Torley Lives

I had to smile when I saw their unofficial slogan, "aggregation without the aggravation" on Guy Kawasaki's blog. A little over a month later, I've been hand-picked for the popurls-like virtual.alltop.com alongside numerous other collections of choice sites, like the Official Second Life Blog (DISCLAIMER: I write for them too). This is quite an honor, considering (1) Kawasaki is one of my heroes, (2) I'm a rabid fan of aggregators (efficiency!), and (3) the people behind the site seem really nice (#3 is the most important). I got a most welcome email from Kathryn Henkens (who runs it along with Will and Guy), and I was like "YAYZERAMA!"

Thanks, I feel really good, but I'm having a hard time finding a badge that suits my modesty! (I'll make some sidebar space too…)

But suddenly, I find myself becoming more self-critical whilst questioning the classification of certain other sites: e.g., Gabes Virtual World has a nice set of crayons, but has more to do with virtualization than 3D spaces on the Internet. And those cute Club Penguin guys need a better title than "What's New". I am sure like contents of boxes, this will settle over time. Some of my personal faves have yet to be included, too.

But suddenly (2x), I feel under pressure to write meaningful posts which are useful to you. Good pressure, since I was already doing that, and there's gonna be more. ("Quality in quantity," that's what I say!) Coming up, then:

• What do you want me to blog about?

I also guarantee:

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The web built its back and part of its ass (aka derriere) on hyperlinks. I don't think they're overrated, and I never will (time travel has told me so), but sometimes I come across webpages that have too many hyperlinks.

How can that be? After all, aren't hyperlinks present for context, to help me make sense of a word (or phrase) in a bigger sea of text? Yes, but too many things to click on also increases choices — what's termed a Tofflerian surplus complexity — and often, if I really want to find something out at my own whims, as opposed to following the consequential interpretation said hyperlink creator has given me, I may just use Google.

Seeing as how single hyperlinks that go to a different place each time aren't standard and really haven't caught on besides JavaScript hacks and Flash follies (and hello XLink?), the element of surprise is negated when I can often see the full address at the bottom of my web browser. That's a good thing, yes? Most of the time.

Too many hyperlinks often don't get clicked on, and thus aren't used. Waste… slop! They could be, but let's look at the practical essentials, and summarize that they most likely won't: the time you put into making them — even if that's just a few seconds for each one, retrieving it, then copying-and-pasting — all add up. Hyperlinks can be distracting when you're focused on writing the meat of a blog post, which is why I suppose I haven't seen a WriteRoom-type program optimized for blogging come up (maybe it's out there and didn't surface in my searches).

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A little while back from online photography maven Thomas Hawk, I heard about TagCow and found out they use Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk to provide free tagging for uploaded photos, including Flickr streams. I was most curious about this, because some months ago, I asked "How much would you pay someone to tag your Flickr stream?"

Basically, the process was as simple as signing in with TagCow, granting them permission, then coming back a few weeks later. I found it pleasantly unintrusive, and as the mot de temps is, "transparent".

In the meantime, Dedric Mauriac has been a voluntary superstar and continued to tag my old images. While the MTurk workers don't have as accurate a grasp on my fave virtual world as bona fide Residents, most of the time, they don't do horribly either. Individual quality comes down to who's tagging, I suppose. As you can see in this example, some tags are generic and not useful like "image", while others are more specific about the subject matter — click to enlarge:

To be fair, describing Second Life snapshot as "graphics animation" or "video game scene" is as accurate as it gets for someone who's never experienced the world, and it's better than having nothing there at all. There's some odd typos, outright-wrong judgment (e.g., an odd number of pictures tagged "muffins"), and the quality diverges widely. I especially appreciated seeing when words within a picture were added as tags. Let's just say I hope I get the same people who do tag well over and over.

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Want to be celebrated as a leader in the lovely field of Second Life photography? Bold, I know… but ever since WindLight hit the decks, the inworld experience has looked + felt awesomer, and virtual world creativity site Koinup is having a contest!

Along with my fellow judges Pastrami Linden (WindLight Team Leader) and Vint Falken (talented blogger), we're going to decide. Yes, this will be aesthetic and subjective, and I just hope it's a good time for all involved. If anything, it'll be a quick 'n' easy way to appreciate the talents — established & new — who are elevating WindLight "emotional technology" in Second Life to new heights. (Insert jokes about "the sky's the limit" and soforth.)

Disclaimer: This contest is proudly run by Koinup and is not affiliated with Linden Lab.

Time is ticking:

Photos can be submitted from April, 18 to May, 7
Winners will be announced May, 13

• See the rules!
• Read Vint Falken's blog post about it!
• … and admire the current entries!

This offer ends soon, if you act now you could get… L$20,000 + exclusive WindLight presets from me! (Hint hint)

To give you an example of where I'm coming from:

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