Sky's Blog

Jim Sky

I couldn’t stand it any longer. When I was in India, attending the AirJaldi summit, on one of the days when the bandwidth diminished to a trickle (due to temporary technical difficulties), I just could not stand trying to create my blog entries thru that little mousehole of connectivity! It was SO frustrating! I vowed to myself at that time that I would look into offline blogging software at the earliest possible moment.

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Which are you more concerned about – seizing an opportunity, or “selling out?”

Ryanne (above) and Jay have signed a deal with PodTech and will blog on sustainable culture

Ryanne and Jay, who I met in Dharamsala, India, in October this year, and whose “hearts of gold” were so obvious from the beginning (they just stepped up and volunteered to help our students learn how to shoot and share video without hardly being asked), have just “sold” the rights to their video podcasts to PodTech. You can see that there was definitely some discussion about the commercialism of selling to a “channel” that carries advertising, and all that… (continue reading…)

CIO Magazine has a column written by David Rosenbaum, and titled Cranky Old Guy in which a week ago he wrote an entry Please Stop Playing with Yourself.

I view the column as being partially humor because I personally am such an odd mix of experience and a desire to use new techniques and technologies in novel ways.

David Rosenbaum really does sound like a cranky old guy in this particular entry, because what he’s bemoaning is that people (today) sit in meetings with their Blackberry, or cell ph, or computer in front of them (or in their lap below table level in order to hide it) reading and answering email rather than attending to the topic of the meeting.

Well, it’s easy to understand that he feels neglected and disrespected because people are doing other things while he’s making a PowerPoint presentation. And who hasn’t done this at least a couple of times in some boring meeting? But there are other aspects to be considered. On both sides of the table.

In fact, I feel that bringing a laptop computer to a meeting should in most cases be encouraged and put to good use, and here’s the how-and-why of that… (continue reading…)

Do you agree with me about the bizarre nature of this? Is this just “the press” building hype around something that can never happen? Or is it a warning about government possibly sticking an intrusive snout into our own private (fantasy) business? (Yes, like that doggy over there sniffing around in the grass looking for the small of you-know-what.)

In an article entitled IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable CNet news’ Daniel Terdiman suggests that publishers of online games like World of Warcraft and SecondLife may soon be forced to report in-game (“fake money”) transfers of value to the IRS so they can be taxed. All of this discussion triggered by talks at the State of Play/Terra Nova Symposium taking place at the New York Law School.
You know, in Civilization III the tax man is not well-liked. How unlike real life, eh? (Heh heh.)

My take, of course, is “it’ll never happen” but I wonder what you think about it all. The premise is that wherever there is an exchange of value, be it real dollars or fantasy dollars, the taxman could be there. (continue reading…)