3pointD.com

we make money not art is running an interview with Wagner James Au today, who in the virtual world of Second Life is known as Hamlet Au, and who for three years was Hamlet Linden, contracted by Linden Lab as an “embedded journalist” in Second Life. Au now covers SL independently at New World Notes. The interview skews slightly in the direction of computer games, but that’s the interviewer’s bias, not that of James, who has a better grasp of how important reporting on virtual worlds is and will become. As James puts it, “virtual reporting will become an integral part of real world reporting in the next decade.” Couldn’t agree more. We ran our own interview with James at the Second Life Herald back in February on the eve of his leaving Linden Lab’s employ.

There’s another cool touchscreen interface on the move, this one coming out of Microsoft, though it’s just been licensed to EON Reality, who do the Raptor plug-in for 3dsMax. The interface is known as TouchLight, and is essentially a rear-projected vertical screen that takes gestural input, much like a number of interfaces I’ve blogged about before. I’m not sure if this is the same screen Robert Scoble told us about when he was on the Metaverse Sessions a few weeks ago, but it looks pretty good in this video. Actually, what’s suprising to me here is how quickly I start to take this stuff for granted. It’s not even on the market yet and already I’m watching this video going, “Oh yeah, there’s a ton of stuff like that out there.” Well, it’s not, really. But it will be soon. [Via press release.]

The Acceleration Studies Foundation is wrapping up its work on a first version of the Metaverse Roadmap, a document designed to look ahead at the next 10 years of the metaverse, and to be updated along the way. (I participated in the meetings that gathered thoughts for the Roadmap back in May.) To celebrate, the ASF is holding a pre-release party at EyeBeam in New York City on Thursday, August 10. The party is free and open to all, but space is limited, so RSVP on Jerry Paffendorf’s Sheep blog to reserve your ticket. (more…)