The Electric Sheep Company’s Christian Westbrook has an update on his blog today about the open-source Second Life simulator mentioned here yesterday. The code for the roll-your-own sim is now available as an open-source project, OpenSim, on the OpenSecondLife Web site. “The simulator does not interact with SL’s asset server in any way, supports server-side scripting via Lua, and uses simple flat files to store asset information at this point,” Christian writes. Check in with him or OpenSim if you want to lend a hand. As reader otakup0pe Neumann noted here, the sim is so far “rather rough around the edges. . . . That being said, it will certainly help some forms of testing and might see some interesting applications for off-grid building areas.” Very cool.
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Adrienne Haik of virtual-world services firm Metaversatility passes on the YouTube clip above, an interview on Channel 4’s Richard & Judy show with three Second Life residents: Fizik Baskerville (aka Rivers Run Red’s Justin Bovington), Slim Warrior (aka musician Leo Wolff) and Errol Mysterio (aka author Tim Guest who’s written a book about his Second Life experience). It’s nothing much new, but it’s an interesting 10 minutes. Fizik perhaps overstates SL’s current economic power (and refers to Rivers as “the content-creation company for Second Life”). Most interesting to me are the reactions of Richard and Judy, the show’s hosts. They do a great job of representing the mainstream wonder about virtual worlds, without being overly lurid. Richard, especially, has some learning to do: I love how he refers to his avatar at one point (toward the end) as a “program” and then soon after that as a “site.” The paradigm has yet to shift for some.
The virtual world known as Entropia Universe announced last May that ATM cards would be made available that would allow members to withdraw their in-world currency as hard cash at real-world ATMs. (Entropia’s PED currency is fixed at 10 to the US dollar.) Now comes the news that the bank that had backed that service will no longer be supported by MasterCard, effectively shutting down the ATM project for the moment. The Financial Institutions Commission of British Columbia reportedly called the bank a “rogue financial institution” having “shown complete disregard for the laws of British Columbia.” It’s impossible to tell whether Entropia picked a lame horse or the Commission took exception to the bank’s distributing virtual currency. Either way, it spells the end, at least for the moment, of one of the more interesting crossovers between the virtual and the real — though it may have been a crossover that was doomed from the start, given the regulatory issues involved. [Via Virtual Worldlets.]
As you may have noticed at right, 3pointD went through a slight bit of sidebar redesign this evening. Most prominently, I’ve added a “recent comments” section, thanks to an ace plug-in for WordPress. So bring on your insights, opinions and/or invective; from now on, you’ll be able to see at least part of it near the top of the sidebar. Other than that, I just rearranged some of the sidebar elements, and got rid of my SLurlPane. I liked the SLurlPane — I liked having the big graphic element up there — but it felt too static, and it slowed down the page a lot. I’ve replaced it with a little Flickr badge — but now that’s busted! The last dozen or so page loads haven’t changed it from the L$ graph, for some reason, even after I uploaded new pics to the 3pointD pool. I suspect this may have to do with my changing one line of the badge code, but I’d done that in the old one and that one worked (until recently, actually). Any suggestions? Anyone know a good Flickr hack that would let me get a larger size pic in there (without having to use the medium size on the interface, which hangs off the edge of the page)? Or a suggestions for some other dynamic graphical element to put there?
Basically, though, let me know how we’re looking. There haven’t been any major changes, but I always like feedback. Thanks in advance!
If you’ve been confused as to why the “three-dimensional” virtual world of Second Life seems to appear on your flat, exceedingly two-dimensional computer screen, put your worries to rest. According to its Web site, the 3D Lab at the University of Michigan has finally pushed the virtual world out into true 3D — or at least, the kind of 3D that people used to experience via those red and blue glasses you’d get at the movie theater. The lab’s stereoscopic client was developed by Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowski based on the recent release of the client source code, and causes Second Life objects to pop out of the screen when viewed through a similar pair of specs. So okay, it’s not really true 3D (whatever that means), but it’s still cool and fun. I’ve just been reading too much of The Onion lately, I guess.
