3pointD.com

It might as well be Second Life

Justin Bovington’s Rivers Run Red apparently screened extended trailers and footage of the third X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand, in Second Life earlier this evening, in conjunction with the world premiere of the movie at Cannes. I missed the event itself, but it was put on “in association with 20th Century Fox“, according to an announcement on the Second Life Web site, and included a live video stream from Cannes complete with live commentary, exclusive to Second Life, from X-Woman Ellen Page, who plays Kitty Pryde (aka Shadowcat) in the movie — though in the Rivers announcement she’s called Ellen Parry. (more…)

Warner Brothers’ Sire Records is launching “an interactive virtual listening party” for songstress Regina Spektor’s new album, “Begin to Hope,” next week in the virtual world of Second Life. The event marks “the first time a major record company has launched a virtual record release in Second Life and held a listening party for one of its artists,” according to a press release. In a series of locations around SL that were built out by Reuben Steiger’s virtual world services company, Millions of Us, residents will be able to hang out, chat and listen to songs from the album in their entirety, according to Steiger. The album itself isn’t due in stores until June 13. (more…)

Emily Chang at eHub flags a new app called PlacesTodo, which lets you tag a list of places using your mobile phone or a Web site, then retrieve your PlacesTodo list on the fly to see if there’s anything nearby that you wanted to check out. Nice way to use the Web and mobile devices to connect to the real world, if you ask me. Very 3pointD.

Way to go, metaverse meme! VerySpatial’s latest podcast covers lots of 3pointD issues, including the land lawsuit against Linden Lab blogged here May 9, 3D desktops, MySpace and the Metaverse Roadmap. There’s a bit of catch-up going on here (they can’t figure out whether of not Second Life is a game, for instance), but it’s recommended listening nonetheless.

A few days old, but worth flagging: Michael Arrington posts the news that eBay has begun banning selective links to users’ reputation profiles on Rapleaf. I point it out mostly because I’m interested in reputation solutions for virtual spaces, but also because eBay has been a leader here, leveraging the network power of its user base into useful reputation information, and it’s a shame that the company would try to quash the use a similar system on its site.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch flags an unfortunately named app called Mytago, which lets you tag the real-world stuff around you for later access on the Web by putting a scanable sticker on it. I’m not convinced (neither is Michael). This kind of physical tagging of real-world objects only makes sense if you’re tagging someone else’s stuff; if it’s your own, there are plenty of better ways to upload things and acquire a Web presence for them. Tagging items out in the world for people to see and share on the Web is a great idea, but I doubt it will be accomplished by introducing a new protocol into the mix. Arrington prefers Mozes, which lets you bookmark things via text messaging. That’s a nice idea, but aren’t our mobile devices soon going to be more powerful than that? In a couple of years, pretty much everyone’s going to be able to Digg (or insert name of new app) pretty much anything they want. I doubt it will be via Mytago or Mozes, however.

VR Juggler is a virtual reality platform I hadn’t heard of before, in development at the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State University. According to VRoot, the development team is seeking feedback and suggestions on how to improve its tool. Have a look, and see if you can come up with anything that might help.

The Smart Internet Technology Cooperative Research Centre in Australia is bringing positional voice and audio to online games and 3D virtual spaces. Its Immersive Communications Environment will represent environmental audio and users’ voices positionally: the gamers and gunshots that are closer to you will sound louder, while those that are further away will sound fainter or won’t be heard at all. For gamers, this is a step forward in games like World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike, and could add a great deal to virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, for those who care to adopt it. The system can only support around 1,000 users per server at the moment, but for most conversations and contexts, that will be more than enough. It doesn’t seem to be commercially available at the moment, but I’m betting it’s only a matter of time. I definitely want to hear my guildies’ voices echoing down the halls of WoW instances in a positional, directional way, rather than just everyone shouting at once. [Via Glitchy.]

Now available: Metaverse Session #2, our interview with Reuben Steiger, head of virtual world services company Millions of Us (which 3pointD wrote about when it launched). My podcasting partner, John Swords, has been doing the heavy lifting of editing the half-dozen or so interviews we did when we were out in Palo Alto for SDForum and the Metaverse Roadmap. Reuben is the second installment, after our chat with the Electric Sheep Company’s resident futurist, Jerry Paffendorf. (more…)