While Kathy's article on MOpocket yesterday covers a lot of the deeply saddening buzz around the Virginia Tech massacre and the schools lack of emergency communication preparedness I just wanted to point out a few more things. One of them very very ghostly in my book.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing another of its ongoing reports tracking Americans' use of the internet today (and someone leaked us an advance copy), and this report contains some really important news:

Save the Children goes into SecondLife Fundraising and Political Activity

Save the Children has decided to create a Yak Shack for online fundraising. Their SL Yak cost 1000 Linden dollars (US$3.50). Mind you - this is not just a donation; for every Yak you purchase, you will be able to virtually milk, ride and knit yak wool, thereby giving you similar income revenue from a virtual yak as a child would get with a real yak. On top of that, purchasers of the yaks can return them by 16 December for a chance to win an interview in Second Life Magazine. Link via Games for Change

Last week, the Spain-based NGO Mensajeros de la Pax will host a homeless avatar named MensajerosDeLaPaz Jubilee. Their catch phrase "Help a child have a second opertunity in his First Life" really got me thinking how you don't homeless children on the streets of New York City. This is a great way of reminding those who are fortunate of the plight of so many. You should check out the YouTube Video.

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First, watch the "Free Hugs" video on YouTube. Now, ponder what this might teach us about politics, the internet and the zeitgeist.

Some background is in order. A year ago, Juan Mann was just an odd guy standing in the Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, Australia offering "free hugs" to passing strangers. One of the people he hugged was Shimon Moore, the lead singer of the Sick Puppies. They became friends, and one day Moore decided to borrow a video camera showing Mann doing his thing. As the "free hug" campaign started to spread, the city council tried to ban it, even attempting to impose a huge liability insurance requirement on him for offering free hugs in public. So Mann and his friends mounted a petition campaign, and after presenting more than 10,000 to the city council, the calls for a ban died away.

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The news from MobileVoter just keeps comming. Ben Rigby and Bart Cheever (Mobile Voter#039s founders) have been working like mad and are today launching TxtVoter Run Your Own Campaign tool.

Simply put TxtVoter allows individuals & organizations to reserve their own keywords which tie idirectly into MobileVoters very own voter registration system. Ultimely this allows anyone to create their own SMS Mobile Voter registration drive.

Voto Latino, a non-partisan youth voter registration organization aimed at Latino youths has teamed up with Mobile Voter, a San Francisco non-profit dedicated to harnessing the power of text messaging and mobile technology to drive youth oriented voter registration. Apparently, the Latino group was so impressed by the way in which young Hispanics used text messages and SMS to rally at immigration protests this spring that they have made it their goal to sign up at least 35,000 Hispanic youths nationwide using Mobile Voter#039s services .

I'm a big fan of the online social networking phenomenon, as you can probably tell from my adjoining article about Essembly.com. But before it fades from memory (and jet-lag will do that to you) I wanted to add one comment about the final session at PC Forum, which was about the future of the social networking explosion. The panelists were Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.com, and newcomer Helen Cheng of Seriosity (which is still in stealth mode but is looking at applying the lessons of online gaming to improving remote team collaboration in the business setting).

Much of the conversation was focused on understanding how these sites have grown and parsing how younger people use social networking tools differently than older ones. LinkedIn makes it easier for people in the work world to network, find jobs or recruit new employees, while Facebook helps young people on college campuses connect for social purposes. In each case, the site's administrators have had to figure out how to give users the right amount of control to make the experience of using the site a satisfying one.