3pointD.com

Second Life resident Pierce Portocarrero, one of the virtual world’s most gifted creators of the in-world filmmaking art known as machinima, has been on hiatus of late. He returns this week with a new piece that’s even better than the ones I’ve seen before. Check out Game Over, which aired in-world as part of the latest monthly machinima festival run by Alt-Zoom Studios. Seemingly a parable of love in the age of self-replicating objects (or something like that), the short film features some truly creative character models, an excellently ambiguous plot and ending, and acting that’s conveyed very well through animations and completely without dialogue. It’s a really excellent piece, including in its camerawork and editing. All we need now is for credit rolls to come to machinima, so we’d know if it was Pierce doing all the work or whether there are other people who deserve some kudos as well. Whatever the case, it’s nice stuff, and we look forward to more.

Andrew Reynolds over at eightbar (the blog of a few IBM researchers at the company’s Hursley installation) writes that he’s put together a crude version of an app that 3pointD has been looking for since earlier this summer: a tool to export shapes from Google’s cool free 3D modeling app SketchUp and import them to the virtual world of Second Life. Andrew’s plug-in for SketchUp writes basic model information to a text file, from which it can be imported to Second Life in notecard form (presumably by manually cutting and pasting). After that, an in-world object parses the notecard and re-generates the model in Second Life. It seems to only handle very simple objects, but it’s a good start. (more…)

After I blogged about my Second Life avatar getting 3D printed, someone asked for some comparison shots so we could all judge how accurately the process comes off. Presented above for your scrutiny, the many faces of Walker Spaight (aka Mark Wallace), including, clockwise from top left: Walker Spaight in Second Life, the physical Walker model printed from the SL av, Mark Wallace in real life, and Walker Spaight in the massively multiplayer online game EVE Online. (more…)

Rosie from The Hedrons strums a few virtual chords

Girl group The Hedrons are a good-looking Glaswegian quartet playing straight-ahead rock tunes a la, oh, the Ramones or the White Stripes or any number of bands between the two. It’s pretty good stuff, actually, and it’s coming to the virtual world of Second Life on Monday, October 9 at 7:30pm British time (11:30am SL time), when the band will do a live 30-minute set to promote their album, One More Won’t Kill Us, which drops the same day. (more…)

Advertising agency BBH (aka Bartle Bogle Hegarty) — whose client roster includes companies like Levis, Vodafone, Johnny Walker, and Sony Ericsson, among others — is setting up shop in the virtual world of Second Life, according to a press release from the company. The agency is being brought in by virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red, who will also have a hand in developing virtual offerings for the company’s client base, it seems. The build (which looks great, based on the pic above) sounds like a full-function SL office installation — complete with avatar receptionists! (more…)

The video above (flagged to me by SL resident Cheri Horton) is from Second Life resident Kisa Naumova, who has written a couple of tools for getting Flickr pics into Second Life. The video shows a tool the allows the display of a user’s Flickr sets (though it doesn’t seem to allow you to drill into each set; maybe that’s coming), while another tool presented in Kisa’s Flickr stream presents a slide show pulled from a group pool of photos. I am dying to get my hands on one of those to pull in photos from the 3pointD group, but I can’t find Kisa or angrybeth Shortbread, who also worked on them, online at the moment. The new tools would seem to complement a Flickr display prim built by “creative technologist” Matt Biddulph (aka SL resident Matt Basiat) (and blogged by us a while back), though I’m not sure if that still works. SL residents can feel free to drop copies of any of these or anything similar on me in-world, to be rewarded by my sincere gratitude.

