Geek Gestalt

If you're a Second Life user and you're feeling charitable in these last days before Christmas, I've got something you may want to look into.

And that is the appropriately named Second Life Christmas initiative (free Second Life account required to connect). It's an island in the virtual world full of opportunities to donate to various causes, as well as to bid in a silent auction on a number of different items.

Money collected through the program will be donated to the Province Empty Stocking Fund, a charity that helps various organizations in the Canadian province … Read more

After spending hours driving more than 60 miles Tuesday in search of a Wii, I am pretty much convinced that there are next to none available in retail stores anywhere, nor are any stores likely to be getting more before Christmas.

You never know, of course. A call I made to a Nintendo representative revealed that it's not entirely clear if retailers will be getting more before the holiday. But time and again, salespeople told me that they didn't expect to get any more after receiving shipments last Sunday that quickly sold out.

So what's a Wii … Read more

Ever wanted to know what it's like to get laughed at for a whole day? Try finding a Wii this week.

That was my task Tuesday: to comb the San Francisco Bay Area for one of Nintendo's elusive video game consoles. And let me tell you, the results were not pretty.

All told, during a long day of driving through Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties, I hit 10 different retailers in person and called 2 others, all in hopes that I might be one of the lucky few who stumbled onto the opportunity to fork over $… Read more

It's a small step for mankind, but a giant step for Spaceport America.

According to a release from the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, UP Aerospace ("Space is 62 miles away, Getting there is just a phone call away") successfully launched a "test flight vehicle" on Wednesday.

The Spaceport, which is near Las Cruces, N.M., is the future home of Virgin Galactic, as well as the XPrize Cup.

UP Aerospace, according to its Web site, is in the business of selling cargo space on launch vehicles.

The release said that the Wednesday launch was private, … Read more

I got my annual Burning Man ticket invitation post card in the mail Monday, always an interesting experience given all the emotions that the card conjures, particularly this time.

At first, I gave the card a cursory reading. But a few hours later, I picked it back and examined it a little more closely. And there, tucked away about a third of the way down the page, are 13 words that could be the most significant in modern Burning Man history: "New for 2008: No tickets will be sold at our event site gate."

It's bolded, but … Read more

Once, when I was waiting on a subway platform in New York, there was a fire of some sort in an adjacent tunnel. Presumably, subway officials issued directions for what those of us inside the station should do to get away from the smoke.

But neither I nor anyone around me would have benefited from those instructions because the public address system in the station was so bad that all we could hear was garbled, voice-like sounds coming from the speakers. I remember bewildered people looking at each other to see if anyone could divine what was being said.

I … Read more

There's a major kerfuffle going on at Second Life publisher Linden Lab.

According to the virtual world blog Massively, Linden Lab CTO and employee No. 4 Cory Ondrejka has been asked by CEO Philip Rosedale to leave the company.

And Linden Lab itself has confirmed that Ondrejka is leaving, though it hasn't publicly explained whether he was fired or left on his own.

Either way, this is very big news in the Second Life world because Ondrejka has been there from the beginning, wrote the Linden Scripting Language and has been the engineering lead all along.

But according … Read more

W00t!

That's how I feel about Merriam-Webster's selection of the 2007 word of the year.

Which just happens to be "w00t."

Defined by M-W as "expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word 'yay,'" "w00t" has been one of my favorite words for years.

You have to give the company credit for choosing a word straight out of the l33t- (or "leet" or "elite") speak dictionary, the argot used by geeks of many colors that substitutes … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--I was waiting to talk to Steve Wozniak last night at the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64 when I overheard him say his favorite video game of all time was Tetris for the Gameboy.

My eyes practically lit up when I heard that because, in a lot of ways, I have to agree.

In fact, as I told him a couple minutes later when I went up to talk to him, one of the things I made sure to do before I left for my Road Trip around the American Southwest this summer was go … Read more