This isn’t educational technology or a serious game, but I found it pretty entertaining. Those that know me know that I can rarely resist anything having to do with music.

An artist in France put together a web site called Incredibox. On this site, you mix your own song using sounds made by the human body. You choose the loop and slide it on one of the characters in the chorus. The sound automagically loops in with the other sounds.

Intellibox is available in both French and English. The artist is apparently working on a second version.

Enjoy!

There is an old New Yorker cartoon that features two dogs. One says to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

Indeed, it has been common for people to hide behind fake personas online for most of the commercial life of the internet. Many did so with chat (remember AOL’s chat rooms?), and many do so with their avatars in Second Life and in online games (e.g. World of Warcraft).

But at least one place on the internet, what you see is what you get. A recent study shows, at least for subset of the population on Facebook,  users present a truer representation of themselves.

see No Lie! Your Facebook Profile Is the Real You | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a Web service called Make3D that lets users turn a single two-dimensional image of an outdoor scene into an immersive 3-D model.

[read the original story in MIT Technology Review]

An email arrived in my inbox today announcing the Medical Modeling and Simulation Database (MMSD). The site was developed by Eastern Virginal Medical School in collaboration with the American College of Surgeons.

The portal serves as a gateway to a broad array of resources and services related to the medical modeling and simulation world, including content for practitioners, researchers, and those working in academia.
It currently contains over 200,000 abstracts of articles relevant to simulation. It also contains a section for simulation centers, companies, products, and meetings.

A quick interaction with the database showed the information in the literature, simulation centers, companies, and meetings are all far from comprehensive (I’m sure this will improve over time).

This project, and other similar ones (such as the one being developed by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare) attempt to aggregate a plethora of information in one location. The issue with this type of project often becomes its upkeep. If the data is not updated and verified frequently, it’s relevance diminishes. I for one would prefer a single large, timely, accurate database rather than several fractionated ones. Let’s hope the champions of these emerging projects find ways to collaborate and share data for all of our benefit.

I found a fascinating project called ArtNatomy built to aid instruction in the Fine Arts. 

Forrester published an outstanding report on the business applications of virtual worlds. Forrest is an independent technology and market research company that provides advice to global leaders in business and technology.
Our healthcare team training platform, 3DiTeams, was included in the report as an outstanding example of Serious Games applied to healthcare.

One of the most telling quotes from the Executive Summary…
“…within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today.”