Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.
I have to admit that there’s a lot of non-news news here. If you’ve been following things from one week to the next many of these stories simply read as “more of the same”.
So I’m going to violate the #1 rule of web 2.0 and advise you to just pull what you need out of this and don’t worry about spending ages on this post. Yes, I know, I should be flogged for not trying to force my readers to spend ages on my website. (You can swing by the Lab if you want.)
Anyhow, give it a quick skim, see what your eye gets drawn to, and spend a little extra time under Nerds Only – big stuff there this week.
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, Dracula, Bubba Ho-Tep, etc etc etc… k here we go:
Grady College Exits Second Life; Leaves Assets Behind
Note: they’re not leaving, they just realized they didn’t need to pay $200/month for an island. It’s a typical story. Building big in virtual worlds doesn’t mean you’re doing something right… in fact, often it’s the opposite.
Freshers get virtual look at campus life
The Dublin Institute of Technology offers a virtual campus tour. We’re very close to the point where these things are just assumed.
‘Second Life’ transforms classroom
A kind of limp “I’ve already made up my mind but if we MUST discuss it..” look at how virtual worlds affect education. There’s better material out there, included just for completion’s sake.
Ethics program enters virtual world through Second Life
Specifically focused on Health Care Ethics from University’s Nevada Center for Ethics & Health Policy. Article foolishly uses the term “first”, but otherwise is a good read.
Former US Secretary Of State Albright Speaks In Second Life
Topic: “the emerging global and transnational challenges of the 21st century and how the next generation of young leaders can contribute to developing innovative strategies to meet these challenges”.
Log on to virtual St. Louis
Your municipal tax dollars at work. It will be interesting to see how this gets used, going forward.
Pratchett heads to Second Life
Themed quiz nights, special events, fancy dress competitions and a treasure hunt. These guys did their research on what works in Second Life.
Playce: A Mirror World for Games
“Mirror World” = replica of the real world. Sounds like a winning business concept. Niche markets rule! (Click the image for an artificially blown-up screenshot… nothing really released from them yet except for thumbnails.)
Openlife Grid Partners with RealXtend Openlife Grid + RealXtend = extremely promising! Makes me wonder who will come out with a well-packaged “run your own connected world” system first: them, or the Linden Lab / IBM team. The race is on!
[TC]2 Releases Avatar Creation Engine
They’ve scanned over 10,800 individuals from ages 18-65+ in all heights, weights, and ethnicities for use in virtual spaces. Handy!
Nagy Gyula Galeria Launches in Second Life
This story will appeal to you if you travel in artistic circles. This is a big display of Nicolas Schöffer (1912-1992) work, who did a lot of the early “Cybernetic Art”. Check it out in SL. (SLurl)
Telstra plasters Uluru in Second Life
They built a little virtual bar and adspace next to the Uluru build – if you’re not an Aussie you might not understand the controversy, but if they tried to do that next to the real Uluru, Telstra would be in some serious legal trouble. Another story here and here.
what a short but EXCITING trip Draxtor took to Tampa this year. He met friends, colleagues, creative people, weird ones, just like himself….out of hours of footage he was able to condense this short report. Yes, DD is still recovering from staying up past 10pm, his usual bedtime…
It’s so weird seeing Second Life people in the flesh. They all look so… I mean the rendering is great, don’t get me wrong, but they look fragile… like if I dropped a building on them it would actually squish them or something… very strange.
Last week I had mentioned that I was planning some experiments to answer two questions:
Can I design new tools that enable new ways for small business to work?
How many ways can I experiment directly with selling a real-world product in Second Life?
These are not small questions! As things are developing, I’m facing the possibility of this consuming the entire blog. That doesn’t help anybody: the content that already goes here gets lost in the shuffle, and the experimental results end up a disorganized mess.
So I’m building out a space at http://www.CalebBooker.com/lab. Currently all you can do there is join the mailing list, which I encourage you to do! We’ll be organizing events, seminars, and analysis of various experiments, but for this to work it needs to be a two-way conversation. Results are sometimes measured in sales, but often in Second Life they’re based on how well ideas are received. This means that your opinion will really count, and joining the mailing list is the first step to really influencing what happens here.
I checked in with realXtend over the weekend. They’re up to version 0.3 now, and showing some serious promise.
For those of you unfamiliar: this is a virtual world technology based on Second Life. They’ve added some major features, including “meshes” (the graphic component almost every 3D environment but Second Life uses) and the ability to import and export everything from avatars to objects. They even include some great tools for working with standard 3d applications.
Launching the server was as easy as launching any other application, and in no time I was walking around a world on my hard drive. I was able to log into a remote demo server as well, and exported my avatar onto their server with no problems.
Modifying avatars in this thing is fantastic. Everything is pull-down menus and buttons, making it very easy to browse content. Clothes look awesome, actually draping on your avatar in a very realistic way. You can even tweak the way it handles animations, changing your posture and walk speed, and you get extremely fine control of the way you look right down to the length of individual fingers.
I could go on about the features, but I’ll let the video tell the story:
Headlines about virtual worlds just from the past week.
