the kinds of media and technology your children are using. Talk with your children about their media choices. Check their understanding of the messages and images they encounter. Make media choices together—decide what your family will and won't view. Encourage sensible and thoughtful use of screen time for your family. Consider ages and needs of your children, and set clear rules and expectations for all family members.

Congressional Ethics

The Data Digger: It is what I am reading

clipped from www.lwv.org Four Reform Groups Express Disappointment In Proposed New House Office Of Congressional Ethics And The Absence of any Investigatory Powers to Carry Out Its Responsibilities We believe such an entity is necessary to effectively respond to the complete breakdown of the House ethics enforcement process in the last Congress and to help ensure that the new House ethics rules are properly enforced.

State Children's Health Insurance Program

The Data Digger: It is what I am reading.

clipped from www.congress.org House Passes SCHIP Extension On Wednesday the House voted 411-3 S.2499, the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007, which continues funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program through March of 2009. In addition, the bill delays an impending 10% cut in Medicare payements to physicians. It does not include a $35 billion increase that had been proposed earlier.

Teclearning blog

The Data Digger: What I am reading

clipped from www.techlearning.com What We All Want Everything we need to do and know about helping students become successful learners is in the above comments as well as knowing one more important thing about kids: that they like to play. In fact they need to play ---a concept that is still barely understood. "Games are the most elevated form of Investigation."

Cause I needed to know

Remember back in high school math? The teacher would be droning on about a certain equation and you would sit there thinking why am I studying this? I will never need this in the real world. HA! I just had a flashback. Wish I would have paid attention.

clipped from www.bnet.com Navigating the Financial Pages Understand General Information about Stock Listings 52-Wk Rng. 52-week range—the highest and lowest stock prices over the last year. If there is a very wide range, it might indicate that the company operates in a volatile sector. Like many financial measures, these figures are most meaningful when used alongside other indicators. P/E. Price/earnings ratio—the market price of a stock divided by its earnings per share over the last 12 months. Together with yield, this is the measure most widely used by investors; usually, both indicators will be quoted in financial listings alongside the stock price. Yield %. The annual dividend paid to investors, expressed as a percentage of its current price.

Brushing up on Anger management

Sometimes anger flares when you least expect it. Everyone can benefit from brushing up on their anger management skills. Help keep the workplace enjoyable. Business etiquette is not an "optional" behavior.

clipped from www.bnet.com Managing Anger at Work Take Steps to Manage Suspected Anger Try not to “reason” the person’s answers away or deny his or her feelings, having shared your own, but enter into a dialogue, giving each other feedback, so that you can clarify and understand what is going on for each of you. Find a point of agreement and build from there. You can do this explicitly by saying something like: “I quite understand where you’re coming from. I’d feel the same if I were you.” Having validated their anger, you can then start finding a way forward by outlining some choices.

Improving communication skills

Theses helpful tips encourage us to "not sweat the small stuff" and tackle a difficult communication relationship head on.

clipped from www.bnet.com Working around Personality Clashes Many people blame conflicts on personality clashes, but what we perceive as personality clashes may, in fact, be something quite different. Each of us has our own unique mix of attributes and beliefs that make up our personalities. If we clashed with everyone who is different from us, we would be clashing constantly. In fact, we accommodate—and even enjoy—difference, provided it does not threaten our beliefs or values. Indeed, our lives are richer and more exciting when we see the world from the perspective of others. What is termed a personality clash is often a jarring that occurs when someone challenges a deeply-held value or belief. We view it as a threat, and we fight hard to prove that we are “right” and they are “wrong.” What we are really doing is seeking confirmation that we have no reason to change.