3pointD.com

The Acceleration Studies Foundation, which is putting on the Metaverse Roadmap meeting in a couple of weeks (which I’ll be attending), has a call for participation out, asking interested parties to contribute any metaversal resources they come across to the Roadmap’s home page. Send links or news to roadmap [at] accelerating [dot] org, and stay tuned for the Metaverse Roadmap’s public wiki, which should help get public participation in the Roadmap off the ground. (And which should really be live by now, if you ask me.)

Philip Torrone’s virtual reality headset

Philip Torrone look out. SpatiaLight, which manufactures “ultra high-resolution Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) microdisplays for the high definition television market,” has a press release accouncing that it’s now developing “a 3-D eyeglass-type display device for use with wireless phones, personal digital assistants and personal media players, which enable the viewing of broadband content, cable and satellite television, music videos as well as playing of video games, all with the experience of high definition large screen television.” Imagine: instead of all the laptops at Starbucks, we’ll one day see a bunch of people logging into the virtual world via a hyper-powered Blackberry and their SpatiaLight VR glasses. I’m not sure I want to have a coffee in that particular Starbucks, but it sure could be a cool way to take your 3pointD on the road.

CNet reports that the Explorer geocoding technology developed by California firm SRC has just been made open-source. [Press release.] SRC describes Explorer as “the industry’s first open sourced geocoder that is data and country independent, enabling developers to integrate digital address databases in any country to support geocoding processes.” There’s a lot of open-source action in the mapping community, so I’m not sure if this is big news or small beer, but it sounds a useful tool. SRC also has a cool-looking Google Maps-demographics mashup that can actually take any appropriate data set and map up a report from it. Neat.

There’s a nice article in the Orange County Register describing the ways people have begun to use virtual worlds as meeting spaces for their real-world ventures. Columnist Colin Stewart describes the conferences held by Aerospace Corporation software engineer Michael O’Brien in the virtual world of Second Life, but he also touches on the Miramar 3D collaborative workspace tool that Intel has been working on for some time. (more…)

By this point, actually, there seem to be at least 70. That’s according to the Second Life Society for Virtual Architecture, anyway, which will hold a meeting this evening (4pm Pacific time) to share the wondrous sights (and sites) its members and other interested parties have stumbled on in their travels, and perhaps hash out criteria for determining what constitutes a wonder of the virtual world. If there’s a place you’d like to nominate or if you just want to hear about interesting builds to visit in the world, click this SL link or navigate via the SlurlPane at the top of the right column here, while the link lasts. More information in this SL forum posting, or contact Meridian Maginot in-world.

Queens, New York, in Second Life

Slowly but surely, Second Life is coming to be seen as a tool not just for geeks and techies, but for everyone. That’s the paradigm shift you want to look for, as that’s the kind of thing that will eventually launch us into the 3pointD world. One sign can be found in the humble borough of Queens, New York, where a local community board is holding the first meeting of the Juggernaut Club this Saturday. The long-term goal of the club is to “introduce young adults living in northwest Queens to the economic opportunities this new world offers, to help them be creators of knowledge.” The club’s first project, intended in part to get people familiar with virtual life and work, will be to contribute to the development of a seven-acre park by hashing out ideas in Second Life. (more…)