I found a new search engine that uses an interesting idea. When you first go to the website, msdewey.com, you are greeted by a woman avatar. When you search for terms she will say different things according to what you search for. Janina Gavankar is the model who plays the avatar and really makes this project unique and sexy! The search results come from microsoft live and it seems like it’s a test from microsoft to have some fun. This site isn’t very useful but it shows what can be done in the future. I still search with google. If you want to see some of the funnier stuff that this avatar will do then type in the following for your search terms [Updated 10/26/06]:

halo 2
murder
ho
Janina Gavankar
how to fight a ninja
what is your name
how to do the robot
george bush
storm
How old are you
dick cheney
what are you

Technorati Tags: microsoft, search, internet, Janina Gavankar

These past months I have been playing games in a virtual world called Second Life. It’s not exactly a game because there is no goal. It’s mostly a platform where users can create anything they want with the tools provided. I signed up at the beginning of this year and have been satisfied with it. I am on their free account which allows you to log in as much as you want, use anything in the game except for owning land. If you want land then you must pay for their premium account which is $9.95 per month.

It’s hard to explain how much you can do inside the game unless you try it. Here’s an article from business week about second life. It will explain a lot to the new users. Some of the games I have played inside second life are, Slingo, Tringo, Blackjack, Slot machines, War and Quintzee. All these games have been created from regular users. There are plenty of other games that I haven’t played yet and more are being created all the time. You can also buy cars, planes, clothes, furniture and gadgets for your avatar inside the virtual world. The one thing that makes this world different than others is you can buy Lindens(game money) with real money and you can sell Lindens for real money. This brings in some business minded people. Some ways of making money in the game is creating objects that others would buy, making scripts for games or vehicles, buying lindens at a low price and selling them for a high price, buying land to place games on and making money from them when people play and escorts or stripping. Yes this is a mature platform and can be used for anything that is legal. No one under 18 can sign up and use second life unless they use the teen grid which is not connected to the mature grid at all. In  the mature grid there are PG places also so not all of it is adult.

I’ve been using second life for entertainment. There are some singers and musicians who play live in certain places. These aren’t wannabe singers. They are very professional and give a great entertainment value. I also play the games for fun too. I haven’t found a business plan for myself in the game just yet but still thinking all the time. I use the name, JohnnyRS Hoggard, in the game. Join up and have fun for free or pay for some nice privileges.

Technorati Tags: second life, games, gaming life, virtual world

   I found an article which was very interesting to me. It was about a fossil with tissue in a dinosaur bones. They found out the sex of the dinosaur which was female and was pregnant. They also have more evidence that dinosaurs have connections with living day birds. I am really interested in finding out more about this and see what this finding can tell us about life and death.

I also found another blogger, by Tdavid, mentioning a find from a 40,000 year old cave bear.

Ok, well, not quite Jurassic Park yet, but impressively scientists have made progress in connecting the DNA sequence of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago.

This does make me think about Jurassic Park type of experiment. Guess we will have to wait and see what the future will give. On one hand I’d love to know more about the past animals but on the other side these animals were instinct for a reason.

Technorati Tags: dinosaur, Jurassic Park, fossil, johnramirez