Daily Clerks

• Wikiasari: Hawaii-Japanese Style of Search
  Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales has managed to put web geeks into a flutter right on the verge of the holidays’ season.
• Geonomy Interview
  Geonomy is an interesting new website, specializing in geo-tagging anything and everything, particularly anything Wikipedia related.

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Expect Democrats who take control of Congress in January to talk about alternative energy as a way to create new jobs, from factory workers who assemble windmills to construction workers who build new ethanol plants. Other jobs are being “in-sourced,” which means foreign companies are creating manufacturing jobs by investing in the United States.  » original news

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Listen up, all greenies stuck in narrowville: time to take stock of priorities. So says John Flicker, the Audobon Society’s president, as these prominent bird counters moved to endorse wind energy. Why? Global warming is more bad than wind turbines. Duh. “With a coal-fired power plant, you can’t count the carcasses, but it’s going to kill a lot more birds,” says Flicker.  » original news

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Produced on a $20,000 budget, this 65-minute documentary reveals the underreported side effects resulting from America’s voracious appetite for coal-generated electricity. Kilowatt Ours follows filmmaker Jeff Barrie on his 18-month journey across the southeast United States, where more than six tons of coal are burned to generate electricity for the average home annually.  » original news

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Scientists examining satellite images have done a double-take at shots of northeast India
- as an island that was previously called home by approximately 10,000 people has now completely vanished from sight. The perpetrator of this horrific crime? Actually, you and I…  » original news

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Electronic gadgets continue to grow in popularity and many people will give them as holiday gifts this season. Devices that plug in to wall outlets are responsible for a small but growing portion of total household energy consumption, about five to seven percent. Devices powered by batteries also pose environmental problems. More than three billion alkaline batteries are thrown away in the U.S. each year instead of being recycled. The toxic metals they contain (such as lead, mercury, and cadmium) can leak into groundwater and harm local residents or wildlife.

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I know Santa Claus is Chinese because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70 percent are from China. After some research, it seems that my one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.

Let’s start with toys. At the Earth Policy Institute, we have found that some 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States are made in China. Electronic goods—from Apple’s iPod to Microsoft’s Xbox—are made in China. Clothing—from the latest cashmere sweaters to gym suits—is also likely to have a “Made in China” label.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Other Events, Apple

Christmas will soon be over (at least on the East Coast of the US where I am) and my thoughts turn to all the cool stuff that others got. Tell us, in the comments, about all the wonderful presents that your friends and loved ones got you this year.

Sadly, my family believes I spend too much time with my Mac (is such a thing possible) so they refuse to feed my addiction.

If you got a Mac or iPod this Christmas check out our iPod tips and Mac tips (though I seem to be in the minority with my feelings about the Mighty Mouse).

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Earlier I told you about Second Life, the next big thing in online networking and communication. Meanwhile I had a chance to further check it out and to get some background of the growing pains of this hype.

The word ‘hype’ always had a negative sound, but I can assure you that Second Life will not give you a negative experience provided you have some patience to learn the tricks to ‘live’ your second life and if you are prepared to indulge some electronic traffic jams from time to time.

Since I last wrote about it I discovered strange and new worlds, fully built by the creative minds of Second Life users.

When you start at Second Life you are transported to a learning island where you can find out how to move and make objects. Most of us forget that instantly, but once you are admitted to the mainland you’ll notice that there is a lively trade going on in Second Life objects. You name it and you can buy it there - from clothes to shoes to cars and houses.

The first Second Life millionaire (yes, they exist) user had a gift for buying land, pimping it with palm-trees and beaches and selling it with a large profit. Now there are tens of people (54 by the latest count according to the official Second Life blog) who are making more then 5000$ per month selling objects in Second Life.

They all add to a better Secondlife experience, so much so that the people from Linden Labs have a really hard time keeping up with their popularity. I have spoken to a few Secondlife ‘old-timers’ who informed me that the environment is currently running on 4100 servers. Imagine 4100 servers in order to just keep an average of 10,000 simultaneously online users ‘alive’. That is just 2.3 users per server!

In just 2 months, the total number of users has increased from 1.5 to 2.2 million users. So it is easy to see that there has to be some serious investment going on by large investors. And guess what, I have found them for you. There are large pieces of land and islands under construction wearing the names of big companies. I knew there was a ABN-AMRO bank property which was not accessible for me (it is a private island), but flying around there, trying to find my way in I noticed a ABN-AMRO 2, 3 and 4 island in the makings!

A few large investor names that drew my attention: Nissan, Toyota (they has Second Life test-drives of new upcoming models for you ready), Nike (they sell shoes in a Nike store), Sony-Universal Music Group (large island with celebrity offices) and MTV has its Laguna Beach, which is one of my favorite SL hide-outs.

Meanwhile I learned some tricks to get a better SL experience: I noticed that there are Same Interest Groups popping up on SL, some with their own property. One of these groups was a ABN-AMRO group and once I joined that group, I was able to move into the ABN-AMRO island which was off limits for me before. I was glad I did because I instantly noticed the difference with the rest of SL I knew: it was much more stable! On some properties in SL it was even hard to move around, not here - everything worked just very smoothly.

So if you get there and join Second Life, be sure that you use SL groups, activate the group and teleport to private areas in order to get the best experience.

I also noticed that I could manipulate my world by changing some settings. You can make the suns shine all day long as if it is noon. If you go to certain places, you can exchange free objects to your inventory. So I am always moving around in the light now and I have thousands of free objects in my inventory, ranging from houses to clothes to textures which I can use freely.

And that really helps. Because at a given time I had a meeting with another international corporate lawyer like me discussing geopolitical strategies. I could play the host by putting down some couches and chairs from my inventory and giving everyone a free drink. And that is networking to me!

communication, marketing, network, second life, secondlife, social networking, web 2.0, web 3.0

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Ryzellon writes -

“You want to keep your noggin toasty in the nasty winter weather.
You don’t want to wear a hat that looks like everyone else’s hat.
You like lions (or dragons).

Now you can combine all of these desires into a simple, yet useful, item of clothing that’s infintely customizable and tailorable to your (or a recipient’s) tastes.” - Link.

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