3pointD.com

The »IBM CODESTATION« island I blogged about just now does indeed include a library of open-source objects and LSL code — though not quite in the way I’d hoped. What IBM has done is create a repository of scripted objects and scripts themselves — things like a clock, a teleporter, a mailbox, an object that rescales on click, a door, radar, poseball, etc. — very much akin to what’s available on the LSL wiki (wherever that resides these days). (more…)

Boy am I glad I stumbled on Aleister Kronos’s Ambling in Second Life blog today, since Aleister himself stumbled on IBM CODESTATION island in the virtual world of Second Life a couple of weeks ago. I just had a visit, and I’m happy to say it includes one of the coolest projects I’ve seen in a while: an »open-API mazebot« that users are invited to take and modify in various ways. This is something I’ve wanted to see in Second Life for a while (and was hoping for in the Lego Mindstorms project), and while any full-perm item you get in SL is of course modifiable, IBM has done a nice thing here by defining some parameters and setting out a task for users to work on. (more…)

This is not exactly 3pointD, but it’s definitely worthy of note: Amil Husain at the United Nations’ Millennium Campaign against poverty is looking for help in developing educational games to run on the $100 laptop in development by One Laptop Per Child, a group founded by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte that wants to put a laptop in the hands of children in poorer nations around the world. Husain wants to produce “entertaining game modules” that cover the eight Millennium Development Goals, and is looking for assistance finding “game developers who have experience translating difficult development issues into entertaining games.” If you think you can help, or you know someone who can, get in touch with Amil at amilhusain [AT] gmail.com.

CNet’s Dan Terdiman has a nice story on the winners of the business plan contest in Second Life that just wrapped up, which was put on by Edelman and the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog). Top prize was taken by Market Truths, which plans “a market research and analysis system to help real-world companies figure out what works and what doesn’t in the burgeoning virtual world.” They walk away with six months of free access to a private island, plus L$350,000 in prize money (a little over US$1,000). I’ve been a big fan of this contest for some time, so I’ll be interested to see what Market Truths can do with their new venture. I’d also love to see a small VC fund that backed virtual business ideas. A few thousand bucks tossed in that direction could go a long way, I think. [UPDATE: The Business Communicators of SL blog has a good interview up with Pebble Hannya of Market Truths.]

It’s been a while since I checked in with Tech Geek Blogger Robert Scoble, but reader Sean FitzGerald sent me a Scobleizer link last night that couldn’t be more 3pointD. An Australian company called Outback Online has a new social 3D virtual world in the works, one that is designed more or less as a competitor to Second Life. The site is advertising “user-generated places,” which of course will be “infinitely scalable.” While the project isn’t very far along yet, Scoble does note, “I saw some brilliant things here that are worth watching.”

In his chat with Outback, the company outlined some of the advantages their platform is designed to have over a service like SL:

• Outback wants to have better graphics than Second Life.
• The company claims it can get up to 10,000 avatars on a single “island.”
• More granualar age controls will make it easier for kids and adults to safely co-exist and interact.
• Developing simultaneously for the Mac only slows things down, they say. But they are also working on an Xbox version!
• “Instead of hosting everything on centrally-located servers they are using P2P to get more people onto islands and bring better graphical performance.”

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