Avatarian Graveyard supplies a service for virtual addicts – people who excessively or compulsively spend time in virtual environments – to help them reintegrate into everyday society.
Avatars, digital identities, alter egos and other digital shadows of their psyche can be uploaded to the Avatarian Graveyard. Once this upload is completed a compound within ignites, causing an internal burnout of the compound material and thus also destroying the circuits that hold the virtual identities. All is lost and to provide a way of coming to terms with this loss and thus helping the grieving process it is possible to scatter the ashes and use the Avatarian Graveyard as urn to place somewhere meaningful as a reminder of ones past or as the coffin shape suggests, one can also burry the object.
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Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet according to scientists, outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth.
Using satellite images of nighttime lights, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil from Brown University have created a new framework for estimating a country or region’s gross domestic product, or GDP by observing the changes in a country’s “night lights” as seen from outer space.
“Consumption of nearly all goods in the evening requires lights,” they write in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. “As income rises, so does light usage per person, in both consumption activities and many investment activities.”
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Boomeranged metaphor in the news: Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, the BBC reports.
Related: Google tracks flue spread via sick searchers, Google everything, Boomeranged metaphors. Thanks Renhui Zhao.
The Google Opt Out Feature Lets User protect their privacy by moving to a desolate village where the are guaranteed an environment free from Google products. Participants will expected to know how to grow their own food, heal their wounds and bury corpses by hand.
While this video is a parody, created by the Onion News Network, Google has been facing a lot of privacy concerns both from the US Government and its users. As Google continues to grow, and invade our lives, situations similar to the ones parody might not seem so far fetched and funny?
Related: Google 2084, Google DNA, Google manhole, Googling in physical space, Google pigeons, Behind the Search Engine, Google Kills Bambi.
Students of the Next Nature Theme at TU/e Industrial design in Eindhoven decided to jungle-up their working environment a bit with the corporate animal wallpaper.
Hand painted (!) by Jurrian Tjeenk Willink, Glenn Jacobs, Kevin Pfeil and Josien Rijswijk. Original pattern design by Karl Grandin, of whom the corporate animal sweater is still available.
See also: Corporate animal pattern laptop engraving, Five strategies of biomimicmarketing, A wood of logos, Nextnature@Volume magazine, Designing for Next Nature @ TU Eindhoven.
In next nature, video game characters become part of your everyday environment, however I am no sure if I would hire this guy to do my plumbing. This hyperreal Mario was created by Pixeloo by pasting a bunch of random faces over a 3d render of Mario from Nintendo. Peculiar image of the week.
These college students perform a “live-action” skit of the old school Super Mario Brothers video game at a talent show. Virtual for real in a high school musical (hilarious alert!). Thanks Ehsan.
See also: Boomeranged Metaphors, Living with first-person shooter disease, Game on, Everything is Fake, Games become jobs.
Now how is this for a Boomeranged Metaphor? Gene suffers from first person shooter disease, also known as Duke Nukem’s disease. It is such a sadness.
See also: When Facebook gets Physical, World of World of Warcraft. Thanks Thomas.