While Prokofy Neva, Tony Walsh and others wonder what will happen to Second Life real estate investments once it’s possible to run your own open-source server (i.e., create your own virtual land), someone has gone ahead and done just that. This thread over at the libsecondlife forums describes a Second Life server built by a user, a single sim that can be accessed using the standard client software. As near as I can figure, the server was built by examining the client code (and/or reverse-engineering it) along with the information that is passed between client and server in order to get an idea of what the server code would need to look like. What’s more, an early version of the server code has already been made available as an open-source project. While this doesn’t mean that people can immediately set about creating the distributed metaverse that 3pointD often likes to contemplate (questions such as where everyone’s assets would reside in such a place remain to be answered), it is a step toward a virtual world, solar system, galaxy or universe free from centralized corporate control, one that looks more like the World Wide Web of individually controlled sites than it does a contiguous grid such as exists in Second Life. (more…)
I have to say, I continue to be impressed with what Reuben Steiger’s virtual-world services firm, Millions of Us, has done for Pontiac’s presence in Second Life. Their Motorati Life project essentially gives users land to build projects promoting not Pontiac but anything related to Second Life car culture. Residents make project proposals, the best of which make it onto »Motorati Island« and are catalogued on the Web site. Users have created monstrous monster truck rallies, death courses, exploding and self-reassembling cars and much more. The latest sounds awesome. It’s Tre Ceres and Un4given Spoonhammer’s Drift or Die, in which you run down menacing zombies in your car, dodging exploding barrels (of course) and other hazards. What I love about the project — besides the fact that it’s almost completely user-created — is that it’s an excellent way to promote engagement in a brand in a manner that’s entertaining to an audience that’s never actually asked to buy anything. You could certainly argue that a more benign manifestation of this would be to simply give users land without the branding, but who’s going to pay for that? (more…)
Second Life resident Kitten Lulu amusingly points out that of the 10 locations in Second Life that Microsoft has chosen for Windows Vista’s virtual launch party (at 2pm SL time, featuring Praga Khan), around half of them are places frequented by paid cybersex escorts. Microsoft “Enthusiast Evangelist” Miel Van Opstal has more insight on just why the locations were chosen. The SL launch seems to have been arranged by a European agency (One Agency) that I can’t find a link for. In any case, if you’re interested in seeing how Vista-compatible your Second Life sex life is, check it out. (SLurls here.) [Via World of SL.]
The MTV Networks channel Nickelodeon is launching a virtual world for kids today, according to a press release. Known as Nicktropolis, the world will be in isometric 3D, and feature games and video content, branded Nickelodeon environments and characters, and the ability to interact with other users and construct one’s own 3D home. The site isn’t quite live yet, but the world looks to be browser-based, though I’m not entirely sure. Nicktropolis will launch with four main areas, described after the jump. These include the kind of gaming elements that arguably make getting into such a world easier than it often is in places like Second Life or There.com. (more…)
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I’ve been thinking for a while now about starting up my own podcast, a short solo show devoted to the metaverse in all its glorious manifestations. I’m slightly skeptical, though, as to whether anyone would actually listen to such a beast. On the other hand, SecondCast (which no, I’m not quitting, sorry Cristiano) has a huge audience, as does this blog. So I thought I’d ask you: Would you listen to a 3pointD podcast? What would make that more likely? How long should it be? Any suggestions for regular features? Anything you don’t want to hear? Should I host it over at PodShow, which is what I’m thinking of doing? Or should I just forget it and keep my mouth shut?
Oh and also, if anyone can link me to some simple guides for recording podcasts (preferably on Mac, but PC could work too), I’d be grateful. I think I have a system going, but alternatives would be nice to know about.
