Jim Rosenberg | jerotus.

This is a real photograph of a virtual reality device from Toshiba. It’s making its way across the web at… well… lightspeed (har har) as a focus of silliness. An excerpt of the mockings:

Evan: “Janie was unprepared for the relentless mocking her new head-mounted display received, especially from her fellow guild members.”Paul: “Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to bring you the ultimate gaming
experience. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cause I don’t.”

Ryan: “Yes, we’re gonna have to go right to…ludicrous speed!”

Cyrus: “I though I could stop wearing headgear when I turned 16.”

Richard: “Correction, I need the superior information in your inferior brain to fly this… thing.”

Zatz: “Can you hear me now?”

[Caption Contest: HMD of the Future? via Engadget]

First off, apologies for my lack of posting this month. It has been hectic at work – lots of new books come out in September, many about politics and the war. Today I’m producing a chat with this guy which should be really fun.

Sunday I was browsing the BBC’s news site (which I do every day) and I came across this story that is at once exciting, fascinating, and scary. A comprehensive survey of the world’s leading technologists finds consensus that by the year 2020 the internet will be pervasive and part of billions of devices worldwide. It also finds a self-selected group of Luddites will resist the technology. “Of course, we’ll have more Unabombers,”wrote Cory Doctorow, an author of the big blog BoingBoing.

Would English remain the dominant language of the internet? Not all agree. And more than half the respondents said it would be dangerous to leave machines in charge of surveillance and security functions.

From NewKerala.com:

Kicking off its plans for a business newspaper, HT Media Ltd, today announced an editorial content tie-up with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), though not going for equity participation as of now.

“We have tied up with the WSJ for our soon-to-be-launched business newspaper. However, it is an editorial tie-up only and nothing is planned for equity participation as of now,” HT Media Business Head Rajan Bhalla told PTI here.

Bhalla said the company was currently in the process of finalising plans for launching the business paper, which can be expected in the news stands by the end of this fiscal.

He said Delhi and Mumbai were the “obvious markets” HT Media had in mind for launching the editions of the newspaper.

Asked when would the edition of Hindustan Times Mumbai, which was launched last year in the general news category, achieve break-even,
Bhalla said it would be “very soon”.

HT Media, the publisher of English daily Hindustan Times and Hindi daily Hindustan, has also recently roped in WSJ’s Europe editor Raju Narisetti for editing the business daily.

“We are in the process of understanding the market as well as team formation for the newspaper,” Narisetti said.

Under the tie-up, the company’s business newspaper and its website would publish WSJ pages that would contain business news from the journal’s print and online editions.

[link via SAJA]

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve slowed down a bit on the blogging this month. More blogging in September. Meanwhile, check out some of the things I’ve been reading:

http://del.icio.us/jerotus

Enjoy the rest of the summer (or winter, if you’re in SYD or Joburg).

–Jim

Indaba means “council” or “meeting,” and that’s exactly what Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa is hosting in mid-September. From Poynter:

Africa’s first-ever major blogging conference, The Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI), will take place Sept. 14-15 in Grahamstown, South Africa. The event is hosted by the New Media Lab (a project of the School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa). It’s part of the Highway Africa 2006 effort.

This indaba aims to bring bloggers, citizen journalists, media practitioners, industry experts, and representatives from civil society all under one roof. It will feature a diverse range of speakers and media professionals from across the globe. The goal of the event is to “equip Africans with skills related to new media which empower them and the organizations they work for by creating a long-lasting and long-reaching digital voice.” The conference also will tackle issues concerning Web 2.0, citizen journalism, intellectual property rights, online ethics and activism.

This indaba also aims to facilitate networking among fellow Africans in the hope of promoting further collaboration on the continent and build a strong online community.

The East Bay Express reports on how Google’s superior ad serving technology can also act as a censor, as it avoids placing ads on pages that have contextual content that may be deemed graphic. While that makes sense for obscene sites, it also seems to apply to stories like the civilian deaths in Qana last Sunday:

The genius of Google lies in its capacity to pair advertising with similarly themed editorial content. This technique is revolutionizing the very nature of advertising, as businesses exercise more control than ever over the contexts in which their messages appear. Hardware stores, for example, can now ensure that their ads are placed next to stories about home improvement. But businesses also want to control what they don’t appear next to — automakers are displeased when their ads appear next to stories about traffic accidents. In response, in 2003, Google developed “sensitivity filters” to periodically scan the Web sites of its partners in search of violence, mature content, or other unacceptable material. “They detect sensitive content that we probably don’t want to be showing advertising beside, and show public service announcements instead,” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety.

Eleanor Holmes Norton is the non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia. She appeared late Thursday on Stephen Colbert’s program – and handled his piercing humor with aplomb. Was it her idea? Did she get good coaching from her flack? Did they agree ahead of time to play funny? Any way you look it, this is a victory for Norton and makes for good television.