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I had an interesting visit with Tom Anderson, CEO of Novint Technologies, at E3 this morning. Novint was showing off the Falcon haptic mouse (named Falcon because the falcon is the predator of the mouse), which is designed to retail for less than $100, starting about a year from now. (A premium version may go on sale by the end of this year.) After the demo I got, and at the price, I’d definitely buy one. It seems a really versatile and refined touch interface, and at that price point you can’t really go wrong. (more…)

Massively multiplayer space opera EVE Online is getting in-game voice support, courtesy of VoIP technology company Vivox, according to a press release. (more…)

Microsoft’s Robert Scoble dropped in on the second day of the Metaverse Roadmap to hang out and observe the proceedings — and give John Swords and me a podcast interview, along with his son Patrick, that will soon be up on The Metaverse Sessions. We chatted for a while after the interview, and mentioned an idea that had been tossed around at the summit: that Microsoft would eventually get into virtual worlds and/or 3D Web technology in a big way. Turns out we weren’t as far off as one might think. (more…)

Linden Lab has begun publishing live economic statistics on a daily basis for its virtual world, Second Life. [Via Clickable Culture.] Stats include the number of users who’ve logged in in the last 60 days (more than 100,000), land added to the grid, money supply and resident transaction data, and L$ sources and sinks. It’s not a lot of information, and a couple of methodological questions remain — for instance, does “residents” refer to physical people, or to accounts, more than one of which may be held by the same person — but it’s a good start. Data is available for download as an Excel file as well, or for use on the Web in XML format.

Now that the Metaverse Roadmap has been Slashdotted, it must qualify as a real live meme. A number of other sites and bloggers have been weighing in on the subject over the last few days, though. A selection of takes from the Web (besides my own): (more…)

The 3D lab and virtual reality lab at the University of Michigan are holding a week-long “virtual reality event” in conjunction with Sensics, Inc., makers of panoramic virtual-reality displays, according to a press release. The invitation-only event starts June 12, and is designed to showcase various VR technologies for comparison side-by-side. If you’re interested in attending, contact marketing@sensics.com or calling (410) 327-0822.

I was chatting to Linden Lab’s chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka last night and thought to ask him about moving Second Life’s back-end architecture “away from custom C++/messaging and into Web services” (as blogged by Tim O’Reilly and linked here by me). After all, I have only a vague idea of exactly what that means, though it sounds quite cool. So for readers like me, who may not have an immediate grasp of all the implications, a bit of clarification from Cory. And yes, it’s very cool. (more…)

There aren’t all that many people around the LA Convention Center, where E3 is about to open, but that hasn’t stopped 3pointD from picking up a rumor here and there. Word today is that Sony Computer Entertainment America is looking to jump on the Major League Gaming bandwagon with a sponsorship of the organization. We blogged MLG a while back when they struck a deal to air their Pro Circuit tour on the USA Network. A slightly vaguer rumor: Wal-Mart may also be talking to the league about a sponsorship. I don’t follow these things as closely as some, but I don’t think I’ve seen this news before. (Please correct me if it’s out there already.) I believe Wal-Mart is the largest games retailer in America. The combined weight of Sony, Wal-Mart and a basic cable slot could do much to catapult gaming into the forefront of American consciousness in a way it hasn’t enjoyed before.

3pointD is interested in services like Turner Broadcasting’s GameTap, which makes PC games available to users via broadband, because of their potential to connect large numbers of users, in similar fashion to services like Xfire. Now comes the accouncement, ahead of E3, that GameTap will revive Ubisoft’s Cyan World’s dormant multiplayer Myst world, Uru Live, which was cancelled in February 2004 but which will again be up and running and supported with new content, according to the press release. The Myst communities that have sprung up around games like Uru Live have been among the most devoted of any. It’s interesting to see GameTap move in this direction, as it indicates their model may be a good catalyst for development as well as distribution, and for community-building as well as simply getting your play on.

A Pennsylvania lawyer has apparently filed suit against Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, over a land deal gone bad, according to this press release. [Via former Second Life Herald correspondent Neal Stewart, who flagged this post on Clickable Culture.] While the facts of the case are anything but clear, it does mark the first time that I know of that an SL resident has bothered to take legal action against the company. Look carefully at how the dispute is handled and how it is resolved, as it should provide important signposts on how such legal issues will be handled in future. (more…)

There’s always more 3pointD to post, but I’m off to E3 this morning — right now, in fact. Look for reports from the L.A. Convention Center throughout the week.