I didn’t think the link was going live until later today, but del.icio.us user mzn apparently found a way to drill down to it (which I just spotted on the excellent SL aggregator site, World of SL). What is it? It’s my story on MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach in the February issue of Wired magazine, on newsstands now. It covers VLB and a couple of other virtual worlds MTV has in the works, and notes that the highest levels of the company, including Viacom execs, are ready to throw more money at virtual worlds. This is the new kind of media convergence that’s only going to gather speed in coming years. With Les Moonves of CBS all excited about virtual worlds, as well as the other broadcast networks and people like Disney jumping into the pool, it seems only a matter of time before virtual world integrations are the norm. Of course, it could still all go south, but there aren’t many signs of that happening, while there are a lot of indications of two important things: that companies want to be in these spaces, and to offer them in entertaining ways; and that audiences enjoy them and will only flock to them in increasing numbers. Tune in, or — just keep watching your boring old flat TV, I guess.
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For all the time people spend worrying about how to make their avatars look in virtual worlds, why not just get a real person to be your avatar, in the real world? That’s exactly what The Girlfriend Experience offers, though it’s hard to tell whether they’ve gotten many takers yet. The home page sums it up nicely: “The Girlfriend experience is a multiplayer game allowing you to enter into a real-life person and use this person as an avatar.” All this is done via Skype, which calls into question just how much fun you can have “playing” this person, but as a concept, it’s pretty interesting — at least, on some vague philosophical basis. Just what are the limits of avatarization? Or is this more of a performance, with the avatar/actor playing a role that’s written and transmitted in real time? The experience is being offered by Mediamatic, which bills itself as “a cultural institution in Amsterdam.” Unfortunately, the service is rarely available, and then only for short periods of time. We’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s actually had this strange out-of-body Girlfriend Experience. Log in and get your avatar to drop us a line. [Via VTOR.]
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Only cricket fans will realize that I don’t mean 50 years here, I mean 50 episodes. That’s right, the 50th episode of SecondCast, Second Life’s favorite podcast, is now on the air. We’ll pass our one-year anniversary sometime in February, which means we’ve been keeping up a remarkably good schedule of almost a podcast a week. Once again, kudos to Johnny Ming for pulling it all together and keeping us in line. Tune in to Episode #50 for a long discussion with Aerdr1e Fabre of Second Life matchmaking service Tea and Sympathy (which can be found in the »Infamy region« of SL (in a skybox, natch), and hear what Cristiano’s looking for in a mate. And despite the fact that I’ve been having Skype problems lately (grrr), downloads are apparently higher than ever, currently running at something in the low five figures per episode. Wow. Nice to know that someone other than ourselves is enjoying what we’re up to. Special thanks to Matthew in Georgia for the extra cool illustration he sent along to celebrate Episode #50 — and for continuing to listen despite the fact that he hasn’t used Second Life in months! Interesting.
Second Life resident Cory Edo of the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) has an interesting entry on the blog chronicling the construction of Starwood Hotels‘ new aloft line of hotels (from which I’ve lifted the image above. It seems that feedback from visitors to the virtual hotel will be incorporated into the design of the real thing, due to open next year. When the project originally launched, Starwood wasn’t sure whether they’d incorporate such feedback. Nice to see them recognize the value of resident feedback, and to see that they’ve found a way to use a viritual world to improve their products in the real world. Just what revisions are being made is being kept under wraps for the moment, but they’ll be reflected in the virtual model first, so check back at the aloft blog or in-world. You can’t get into the aloft sim at the moment, but you can get a long-distance view from the neighboring »Argali region«.
My father is in Washington today, where there’s a huge march to promote peace and protest the troop build-up in Iraq. If you want to get involved but you can’t make it to DC, there’s a series of events scheduled in the virtual world of Second Life to accompany the real-world schedule, culminating in a March on SL’s Capitol Hill on Monday. The events are being organized by members of SL NetRoots and will be held at RootsCamp on »Progressive Island«. (more…)
The Virtual Economy Research Network flags a report from a Swedish newspaper (in Swedish, of course) to the effect that Sweden will establish an official “embassy” in the virtual world of Second Life. “the facility will not deal with passports or visa applications like a normal embassy, but rather acts as a marketing outpost for Sweden designed to reach the digital generation. The idea is being developed at Swedish Institute instead of the Ministry of foreign affairs,” VERN reports. And why not? If it works for CBS, it could well work for Sweden.