This is a big news week, partially because everybody waited until during the big conventions to make announcements. Lesson being: this is a rotten week to make an announcement guys. You get lost in the shuffle. Even the biggest announcements are dwarfed by the sheer volume.
Believe it or not I cut out a lot here. Massive numbers of articles that might apply didn’t make it because they were either A) old news sold as new, or B) rumor/unverified/blatant ads. Inevitably things that should be here didn’t make it, and things that should have been cut weren’t… but after many hours of sifting through everything I’m done and it gets published as-is. Man, I’m seeing double… I’ve got to find better ways to spend my weekends…
Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, the Hostess Munchies, Molson Brewery, etc etc etc… k here we go:
A third life for marketing in virtual worlds
… oh, but here we’re saying SLCC only saw 400. Enh, who knows. Regardless, SLCC as an event seems to havereceivedmorepress. Most stories about the VW 2008 were focused on specific announcements, with the expo itself as an afterthought. Hmmm… something in the way the content is presented I suppose. Worth further study.
Will Second Life Transform the Way We Do Business?
A general article touching upon meetings, events, education, training and recruiting. It’s also a reminder that librarians seem to be very, very interested in Second Life. I must remember to interview one and really get a deeper understanding about why…
Random House Group Hosts E-book Exhibition In Second Life
Many people don’t realize that ebooks get ISBNs, and are ordered and cataloged through distributors just like physical books. This is really a promo event for the Sony Reader but probably worth your time if you want to find out more here.
Rivers Run Red Enters Exclusive Partnership with Linden for Immersive Workspaces
Another re-broadcast news story. Anyhow. A purpose-built immersive workspace needs to be built for SL to compete with Qwaq, no question, but without having seen it myself it’s difficult to endorse the idea. For all we know it could be great or a complete disaster. Rivers Run Red projects have seen mixed mixedresults, so jury’s still out on this one until we can do live demos ourselves.
Twinity moves to public beta
“Public beta” = “open, but with tiny bugs”. Today’s a good day to try it out, I’d really like to hear what you have to say about it.
Multiverse touts extensible virtual-world effort
Kind of a re-packaging of old content here (the only real news is that they’re packaging everything under the name “Places”), but in case you hadn’t heard: they’re going to replicate a bunch of real world places. Times Square is pretty impressive, worth checking out.
Webkinz World is Now Worldwide
I knew Webkinz would be big but they’re proving to be a monster! Last year I had to go to a specialty gift shop downtown to find one for my daughter – who was the only kid in the neighborhood with one. Now even the pharmacy on the corner keeps them in stock, and every kid in the neighborhood has at least three. Madness.
Gaming
PayByCash Launches Virtual Ultimate Game Card
A prepaid card that covers over 200 worlds. Pretty handy service – if I was an entertainment world builder I’d probably sign my world up.
Can You See Me Now?
(via Kzero) Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. If you follow blogs like this one you’ve probably heard the term “Augmented Reality” knocked about here and there. This is the very definition. Check out the cool video:
Nerds Only
The Electric Sheep Company Opening Webflock to Third-Party Developers
Although we had expected that web-based worlds would be big, I don’t think any of us expected a downright glut of them. There are dozens! By opening it up to 3rd party developers, The Electric Sheep Company is making a critical step for survival. Success online these days is measured largely in how well a company plays with others.
Vivox(R) Announces Vivox Open Initiative to Drive Innovation and Expand Reach
Last week I commented on the BabbleStream story: “Make or break here would be if they opened up the API so that people could start integrating the tool without the input of individual platform builders.” Gosh, I guess the gods were listening… can’t wait to see what new voice tools get developed here. It would be extra exciting if some 3rd party company formed around a really unique niche application for the technology. Someone make the killer biz app!
SceneCaster Announces Support for COLLADA Scenecaster makes a smart move and supports a big 3D standard. Now if they could find someone to start selling specific applications for their technology they’d be in business.
The Ethics of a Sex Life in Your Second Life
Guys, it’s the same as the ethics of phone sex. New technology doesn’t necessarily change the rules every time. Why do we make life so complicated…
Sociological Oddities
Teleport to Israel Through Second Life
What I found interesting about this bit wasn’t just the way funding came together, but how the story came together. A reporter was checking it out, happened to run into someone, casually mentioned they were interested in writing about it, and suddenly they were talking to the creator. Try that in Web 2.0.
Linden Lab put the bullet in ad farms
What I find fascinating about “ad farms”, those plots of land filled with blinking/spinning/animated towers of ads that blight the landscape, is how it compares to real-world urban planning, zoning laws, etc etc etc. Big topic, not good to get into in a newsreel… some other time.
At ESPN, Play-by-Play Goes Virtual
I’m kicking myself for not predicting this. OF COURSE they’re doing this… a new in-depth football simulation has been released every year (see MADDEN) since the 90s. Image courtesy of the New York Times… who will probably ungratefully fuss over the repost but we’ll cross that bridge if/when…
Virtual Greats’ Snoop Dogg and Incredible Hulk Goods Launch in Gaia
Playce: A Mirror World for Games
[TC]2 Releases Avatar Creation Engine