And a podcasting update: John Swords and I recorded a handful of good podcasts at the Metaverse Roadmap this weekend. We’ll start airing them over the next few days and weeks as the inaugural ‘casts in a new series, The Metaverse Sessions. Look for out conversations with the likes of Reuben Steiger, Sibley Verbeck, Jerry Paffendorf (who arranged the roadmap summit) and, our best catches so far, Robert Scoble and son, and Doug Englebart, who built the first mouse (that’s right), and who’s been thinking about how computers can enhance human cabilities for probably more years than anyone else. See you on the air.

Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, hired Joe Miller as their new VP of Platform and Technology Development, according to this press release. (more…)

Whew. Generating useful ideas about the future of the metaverse turns out to actually be hard work. I was so busy and wiped out yesterday evening after a day of SDForum and two days of the Metaverse Roadmap that I didn’t post anything at 3pointD for the first day in over a month. I’ll try to rectify that now by giving you a wrap of what was tossed around this weekend, though it won’t be easy. (more…)

An update from the Metaverse Roadmap: We spent a fun session this afternoon envisioning some of the things that might come to pass in the metaverse in two- to ten-years time. Some tentative conclusions, for your perusal:

More and more virtual worlds will start coming online as venture capital money discovers the space. As this happens, they will wink out with greater frequency as well. The coming and going of VWs will be disruptive to many of the communities that have formed in these worlds, but communities will prove stronger than platforms, and will migrate from world to world in search of a safe and stable home. To facilitate this, more cross-platform applications like Xfire will emerge, ultimately leading to a strengthening of bonds among users.

A few more possibilities, drawn at random from the crowd (though admittedly leaning toward the more amusing), after the jump: (more…)

VRoot flags an open-source 3D desktop environment called True3D*Shell with an OpenGL API. Again, I’m in Metaverse Roadmap sessions today, so I haven’t checked this out yet, but it looks interesting.

The Wall Street Journal’s Reply All column is running a predictive conversation between Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf on the future of the Internet. Mobility, broadband, RFID, distributed decision-making, advertising and the planet Mars all come into play. Interesting reading.

Haven’t had time to look into this, as I’m at the Metaverse Roadmap today and tomorrow, but it sounds interesting. What is it? “A free web Player for sharing interactive 3D objects, scenes and worlds. truePlay enables users to interact, learn and work in real-time in a photorealistic, simulated, 3D space that offers a much richer sense of presence than any 2D technology could provide.” Check it out and let us know what you think. [Via Glitchy.]

Joi Ito gave a fun talk at SDForum about being a massively multiplayer online game player, rather than a venture capitalist, and how the player’s experience could lead the development of virtual worlds. “The whole concept of cyberspace is holding us back a little bit,” Ito said. It’s not the case that cyberspace starts when you log into an immersive virtual world like Second Life or World of Warcraft, Ito said. I couldn’t agree more. The virtual world is simply a seamless extension of the real world. “We need to rethink the idea of cyberspace,” Ito said. (more…)

Will Harvey, founder and CEO of IMVU and founder of There.com, gave an afternoon keynote talk here at SDForum titled “Virtual Worlds Meet Instant Messaging,” which is what IMVU is all about, Harvey said. Not only that, but IMVU is “the best 3D instant messenger,” he said — though he noted that the competition isn’t very stiff at the moment. The talk was, for the most part, a case study in how IMVU has developed up to now. (more…)

An interesting discussion broke out at the end of the pre-lunch panel here at SDForum. Daniel James of Three Rings (makers of Puzzle Pirates) took issue with Philip Rosedale’s earlier statement that “the time is now” to build the metaverse. The tools available now are “rickety,” at best, James said. He sees ten years from now as the time when there will the kind of ubiquitous adoption of metaverse technologies in the way that people use the Web today. Furthermore, he argued, the metaverse will move to an open-source model. Until then, we’ll see tooth-and-nail Darwinian evolution and eventually survival of the fittest. Will Harvey of IMVU disagreed. (more…)

An interesting pre-lunch panel at SDForum on the virtual world value chain was moderated by Sharon Wienbar of BA Venture Partners, a $400 million venture fund that invests in software, hardware and life sciences companies. BA has several investments in the game space, including in mobile games, though they don’t have any virtual-world investments yet. “A couple of people have suggested we should start doing VC for in-world businesses,” she said. Her initial reaction was negative, but she later realized that Second Life’s in-world market is bigger than some target markets of companies BA has invested in. “In a virtual world, there is a much longer, more complex value chain” than in the real world, Wienbar said.

