3pointD.com

• Maps drawn from memory (kottke.org)
  Lots of great links from kottke re: maps drawn from memory
  (tags: art education map)

MovieTickets.com has launched an experimental island in the virtual world of Second Life, according to a press release. They’ve built »a huge theater« on their MovieTickets island in Second Life, where you can go to watch trailers of the latest films and click through to the MovieTickets.com page where you can find local showtimes and purchase tickets. The theater build is actually pretty cool, with a spacious lobby and tall screening rooms that make a lot more sense than most of the screening locations I’ve seen in Second Life. I’m not sure there’s huge advantage in going 3D with this service, but MovieTickets apparently has further plans. (more…)

HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival will be coming to the virtual world of Second Life on Thursday, March 1, according to Reuben Steiger over at Millions of Us. Thursday’s event, which will kick off at 2:00pm SL time (5:00pm Eastern), will feature some live streaming audio standup and MCing from emerging talent Hyla Matthews, followed by a streaming video roundup of talent from the festival. The event takes place at HBO’s »Virtual Comedy House« in the Playground region of SL. IM Baccara Millionsofus to RSVP for the event, or email baccararhodes AT gmail.com. Sounds like good fun.

Episode #53 of SecondCast is up on the SecondCast site (or can be listened to in the sidebar here, or downloaded from iTunes), and it’s fairly hilarious right off the bat. Like really hilarious, as in the first three minutes will have you on the floor. And the bleeps! Hear Lordfly file an abuse report against Johnny’s face. Pretty excellent stuff.

When you’re done with that, go check out Episode #1 of the relaunched Grid Review, the machinima news project being produced by Edelman and the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog). Now benefitting from the Sheep’s absorption of master machinimators the Ill Clan, as well as expert narration from SecondCast’s own Johnny Ming, the Grid Review is suddenly totally entertaining (whereas the old format was only somewhat entertaining in its own format, if you ask me, despite the presence of some great machinimators). Let’s hope they can keep it up.

Murat Aktihanoglu, who I met at the recent metaverse meetup, sends words of a mashup he’s developing that will make Google Earth into a multi-user application with the help of Skype. Needless to say, this is the kind of thing that excites 3pointD, and is in fact something we’ve been looking for for some time. You can download an early version at the somewhat oddly named Unype site. Unype lives between my Skype and yours, and between Google Earth and Skype on both machines. Fire up Skype and GE, click to connect your instance of Unype to them, click to connect to a friend within Unype, and then have your friend click Unype’s “follow” button. Then, when you navigate in your Google Earth, Unype automatically navigates your friend’s Google Earth to the same place. That’s cool as far as it goes, but there’s more coming, Murat says. (more…)

• Hunter S. Thompson: 1978 BBC Documentary ‘Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision’ - Google Video
  the vbs guys kinda remind me of HST. then again so does 3 point dizzle
  (tags: bbc documentary drugs history media politics video)
• Pruned: Super-Versailles
  my living room is starting to look more and more like these mega-control centers everyday. yipee!
  (tags: architecture information surveillance technology video visualization)
• Helvetica
  Helvetica: A Documentary Film; screening @ SXSW
  (tags: design documentary film movie videogames)

Finally! I’ve long thought the Rocky Horror Picture Show would be the perfect film to screen in the virtual world of Second Life. After all, it’s the original weird costumed participatory media experience, filled with sex, mad scientists and terrorized newbies — just like SL! Well, start working on your Frank N. Furter avatars, because the Pirate Cinema in Stockholm, Sweden (I think this is the link), is holding a Rocky Horror Picture Show Second Life-a-long that will pair a real-world screening with one in the virtual world.

The event is being held in collaboration with architecture students at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, who are billing it as “a night in the spirit of Piracy and architecture, an attempt to destroy the firewall between the physical and virtual, to create a fellowship without limits.” The film starts Thursday, March 1, at noon SL time, in »The Office region« of SL.

The great thing about it is that the real-life screening will be streamed into the virtual world. (The SL screening will apparently be streamed to the RL theater as well.) If you’re not a virgin, you know that this means that the SL audience will get to see not only the film itself, but the antics of Sweden’s costumed Rocky Horror fans as they prance and dance onstage, and ask questions and give directions to the actors (which the actors, of course, answer and follow slavishly). One can only imagine what the experience will be like in Second Life. (It would be great to get a regular screening going there to see how the Rocky Horror cult manifests itself in the virtual world.)

Excellent fun.

