Community Mobilization

Vote for ACS in the Mashup Challenge

The American Cancer Society is a finalist in the NetSquared Mashup challenge. We would really appreciate your vote. It is a bit of a process to vote but I can assure you that it is worth it 100%! Thank you for your support.
1. You must register with NetSquared's site to vote. NetSquared is cool so it's a good idea anyway.

2. Once you've logged in go to the bottom of the page where you'll see the PROJECTS tab. Click on the N2Y3 Mashups Challenge Project Gallery Link.

3. You'll end up at the project gallery which has a big tag cloud in the section "Explore Project Ideas By Cause Area." Click on Health in the tag cloud.

4. You'll end up on the Health section. Go down the bottom of the page and click "page 2."

5. Scroll down about 3/4 of the page. We're "US Cancer Data and Care Disparities Map." (Right below the SexINFO project proposal. Ya can't miss it.)

6. In the light green field at the top of the proposal space click "Add to my ballot." That gives you a chance to vote for it at the end.

7. You must vote for 4 more. It won't let you confirm your ballot if there is less than five projects on it. Just go to others and follow the same process to get them on your ballot.

8. In the upper right-hand column you'll see the your list of ballot items growing. When you've got 5 or more you can check the "vote" link at the bottom of your list.

9. The ballot list comes up with check-boxes to the left of each project name. Click the check boxes and click "submit" at the bottom.

10. You're done. Next time you log in you won't be able to generate a ballot. But do read some of the other proposals. There are some pretty interesting ones.

Human Rights, and Virtual Poperty Rights

The panelists consist of professionals from GoPets, Live gamer, and Charles River Ventures. One of the questions that often comes up is are game designers responsible of devaluation of valuable goods in world? The panelist seem to agree that part of game play is treating player fairly but game owners can not be held accountable for market forces.Marketing side is more important than the legal side. Treat the customers well in protecting their content (not necessarily guaranteeing value). EULAs help to determine publisher responsibilities, but again vthe questions are all centered on the challenges of the legal vs. the ethical.
Part of the limiting factors of WOW is the lack of human and property rights within the game. One amazing questions becomes inheritance and willing of objects. Monetary value that is assigned to avatars and to activity is difficult to assign since there is not always a definitive dollar value to an object or a skill set.

Virtual Worlds, Real Laws

One of the major intellectual quandaries in the virtual space arena is what are the roles of real world laws, if any? New York University Law School and Harvard's Berkman Center, with the direction of Professor Beth Noveck, even set up the State of Play conference to address some of the concerns. They included legal questions on Intellectual Property rights, taxation, pornography, and free speech. Now Virtual Worlds Management is conducting a Virtual World Law conference in New York this spring. I am not sure of the attendees or the nature of the presenters, academic or professional, but their conferences have been well attended in the past and their content is consistently very good. The conference will involve the American Bar Association's committee on Virtual Worlds and Multiuser Online Games. Their participation will help in world business owners address legal questions they have in the wake of some of the more public virtual world law suits.

World Future Society 2007 and 2008 trends

The World Future Society has compiled their 2007 and 2008 trends into great U-Tube videos. I have embedded them below. They are eye opening and provide a real sense of long term view and long term importance of considering ecological impacts on business and our lives.

Facebook Changes Policy

Over the last 3 weeks Facebook has been publicly posting your purchases from select vendors online alongside your profile. In doing so it gave the product advertising by say - look who bought me! Sad story is that in doing so a number of holiday surprises are now ruined since family and friends saw all of the holiday presents you purchased even before they had the chance to wrap them. In associating products with central influences Facebook was trying to create a market for 'Cool'. Buy what the cool kids have and if you don't already know we will tell you what they just bought and where you can get it too. Turns out that the Beacon system gave away too much information and really aggravated a lot of users... especially t he cool kids. The Financial Times is reporting that Beacon has had a few tweaks to keep your consumer history a bit more private.

Virtual World Therapy

Duke University is developing therapeutic experiences in virtual world settings. The experiences are designed to address addition in particular but may be used to also treat phobias in minimal exposure settings. When temptation arises in certain situations, the patient rates his or her own craving level. But the magic moment comes when a high craving subsides, which it does, because the patient won't be taking drugs in the virtual world. Thanks to Masively and ABC!

Harvard's Berkman Center Funding a Cookie Contest

We are talking about the internet tracking cookies, not the chocolate chip kind. The Berkman Center, in conjunction with Stop Badware is sponsoring The Cookie Crumble Contest for film makers, asking them to produce short 2 minute clips explaining what a cookie is and how they transmit personal data to marketing companies. The goal is for these shorts to be as entertaining as they are educational and the winners of the contest will be be invited to screen their films at a Federal Trade Commission meeting in Washington DC.

If we are looking at the end of cookies then the real question is how ever will a marketer know how to target me with adds for products I may be interested in? I think that we all know that answer - they will just ask our friends. More exacting they will leverage the personal data I am loading to my social network spaces and go from there. Pure brilliance.

Open Id and portable reputation

One of the long standing issues with social networks and social community sites if the ability to have portable reputation and identity specifically if you are a good upstanding member of the community. Here is a very good Lifehacker article on openid and the promise of what it brings as well as some of the concerns surrounding the system, or set of systems.

I know that Marc Canter has been addressing some of these issues on his Broadband Mechanics blog and the people aggregator program. Reputation transfer has always been a confounding issue. One of the reasons is that every network is built with a unique system. The Open ID does not transfer data and information between networks but does maintain an identity. Not only does it allow of an approaching universal single sign on, but it maintains displayed identity throughout the gamut of spaces that you visit.

Douglas Rushkoff Course

Thank you Boing Boing for being a champ again and pointing to a fantastic set of courses offered up by one of my favorite authors Douglas Rushkoff.  I am going to look into taking the course distance learning because his writings have really been eye opening over the years. Exit Strategy and Get Back In The Box really changed the way I view corporate construction and make me so happy I work in non-profit every day.

US Navy to Implement Netwrok Analysis in Kidney Transplating

The US Navy Academy mathematicians have derived a network analysis formula to help surgeons determine the best probability matches for any given set of donors and recipients. The aim it  to increase the percentage of kidney transplants that succeed seeing that currently 1/3 of transplants are rejected by the body. The formula crunches a number of numbers and aligns the most critical patients with the best suited donors all with the aim to reduce rejection rates and provide over 1,000 more successful transplants per year.

The numbers in the circles represent the degree of importance that a particular patient receives a kidney. The numbers on the lines connecting the circles denote the quality of each match.