“Technology that allows gamers to control game functions with only their eyes is helping to open virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft to people with severe motor disabilities.”
“A new way to allow simulated and real robots to take on a life of their own is under development by a German team with colleagues at Edinburgh University.”
“Every web surfer, in the course of his or her browsing, has been forced to stop and perform this weird little task: look at a picture of some wavy, ghostly, distorted letters and type them into a box. Sometimes you flub it and have to retype the letters, but otherwise you don’t think about it much. That string of letters has a name; it’s called a CAPTCHA. And it’s a test. By correctly transcribing it, you have proved to the computer that you are a human being…”
a San Francisco company, Radar Networks, is testing a free, Web-based application, called Twine, that may provide some robotic secretarial help in organizing and retrieving documents.
“This week the library was overwhelmed by the public response after it put 3,100 of the most popular photos from its collection online at Flickr, getting them outside the Washington library walls and into the hands of people who want to use them”
The latest issue (72) of ERCIM News features a keynote address about the future web by Timothy Berners-Lee.
Increasingly complex gaming platforms, such as these PlayStation 3 consoles at a party at a Tokyo shopping district, are taking over the role of a traditional PC.
“Get ready to hop your avatar onto a hoverboard and fly seamlessly between Second Life and There.com. To buy armor or gold pieces in World of Warcraft or EverQuest II with actual dollars or euros. Or to pack up your 3D models from a Multiverse virtual world and take it with you to Gaia Online.”
“The Library of Congress, through its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), today announced eight partnerships as part of its new Preserving Creative America initiative to address the long-term preservation of creative content in digital form. These partners will target preservation issues across a broad range of creative works, including digital photographs, cartoons, motion pictures, sound recordings and even video games. The work will be conducted by a combination of industry trade associations, private sector companies and nonprofits, as well as cultural heritage institutions.”
“People are using time spent on the Internet to actually engage themselves in reading content more now than ever before, according to new data presented by the Online Publishers Association and Nielsen/NetRatings. The association released its four-year-long Internet Activity Index (IAI) today, which gauges people’s use of e-commerce, communications, content and search services over time. And while activities like e-commerce and communications still remain popular, reading and viewing content has skyrocketed between 2003 and today.”