Technology in Mind

I was invited several months back to try out the latest Skyfire beta and was pleasantly surprised.  I own a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard device (HTC S621, not the device in the picture) and was quite impressed with how well this application ran on my phone.

I rarely used the built-in IE, and tend to use the free java Opera-Mini application for the most part. But Skyfire is able to access websites like youtube and online radio stations not available in the other browsers. Recently during a shopping trip in town with my wife, I found myself sitting outside a health food store waiting for my wife to purchase a few items.  I launched skyfire, viewed a flash video on CNN’s website, and then launched an Internet radio station from Bremen, Germany, ‘NDR2’.  They both worked great over EDGE, although when I started driving, the radio station did stutter a few times, like in the old days of streaming Real Audio over a modem.  Eventually as I left the strong concentration of cell towers in Wilmington, the station died out and never recovered.  Around my house, my carrier’s signal is too weak so I am unable to launch the application unless I turn on my phone’s WIFI.  Then it works flawlessly, even better than over EDGE/GPRS.

Having said that, here are Skyfire’s flaws. As you can imagine, a great browser like this is memory intensive and consumes a great deal of your battery’s charge.  Granted, I’ll admit that I think my HTC S621 device is in the need of a new battery, which is disappointing as it’s less than a year old.  But any amount of significant viewing time is going to drain your battery quickly with this browser.  Since this still is a beta product, I imagine that they’re working to reducing the memory size and the level in which it consumes the battery’s charge.

In the meantime, I still tend to use Opera Mini over Skyfire, unless I have a desire or need to view a video or something with flash animation.  And that depends on how soon I expect to be able to recharge my phone.

*Note that the only way to get an invite is from Skyfire, which they send out periodically.  I believe my wait was several months from the time I initially requested it. Some have been fortunate and received one sooner.  Also, the beta invites are tied directly to one’s phone number so they can’t be transferred to another user. Currently their beta product works on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones and Nokia Series 60, 3^rd Edition phones, both touch-screen and non-touch-screen, in the U.S.

11/8/08 Update – Skyfire is now in open beta.  They’ve also opened it up to users in Canada as well.

This is my first attempt at recording a video of my Second Life office.  No retakes or attempts to edit this were made. Of course, you might agree that I should have thought this out more.

But I really just created this as a means to display my virtual office skybox to a few friends and family members who I haven’t been able to convince to take the leap into this virtual world.  Even then, I might perhaps stage a better take, and possibly dub it with music and possibly voice for a better video at some point.  This video was produced using the open source software, Taksi.

I finally implemented google adsense on my blog.  It’s funny how currently the only ads being displayed are related to ‘Mind’ stuff.  I guess Google’s spider’s aren’t taking much into account except for the name of the website.  I hope that in time the searches will become more relevant to my different blog postings.  There’s still a lot I have to learn about how to use this effectively with consideration to my aesthetics and how to help it serve relevant ads.

According to Google’s TOS I’m not to click on my own ads and that’s a reasonable expectation.  And I don’t expect anyone else to click on the links unless it’s serves an ad that’s of interest to that visitor. If I make a bit of money from these ads then I’ll be happy, but if I don’t, I will still continue to blog concerning information that I find interesting.

I really don’t care much for websites that are nothing but a clutter of links with pretend information.  Perhaps these people do earn some money this way, but I don’t like them. When I’m searching for information using google. I don’t like to pull up sites that have a prefabricated article that someone added in an attempt to make it look like a legitimate find to a query. It becomes quickly evident that their only real intention was to be a page full of ad links.

I recently decided to relocate from the low rent office building to my newly purchased property.  There were a number of reasons for doing so.

1. Although the rent was inexpensive, I was only permitted 100 prims.  That gives very little allowance for setting up anything reasonable. On my new parcel I have an allowance of 703 prims.
2. I didn’t have parcel rights, so I couldn’t use radio or video streaming, or more importantly to me was the prospect of being able to use the ‘web on a prim’ functionality.
3. I purchased an inexpensive skybox for 27 Lindens from SLExchange. It gives me a nice office up in the Linden sky at about 500 Meters, with ample space for my office.
4. Since I have enough prims, my wife plans to use the ground level below my skybox office to eventually advertise and promote her real life business for yoga and selling Aloha oils from Hawaii.

In a virtual world such as Second Life, it really doesn’t matter where you locate your office.  There’s no necessity to be in a high traffic area, or a location where people will chance upon your place.  This especially holds true for a RL business.  You can promote the existence of your office in Second Life through your profile, favorite picks, and even through in world advertising if you wanted. At in-world business meetings you can give your business card with teleport location to others. In Real Life you can put a SLURL address on your web site and direct people to your virtual office.

As stated before, I’m using my office space as an extension of my web site with the purpose of exploring benefits and uses for in-world and real world integration.

The SLURL for my new skybox office is at  is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Gamma/178/225/547/ .