Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Darcy Megan Stanger, better known by the pen name Dame Darcy, is an alternative cartoonist, fine artist, musician, cabaret performer, and animator/filmmaker. Her "Neo-Victorian" comic book series Meat Cake was published by Fantagraphics Books from 1993–2008. The Meat Cake Bible compilation was released in June 2016 and nominated for The Eisner Award July 2017. Vegan Love: Dating and Partnering for the Cruelty-Free Gal, with Fashion, Makeup & Wedding Tips, written by Maya Gottfried and illustrated by Dame Darcy, was the Silver Medalist winners of the Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2018.
Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by the end of 2017 the active user count had declined to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective".
In computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user or the user's character or persona. Avatars can be two-dimensional icons in Internet forums and other online communities, where they are also known as profile pictures, userpics, or formerly picons. Alternatively, an avatar can take the form of a three-dimensional model, as used in online worlds and video games.
Boing Boing is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won the Bloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The editors are Mark Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, Carla Sinclair, and Rob Beschizza, and the publisher is Jason Weisberger.
Xeni Jardin is an American weblogger, digital media commentator, and tech culture journalist. She is known as a former co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing, a former contributor to Wired Magazine and Wired News, and a former correspondent for the National Public Radio show Day to Day. She has also worked as a guest technology news commentator for television networks such as PBS NewsHour, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and ABC.
A griefer or bad-faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately irritates and harasses other players within the game (trolling), by using aspects of the game in unintended ways, such as destroying something another player made or built. A griefer derives pleasure primarily, or exclusively, from the act of annoying other users, and as such, is a particular nuisance in online gaming communities. To qualify as griefing, a player must be using aspects of the game in unintended ways to annoy other players—if they are trying to gain a strategic advantage, it is instead called "cheating".
Joseph Stewart Burns, better known as J. Stewart Burns, is a television writer and producer most notable for his work on The Simpsons, Futurama, and Unhappily Ever After.
John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, and for his work as a contributor on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Gaymer and gay gamer are umbrella terms used to refer to the group of people who are identified as homosexual and have an active interest in video games or tabletop games, also known as gamers. Lesbian, bisexual, and transgender gamers are often categorized under this term.
Amie Street was an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. The site was notable for its demand-based pricing. The company was later moved to Long Island City in Queens, New York. In late 2010, the site was sold to Amazon who redirected customers to their own website.
"The Funeral" is a song by the American rock band Band of Horses, taken from their debut studio album, Everything All the Time (2006). The alternative rock song was written by the band members. The song was released as the debut single from the band and lead single from the album. A live version of the song appeared earlier on the band's self-titled EP, under the original name "Billion Day Funeral".
Shelfari was a social cataloging website. Shelfari users built virtual bookshelves of the titles they owned or had read, and could rate, review, tag, and discuss their books. Users could also create groups that other members could join, create discussions, and talk about books, or other topics. Recommendations could be sent to friends on the site for what books to read.
Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator created by Anthony Volodkin.
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1974. As the popularity of the game grew throughout the late-1970s and 1980s, it became referenced in popular culture more frequently. The complement of games, films and cultural references based on Dungeons & Dragons or similar fantasies, characters, and adventures became ubiquitous after the end of the 1970s.
Violet Blue is an American journalist, author, editor, advisor, and educator. Blue wrote a weekly sex column for the San Francisco Chronicle until 2010. In her podcast, Open Source Sex, she reads erotica and discusses topics such as fetishes and oral sex. She also has a video blog. She lectures at San Francisco Sex Information. Blue is the author of several books on sex and has edited several volumes of erotica anthologies. Her first book, an erotic anthology she edited, was titled Sweet Life: Erotic Fantasies for Couples. It was published in December 2001 by Cleis Press.
Encyclopedia Dramatica is an online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google Search in 2010. It has been linked to one school shooting and participates in harassment campaigns.
The Kingkiller Chronicle is a fantasy trilogy by the American writer Patrick Rothfuss. The first two books, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, were released in 2007 and 2011. The books released in the series have sold over 10 million copies.
Content ID is a digital fingerprinting system developed by Google which is used to easily identify and manage copyrighted content on YouTube. Videos uploaded to YouTube are compared against audio and video files registered with Content ID by content owners, looking for any matches. Content owners have the choice to have matching content blocked or to monetize it. The system began to be implemented around 2007. By 2016, it had cost $60 million to develop and led to around $2 billion in payments to copyright holders. By 2018, Google had invested at least $100 million into the system.