CNet News, where friend of 3pointD Daniel Terdiman writes about virtual worlds, online games and cyberculture, among other things, has launched a permanent presence in the virtual world of Second Life. Located on the sim belonging to virtual-world services company Millions of Us, which built out the site, there’s a nice building modeled loosely after CNet’s San Francisco offices, complete with an amphiteater where CNet reporters can do interviews, give talks and stream media. Terdiman himself will do a regular series of interviews in the space, and give talks about recent stories he’s written. The site marks the first of what should prove to be several entrants from among the tech media that are planning to enter SL on a long-term basis. CNet’s launch gives it a head start, and Terdiman’s commitment to SL should keep things going, but it will be interesting to see what the other installations have on offer in terms of interactivity and things like news feeds. It will be nice to have more news coming into the world, in whatever form.

The latest episode of SecondCast, the only Second Life podcast that matters, is now available for your listening pleasure. We stick to the news in episode #34, covering Grid crashes, power outages at Linden Lab, and Hamlet’s recent video interview and wandering tongue, among other things. With special guest co-host, machinima queen Moo Money, for extra spice. Check it out.

An early model of Virtual Laguna Beach built out in Second Life

Good news, metaverse fans: This week’s episode of MTV’s eye-opening reality show Laguna Beach will premiere not on television but in the “music” channel’s virtual world, Virtual Laguna Beach, built on the same technology as There.com. The show will go on at 9pm Eastern time this evening, to coincide with the VLB “Winter Formal” being held tonight. The episode then airs on TV on Wednesday at 10pm. (Second Life residents can also visit a model of Virtual Laguna Beach in their own virtual world, sans the TV show. More on that below.) (more…)

• Google: Web Search Help Center
  Get the results most relevant to you, based on what you’ve searched for in the past
  (tags: google new reference search)

Wayne Ashley, who helped curate a set of recent workshops and symposia known as Breaking the Game, sends along a link to what looks like an interesting collection of recorded conversations, interviews and guided tours from those sessions, which were devoted to things like the intersection of the real and virtual where 3D design is concerned, “virtual worlds, computer gaming, immersive technologies, and new possibilities for artistic practice and experience,” and ways to “open up the art of game modification to the contingencies of everyday life, where virtual technologies increasingly mediate physical spaces and human movements in very complex and dynamic ways.” I’ve dipped into a few of the recordings here and there and they do promise a rich trove of thought to mine. Jerry, of course, seems to have weaseled his way onto the roster, as ever, but there are also a number of less ubiquitous thinkers you may not have encountered before, whose thoughts are just as well worth watching. Enjoy.

For those 3pointD readers who are also resident in the virtual world of Second Life, I’ve created a 3pointD group there that you can join to get announcements of upcoming events or other items of interest to the 3pointD crowd. While I doubt I’ll have much to say there very often, I’m thinking it will serve as a nice way to keep in touch for future meetups and things of that nature. Speaking of which, various people have been chatting here on the site and in email about a Second Life 3pointD meetup devoted to virtual world sustainability and related issues. I’ll throw a tentative date out there: How’s the evening of Sunday, October 8?

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, fresh from the 3D printer and ready for his close-up, it’s the Walker Spaight avatar we’ve all been waiting for! While I haven’t yet seen him in person, Walker was produced by the Fabjectory 3D printing service of Second Life resident Hal9k Andalso (aka Mike Buckbee). I’m eager to see what Walker is like in real life, having occupied him virtually for almost two years now. (Is this a 3D model of Walker, or of me?) I love the idea of a 3D printing service for avatars, especially in full color; seems a sure thing to take off among SL residents, who are already obsessed with their in-world appearance. You can see a full-length pic of Walker after the jump. Both images are stolen from the Fabjectory set on Flickr. (more…)

We’ve been twisting the arm of Brian Chirls, who works with Susan and Arin of the Four Eyed Monsters film, to get him to add the virtual world of Second Life to the map of cities in which the film has been requested. (See these two posts for more details; if you can garner 150 requests on the Web site, they’ll show the film in your town.) As you can see above, he’s done it. Thanks, Brian! Just dial up the map to see how many requests have been made (you have to zoom way out to see where on the earth SL has ended up), and don’t forget to put your request in. It would be great to see a movie as interesting as Four Eyed Monsters have a screening in Second Life as part of its worldwide rollout. Only 83 requests to go!

