Learning the World

If you maintain a Firefox extension (aka a Firefox toolbar) and need update it to be compatible with Firefox 2.0, check out this document on the Firefox Developers site. It's a fairly straightforward process (if you have a fairly straightforward toolbar — all I had to do to update the Lafayette one was to up the Firefox version number to include the 2.0 incarnation).

Courtney and I have spent a fair amount of time talking about virtual worlds like Second Life on the Coffee Break. Now here's an example of one that that's spawning from the grounds of academia:

From CNET: On Thursday, the MacArthur Foundation is announcing a $240,000 grant to Edward Castronova for his online game, “Arden: The World of Shakespeare.” The idea behind the project is to produce a virtual world steeped in the rich lore and characters of the playwright's work.

It's a two fold academic environment: on the public side, you have the ability to virtually explore Shakespeare's works. And on the backend, you have social scientistis experimenting with the economic and governmental rules of the different various incarnations of the world to see what results they get. Very cool stuff.

The media-browser browser Songbird has released its first multiplatform beta. It runs on Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X. I just tried it out, and I can't say I'm hugely impressed — I don't usually have problems finding audio links on a web page (and I don't spend much time looking for them) but if you're looking for a smoother in-browser music-playing option, it's worth checking out.

Songbird's major claim to fame is music discovery — it looks for any links to media files on a web page, and then displays them in a playlist beneath the main browser window. You can then play them through the browser or download the file to your machine (there doesn't seem to be a one-click “import to iTunes” option, but I haven't dug around much).

Microsoft has posted checklists of things that consumers and web developers should check after installing Internet Explorer 7 (which was released earlier this week). The recommendations for consumers is mostly marketing hype about new features, but the web developers' area is more useful, outlining major changes and things you should verify still work under IE 7.

Here's the link to the notes for my RSS Workshop from Thursday, Oct. 19, 2006.

Most folks got this via campus e-mail (or at least received it) but I figured it's worth reposting here. Looks like a great deal of fun — I hope it's a public competition so we can all watch as the robots do their thing (my 3-year-old daughter *loves* robots).

Imagine commanding a robot to seek out a treasure, or maybe a rescue mission, on a field riddled with obstacles! This could be you! The Lafayette College Department of Computer Science is sponsoring an autonomous robot competition open to all students. The competition's goal is to allow teams of one to three students with ranging technical abilities to explore this exciting area of computer-controlled devices. No prior experience or technical expertise required; just come to the Organizational Meeting with a desire to learn.

We're one step closer to Snow Crash as Reuters opens a bureau in Second Life. According to the article:

Reuters will have journalists reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about Second Life as part of the London-based company's strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies.

“In 'Second Life,' we're making Reuters part of a new generation,” Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said in a statement. “We're playing an active role in this community by bringing the outside world into 'Second Life' and vice versa.”