An Extraordinary VR Journey – The Latest VRMAG

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Editorial Director Marco Trezzini, via email:

Since I believe we have created the best issue of VRMAG ever, I’m writing you with the hope you will accept to dedicate 5 minutes of your time to explore our online magazine dedicated to photographic virtual reality exploration of people, places and events around the world. Almost forgot to mention, VRMAG is a no profit publication, with no ads.
This issue features the closed zone of Chernobyl, Wired NextFest in Los Angeles, Cuba’s capital city La Habana, Red square in Moscow, the Palaces where European Royalties lives, New York’s Tribute in light, the island of Cyprus’s Aphrodite beach, Valentino’s exhibit Ara Pacis museum in Rome, the Mayan ruins Chinkultic and Tenam Puente in Mexico, Vienna, the Copenhagen Opera House, Seattle, RedBull AirRace Abu Dhabi ….
For VRMAG showing panoramas of the physical world is not enough,
so we’ll take you to Second Life in order to visit Anshe Chung’s Picture Gallery Dresden, and to DanCoyote’s Full Immersion Hyperformalism and get behind the scenes on the creation of next generation interactive screenshots for the gaming industry, take a visit to an “wellenkreis” an art installation of an endless sine curve in real space …
You will experience the view a sleeping pill has from it’s medicine bottle,
watch the world as a coca cola would do, transport you into a washing machine and feel like your sock. Be a fish and be intrigued by a guy ironing underwater,
enter the head of Hermann’s sculpture, chat with Jonathan livingston, experience a bubble party, feel the thrill of extreme canyoning, and much more …

Visit www.vrmag.org now.

Top 100 Wines – 2007

Jon Bonné:

A dash of the old, a dash of the new – that’s the theme of this year’s Top 100 Wines.
The Chronicle Wine section tastes wine from all over the world, but our Top 100 Wines are a showcase for the most compelling winemaking on the West Coast. We tasted thousands of wines this past year from California, Washington and Oregon. We recommended hundreds. You may recognize some of the lucky 100 from our weekly Wine Selections, but instead of simply choosing the best of what our panels tasted, we sought out a balance between quality, price and innovation – particularly innovation. So while many of our top contenders are familiar names, this year we also kept an eye out for new faces, new locales and new types of wine.
Consider, for example, the Pinot Noir made by Stewart Johnson of Kendric Vineyards in San Anselmo. A few years ago, uttering “Marin County Pinot Noir” would have prompted the same stare as “San Francisco suntan.” Now Marin has proven its potential as a wine region. (No such luck on the San Francisco suntan part.)