I won’t be able to check this out for an hour or two, but wanted to quickly flag the fact (flagged to me by Second Life resident Troy McLuhan) that Amazon.com’s Jeff Barr has hacked up a system whereby he can put a Web page on the surface of a prim (one of the “primitive” objects that are the building blocks of SL objects). It doesn’t appear to have all the functionality Linden Lab plans for Web-on-a-prim (which seems to have an infinite development horizon), but it’s a damn sight better than anything in SL at the moment. I’m not entirely clear on how it works or whether it’s open for anyone to copy and use (more on all this later), but I’m looking forward to checking it out. Jeff did text on a prim last week. Nice job.

Hard to believe it was way back in May that we reported that Swedish social networking site PlayAhead was being brought into the virtual world of Second Life by VW services company Rivers Run Red. At long last, the project has launched, according to this Michael Parsons column in CNet UK. It’s a good read, describing the launch “as though the flat profiles of the community’s members have risen up off the page like a pop-up book and suddenly starting walking around with independent life.” Parsons also contemplates “what would happen if other larger social-networking sites made the leap into the third dimension,” and echoes one of our favorite sentiments here at 3pointD: “Current online social spaces like PlayAhead and MySpace are building a two-dimensional path that leads directly to the heart of the metaverse, and once people have started to invest a lot of time and energy into their social-networking accounts, they’re going to be a lot more open to the next step — taking that first, awkward walk as a newly born avatar, stumbling around in three-dimensional space and trying to find someone cute to have a virtual drink with.” We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

World of Warcraft guild We Know has garnered some repute for being run by venture capitalist Joi Ito, who says he listens to the guild’s TeamSpeak channel even while cooking dinner or driving his car. We Know’s latest innovation is to use the virtual world of Second Life to plan their end-game raids on World of Warcraft instances, the tough dungeons that can only be conquered by intense planning and lockstep cooperation. In Ito’s Kula sim, the guild has set up maps of several WoW instances (taken from WoW screenshots), and annotates them using SL objects. [Via Metroblogging Azeroth.] Ito spoke at SD Forum about the fact that his guild uses SL as a place to review in-game video footage of their raids, much as a football team would review game videos. Now SL is being used as a place to prepare specific strategies, in what amounts to a nice virtual world mashup. How much cooler would this be, though, if We Know was putting the instance maps into something like angrybeth Shortbread’s communal writeboard or one of the other collaborative annotation tools that are available in Second Life? And even cooler than that if the maps were made interactive. Just watch out for Overlord Wyrmthalak.

This is only a test. But it’s a test of the very cool blogHUD, a heads-up display attachment devised by Second Life resident Koz Farina, that allows SL residents to post to various blogs from within the world. Its basic functionality allows users t . . .

[. . . and that’s where the trouble began. I’m a huge fan of the blogHUD, but the test was only a qualified success. Still, I’d recommend you pick one up. More after the jump.] (more…)

Jerry and Vanessa and I went to a party last night for Four Eyed Monsters, the cool film we saw last week. Susan and Arin were very nice, delighted to be feted, and we got them pumped up to bring the film to Second Life. Susan has a friend who just joined SL, and Arin is down with the idea, also having immediately grokked the concept of lifelogging as described in this post (see the comments thread). It was very cool to see their eyes light up as we described some of the things they’d be able to do in Second Life. But we need your help! Go to this Web page to request the film be screened in Second Life, if you haven’t already. Plug in a random zip code and select “2nd Life” from the drop-down country menu. We’re leaning on Susan and Arin’s friend Brian to include SL on the request map so you can see how many requests there have been, but trust us, you need to go request the film now so that the first feature film to be screened in SL is this very cool production and not the latest X-Men sequel. Plus there’s one more Thursday in September on which you can go see the film in an actual theater. Enjoy.

