I posted a few days ago about Scrivener. After a little research this weekend, I discovered it’s only available for Mac, and after some more digging, I came across a blog by a writer wishing that Scrivener was available for PC, and wringing his hands over the fact its creator has no plans to make it available for PC. The comments that followed include a little puzzlement over leaving out a huge portion of the market and some nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyahing from Mac users. Um. No.

Let’s move past the fact that these particular Mac posters were stupidly juvenile. There’s something else going on here that makes me ill. A couple of months ago when Lola was on her way out, and before I bought Zooey, some of my Mac-using friends tried to get me to switch from being a PC to being a Mac. “Come over to our side,” they coaxed. Your side? Is there a wall? Guess what, folks, it’s a machine, not a doctrine.

Look, I’ll give Macs the beauty prize but as far as I can tell, the company operates under an exclusionary and paranoid business model. If you’re not one of us, you’re some kind of idiot. Exhibit A: the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads. I’ve come across enough angry Mac-users blogs to know that the company’s childish mindset has trickled down to its consumers. I thought the two main parties in American government had cornered the market on stomping off to separate corners and shouting with their fingers in their ears. This kind of I’m-better-than-you thinking is bad when it comes up as a natural part of human nature. Do we really need it to be manufactured by a company whose goal is to make money off our dissent?

Anyway, I digress. Scrivener. Not for PC users. Fortunately there are other programs for us PC-users (you know, the other 95% of us).

YWriter is supposed to be excellent and is available for FREE! I watched the online tutorial and this is the one I plan on using.  Then there’s Celtex, SuperNotecard, Zoot, MyBase, Keeper, Liquid Story Binder XE which one reviewer says is the best for Windows users, Mendely, Page Four which costs $34.95 and I hear isn’t as good as YWriter, and finally, Writer’s Cafe.

After completing eight books on evil, conspiring, trying-to-take-over-the-world, monopolizing Microsoft’s MS Word, I’m happy to find some new tools. Can’t wait to see how they pan out.

BEHIND THE FIREWALL

Is this the  the  route

education will take?

The CWRU virtual campus. Picture: Courtesy  Eduscape – Education in Second Life

University and tertiary institution administrations like to play God – or so I have been led to believe – so the experience of Case Western Reserve University, established 1826 in Cleveland, Ohio, in taking some of its Virtual World activities behind  a firewall could prove illuminating  for us all.

It also will provide  an opportunity for control – none of that sex, drugs and rock ‘n’roll, scantily-clad or naked avatars, and griefing,  that some conservatives see as the whole of Second Life – data privacy, confidentiality,  IT security, and, according to Wendy Shapiro (pictured right), the university’s senior academic-technology officer, in an Amanda Linden article in “EDUSCAPE – Education In Second Life”,  fulfills   two of the most important elements of a private educational Second Life “1) a multi-age platform and 2) privacy”.

And when you host your own universe, as Shapiro noted, according to Marc Perry, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, “you get God privileges -You can control everything. You can control who comes in, who gets kicked off. You can control whether people walk or fly.”

CWRU,  the first educational institution to deploy the behind-the-firewall version of Second Life, codenamed ‘Nebraska’, in partnership with The New Media Consortium (NMC),  announced the move at the annual summit on technology and collaboration, CollabTech, held both on Case Western Reserve’s physical campus in Cleveland and their eight-island virtual campus in Second Life.

The reason for the partial move behind the firewall,  according to Perry quoting Larry Johnson, chief executive of the New Media Consortium, a Texas-based higher-education-technology group, is because CWRU’s medical school is interested in performing research involving personal medical histories (and) could use a private environment.

“I think that it’s going to solve a lot of issues that many institutions have with using virtual worlds in general.,” Johnson said. It’s the first step in allowing universities to begin to build their own grids.

“Another function would be programs that focus on both adults and kids,” he said. “Right now, adults need to undergo background checks to access the Second Life teen grid.

This would aid another use Case envisions for the ‘Nebraska’ environment which would involve the campus Hispanic club providing mentors to Cleveland public-school students in the online virtual world.

By the way Second Life is still  interested in getting participants in its beta program for the standalone version of Second Life (Contact: business at secondlife.com).

