A Second Life For Business - Second Life: Is Business Ready For Virtual Worlds?: Is Business Ready For Second Life

A Second Life For Business - Second Life: Is Business Ready For Virtual Worlds?: Is Business Ready For Second Life: "But Chris Holdren, vice president of Web services at Starwood Hotels, who oversaw the construction of a hotel in Second Life a prototype of the new Aloft brand hotels scheduled to appear in the real world in 2008 says Second Life presents enough opportunities that corporate technology leaders should pay attention to it. 'I definitely think they should learn about it and understand it,' he says. 'Whether they invest in it is a more complicated question.'"

Pay attention indeed. The Web innovations already underway will make the Dotcom revolution pale by comparison. What we once thought of as the virtual world ain't so virtual anymore, as more and more real business is conducted online. In fact, the online experience for many of these transactions is a far more desirable, in terms of convenience and efficiency, than the real deal (think about standing in line at a bank or to check in for air travel.

Somewhere in the convergence of "conventional" ecommerce and services like Second Life, something new will emerge, a truly virtual experience that will make all this typing and clicking seem like smoke signals and cave paintings.

In this new world, even more so than now, success will go to the innovators. Those innovators are already making the effort to understand the future.

Save Internet Radio! Petition

From an email from Rusty Hodge, General Manager and Program Director, SomaFM.com:

[O]nce again internet radio is facing huge additional royalties for broadcasting music. These royalties are in addition to the ones that we pay to ASCAP and BMI, and are a royalty that is only paid by internet broadcasters. Over-the-air (AM/FM) broadcasters are explicitly exempt from this royalty; it only applies to internet broadcasters and subscription music services.

The music industry never tires of demonstrating its utter cluelessness through these attempts to turn back the clock.

Don't let their idiocy ruin the future of music. Please sign the Save Internet Radio! Petition.

Scientists to save 5,000-year-old embrace - Yahoo! News

Scientists to save 5,000-year-old embrace - Yahoo! News: "In a
Valentine's Day gift to the country, scientists said they are determined to remove and preserve together the remains of a couple buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, their arms still wrapped around each other in an enduring embrace."

Strange...

Yesterday I watched an X-File rerun entitled Field Trip, which included an overhead shot of two skeletons in an embrace -- an image that was very nearly identical to the photo in this Reuters news story.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Go Completely Bat-Shit Crazy

And in a story about the Right Stuff gone terribly, terribly wrong:

Astronaut in bizarre kidnap plot in Florida court - Yahoo! News: "Police allege Nowak drove 950 miles from Houston to Orlando -- wearing adult diapers so she would not have to stop to urinate -- and disguised herself in a dark wig, glasses and trench coat to confront her rival, Colleen Shipman, who according to media reports is a captain in the U.S. Air Force."

Molly Ivins dies of cancer at 62 - Yahoo! News

Molly Ivins dies of cancer at 62 - Yahoo! News: "'Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?' she wrote in a 2002 column about a California political race."

I love Molly Ivins' political writing. She was a loud, brassy, unabashedly liberal voice, a thoughtful, perceptive thorn in the side of pomposity. She was the Anti-Coulter. She will be missed.