Googleannounced yesterday that it would hold a 3D building competition for university students, in which students in the U.S. and Canada are asked to model their university campus in 3D using SketchUp. Entries are due by June 1, and the top 50 team members receive an all-expense-paid trip to the Googleplex to participate in a three-day workshop with Google’s modeling experts. This is pretty cool, as far as it goes — it just doesn’t go very far. It seems to me this is just about the most boring way possible to promote the use of SketchUp and Google Earth for cool 3D modeling stuff. What do you think? (more…)
An anonymous beta tester of AOL’s new service in the virtual world of Second Life, known as AOL Pointe, just forwarded me the image above, which appears to be the AOL Pointe build, perhaps still under construction. Kind of hard to tell from that angle just where everything’s at, but the build looks nice and colorful, and I dig the textures on the ground. Plus: Is that a skateboard rail I see? Cool. After the jump: a teleport map that indicates the build will be pretty elaborate. Centrifuge? (more…)
The Smokin’ Aces promotion that NBC Universal has been running in the virtual world of Second Life this week under its new VirtualNBC initiative sounds like it’s been a great success — or at least has made NBC pretty happy. Produced by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), the promotion takes the form of an in-world game in which players compete to assassinate each other, and to bump off the big target, Buddy Israel. The game resembles an online game called The Ship, which works largely the same way. NBC has signed up more than 1,000 players since it went live January 17, 3pointD hears, and players have really gotten into the game, finding creative ways to kill each other and even hacking the scripted objects that make up the game. After all, there’s a L$1 million bounty at stake, to be awarded today. The movie opens tonight, and Smokin’ Aces director Joe Carnahan will do a live Q&A in Second Life at 10:00am SL time (1:00pm Eastern) in the Orientation Room at the Smokin’ Aces »Nomad Hotel«. (more…)
The Google Earth Blog carries the news that Jeff Han, who developed a truly amazing multi-touch screen interface at NYU, is now commercializing the product through his new company, Perceptive Pixel. Fast Company has a great piece on Han, and there’s a bandwidth-intensive video to watch, which shows some pretty mind-blowing stuff. When I first started hearing about these things last spring I was drooling over them, and they only seem to have gotten cooler since then. Little word yet on pricing, though Fast Company notes that there are already competitors out there. These include Microsoft (at around $50,000) and perhaps even Apple. Han has already sold a screen to the military for six figures, however. Now all I need is a little extra cash.
Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red passes on a link to the renewed rumor that Google is working on turning Google Earth into a virtual world that would work similarly to Second Life. We’ve heard mutterings of this kind of thing before. This one comes from “an academic who heard through the Ph.D. grapevine,” which doesn’t lend it any more credence, in my book. That said, it would make an awful lot of sense. Whether it’s going on or not probably depends on whether Google’s muckety-mucks believe there’s much of a future in virtual worlds. I know that a few significant people there are at least partial believers, but I’m not sure if there’s a great deal of buy-in at high levels or not. Would be ace, if so.
Turns out that the BBC’s virtual world for children is not in fact a virtual world, 3pointD hears, as was widely mis-reported (including by me) this week. Seems the service will be strictly single-player, with no direct interactions between users, although it may have some limited interaction with the Web in some form. So not as 3pointD as it might have been. Sorry, kids.
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SL resident Williem Leandros sends news that he and a friend have built an interesting real-world control panel that can both control objects in the virtual world of Second Life and in turn be controlled by them. The real and virtual controllers are “entangled together through a Python web server” so that turning a knob on the physical controller affects the same knob on the virtual one. Pushing buttons on the virtual controller can light LEDs on the physical one. The project is just a proof of concept, but of course “the same techniques can connect other real world objects to other SL objects,” which is the kind of thing that someone somewhere will eventually find a productive use for. “We’ll probably be connecting the panel to trains and fireworks,” writes one of the pair (from whom I’ve lifted the screenshot above). Very cool. See the virtual controller for yourself »in the Pi region« of SL.