There’s a new SecondCast on the air: in Episode #33 we talk to Mike Prevost of Muse Isle, a Second Life venue for live music performance, and Cylindrian Rutabaga, who often plays there. An interesting look at what it’s like to gig in the virtual world. Plus, listen along as the SecondCasters pimp their MySpace pages in order to try and get a record deal. Exciting!

Vivox, the voice-over-IP startup that provides voice services to virtual worlds, is giving away a million minutes of voice time free to residents of the virtual world of Second Life. The giveaway will let SL residents make calls from within Second Life to any phone, including mobiles and landlines, in North America, as well as take advantage of Vivox’s unique proximity services in Second Life, where up to five avatars standing near a Vivox virtual microphone are automatically conferenced together if they’re running the Vivox client. The giveaway [<-- details] starts October 4. Vivox is also the company that's bringing integrated voice services to the EVE Online client. Second Life phone home.

Second Life resident Pixeleen Mistral, the latest star correpondent to grace the pages of the Second Life Herald, has a great interview in the Herald today with Linden Lab code jock Andrew Linden, in which he talks about new security measures being “locked and loaded for emergency deploy” after a series of denial-of-service attacks brought the Grid to its knees in recent days. Required reading for anyone interested in just what Linden Lab is doing to stop future attacks, and how they’re prioritizing the work.

Snapzilla, the Flickr-like site for the virtual world of Second Life, has released a two-volume “Best of” coffee table book set to celebrate a recent milestone: as of Tuesday, SL residents had uploaded more than 100,000 Second Life screenshots to the site. The books are available only in-world at the moment, but here’s hoping there might one day be a way to see hard copies. It seems inevitable; if Second Life continues to grow, we’ll doubtless be thumbing through A Day in the Second Life on the tables at Barnes & Noble at some point. Can’t wait. For now, head to the ANOmations store [<-- SL link] in Second Life to pick up your virtual copies. (more…)

Factory in Baku sim, where the W-Hats churn out alleged griefers (click for larger image on Flickr)

In the wake of recent attacks on the virtual world of Second Life, it only makes sense that Linden Lab should move against those it holds responsible, banning them from its world. But the action raises serious questions about community, privacy, transparency and even art, as well as the delicate task Linden Lab faces of maintaining its service while also attempting to build a “world.” One of those may have to fall by the wayside, and you can guess which it’s likely to be. [UPDATE: See below for response to an earlier email I sent to Linden Lab asking for more detail. A heartening response at that.] (more…)

Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world of Second Life, banned 60 accounts this week over what amounted to two distributed denial-of-service attacks perpetrated on the same day. The attacks, which involved seeding the SL Grid with self-replicating objects which soon choked off processing power, forced Linden Lab to disable much of SL for long periods on Monday. Past attacks have shut the Grid down altogether. Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale, reported the banned accounts in an audio Town Hall meeting held Tuesday. (more…)

With the 2006 Burning Man Project marking its first steps into 3pointD territory via Google Earth, Second Life’s annual homage to the event is already well established and has enjoyed an exceptional amount of coverage this year thanks to GavinLeigh Wake’s Burninglife.com. And yet while the glowing embers of the festival fade to black perhaps we might take one last opportunity to work the bellows. The theme this year was ‘The Future: Hope and Fear’. At the time of the event it wasn’t going to be ‘the future’ until the event was over, so it seems appropriate to discuss it now-er, yeah. A few builders may have also mistook the theme to read ‘Ambivalence: Ban Lines and Plywood’, however that’s not to say the festival was devoid of compelling experiences. Far from it.

At its best Burning Life, like any time-certain event in Second Life, is intensified by its ephemerality and the knowledge that hundreds of person hours of avatar effort will at some point implode to inventory or scatter throughout the grid. What sets it apart is its subject matter, where residents have the potential to be not merely amused but also confronted by deeper and more personal visions on the part of the creators. For a brief time the playa is a condenser, saturated with inspiration and perspiration, where boundaries are drawn on the endless asymmetric expanse of the mind, creating a momentary compound from which to contemplate the world and our place within it.