Military training

The US Air Force’s MyBase in Second Life

Meanwhile Federal Computer Week recently published an interesting article the handful of  US Government agencies who have turned to virtual worlds to create programs that bring together the best aspects of Internet-based training and the traditional classroom.

It gives an overview of three, two of which will obviously become mainly behind firewall applications:

US Air Force: The Air Force’s training command entered the world of virtual learning in December, 2008, with the launch of MyBase,  in Second Life, with an aim to enhancing Air Force recruiting, training, education and operations and meet the education and training needs of future members of the Air Force. MyBase is currently open to the public but the Air Force plans to establish a secure site to provide virtual education and training, such as certification and degree programs, and later a second secure site to re-create operational environments. For example, it could re-create an air base in Iraq where service members could go to train and also meet others with whom they would deploy.

US National Guard: The Guard started the programme -  a virtual world designed to support training, education and collaboration across government – from scratch two-and-a-half years ago as a training and preparedness program for service members and civilian emergency managers. Lt. Col. Gregory Pickell, chief of the Joint Advanced Concepts Division’s Training Technology Branch at the National Guard Bureau, and in charge of the U.S. Nexus programme, believes it has a broader government application. “We found that the virtual word has the ability to bring people together in ways that are not possible in the real world,” he said. “If you have distance-based education, training or collaboration requirements, Nexus gives you more value for every mile between you and your audience.”  U.S. Nexus was developed for the Guard by Engineering and Computer Simulations. It will enter its beta test phase in June, with an initial operational capability slated for November. One of the objectives of U.S. Nexus is to redefine access to traditional distance-earning applications, making it easier to locate the appropriate course without Google searches or text links. Pickell said, aabout 80 percent of online courses are unknown to the user community because they are located at a university or behind a military firewall. “Our job is to find those applications and bring them into the [U.S. Nexus] parallel world architecture.” Users would access applications in ways that make sense to them, such as a firefighter taking a recertification course at a virtual firehouse. U.S. Nexus supports simultaneous training of geographically dispersed people at a lower cost than bringing them all together in a single place, Pickell said. DOD and the Veterans Affairs Department have discussed using U.S. Nexus to coordinate care for injured Iraq war veterans. The Defense Acquisition University, with more than 320,000 students worldwide, plans to use Nexus for a variety of requirements, including avatar-to-avatar synchronous classroom delivery.

Testing other VWs

US Navy: The Naval Undersea Warfare Center set up shop in Second Life about a year ago. “We have a responsibility… that we look globally for new technology,” Paul Lefebvre, technical director and senior civilian at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport, said. “This is technology that has potential for a lot of applications.” As the Navy’s undersea research and development lab, NUWC Division Newport was tasked with delivering better products to the fleet, Lefebvre said. “So we’re looking how to apply things like Second Life to the fleet,” he said. This includes how to use virtual worlds for operational testing, training, collaboration, product development and design work. This summer, NUWC Newport is planning an experiment that will create a virtual submarine attack center. Some fleet participants will take part in the exercise virtually, where they will access simulated scenarios and perform their mission in a virtual world. Others will take part traditionally, without the immersive experience. They will compare the results of the test to see how participants fare in each. In addition to Second Life NUWC  has tested OpenSimulator, Sun Wonderland, Forterra’s Olive and Qwaq Forums.

]]> http://medc2org.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/virtual-worlds-event-includes-virtual-hospital-and-second-life/ Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:17:04 +0000 dandeakin http://medc2org.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/virtual-worlds-event-includes-virtual-hospital-and-second-life/ http://medc2org.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/much-more-planned-for-air-force-virtual-world/ Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 dandeakin http://medc2org.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/much-more-planned-for-air-force-virtual-world/ http://earlybert.com/2008/09/04/fusie-tussen-virtual-worlds-en-virtual-machines/ Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:14:32 +0000 Bert Bouwhuis http://earlybert.com/2008/09/04/fusie-tussen-virtual-worlds-en-virtual-machines/ http://pvhaley.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/real-ai-for-games/ Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:28:28 +0000 paul@haleyAI.com http://pvhaley.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/real-ai-for-games/