ValleyWag has another bitter post attacking Second Life today, this time focusing on its economy, charging that it’s a kind of Ponzi scheme. The original blog post by Randolph Harrison is slightly more reasoned overall, but still fails to be an argument about Second Life itself. Instead, Harrison is upset that Second Life doesn’t match up to its hype.
His main complaint is that the currency exchange market isn’t liquid enough for someone to be able to cash out large amounts of L$ at current rates. Moving large volumes of currency results in a fall in the value you actually receive for your L$. This doesn’t make SL a Ponzi scheme; it simply means there’s not a lot of liquidity in the market. Large currency moves in real-world economies that can’t handle them often result in the same thing. The problem — and it’s a real one — is that Linden Lab advertises SL as an economy as robust as any mature real-world economy. It simply isn’t yet. But neither is it a scam. (more…)
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Another one that dropped while I was away, but which Giff has just reminded me of: The New Media Consortium, which set up shop in the virtual world of Second Life sometime back, has announced that it has established a new services unit, NMC Virtual Worlds, to cater to “educational institutions wishing to explore, build, or establish a presence in a range of virtual worlds.” NMC itself is a non-profit consortium of more than 225 research and educational institutions, so it will be interesting to see what kind of virtual world educational initiatives the organization can catalyze both within its own ranks and in the broader educational realm. While there’s only one project on their portfolio page at the moment, NMC is apparently working with Second Life creator Linden Lab to create a specialized new-user experience for educators, and is already working with a number of groups within SL. (See the announcement for more details.) Services will also be offered for 3D online spaces like Croquet. We look forward to learning what they come up with.
Just a quick one to note that Reuters’ Second Life correspondent Adam Pasick has roped some big guns into the virtual world. Starting Wednesday afternoon (24 January), SL time, he’ll be conducting a series of interviews with attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, one of the heaviest of heavyweight gatherings of movers and shakers anywhere in the world. While Davos can be interesting, it’s influence has actually waned in recent years. Perhaps more significant than the messages coming out of the forum, at least as far as the 3pointD world is concerned, is the message that Pasick’s interviews will be sending into it: By lining up eight influential personages to make appearances in Second Life during Davos, Reuters is spreading the word on virtual worlds to hundreds more such figures. That’s the kind of thing that can help lend momentum to 3D online technologies being adopted on a more widespread basis on down the line. For the full schedule of interviews, check the Reuters SL site. The event is being produced by the Electric Sheep Company, sponsors of this blog.
Second Life resident FlipperPA Peregrine sends news that the BBC’s kids’ channel, CBBC, will launch a virtual world for children that’s due to go live as soon as this summer. Details are few at the moment, but for safety’s sake the world will not feature an SL-like economy, nor “facilities for building new parts of the virtual world.” The BBC story does say, however, that users will “have an opportunity to make that world a more fascinating place with their own imaginations.” Just how they’ll split that difference and make the world more than a simple 3D chat room remains to be seen. Successful social networking sites fly not merely on the strength of social networking, but because they incorporate tools for self-expression. There’s no reason to think a 3D social space wouldn’t need to offer similar functionality.
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Raph Koster flags a report from Korea’s ETNews (subscription only) that describes a new trade association that’s been formed by Korean gold farmers and real-money trade sites to lobby the Korean government, which has been considering regulation of the sector. This is just the kind of issue we’re often concerned with over at the Second Life Herald, and which Herald founder Urizenus Sklar (aka Peter Ludlow) and I address quite a bit in the book we recently wrote (which should perhaps appear between covers by the end of this year). While it may be quite apparent to most readers of this blog, a lot of the general public has little notion that there’s so much more going on in virtual worlds than simply games. Real-world issues like this and related issues of taxation, law and contractual obligations are only just now beginning to be examined and worked out by the courts in various countries. Call it a first step in the rationalization of the metaverse. In the best case scenario, it should lead to the online portion of our lives becoming more secure and more grounded, and less of the wild-west scenario it’s still often portrayed as.
Only cricket fans will realize that I don’t mean 50 years here, I mean 50 episodes. That’s right, the 
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