These qualities were exemplified, even amplified, in funhaus Stilman. (more…)

It’s hardly news anymore when self-replicating objects hobble the operation of the virtual world of Second Life, even when it happens twice in the same day. That’s a bit of a shame, as the problem is a serious one, and Linden Lab seems to be doing little toward a more lasting fix than simply cleaning up each problem as it arises. That’s a solution that simply won’t scale as the world grows bigger. Even if the number of griefers remains the same in proportion to the population, the number of attacks will necessarily rise. Once these attacks start coming with any kind of frequency, a more permanent solution will have to be found, since the amount of downtime will soon become intolerable. We look forward to hearing whether LL is considering any such possible solutions.

The mythic “lost episode” of SecondCast, recorded live at the Second Life Community Convention, has surfaced. Unfortunately, it’s only a minute’s worth of tape — however, it’s video! Feast your eyes as Baccara Rhodes, Lordfly Digeridoo, Malarthi Behemoth and I (I’m on the left, Malarthi’s on the right) discuss “green-dot syndrome” on the teen and adult grids of the virtual world of Second Life. Baccara is one of Second Life’s oldest residents, and has watched as the Grid has changed radically over the last several years. Malarthi is the very first resident of the Teen Grid. We had a great conversation with them both, as well as with audience members, about community in virtual spaces and real, and a range of other things, but unfortunately we later discovered that the audio capture arranged by the convention’s organizers wasn’t up to the task of properly taping the show, which is a real shame. Fortunately, SL podcaster Jeremy Flagstaff caught a minute of the show on tape. Enjoy.

The latest episode of SecondCast, our podcast about all things Second Life, is now on the air. In episode #32, we hear from SecondCast cast member Torrid Midnight, who reports that she’s leaving Second Life (and SecondCast, unfortunately) for an indefinite amount of time. Her exit was precipitated by a nasty conflict over IP rights in Second Life, during which Torrid was pretty badly abused, by people who didn’t really have a leg to stand on. More after the jump. (more…)

MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach, the virtual world tied to its hit TV show, gets its official launch this Wednesday, according to an article in The New York Times. The article also reports that MTV plans two other virtual worlds to join VLB in coming months: “VMTV is a music destination where visitors can club-hop among hip neighborhoods, buy music, watch videos, sing karaoke or even start their own bands. The third virtual destination, LogoWorld, an offshoot of Logo, the gay and lesbian cable channel, will be designed entirely by its participants.” Could this be the beginning of the migration we’ve been pointing to here at 3pointD for some time? That is, the migration from flat online community spaces like MySpace and into their 3D counterparts like Second Life and There.com (which provided the underlying technology for VLB). We of course are betting it is, but it could also mark a shift in how such places get funded and built, from start-up companies that need to seek venture capital to stay afloat, to big media companies getting into the space. The 3pointD age is upon us.

Tim Holt (who I need to get in touch with because he’s doing some pretty cool projects in Multiverse), sends along a link to this video demonstrating a program called Teddy, which lets you create globular 3D models via a hand-drawing interface. Just sketch a shape on your screen, and Teddy automatically makes it into a topological sphere. Easily add arms, feet, other weird protuberances, paint the thing, then export the model in .obj format (which means it can be imported into Poser, Maya, Blender, 3D Studio Max and others). It’s a very cool interface, and there’s lots of information about how it works on the site. The free download is only 1.7MB. It’s definitely still experimental, as too much manipulation and painting often results in system-freezing crashes (it took me a long time to get even the simple model above in stable form), but you can have at least a little fun with it if you’re determined. I found I usually ended up with something quite Spore-like. Will Wright would be proud!

• Why Johnny can’t code | Salon Technology
  “BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched — but today there’s no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming.”
  (tags: education programming tech)