3pointD.com

• Family Guy cast signs up to voice game - Joystiq
  um, there’s going to be a Family Guy game???
  (tags: games TV fox)

It looks like Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, have quietly gone and found someone to write an “official guide” to getting around their corner of the metaverse. [Via Tony Walsh and Aimee Weber.] Due out in mid-December, the volume “explores in detail every aspect of Second Life’s rich and multilayered virtual world, explains how it works, and offers a wealth of information and practical advice for all Second Life residents.”

The book was written by Michael Rymaszewski, who in the past has penned official guides to such popular video games as Age of Empires III, Zoo Tycoon 2, Rise of Nations and others. On first blush it seems an odd choice, since game guides usually focus on getting from start to finish as easily as possible and uncovering hidden corners of the game in question. But Catherine Smith at Linden Lab tells me that it was the publisher who approached the company about doing an official guide. In addition, “LL has had lots of input into the content, the look and feel and the writing of the book,” she says. The volume promises more than just min/maxing tips, to be sure. (more…)

Giff Constable of the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) has posted a really perceptive critique of the challenges of mounting a play in the virtual world of Second Life. “Putting on a play using Second Life is a bit like trying to crack a walnut with a refrigerator,” Giff says. I’m not going to try to disentagle the simile, but I love the image. Giff points out the limitations of humanoid avatars and text chat for conveying the kinds of emotions that plays need to get across, and ponders a more Second Life-like possibility:

What else can heighten emotional content so the audience engages more fully? How about the actor forms themselves? Instead of using the humanoid, mesh-based frames most people wear in Second Life, how about using less-realistic, prim-based characters where emotions and expressions can be exaggerated in an almost bunraku style? I also think it would be useful to hearken back to silent movies where everything was done with motion and music/soundtrack.

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The All Points Blog points to a post on urban travel site Gridskipper that wistfully hopes people will start doing more mashing up of the many mashups that are already out there. In this case, it’s a pair of Google Maps mashups that show the locations of fast-food restaurants in one case, and demographic information in another. “I’d love to see a Google map mashup that allows you to search the Census data through fast food locations so you could find the median income level, ethnicity and age around a specific Burger King location,” Gridskipper says. (In fact, would it be possible to write an app that could automatically mash up any two mashups? That would be beautiful.) I love the idea of mashing together mashups like this. And especially when applied to maps, it’s just the kind of 3pointD stuff that’s tying the Web ever more closely to the real world.

Free site-tracking service StatCounter is offering a new service whereby you can view recent visitors to your site on a Google Maps map. There are already a couple of services that can do this for you, but this one seems nice since it’s attached to a popular site-tracking service and requires no set-up. I’m going to check it out, but first I need to clean up the front page here, since it’s taking forever to load these days. Wish me luck.