Digg, Stack, and Swarm...

Sounds like a new dance, doesn't it!

Digg, a popular social networking service that lets people share and vote on news stories, launched Digg Labs today with two new tools that create cool interactive visualizations of all of the activity happening there. Here's a description from the Digg Blog:

Digg Stack shows diggs occuring in real time on up to 100 stories at once. As stories are dugg, they appear along the bottom of the screen, colored according to how popular they are. Users digging these stories appear as falling blocks that stack up as activity increases. The zoom level is adjustable, so you can focus in on the most recent stories, or pull back for a broader overview. You can also pause the visualization if it's flying by too quickly, or if you want to focus on a specific story more readily.

Digg Swarm is a more lyrical view of Digg. Stories come in as circles with the title inside of them, and diggers "swarm" around these stories when they digg them. Every time a story gets dugg, it increases in size — so the bigger the story, the more active it is. As people digg more stories, they move from circle to circle, and increase in size.

I'm not sure what to do with this yet, but it sure looks cool. :-)

Dandelife

Saw this on Kairosnews

Dandelife: "Dandelife is a social biography network. What's that? Well you all know what a social network is. Dandelife is a social network built around the telling of your life's stories. You can use Dandelife to create your own personal biography and then share that with the rest of the world. Imagine all your own notes on all the people you've met, the places you've been, the events you've gone to and the stories you could tell about them all. "

I haven't tried it out yet, but it seems to create timelines out of blog-like entries that you make on the site.

An Undergraduate Course in Second Life

Ed Lamoureux from Bradley University is teaching an Undergraduate Course in Second Life at the Second Life NMC Campus this coming semester. He plans to write three installments for the NMC Campus Observer blog about preparing for the class. The first installment is already there and good reading!

Arts in Ireland

I've been meaning to blog about this one for a while. Wheaton art professor, Andrew Howard is chronicling his and his students experiences at the Burren College of Art in Ireland on a Blogger blog:

Arts in Ireland

Fifteen students and professors Andy Howard and Tim Cunard will be spending three weeks at Burren College of Art, which is located in one of Ireland's most picturesque regions.

Second Life

I joined Second Life last night and spent quite a bit of time tweaking my avatar (Paul Story) and trying to get my bearings. Lots of wandering (and teleporting) around aimlessly.... er... I mean exploring! Some chatting with other newbies. It runs a bit on the slow side on my home computer (which is far from top of the line)... but a lot better than I expected. I seem to be able to move around and talk, listen to music, play games, watch movies, etc... all in real time. Sometimes the textures on objects take a little time to draw, but eventually I can see everything.

Today, I figured out how to get to the NMC Campus and took a brief look around. I plan to explore more soon. Here's a snapshot of me standing at the entry point to the campus:


Second Life really is an amazing environment and deserves a close look. It is not your typical hack and slash online game, but rather an open-ended virtual world that allows you to be creative and social. It reminds me a little of the MOO environment that the NITLE sponsored German Liberal Arts Collaborative used in the Fall 2005 semester, but much more sophisticated. I can imagine students creating complex class presentations here and/or meeting and having classes with students from other institutions from around the world. I can imagine virtual conferences here, virtual galleries... maybe even some virtual campus tours?? Lots of possibilities here.

iView Multimedia

Been busy and vacationing lately. Now I need to get back in the habit of blogging!

Here's a link to Microsoft's Digital Asset Management system that Ken sent via email the other day:

iView Multimedia