Mitch Wagner's Blog

Griefers Post Seizure-Inducing Graphics On Epilepsy Board

Attackers targeted a messaging board for the noprofit Epilepsy Foundation and posted JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.

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Outspring Mail For Mac Learns From You

I've recently been bumping up against the rough edges of Apple Mail, and so I was very interested in learning about Outspring Mail, a $95 Mac e-mail program that's designed to observe the user's actions and learn from them.

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Funny cat video

I love the audio. (via)

Qwaq Brings Virtual Worlds To Business Collaboration

I had a chance to talk with the CEO of Qwaq the other day. Qwaq makes virtual worlds software optimized for corporate meetings. If you've spent time in Second Life, you know the power of avatars and 3-D spaces to enhance conversations and collaboration. It's hard to explain to people who've never tried virtual worlds, but it's real. Qwaq is an attempt to tailor virtual worlds for business collaboration, adding features that businesses need and taking away features that are harmful.

Intel built this auditorium in Qwaq to show the ability to share presentations and 3D objects.

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The power of virtual worlds is that they trick your brain into thinking you're actually sharing a physical space with other people, participating in a shared activity. As a result, conversations and collaboration are richer. People who'd remain silent in a conference call, Webex, or chatroom will speak up in a meeting in a virtual world.

"Nothing is better for us than people who've been in Second Life," said Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq, in a phone interview. "They know the value of the immersive situation and they come in with a list of questions about features and functionality which they want us to address -- and we're able to do it." On the other hand, conversations with people who aren't familiar with virtual worlds get hung up on the discussion of whether the platform has any practical purpose at all.

If you're skeptical that virtual worlds have any place in business, well, I'm not going to be able to convince you here. Nothing can convince you other than trying virtual worlds out for yourself.

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Kevin Smith's next movie

It's called Zack and Miri Make A Porno. Gee, I wonder what it will be about? It's due out Oct. 31.

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.

I had trouble getting into this one. The idea behind it is brilliant -- magic is a branch of mathematics, which means computer programs are the ultimate magical tools. The hero is named Bob Howard, he's a network administrator and spy for the Laundry, a secret branch of the British government devoted to controlling infestation of H.P. Lovecraftian gods. Stross knows the culture and technology cold; Howard is a Slashdot-reading, Palm Treo-carrying alpha geek, who spends as much time and energy battling meddlesome bureaucrats as he does fighting demons.

However, the premise was introduced in the first volume of the series, The Atrocity Archive. The Jennifer Morgue is consumed with pastiche of the James Bond novels and movies. Since I never cared for the novels or movies, I bogged down in the novel and didn't finish it.

However, I did enjoy two bonuses in the volume: A short story featuring Bob Howard and the Laundry, Pimpf, and an essay looking at a century of spy and how James Bond fits into the genre. Stross makes the argument that Bond is a Mary Sue character.

A Mary Sue character is a wish-fulfillment projection of the author into the story. It comes from amateur fiction based on Star Trek, in those stories, Mary Sue was a brilliant young ensign on the Enterprise who everybody loved, and then she died tragically and everyone was sad.

Stross argues that Ian Fleming, like his fictional creation, was a British gentleman recruited into spying for Britannia, but unlike Bond, Fleming was stuck in a boring office poring over documents. So he invented an alter ego who got to have the adventures Fleming never had.

With the Stross done, I've resumed reading of T.R., the biography of Theodore Roosevelt by H.W. Brands, and re-reading Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen, which I initially read so long ago that I've completely forgotten it.

CNN Creates Citizen Journalism Channels On Web, In Second Life

Budding Wolf Blitzers can bring their news reporting talents to the Web and Second Life using a citizen journalism program run by CNN. Reporters post video, photos, audio, and text reports to the beta iReport site, and have the news appear on the site unfiltered. The best contributions appear on CNN itself.

Citizen journalists provide perspective that professional reporters often can't, said Lila King, senior producer for interactive storytelling for CNN. "We're getting the first-person perspective on events, intimate stories about how a tornado blew through town and this is how it was," King said. Similarly, citizen journalism allowed for intimate reporting of the California wildfires. "You get an amazing integration of what's actually happening on a hyperlocal level, block by block, by individuals living the experience," she said.

The first phase of iReport launched in August, 2006. iReport got 13 stories on the first day. The very first report was a photo of a squirrel shading itself on a branch. It was just a whimsical little photo, but it made a nice image for a news report on the network about the heat-wave then sweeping the South.

In April 2007, citizen journalism proved itself on a more serious story: The Virginia Tech mass murders. A student named Jamal Albarghouti shot video on his cell phone camera of the shootings in progress and sent them to iReport.

Since then, iReport has grown, fueled by big stories like the Minnesota bridge collapse, and wildfires in California. "With every one of these events, we got an uptick in the quality and number of iReport stories coming in," King said. About 10% of the stories end up on the air on CNN, after being vetted for accuracy and fairness and overall quality by CNN producers.

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Funny and sad

OK, this is both the funniest and saddest thing I ever read:

Daddy Put In Bye-Bye Box
"I'm going to be the big boy of the house until he gets back," said 5-year-old Ryan Lewis, whose daddy now resides in a cool underground fort.

Arthur C. Clarke Remembered

Arthur C. Clarke, who died Wednesday, spent more than 60 years writing about how communications and computing technology could help drive the the next stage of human evolution. So it's appropriate that he's now being remembered on the international communications network, the Internet.

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Video: Bug Labs' Build-It-Yourself Mobile Devices

We caught up with Peter Semmelhack, president and CEO of Buglabs, to talk about how his company is building tools to allow users to build any mobile device "as easy as snapping Legos together." The company's mobile devices are based on open source hardware and software to foster innovation. Watch now to get a look at the devices, and find out how Bug Labs hopes to make money by giving technology away for free.

For more on Bug Labs, see our write-up of their talk at the ETech conference: Bug Labs Looks To Make Mobile Innovation Simple