Media Machines, which makes the browser-based 3D Flux Player (Windows only) and Flux Studio (both free), has an interesting mashup on its site that combines a Flux window with Google Maps. Click on the map marker and a 3D model of the buildings there pops up in a Flux Player window. The new Flux Studio 2.0 can now natively import the KML files that are used in Google Earth (but not yet export), allowing Flux users to get models created in SketchUp or listed on SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse into their browser-based 3D scenes. (more…)

[UPDATE: Well, that’ll teach me. The Sheep’s appearance on the Today show has not been put off again. Sibley is now scheduled to appear Friday morning. Maybe. I think the next time I blog about this it’ll be after the fact.] The appearance of Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company, on NBC’s Today Show, originally scheduled for last week, has now been rescheduled to this Thursday, March 1. Tune in between 8:00am and 10:00am Eastern (5:00am - 7:00am SL Time) to check him out.

I’m not saying Kaneva is the future; I’m just saying it could well capture a lot of little clicking fingers. [Now with further details.] I met with Kaneva CEO Christopher Klaus, COO Rob Frasca and marketing director Michelle Norwood yesterday at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side to hear what they’re up to, and I was surprised to find a lot of it dovetailed with some of the things I like to blah on about here on 3pointD. They won’t let me into the beta until next week because they’re moving some servers around at the moment — as well as barnstorming various bloggers and media outlets — but the demo reel I saw showed a system that seemed to combine the expressive power of MySpace with the social power of There.com, and which was a nice way to bridge the 2D and 3D online worlds without worrying too much about things like “immersion.” If it turns out people are starting to push the limits of what they can do on MySpace, this could be the natural next step for a lot of them. What it allows you to do, which MySpace doesn’t, is to engage in the kind of “social media consumption” (I just made that term up — I think) that has been one of the more powerful features of existing 3D social worlds, and which will increasingly come to mark our media habits in the future, if you ask me. (more…)

Mega-rockers KORN are coming to MTV’s virtual world this Wednesday, February 28, according to a new Virtual KORN domain on the MTV site. The band hits Virtual Laguna Beach on Wednesday to celebrate the release of their Unplugged album. One interesting thing to note: MTV is now referring to VLB and its adjunct areas like the Virtual Hills as “Virtual MTV” when the mood strikes them. It looks like this has been part of the plan all along, as I wrote in Wired magazine a while back, to slowly add areas until the project constituted a big virtual world that wasn’t necessarily tied to any one media property but which funneled an audience in through various portals. It sounds like a sensible strategy. And more evidence that media and entertainment companies are fast growing into the VW space. Unfortunatley, a few of the links on the Virtual KORN site don’t work. The one thing MTV could be better on here is a clearer path into their world. A number of people have commented on 3pointD that they have trouble singing up. Hopefully KORN fans will be able to figure it out.

If you missed last Friday’s metaverse meetup (which I’m still trying to find time to blog about at length), or even if you were there, you might be interested to check out a couple of Flickr sets that have been posted from the event. Dig a few select shots from John Swords, as well as many more from Eric Gruber. Plus, of course, this one above, of me blathering to the assembled about some recent thoughts on the metaverse. Cool crowd.

The always-awesome Ordinal Malaprop is developing an interface that will let Twitter members post and receive updates from within the virtual world of Second Life. Go, Ordinal! It sounds like there’s already a working version, though it’s in an early stage of development. I want one. I’d love to be able to Twitter my wanderings around Second Life. I like Koz Farina’s BlogHUD system, but I don’t use it because (a) I want to reach people outside Second Life, which I can’t do using BlogHUD from the chat line, and (b) cross-posting to 3pointD from BlogHUD involves composing an unwieldy notecard, which I don’t see the need for. A Twitter interface would combine the ease of posting short Twitters from the chat line, and the range of broadcast that Twitter already features. Totally ace.

Second Life Tree is a new directory of Second Life URLs that allow you to teleport directly from a Web page into the virtual world of Second Life. [Via VTOR.] It’s already got around 300 links in it, which means it should be of some value, and that value should only grow as people suggest their own links at the site. So start suggesting.

If you’re in the New York City area tomorrow, Tuesday, February 27, and want to participate in or just attend a discussion of male fashions in both the real world and the virtual world of Second Life, drop by the A.I.R. Gallery at 511 West 25th Street, Suite 301, in Manhattan, at 5:30pm Eastern time (2:30pm SL Time) for an event being put on by Daria Dorosh, a long-time professor at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology — and also a long-time explorer in virtual worlds. In fact, the organizers could use some help, so if you’re going to be in the area and you have some facility with Second Life, Skype and stuff like that, see below. (more…)

Reuters has the news that the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) will be getting a $7 million round of investment from CBS and Gladwyne Partners (the latter having invested in a previous round). Sheep CEO Sibley Verbeck tells the news agency, “Electric Sheep plans to use the financing to create software to make virtual worlds ready for mainstream consumption.” Nice going, guys. In fact, I was mentioning something like this idea at Friday’s metaverse meetup. Virtual worlds to this point have been the province of people coming out of the gamedev community, for the most part. I really see them as more of a media convergence phenomenon. Which means that media companies, which have been serving “entertainment experiences” to huge audiences for decades — and have massive bankrolls to show for it — are going to be huge players in the space, before long. Or even sooner.

