WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon

June 14 – October 4, 2009

“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.” -Albert Einstein

“WoW is the most sophisticated happiness engine that exists now.” -Dr. Jane McGonigal

“Games may provide new ways for museums to have a profound impact on society if they are designed, as alternate-reality games are, to change people’s real-world behavior.” -Dr. Jane McGonigal

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon explores various forms of cultural production based on World of Warcraft in particular and on gaming in general. While surveying Warcraft’s Fifteen-year history, the exhibition looks at artistic practices that have been influenced by game culture. The actual works by the producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment (headquartered in Irvine, California), provide a starting point and reference.

Fourteen international artists were selected to consider this movement with the following themes in mind: elements of desire, the collapse of fantasy, medievalism, creative critiques, and public intervention. Artists in this exhibition take on the visual marker of World of Warcraft to consider, implications of gaming, and their greater impact on our culture. In addition to the works of these artists, fan art and the growing culture of machinima (computer animation that uses the graphic engines from video games) will be explored in this exhibition.

Laguna Art Museum

More information on WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon

Also check out the /hug machinima world at http://thirdfaction.org/blog/

Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames

Not sure how exclusive this still is: but if you haven;t heard already people are like freakin’ out about friggin;’ facebook usernames.!!

“The super-geeky obsessives are abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address. Since its announcement, there’s been a lot of excited discussion of the feature, but in a dashes.com exclusive I can exclusively report this exclusive look at the future of the feature”.

More from Anil Dash:.

How are journalists using twitter in Australia ?

MediaShift’s Julie Posetti spoke to 25 of the journalists she follows to find out first hand.

Excerpt:”Twitter became big news once journalists realized its power as a tool for breaking stories during the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. In the aftermath of the micro-blogging platform hitting the headlines, there was an explosion of professional journalists in the Twittersphere. This growth has been fueled by increasing mainstream awareness of the importance of social media to the future of a crisis-ridden industry and the elevation of Twitter as a platform for news dissemination, citizen journalism and audience interaction.

So, how are journalists using Twitter? How is the service changing traditional reporting practices and what (if any) are the rules of engagement with the platform for professional journalists? I interviewed 25 of the journalists I follow on Twitter (most of them Australian with a smattering of South African and U.S. respondents) to find out first-hand.

This is the first installment in a two-part MediaShift series on the theme of journalists and Twitter”.

More from MediaShift http://tinyurl.com/q8ljes

Happn.in on Twitter

Happn.in tracks local Twitter users in 52 global cities, and computes a list of the top 10 phrases used in each city every hour. The top phrases used significantly more often that hour than the last are compiled into a list of trends. As Happn.in explains, “A phrase’s hotness is calculated with the ratio of the [percentage of users who used that phrase during the past hour] to the [mean percentage of users who used that phrase over the past week]. Phrases decay exponentially, and quickly drop from the list once they have stopped being used.”

More from Mashable’s – Josh Catone.

GG: Anyone know if this works for Melbourne or Sydney?

Facebook gets a Creative Commons App

The intent of this application is to help you choose a license that will identify to your friends and the public how you want your work to be used in the world. Once you answer the couple of questions on our page, we’ll recommend one of our six licenses and you’ll have the opportunity to place it directly on your Facebook profile.

http://apps.facebook.com/creativecommons/

i am uniQue

This site lets you build a unique interactive 3D portrait made up of words, pictures, video, tweets etc.

Appears to be FOXTEL’s latest foray and attempt at a social media campaign.

Start playing with yourself at i am uniQue

Join my geekgirl Twibe!

Just started a Twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/geekgirl to join.

Tweet this

I’ve been on the lookout today for Twitter apps and WordPress. Here’s a list of 10 of the best Twitter tools for your blog. You’ll notice I’ve installed Tweet This which allows you to re-tweet any of my posts; so you may want to search for favourite and memorable posts.

Enjoy.!

Oh, if you come across more let me know. *hugs* GG

CDC Swine Flu Widget

Well sometime the general public seem to have more immediate updates than the CDC on swine flu, but just in case you want an ‘official’ widget from the source.

Available from widgetbox

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/swine-flu-info-from-the-cdc

Visible Tweets

Visible Tweets – Twitter Visualisations. Now with added prettiness!

http://visibletweets.com/