voyeurism

Introducing the Starling Project

the one-hundred-and-forty-sixth episode of ventriloquy introduces the Starling Project.

The Starling Project refers to my proposed research into an education initiative in Second Life and other virtual worlds, that will keep me busy till 2011.

i am applying for funding for the Starling Project, under the third round of Singapore's National Research Foundation's Research & Development Programme on Interactive and Digital Media in Education.

please do join me in this 3.3 MB download, as i share how i came to decide on the name for the project.

Additional reading:
- Carl Zimmer's 2 May 2006 article (Starlings' listening skills may shed light on language evolution) The New York Times

Other projects named Starling:
- The Starling Project Foundation, Inc. (classical music education)
- Teach the starlings (biogeography education)
- Project Starling (social science research)
- The Starling database program

lagi kakis

as promised, here's another pic of the photo-taking session from two days' ago :-)

kakis

the Singaporean community in Second Life had a little gathering earlier this evening - no doubt pictures from the event will soon be surfacing on the web. i'll be linking to them too, once they become available :-)

in the meantime, here's one i took post facto - after the event - quite apart from the hard-to-ignore poseballs, it does show a fraction of the more than sixty avatars who were present concurrently for the photoshoot. more importantly, it shows how the diversity of Real Life Singapore is mirrored in Second Life :-)

first bite

i don't often post by simply referencing others' posts, but this one is just too good not to share :-)

Tateru Nino's 21 April 2008 entry (Peering inside: disorienting experiences) Massively

Technorati Tags: learning, Second Life

first build

the one hundred and forty-fifth episode of ventriloquy shares my thoughts on the potential role that Second Life could play in nurturing Communities of Practice.

as in so many things, the catalysts behind these recent musings come from two seemingly unrelated quarters, one of which is depicted in this picture.

please do join me in this 3.7 MB download :-)

Show notes:
- Community of Practice (wikipedia entry)

in solidarity, in memory

one year on, we stand in remembrance.

Virginia Tech Second Life® Memorial Tribute Video

active avatars in Second Life, ranked as a proportion of countries' respective population sizes (March 2008)

following up on the preceding post, here is the breakdown of figures for active avatars per country for March 2008, normalised against the respective population sizes (again, population totals were obtained from the CIA's World Factbook).

for those of you who are new to this, i'll give you a concrete example (if you've read my post from September 2007 on the same topic, you can just skip ahead to the next paragraph). the United States had 194899 active avatars during March. the population size of the USA in July 2008 is projected to be 303824646. this means that 0.06 percent of the US population had avatars active in Second Life during March.

i took the top 40 countries by active avatars (ranked by absolute numbers), and processed them by 'active avatars as proportion of country population'. just like for the February figures, Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela have been excluded, because the proportions are really tiny.

here's what the numbers for March look like :-)

1. the Netherlands 0.10 % (unchanged)

2. United Kingdom 0.07 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.08 %; rank is stable)

3. USA 0.06 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Denmark)

4. Australia 0.06 % (proportion has increased, from 0.05 %; rank has increased, displacing Denmark)

5. Denmark 0.06 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by the USA and Australia)

6. Belgium 0.06 % (proportion has increased, from 0.05 %; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia, Germany and Switzerland)

7. Switzerland 0.06 % (proportion has increased, from 0.05 %; rank has increased, displacing Germany)

8. Slovenia 0.06 % (proportion has increased, from 0.05 %; displaced in rank by Belgium and Switzerland)

9. Canada 0.06 % (proportion has increased, from 0.05 %; rank has increased, displacing Germany)

10. Germany 0.05 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Belgium, Switzerland and Canada)

11. Portugal 0.05 % (proportion has increased, from 0.04 %; rank has increased, displacing Spain, Ireland, France and Sweden)

12. Sweden 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Spain, Ireland and France)

13. Spain 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Portugal and Sweden)

14. Ireland 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Portugal and Sweden)

15. France 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Portugal and Sweden)

16. Italy 0.04 % (unchanged)

17. New Zealand 0.04 % (proportion has increased, from 0.03 %; rank is stable)

18. Singapore 0.03 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Norway and Austria)

19. Norway 0.03 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Singapore)

20. Austria 0.03 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by SIngapore)

21. Finland 0.02 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Japan)

22. Japan 0.02 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Finland)

23. Greece 0.02 % (unchanged)

24. the Czech Republic 0.02 % (proportion has increased, from 0.01 %; rank has increased, displacing Brazil and Israel)

25. Israel 0.01 % (unchanged)

26. Brazil 0.01 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by the Czech Republic and Israel)

27. Poland 0.01 % (unchanged)

28. Romania 0.01 % (unchanged)

29. Hungary 0.01 % (new entry)

analysed this way, Singapore is still the Asian country with the highest proportion of active avatars in Second Life.

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Second Life, Singapore

active avatars in Second Life, ranked as a proportion of countries' respective population sizes (February 2008)

following up on February's post, here is the breakdown of figures for active avatars per country for February 2008, normalised against the respective population sizes (again, population totals were obtained from the CIA's World Factbook).

for those of you who are new to this, i'll give you a concrete example (if you've read my post from September 2007 on the same topic, you can just skip ahead to the next paragraph). the United States had 182698 active avatars during February. the population size of the USA in July 2008 is projected to be 303824646. this means that 0.06 percent of the US population had avatars active in Second Life during February.

i took the top 40 countries by active avatars (ranked by absolute numbers), and processed them by 'active avatars as proportion of country population'. just like for the January figures, Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela have been excluded, because the proportions are really tiny. excluded for the same reason from this list of 40 is Afghanistan.

here's what the numbers for February look like :-)

1. the Netherlands 0.10 % (unchanged)

2. United Kingdom 0.08 % (proportion has increased, from 0.07 %; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia)

3. Denmark 0.06 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia and the USA)

4. USA 0.06 % (unchanged)

5. Australia 0.05 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany)

6. Slovenia 0.05 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.07 %; displaced in rank by the United Kingdom, Denmark, the USA and Australia)

7. Germany 0.05 % (unchanged)

8. Switzerland 0.05 % (unchanged)

9. Belgium 0.05 % (unchanged)

10. Canada 0.05 % (unchanged)

11. Spain 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Norway)

12. Ireland 0.04 % (unchanged)

13. France 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Spain and Ireland)

14. Sweden 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Italy, Portugal and Norway)

15. Portugal 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Spain and Sweden)

16. Italy 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Spain, Sweden and Portugal)

17. New Zealand 0.03 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.04 %; rank has increased, displacing Norway)

18. Norway 0.03 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.04 %; displaced in rank by Spain, Sweden and New Zealand)

19. Austria 0.03 % (unchanged)

20. Singapore 0.03 % (proportion has increased, from 0.02 %; rank is stable)

21. Japan 0.02 % (unchanged)

22. Finland 0.02 % (unchanged)

23. Greece 0.02 % (unchanged)

24. Brazil 0.01 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.02 %; rank is stable)

25. Israel 0.01 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing the Czech Republic)

26. the Czech Republic 0.01 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.02 %; displaced in rank by Israel)

27. Poland 0.01 % (unchanged)

28. Romania 0.01 % (new entry)

analysed this way, Singapore is still the Asian country with the highest proportion of active avatars in Second Life.

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Second Life, Singapore

the Olympic flame comes to the Champs-Elysées

here are some pictures i snapped as the Olympic flame made its way down the Champs-Elysées.

Cold snap in southeastern England

these pictures were taken just one hour apart, from my aunt's house in Kent :-)

the last time there was such a cold snap this late in the year in the UK was in 1989.