• The FADER Magazine on Def Jam & EA’s Def Jam Icon
  “We found ourselves having to give our (virtual) girlfriend $5000 for a birthday present while keeping E-40 from fighting Young Jeezy and simultaneously trying to get a Ludacris single to top the charts.”
  (tags: music games simulation gangsta)
• High School Drama in Second Life (No, Really!) - Second Life Insider
  non-sexual role-playing sims in second life still make for the best stories
  (tags: secondlife simulation school teens)
• Zen of Design»Blog Archive » Puzzle Pirates Provides a Second Data Point
  Daniel James comments on puzzle pirate numbers
  (tags: games metrics subscriptions mmog)

The above YouTube clip, from Minneapolis artist Phil Hansen, doesn’t appear to be all that 3pointD, at first, but appearances can be deceiving. It’s a full five minutes of some really nice action painting with a unique twist (which I won’t give away; hit the Play button already!). In an unbelievably fortuitous moment of technological serendipity, I happened to be listening to Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues on iTunes when I was watching this, and had the YouTube soundtrack turned down. All of which engendered a small epiphany about the history of lifelogging and the origins of the mixed(-up) media we enjoy today. Read on, if you dare. (more…)

So I’m just back from the metaverse meetup and I wouldn’t normally be blogging at this hour, but I’m trying to find out just how I’ve screwed up the site (there’s supposed to be a strip of red buttons just below the header image now; it shows in IE but not Firefox, for some reason), and whether a new post might knock things loose and get it working again. (Don’t laugh; it’s happened.) The meetup was a hoot, with a bunch of geeks packed into the back room of Planet Thailand, as well as a few more-or-less normal people along for the ride. Jerry and I each made presentations from the top of the stair once we’d gotten back to his pad, and a nice hot debate ensued, which I’ll recount later. The assembled crowd (of 40 or so?) was great, consisting of a few meetup newbies as well as the usual suspects. More details on the actual proceedings will have to wait. The prize for best effort, though, has to go to Negin and Kimmy, who spent all night working their asses off on a second installment of their excellent Nerd of the Week, a series of clips to accompany (or possibly become part of) the movie they’re working on, Nerdcore Rising. They interviewed everyone in sight (I got lav’ed no less than twice), and spent at least eight straight hours working. I was tired of hearing myself talk by the end of the night, so I can only imagine how they felt.

• iConcertCal
  ConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city.
  (tags: music calender apple applications events)
• Slifeshare | Share your digital life
  Onlife goes social with Slifeshare
  (tags: free hack lifehacks mobile privacy security social software tools tracking)
• zengestrom.com: Video of Stockholm MSN talk
  Jyri Engeström on Social Objects (via pasta and vinegar)
  (tags: mobile video social objects networks)
• Jaiku | Home
  Jyri Engeström’s company; Jaiku. Pre-Twitter phone book that displays the real-time presence and location of your contacts.
  (tags: apps blog book cell community culture gadgets gps IM map mobile network online rss sharing social software web2.0)

This is another thing I wasn’t able to get working yesterday due to the various technical problems that were plaguing me, but I know that other people have got it working and it’s a good idea that’s open source, so even if I can’t handle it there’s someone out there who can, and who will find a way to tweak it to make it even cooler than it already is. The gadget in question is an audio player that directs a parcel of land in the virtual world of Second Life to play tunes from Cruxy.com, the cool YouTube-for-indie-bands (although more polished than YouTube, and not just for bands) that lets artists grab the lion’s share of the revenue on tracks they sell through the site. Get the player at Cruxy’s »media island« in the Silver Shores region of Second Life (look in the little modernist shack across the lake from the main build).
(more…)

I’ve seen this YouTube clip before, but I was finally inspired to install it after 3pointD contributor Chip Poutine sent me this link. It’s a very cool screensaver that renders all the blog posts coming from everywhere in the world in 3D on a 3D globe. Unfortunately, something in my system seems to be preventing it from working (which is plaguing a lot of my day today, frustratingly). I get the cool globe, but no posts show up. In any case, I love the idea. Download it yourself and tell me what I’m doing wrong. [UPDATE: Ooh, nvm, it’s working now! \o/ Very cool. And yes, you can click through to the posts themselves on the Web. (Sorry for the double-update.)]

Okay, Babbage is getting ready to give his acceptance speech at 3pointD’s Favorite Linden awards ceremony, but he’s got a little work to do before the committee ratifies the choice.

