3pointD.com

Amazingly, this Undead Mage has just hucked a fireball at that guy’s house! What’s amazing about it is not the fireball itself, but that he’s done it in a commercial for Farmer’s Insurance. If there’s any doubt that this is a commercial based on World of Warcraft or a similar swords-and-spells game, it’s dispelled by the first line spoken by the insurance agents once the scene cuts away from our friend, the Lord of Mishap. (Don’t worry: no spoilers here.) Kind of made my jaw drop. But the thing that makes 3pointD really care about this is the deep cultural penetration it’s evidence of. (more…)

Well, as old as the computer age, anyway. Teaching machines to correctly discern objects in three-dimensional scenes has long been a sticking point in artificial intelligence and robotics. Now, according to a UPI story, “Carnegie Mellon University scientists say it is now possible for computers to learn how to discern the geometric context of natural scenes, which, previously, has been a major roadblock for computer vision.” Said scientists will apparently be unveiling their creation at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, which starts this weekend. Intriguing. And these are the real deep geeks. Maybe I’ll try to go. [Thanks to Glitchy for the link.]

Very Spatial yesterday flagged an interesting story on the BBC about Google’s mobile aspirations for the future. That, combined with talk coming out of Google’s Geo Developers Day that various people have reported to me, has finally convinced me that Google may at least be starting to think about some kind of multi-user version of Google Earth. If it comes, it won’t be soon, but it’s worth recapping possible developments (if that makes any sense), though a lot of this talk has been circulating for some time. Mozilla as well seems to be thinking about related ideas. (more…)

There was lots of news out of Google’s Geo Developers Day, held yesterday ahead of O’Reilly’s’s Where 2.0 conference that starts today. Among the notable tidbits (mostly lifted from Ogle Earth, but also reported by Jerry Paffendorf, who’ll be speaking at Where 2.0 this afternoon):

• Here’s Google’s press release about it all.

• Google Earth in new version 4.0 beta is now available for Linux [<-- download] and on Mac [<-- download], as well as Windows [<-- download]. Good roundup of new/changed features on Ogle Earth, including support for textures and local lighting on SketchUp models.

• There’s a new KML 2.1 spec and tutorial. And you can now upload KML to Google Maps just by pasting in a URL, according to Ogle Earth.

• The Google Maps API also now supports Geocoding for many parts of the world.

• There’s a new Google Maps for Enterprise service (with fee) for business and government.

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This isn’t strictly the kind of mobile connectivity I usually cover here, but it’s right in the pocket in terms of convergence. A company called TVersity has a press release today about a new version of their Media Server that lets you stream Internet radio stations to your PSP. Now, I’m neither a PSP nor a streaming expert, but as far as I can tell this is the first service, outside of homebrew hacks that users have created, that lets you do this. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.) What I like about it is that it harnesses the processing and adoption power of a games device to drive new kinds of connectivity. Anything that helps make the Internet more mobile is a good thing for the kind of 3pointD connectivity I’m always looking for: technology that helps people connect in the real world. Game devices feature some of the most powerful processing and some of the broadest adoption of any new devices out there (more than 17 million PSPs have been sold so far — though none to me, unfortunately), and have the potential to drive more generalized uses in a big way. I look forward to tuning in.

I just found out that SLBoutique, a Web-based shopping site for Second Life objects, has been relaunched with a new look and new functionality. The relaunch comes courtesy of the Electric Sheep Company (a sponsor of this blog), the virtual world services firm that bought SLBoutique some months back. SLB is one of a handful of sites that let SL users browse and purchase in-world items via the Web. Others include SLExchange, and Second Server, plus a few others I’ve no doubt forgotten or haven’t discovered yet. How significant is the SLB relaunch? Well, the site certainly is easier to use and look at, but it’s the new functionality that will make the difference. Or at least, will begin to. (more…)