3pointD.com

Two new applications out recently — Yahoo! Pipes and IBM’s QEDWiki — contain much promise for the 3pointD world. They’re basically mashupmakers (mashuppers? mashers?), GUI-based systems that let you create your own mashups without having to get too deep into code. They’re still a bit beyond my ability to really check out without spending a whole day on them, but they definitely make mashupping (I’m going with “mashupping” for the moment) available to a broader set of users. What does this mean for the 3pointD generation? More mashups, of course. But more importantly, it means greater, more widespread power to make the virtual world a more useful place. (more…)

Who knew the American Forces Network (which I believe is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense) had a weekly podcast called Virtual World News? It’s just a few minutes, and it’s really just games-related news, not specific to virtual worlds, but it was a surprising find. On reflection, of course, it’s not surprising at all. It’s not hard to imagine the members of our armed forces in Europe hankering after some good old-fashioned gaming news. This is not a phrase that would normally cross my lips, but: Go DoD!

Linden Lab has released a new set of statistics covering the virtual world of Second Life that are slightly more granular than the information that’s been available before. Information about land mass, population and L$ transactions and trading, as well as other bits and bobs are available in an Excell spreadsheet from the official Linden blog. Still, the release is disappointing on a couple of levels. Methodology is one. The source for each stat needs to be spelled out much more rigorously than it is here. On the “L$ Supply” tab, for instance, things like “Sinks to LL” and “Other sources (sinks)” need a more complete definition than they receive here or on the economics Web pages. In addition, the new release does almost nothing to move the debate over usage forward. While new figures finally describe “unique” users that have actually logged in separately from “residents” that may be alts or may not ever have logged in (around 2 million vs. 3 million), there is no additional information about usage other than an aggregate number of hours used per month. The blog post accompanying the release notes that “Approximately 10% of unique users have logged in for 40 hours or more,” but that’s all we get. The Lindens could do better here, and at this point have no excuse for not coming up with a metric they like, even if it’s one that not everyone will be satisfied with. Because what they’re giving us now is something that almost no one who is looking closely will find sufficient. That said, the post does note that this is a preliminary report and that more information will be incorporated as things move forward. We look forward to seeing a good, deep report get designed, one that’s released on a regular schedule. Hopefully, we won’t have too long to wait.

Reuters’ Second Life correspondent, Adam Pasick, reports that Comverse has developed a version of the virtual world of Second Life that runs on a mobile phone. It sounds like the technology is imperfect at the moment (as is SL itself) and requires a PC to be running Second Life at an intermediary position, but it’s an interesting and potentially exciting step toward opening Second Life up to yet more uses. A full Second Life client on a cell phone might be overkill, but a streamlined client would be a great extension of the communication functions of Second Life. It also sounds like Comverse has SMS and Instant Message add-ons in the works that will allow those interactions with SL, though exactly how those fit in isn’t yet clear. Comverse has also developed a version of SL to run on IPTV platforms. Wow, they’ve been busy, and Pasick reports that this was all done in advance of the open-source SL client. Much of this technology will be demonstrated at next week’s 3GSM Conference in Barcelona, Pasick reports. Wish I could be there.

Word from the Terra Novans is that Ted Castronova’s second Ludium conference (following a first outing that was rocked by a very tongue-in-cheek scandal) will be held June 22-23 at Indiana University — and that it may even feature a demo of the Multiverse-based experimental Shakespearean MMO known as Arden that Ted is building there (and for which he’s won a Macarthur grant). The Ludium is a brilliant concept of Ted’s: a conference on games that’s run like a game. This year’s Ludium covers games and public policy, and so will take the form of a political convention that will elect a spokesperson for a set of agreed “Principles for Sensible Video Game Policy.” Should be fun.