Scott Fisher

Blogging meets lifelogging...or something.

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. That's your Dandelife. To get you started you may want to see the co-founder Kelly Abbott's Dandelife since he's got a good start: http://www.dandelife.com/kga245 . If that weren't enough, Dandelife works with Flickr and Youtube. So if you have your photos online at Flickr, and you regularly upload videos to Youtube, then you can keep doing that. Then come to Dandelife to combine those images and movies with stories about the people, places, things and events in them.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: danah boyd
Time: Wednesday, August 30, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

This week's forum will be a conversation with danah boyd about MySpace and youth culture.

Her wikipdedia profile:

danah boyd, is an American academic, researcher, blogger, and employee of Yahoo! Research Berkeley best known for media appearances where she speaks about social networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace. Since 2003, she and her research have been quoted on the subject of social networking in dozens of different articles in media sources such as NPR, Wired, MSNBC, USA Today, and The O'Reilly Factor. She was also the subject of a major profile in The New York Times in 2003. [more]

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Met Heather Kelley recently at the SLOMO video festival in Westwood. In talking about the game program here at IMD, she mentioned this upcoming competition for experimental gameplay that her group is organizing. More info here:

Bonjour a tous,
Greetings from Montreal! You're receiving this invite because I know you as a developer or supporter of independent-minded and experimental computer and video games. My Montreal colleagues and I have formed a group here to promote experimental gameplay, and games as art, called Kokoromi ("experiment" in Japanese).
For our first project, we're throwing an event called GAMMA (Game Art Montreal), to be held during the Montreal International Game Summit ( http://montrealgamesummit.com) and the Festival Arcadia ( http://www.festivalarcadia.com/). Our goal is to publicly showcase the potential of indie and "small games" as an artistic and cultural medium. And we'd like you to be a part of it!
During the next two months, you are invited to develop a small PC game that responds to a particular design challenge (which I'll explain in a sec). In early November, we'll debut all the finished games at a city-wide social event (aka insane dance party) to coincide with the two consecutive Montreal conferences.
So, the "big idea" for GAMMA 01 is this: You are invited to create a game that translates a live audio stream into realtime game elements and gameplay. At the GAMMA event, the live music (DJs, bands) will be fed into the games to trigger the game content, and the partygoers will play the games live on large screens. Thus, gamers as VJs!
Simple idea, super-cool outcome.
It's easy to get started: just visit our discussion boards, which contain all the participation and technical information, as well as updates on the event. Be sure to drop by Les Equipes forum and let us know who you are.
http://gamma.gamedesignresource.com/
This is an ideal opportunity to really push the limits of what games can be and do, and we'd be psyched to have you with us. So, we hope to see you in our forums over the next months, and look forward to your games!

KOKOROMI
Heather Kelley
Phil Fish
Damien Di Fede

Game submission deadline is November 1st, 2006
Commercial, indie, and student developers are all welcome.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

School's just started and Annenberg's new Fellow, Cory Doctorow, is already making some very useful observations:

Boing Boing: USC's bizarre, non-legal copyright policy.

I'm spending the year at the University of Southern California on a Fulbright chair. Yesterday, some of my students forwarded me a memo sent to them by USC Deputy Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Student Affairs on "Copyright Compliance."

It purports to inform students about the contours and boundaries of copyright, but actually presents a collection of scare-tactic half-truths and astonishing statements about the purpose of the university.

Should be a very productive year...

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Please join me in congratulating Mark Bolas on his appointment as Associate Professor of Interactive Media with Tenure...

Posted by Scott Fisher at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Planned to mention this in 511 seminar but we ran out of time.

There is an excellent show by James Turrell @ Griffin, 2902 Nebraska Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 586-6886, through Aug. 26.

Worth seeing.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speakers: IMD Faculty & Students
Time: Wednesday, August 23, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

To kick off the 06-07 year, the first IMD Forum will introduce new members of the IMD community and attempt to catch up with the numerous IMD activities that have occured since last semester.

Highlights will include updates on IMD presentations,installations, and memorable experiences at events such as:

• Big Picture Symposium III
  
• Advances in Computer Entertainment
  
• SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies and Guerilla Studio
  
• PROCAMS2006- IEEE International Workshop on Projector-Camera Systems
  
• The Aspen Conference
  
• The TechnoSpheres Symposium
  
• Sandbox
  
• Creative Commons Rio
  
• Intercommunications Center in Tokyo
  
• Watarium
  
• Hot new game trends in Tokyo....
  

and more.

Backchannel log: Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)