I recently had a disconcerting experience with CNN, which I described in a Popten post (below). Boing Boing then wrote a post about my experience as well, which echoed all over the blogosphere. It was a hell of a day, to say the least.

Boing Boing Article Here.

Popten Post Here.

Victor Pineiro put a lot of work into a funny, popular post about the “top ten geek anthems of all time.” Shortly after, CNN ran an extremely similar article, which replicated many of Victor’s picks and had extremely similar copy. But the CNN article didn’t credit Victor with the inspiration.

Victor doesn’t think that this is a copyright violation (I think he’s right), but it does smack of plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. It’s possible that CNN was inspired to write the extremely similar piece at the same time, but the more likely explanation is that CNN just ripped Victor off. Victor couldn’t find any contact info for the author and when he posted a question about it to the article’s comment thread, it was rejected.

We often hear big media companies talk about how bloggers rip them off by posting fragments of their articles, but there’s a well-developed practice of linking and crediting in blogging that often doesn’t go the other way, and it sucks that media companies don’t play nice in link economy.

My article on Avatar as a precursor to a virtual world was just published in the Psychology Today blog- honored to guest blog on Ethan’s ‘Geek Pride’.

Check the article out here.

2009 was a hell of a year for Popten, the pop culture/top ten blog which I write for, edit and manage.  This year has seen our little blog grow into more than an online home for our ten original bloggers, averaging twenty thousand unique visitors a month, with a stable of 15-20 writers providing regular, superlative content.  We were recently cited in the Chicago Tribune, USA Today and The Onion, among others and journalists from the LA Times and Hollywood Reporter are guest blogging.  We’ve also had a complete redesign, transforming Popten into an online magazine.

We decided to end the decade properly, having each of our authors contribute 1-4 Top Ten ____ of the Decade lists every day of December.  From movies to storytellers to celebrity meltdowns, we managed to quantify the decade with almost thirty articles.

Check out our End of Decade series here.  Or just check out Popten here.

Our latest Pure West documentary for VBS TV, this one is especially close to my heart, as we talk to the father of video games, Mr. Ralph Baer himself.  Sadly I was only able to find Ralph, volley some emails and kick some pre-production on this one, as I was at another job the day we filmed it.  Of course, Juan and Peter knocked it out of the park, as they always do.  Hopefully I’ll get to meet Ralph someday… and have him sign my Simon like he signed Peter’s.

Since finishing my work for Second Life at the end of August, I’ve been copywriting, content planning and strategizing for luxury carbon offset company The Belgrave Trust.  It’s been a fantastic challenge, entering the green space.  I did some market research and PR work last year for Belgrave, so this was a great way to see how far they’d come in the space of twelve months.  We spent the past six weeks readying the site for launch- always an exciting time.  Look for it any day now…

Founded on the principles of ease through simplicity, innovation via markets, and strength from diversification, The Belgrave Trust is a community of members who have discovered the most efficient and effective way to live carbon neutral.

Our members are drawn from the leadership community in media, finance, technology, policy, and commerce, and share the common belief that Global Climate Change is the greatest crisis of our time, that the most fortunate among us share a special responsibility to rise up and tackle this challenge.

VBS just released the second short documentary I produced with my brother, about the Virtusphere.  This is a fun little piece about what might be the future of virtual reality.  The back story on this little piece of technology is pretty fantastic.

We were just hired to produce another short doc, about Ralph Baer, “the father of video games”, a holocaust survivor.  We’re pretty thrilled with the chance to meet one of our heroes.  I’ll post it as soon as it’s done.

[YouTube clip is up b/c I can't get VBS's embed feature to work!]

One of the perks of heading to Austin for the Alamo Drafthouse’s Second Skin premiere was hanging out with the G4 guys.  Patrick & Casey are the best- it was an honor to have an entire MMO Report dedicated to Second Skin.  Especially since G4 is far and away Juan & I’s favorite channel.  If you miss it on the big(ger) screen, here it is on the small one.

Now that the site has gone live and the NDA has lifted, I can finally tell everyone what I’ve spent the past five months doing.

This past April I was hired by Big Spaceship to copywrite and content plan the new Second Life website with them- the most enjoyable project I’ve undertaken since Second Skin.  It was an absolute honor to work on such an important, popular website, and work alongside the superlative crew at the Spaceship.

It was also a fantastic challenge that felt like the next logical step after writing Second Skin.  Working with Senior Strategist Ivan Askwith, I tried to distill the complicated ideas behind Second Life and virtual worlds into simple phrases and concepts to connect with a broader audience.

Looking forward, I’m raring to go on my next MMO or video game copywriting assignment, hoping to continue my exploration of virtual worlds full time.

I’d also like to give a very profound thanks to Ivan, all the good people at the Spaceship, and Chestnut Rau, who helped me find many of the hotspots in Second Life, and seems to know absolutely everything that’s going on in the virtual world.

Below are links to some of my favorite sections:

What Is Second Life: A series of slides and captions introducing the concepts and features of the virtual world.

Learn- Land: The basics of virtual land ownership broken down into digestible chunks for mass consumption.

Showcase: I spent weeks wandering Second Life, finding the best and brightest spots and reporting on them.

Learn- Shopping: All you need to know about virtual shopping and identity.

Create:  How to be creative in Second Life.

Community FAQ: Simple answers to basic questions

[Above, my green-skinned avatar Cronopios, hanging out on the Second Life homepage.]

The article is here.

THE MOVIE “Second Skin”

THE DEAL This documentary, written and produced by Valley Stream’s Victor Piñeiro, focuses on seven people immersed in the computer-generated fantasy worlds known as MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Via their virtual bodies, some find happiness, some find love and some seem to lose themselves entirely. The film, which received good reviews on the festival circuit and enjoyed a brief theatrical run in New York City earlier this month, was released on DVD Tuesday. Go to secondskinfilm .com for a trailer and more information.

It’s such an honor to be up on Hulu’s homepage slideshow all week.  Now I’ve just been informed that we’re the #1 most popular movie on the supersite- three days in a row and counting!  That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-10 million people watching Second Skin.  I can’t stop smiling.