In computer gaming circles, a roguelike (yes, it’s a noun) is a game that borrows many of the characteristics of the 2D ASCII dungeon-crawling computer game Rogue. What Babbage is building borrows many characteristics of the Web-based ratings system Digg, so I’m calling at a Digglike. It’s coming along, but it isn’t done yet. (more…)

[UPDATE: Boo! Due to technical difficulties, the Sheep won’t appear on the Today show until sometime early next week. Stay tuned for details.] Sibley Verbeck, CEO of metaverse services firm Electric Sheep Company (still sponsors of this blog) will make a live appearance on NBC’s Today Show tomorrow morning, February 23, 3pointD has just heard. Sibley will be interviewed by Today Show host Matt Lauer, as Sheep Jessie Segal and Kerria Seabrook navigate their avatars around the virtual world of Second Life, checking out some builds and other interesting corners of the culture. The spot will air sometime between 8:00am and 10:00am Eastern (that’s 5:00am and 7:00am SL Time), so get up early and tune in.

Well, I was all ready to anoint Babbage as my favorite Linden, but I can’t get his gadget to work. This post on the official Linden blog describes a HUD that lets you Digg objects inside the virtual world of Second Life, if I’m understanding it correctly. It uses the scanner function of the Linden Scripting Language to automatically highlight nearbby object, which you can then give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to. My copy, though, didn’t highlight anything. Has anyone else gotten this to work? If so, I’d love to hear from you, as this kind of thing is just the kind of functionality I think SL needs more of. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can pick up a copy at Babbage’s plot »in Ambleside«. Sounds very cool, so I’m hoping I’ve just done something wrong. [UPDATE: It works! Almost.]

It looks like the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) are getting ready to bring authors from Random House’s Bantam Dell imprint to the virtual world of Second Life. I was poking around the Grid today and dropped in on Sheep Island, where I spotted a Bantam Dell building just outside Sheep Tower. The inside is all set up for what looks like a reading or Q&A, the featured author being best-selling thriller writer Dean Koontz. While this could just be a test build, the Bantam Dell logo is slapped all over everything, and the place looks ready for a bunch of literary-minded avatars to show up and pelt Koontz with questions. I don’t have much information other than that, just a few screenshots, which you can check out after the jump. (more…)

• YouTube - animator vs animation
  My kind of guy
  (tags: youtube funny animation animator desktop fight)

Call me Mad Dog Winters. (I’ll explain in a sec.) The Mini Cooper, everyone’s favorite cute little British car, is teaming up with Reuben Steiger’s Millions of Us to bring a cool-sounding promotion for the new Cooper S to the virtual world of Second Life. The thing I especially like about this project is that it offers a contest/game that’s played not just in SL, but on a handful of Web 2.0 sites as well, which, as regular readers know, is one of my favorite kinds of mashups. (more…)

Dutch bankers ING, in partnership with metaverse services company Rivers Run Red, are getting ready to set up a virtual Holland within the virtual world of Second Life. While the OurVirtualHolland project’s Web site doesn’t say how many sims it will cover, it sounds a substantial project, featuring Dutch architecture, landscapes, windmills, tulip fields, and even deltaworks, as well as what sounds like a virtual Formula 1 racetrack. (ING is the title sponsor of the ING Renault Formula 1 team.) Residents will be able to own land and run businesses there (i.e., it’s a place designed to attract residents, not just visitors), and the virtual Holland will come complete with its own third-party registation site and orientation experience. The project will be built and opened in stages, but ING notes, “We expect a first release to be ready in weeks not months.” (more…)

Rik Riel has a nice video on his blog showing off the »Roma sim« in the virtual world of Second Life. The Grid is down at the moment or I’d go check it out, but it looks like a nice build. A no-fly zone, the sim comes complete with a market, religious buildings, and what look like working chariot races and a gladiator’s arena, as well as several interactive educational displays. It’s nice work, and Rik’s video tour is nice work as well. Worth checking out.

A fun new episode of everyone’s favorite Second Life podcast, SecondCast, is now on the air (or on the site, rather). It’s our one-year anniversary, and incredibly, we’ve actually managed to average an episode a week, making this one #52. Johnny, Torrid, Lordfly, Cristiano and myself take a walk down memory lane, reminiscing about fruit griefing, field trips and SecondCast’s own war of the worlds. We also cover some news of the day. Happy Birthday, us!

Quick follow-up to my post about using Google Earth to help survive in Iraq: podcaster Johnny Ming sends along a link to this story from last month about Iraqi insurgents using Google Earth to pinpoint coalition targets. “Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google,” the story says. “The satellite photographs show in detail the buildings inside the bases and vulnerable areas such as tented accommodation, lavatory blocks and where lightly armoured Land Rovers are parked.” Just a reminder that technology makes no value judgments; it can as easily be used for destructive purposes as for benevolent ones.