Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End trailers

Another one of my favorites in our site. Brilliantly done (watch it in fullscreen - click on button on bottom right hand):

Shrek 3 Trailer channel

Check out this channel of Shrek 3 trailers created using the MixerCast application. Its quite a feeling when your one and half year of efforts come to fruition in creations like these (hint: click on the curtain.. duh!!).

Do You Need A Second Life?

You might, if you feel incumbered by the politics of the current one! Guardian has done a nice roundup of the current state of affairs in the virtual universe, your chance to lead your life a second time.

Of course, the world's catching up. The Swedish embassy has opened its office, and Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, claim that they have a daily turnover of $600,000, and have already created 6000 full-time jobs. UK government has started taxing money earned in SL (don't you remember... nothing's more certain than death and taxes!).

But then, SL isn't the only one, and the list is growing by the day. For the moment, the two biggest contenders are Entropia Universe and SL. In a year and half, there would be hundreds of businesses cropping up in trying to seamlessly merge the two worlds... or at least, import / export from one to the other. There will be virtual world and virtual existence mashups created.

Here's a bit from Guardian.

"This week may mark a coming of age for virtual worlds - the three-dimensional spaces on the internet where people have their own avatars, or on-screen characters. Last night BBC2's The Money Programme was screened in Second Life, the best known of the dozens of virtual realities that are springing up. This week Sky News opened a replica of its studio in Second Life and IBM sponsored a ballet.

Yesterday the Swedish virtual world Entropia Universe announced that it was teaming up with CRD, an offshoot of the Beijing municipality, to build a virtual universe able to handle 7 million users at any one moment. David Liu, chief executive of CRD, claimed that virtual worlds would generate about 10,000 jobs in China."

I am going to be hanging out for extensive periods of time in SL. Let's meetup, if you are going to be there!

Twitter widgets in Mixercast!

Months ago, when we were developing the platform for Mixercast, it was unanimously decided to keep the architecture as open as possible. We sincerely believed that the Web 2.0 (yeah, yeah... I know that the word really doesn't mean anything anymore) is not just about social networking and user generated content... its really about the seamless integration/mashup of a multitude of services. Today, now that the site is alive and kicking, that decision might well turn out to be one of the best ones we ever made.

The integration of Twitter into Mixercast, literally took us no more than a week, and more such services are "coming soon". If you are a flash developer, you would really understand the beauty of this - flash running inside flash, and all the users need to do, is drag-and-drop! Isn't that how the world is supposed to be?

Bank of America employee mistakes faulty fax as a bomb threat

This gotta be one of the funniest news I have heard in a while!. Via International Herald Tribune

"A Bank of America employee misinterpreted a faulty fax about a bank promotion as a bomb threat Wednesday, leading authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses.

The fax from a marketing group about a Bank of America small business promotion contained images of a lighted match and a bomb with a fuse, bank spokesman Ernesto Anguilla said. But words explaining the promotion did not transmit.

"The fax machine malfunctioned, so a partial image came through that looked somewhat suspicious," Anguilla said.

The missing text included the phrases "The countdown begins" and "Small business commitment week June 4-8," according to a copy circulated by police.

"It was an internal communication designed only for our employees," Anguilla said. The fax was sent to the bank's branches in parts of New England as well as New York and New Jersey."

Raises a bunch of questions. Would it be seen as a threat, if there was no fear of terrorism in the US? Does waging a war reduce or increase that fear? In a "free country" (and we can get into a rhetorical discussion on what a "free country" means), this would probably be just frowned upon, laughed at and then trashed or pasted on the wall as a joke.

And if there is a constant undertone of fear, what's the way to mitigate it? A recent film I made on Mumbai bombings for Current TV, I realized that despite an attack a year, there is really no fear in the city (though there is a sense of resignation to destiny). Would love to see an article that dives deeper into the psyche.