A Shakespearian Second Life

Virtual gaming fever has hit the MacArthur Foundation, resulting in the philanthropic organization awarding Indiana University professor Edward Castronova a $240,000 grant to build a Second Life -esque virtual world fashioned after the plays of Shakespeare. The project, entitled "Arden: The World of Shakespeare," is meant to let Castronova and his research team delve into online behaviors by conducting ongoing social experiments online....

Political Junkie? Check out Pollster.com

Mark Blumenthal, the man behind last election cycle's Mystsery Pollster blog, has a new site called pollster.com and it is fantastic.  There is a blog that provides analysis of the latest polling data as well as a section called The Polls that aggregates all the various polls for each Senate and Gubernatorial race and select House races. ...

Politicians Invade Facebook

Personal Democracy has a great blog entry regarding a recent study on the use of Facebook by candidates for political office.

Here are some key stats Personal Democracy highlighted:

(1) "36 or 25% of candidates for U.S. Senate have posted their own profiles: 17 Democrats, 11 Republicans,...

Internet Regulation Around the World

With the recent news that the Iranian government has decided to limit ADSL bandwidth above 128 kbps for all ISPs (BoingBoing reported it before Reuters) without giving a reason, it makes sense that this is an opportune time to take stock of state-mandated Internet regulation (including content filtering and surveillance) schemes around the world....

The LA Times’ Tries to Get Healthy

Recently word got out that the Los Angeles Times is using it's own investigative reporters to help chart the future of the newspaper both online and in print.   According to the New York Times, the LA Times "is dedicating three investigative reporters and half a dozen editors to find ideas, at home and abroad,...