Wiki whoops and wonders

We are all familiar with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is used and edited by you and me and them. But I recently came accross this site that does something incredible. Wikiscanner, created by Virgil Griffith has enabled the tracking of edits in Wikipedia made by companies and governments, among others. The great thing about Wikipedia is that you can click to see the revision history and the changes made.

Some examples:

Exxon changed the description of the Exxon Valdez oil spill from a count of the animals killed and an explanation of the long term affects to say that, essentially, there are no long term affects and the oil spill seems to have increased the salmon harvest.

Pepsi removes controversy from history: Pepsi was banned from import in India in 1970 for having refused to release the list of its ingredients. In 1993, the ban was lifted, with Pepsi arriving on the market shortly afterwards.

And creepiest of all perhaps is the Canadian Government’s meddling. Wikiscanner tracks IP’s, and can find whence they come from. One user with an IP address at the House of Commons repeatedly removed material from the encyclopedia’s entry on homosexuality, replacing it 24 times with statements like “Homosexuality is evil.”

Other abusers? Officials at the Church of Scientology, Disney and U.S. Capitol staffers, especially now that the U.S. is getting closer to an election.

Library of Congress interested in preserving Virtual Worlds

In a previous post, I spoke about the demise of the web, and wondered what would happen to all that content. Now the US Library of Congress announced recently that it had awarded a two-year $590,000 grant to several institutions to help preserve online games and virtual worlds. Called Preserving Virtual Worlds, it seeks to develop archiving methods for early digital games, electronic literature, and virtual worlds.

From their website: “Preserving Creative America Initiative to Engage Private Sector Creators of Films, Sound Recordings, Photographs, Cartoons and Video Games in Digital Formats”.

Some institutes involved in the project are the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Maryland’s Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world Second Life.

Top 100 e-learning tools

Just back from teaching for a week where I managed to “wow” my adult learners with web stuff. Wish I could have had this list at the time: the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies’ (UK) list is out and they provide a glimpse into what they perceive to be the definitive list. Compiled by (e-)learning professionals (consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc) who responded to their open invitation.

Click the name of the tool and read the why’s from some of the voters. Makes for very interesting reading. I notice WordPress is #5 on the list. How would this list compare to a list that you or your colleagues’ would compile?

Michelangelo Antonioni

I had an interesting conversation about Michelangelo Antonioni last night with my nephew and sister. All of us lived in Italy and experienced the “Vita Italiana” (Italian Life). For my sister and I, it was the 1960’s, when Michelangelo Antonioni’s 3 major films were created (“L’Aventura, “Blow Up” and “Zabriskie Point”. I could drop other Italian directors in here as well (Fellini, Visonti, Pasolini…oops, I just did!), but I must say that Michelangelo Antonioni’s output was minimal in comparison to the other directors. Why so?

His late 1960’s films were panned for many reasons, among them his attempt at being “hip” for the “now” generation. He was completely hip in my book. When I saw “Blow Up” in the theater upon its release, I was at once mesmerized, adolescent that I was. Never mind the alt visuals and cool fashions…the soundtracks were awesome.

My brother in-law, during this conversation (at an Italian Pizzeria, I should add) had a Michelangelo Antonioni story encounter. He was in Rome in 2001, as we all were for a reunion of sorts, and he was at an Art opening when there was a sudden commotion outside regarding a limo and an elderly gentleman. He was intrigued, and asked what the fuss was about, and was soon told that it was Michelangelo Antonioni, who was just leaving. My bro-in-law, who was a film student years ago, was in awe. And perhaps an opportunity lost, to get a glimpse, an autograph or even a conversation.

Michelangelo Antonioni was, in my opinion, the one to put the “Art” in art films. (Remember those days in cramped, small, dank and smelly theatres watching art films?).

Of note last night: Michelangelo Antonioni used Jack Nicholson in a 1970’s film called “The Passenger”. This was perhaps the last Italian director to use a known, great US actor in an Italian film. Remember Fellini using Donald Sutherland for “Casanova” and Franco Zeffirelli’s use of Sutherland in “1900″? Now there’s a book waiting to be written…about the use of American actors, ex pats, etc in Italian Cinema. BTW, I happened to be in Rome when the two aforementioned directors were sparring in the newspaper, over many things.

Anyway, my sister reminded me that she gave me a book of Antonioni essays. So now I should go look for it among my stacks of books and give it another read.

Ciao, e Grazie, Signor Antonioni.

Second Life Video of bullying scenario sparks cries of racism

This short video clip, intended to spark dialogue among students regarding bullying has prompted outcries of racism. Made with approval of a consortium of Italian universities and European Commission, this idea of presenting problems, like social exclusion, school bullying, violence, racism, etc in a Virtual World like Second Life is to try to solve these problems using a technology that teens are familiar with.

What do you think? Without knowing what is actually happening in Italian schools regarding immigrants, etc, should we jump to inevitable conclusions?

Note: this image capture can be misleading…