First impressions: The waiting area for the flight was filled with a great diversity of ethnicities, including westerners and lots of others. Once we booted the belligerent woman in front of us to her proper seat, all was terrific. The overnight flight was not too full with some empty seats in the rows in front and behind us (but not ours sadly). The airline has high customer service! Good food, a nice toiletry bag with slippers and an AMAZING in flight entertainment system. It was a comfortable way to spend the 12 and a half hours, with two good meals, several movies (No Country for Old Men is fairly violent!), a great companion and nice people to work with us.

And once we landed, it is remarkable. Everything is in English. Everyone is helpful. It is very easy to navigate customs, baggage claim, and the Hyatt people even gave us a drink while we waited for the car. When it arrived the nice attendant walked us out of the airport and WHAM-the heat hits you. It is 7:45pm, dark outside, very hot and humid. We walked through an active crowd only to encounter a BMW 740LI for our transportation. Nice car!

 The Grand Hyatt hotel is nothing short of beautiful with a massive rainforest inside to frame the 8 or more restaurants you can choose from. The staff are friendly and the rooms are spacious and luxurious. Thank you RIT for my 5 star hotel!

 We ended up eating at Wox the first night because by the time we decided everything else had closed! It was tucked away in the corner of the rainforest, with just a few people eating.

More to Come!

Education Upgrade

Colleges shake their reputation as late adoptersBy Lorna Collier

This article looked at the findings of the Horizon Report, which identified Digent as a novel way to support collaboration. Now, I cannot find any sign of this article, but it was partially reprinted with quotes from me here:

http://mainiactheresa.blogspot.com/2008/05/51508-good-karma.html

Good news, nonetheless!

Update August 20: The full encarta article is available from the Author’s website: http://www.lornacollier.com/horizononmsn.pdf

Hiya, Google released their 3D world to beta today. It is called Lively.  I found much easier to use than secondlife, but with less power. However, it is a power-to-the-people kind of thing so if the community around it grows bigger there will be lots of free virtual goods. I even made my own island on my first visit.

http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-3922051443420242239

http://8.eppfff.com/1v

dotSyntax, LLC has taken 4 of the 6 awards at about.com’s 2008 IM awards!

View the full article here: http://im.about.com/od/imreviews/ss/IMBestWinners.htm

1. Most Improved IM
2. Best Third-Party Instant Messenger
3. Best IM Feature
4. Developers of the Year

Congratulations to RIT’s own Steve Shapiro and team!

Discovery. Its the one of Nick’s subcomponents that keeps popping up all over the place in my life. Maybe all of the online culture is one of Discovery (hey it would explain the value of Google). There is a constant quest to discover and try the enormous variety of new things accessible online. To be sure, this is a social computing thing. Its about discovering new territory and inviting your cool friends in for a visit.

Discovery experiences appear to be more important than ever today. For example, Alternate Reality Games, like Jane McGonigal’s The Lost Ring are attracting larger and larger audiences/players. The players become involved in a story because they are curious; curious to learn more, curious to see what this is about, curious to see if anybody else has found more.

But how do Businesses embrace Discovery?

• Viral Marketing campaigns that leverage consumer’s desire to Discover are really engaging. I showed my class the multifaceted Mini Men of Metal to give them a feel for this genre.
• Making us all beta testers allows us all to try businesses for free. I remember the pages of legal stuff I had to sign to be a beta tester back in the day (not to mention the stacks of 3.5 inch disks to install) ugh.

• Can we build new business models on discovery? Does giving users the ability to experience something free take away any chance that you would want to own it? A question you might ask the music industry. Last.fm, Pandora, Finetune allow users to explore music based on your own and others listening habits. Imeem and Muxtape allow you to create playlists of your own music that others can listen to and then buy.

One recent study suggests that Discovery business models may be increasing sales of music at Last.fm. I hope so. Given our unprecedented ability to search through the incredible variety of creative work, sharing the few things we like seems like what we are all doing online. Indeed, Discovery and associated sharing may be what drives the social networking phenomenon we are enjoying right now.

Dibbell will discuss:

LUDOCAPITALISM
A Few Ways of Making Real Money From a Virtual Economy, and What They Mean

In the make-believe realms of massively multiplayer online games
(MMOs) and other virtual worlds, the immaterial objects of players’
desire have become, for some, a source of materially significant
income. In this talk, I revisit my own attempts to profit from the
real-money traffic in virtual goods, teasing out their implications
for a world economy that is everyday more riddled with the stuff –
and the logic — of games.