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• RIM tells developers to have more fun | Crave : The gadget blog
  Blackberry API…for “apps with embedded audio and video, more location-based services, support for better 3D graphics,”
  (tags: RIM API blackberry technology)

I missed the beginning of the remarks by Colin Parris, vice president of digital convergence at IBM Research, because the panels are stacked a bit back-to-back and I was on the one directly before he spoke, but the first half of his presentation consisted of laying out some of the potential benefits of integrating virtual worlds with current business processes. The second half of his remarks consisted of looking at what IBM is doing and planning in the space. I’ve transcribed them pretty well below. (more…)

Gideon Wiis in Second Life (photo by Glitchy)

Gideon May of the team behind Lifecrawler showed up at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference today with a laptop and a Wii controller that’s he’s begun hacking to control his avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. You can already move your avatar around using the Wii controller’s D-pad with Gideon’s system, and he just needs to find a Radio Shack and buy some hardware and he’s going to try to make avatar navigation a gestural function of the Wii controller — by the metaverse meetup on Friday! Awesome. After that, it’s on to using the force feedback system to indicate collisions, and hack out some alternate controller schemes that would allow a user to navigate their avatar via the keyboard but play games within Second Life by waving the Wiimote around. Neither Glitchy nor I could think of anyone who’s done this before, though it seems so cool and obvious. Let us know if you’re in New York and you want to lend Gideon a hand.