The panel included Shital Mehta, founding partner of Shanth Interactive, an interactive communications agency that takes “an untraditional approach to what’s traditionally been PR and marketing”; Will Harvey, CEO of IMVU and founder of There.com; Sibley Verbeck, CEO of Electric Sheep Company (anchor sponsor of this blog); and Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, makers of Puzzle Pirates. (more…)

Philip Rosedale’s presentation at SDForum was followed by an interesting panel on “in-world culture,” moderated by Dan Terdiman of CNet News.com. Panelists included Wagner James Au of New World Notes; danah boyd, a social media researcher at Yahoo! Research, and a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley doing research in teens’ use of technology; Susan Choe, CEO, StrayFish, who’s been following metaverse technologies since 2000, at first for Yahoo! and now for her own firm, which is currently in the process of launching; and Nicole Lazzaro, president of XEODesign, who says, “I make games more fun.” Her firm works with game-makers like Sony, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft to “create more emotion.” XEO “defines the emotional mechanisms that drive play,” and “heightens the emotional profile in play experiences.” (more…)

I managed to snap a picture of Philip Linden’s slide on how many users in Second Life make a profit (or a loss) on the businesses they run there. Not sure if you can see it very well, but here it is, for what it’s worth:

Philiip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab (makers of Second Life), keynoted the SDForum event on virtual worlds this morning at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The theme of Philip’s talk was imagination, and how the metaverse help harness the power of imagination to improve our experience of the real world. Philip described the metaverse as “a place where you can reinvent the world to work better for you. We can imagine things with our minds that are impossible to create in the real world, or can only be created with great difficulty.” The point of a place like SL is that those things can be created more easily there. He also released some interesting figures, some of which I don’t believe I’ve seen before. (more…)

The New Globe Theatre in Second Life

It’s just one launch, actually, but it’s happening later today: It’s called Millions of Us, a new 3D net services company, and it’s headed up by Reuben Steiger, former evangelist at Linden Lab (makers of Second Life). Millions of Us will help businesses “understand and harness the power of virtual worlds,” according to its Web site. Though Reuben’s currently working alone from a small office in San Francisco’s SoMa district, hiring developers as needed, Millions of Us has already completed two notable pilot projects, and has two more clients signed on for larger projects, including a major record label and a Hollywood effects company. (more…)

Instructables, the very cool instruction-sharing site for making things, has a new page up for sharing instructions for making things in Second Life. Learn how to add your own animations, create a cell-shaded sphere, bury yourself underground and do lots of other cool stuff. [Via VTOR.] Not that much on it at the moment, but with any luck there’s much more to come.

Doc Searls flags the next MashUp Camp, July 12-13 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. According to Doc, 500 people have already signed up. I’d love to see some cool 3pointD mashups come out of this.

As Mitch Kapor puts it, this is important! Check the AlterNet post on the new Net Neutrality act, then see what you can do.

Blog-EFL, which covers e-learning tools for language teaching, flags an interesting phenomenon occurring in Second Life, in which the presence of a celebrity (in this case it’s podcaster Adam Curry) has galvanized a community of residents in the virtual world, as well as a small-scale land rush as fanbois people vie to set up shop near the home of the star. Not so different from the real world, perhaps, although such trends become apparent far more quickly in SL, which could lead to some interesting applications (more…)

I’m off to SDForum tomorrow to hear the likes of Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab, Will Harvey of IMVU, Joi Ito and Reuben Steiger of startup VW services company Millions of Us, among others, “explore the new Virtual Economy.” Also on the lineup will be Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company (anchor sponsor of this blog), and what I didn’t realize until the Sheep sent word is that the event will have a mixed-reality component, with the event streamed for free into Second Life. Since attendance at the real-world event costs $150, this is an excellent use of SL as a communications platform, if you ask me, a great example of how a free membership in a virtual world can give you access to more information than would normall be available. See you there.

Tony Walsh reports that you can now buy Entropia Universe currency, known as PED, via real-world ATMs. According to an Entropia Universe press release, players can acquire an ATM card from the company (Entropia Universe) that will allow them to transfer money from their bank accounts to their Entropia accounts via Versatel ATMs. (more…)

We fancy ourselves forward-looking at 3pointD, but little did we know. Less than 24 hours after introducing Glitchy Links with the promise of news of J.Lo in the virtual world comes just that: Glitchy reports that Rivers Run Red (recently blogged here) is to create a J.Lo guitar in Second Life on behalf of Fender Guitars and MTV-UK. Details have yet to emerge (or else I missed them while I was on my flight to California), but it’s a nice deal to land for Fizik Baskerville and the rest of the Rivers — as well as good evidence that Glitchy has landed on the right blog. Stay tuned for updates.