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• Virtual Fitting Rooms - Intellifit Takes The Frustration Out Of Online Shopping
  3D body scanner coming to a mall near you?
  (tags: virtual clothing body technology)

Second Life resident and Fo3 qDot Bunnyhug, one of the top teledildonics engineers in the world, has a new project: The Naughtyizing of Croquet. Yes, the humble roboticist from Arkansas Oklahoma is going to spend the month of April hooking a variety of motorized sex toys to the open-source virtual world-building platform Croquet. qDot pioneered teledildonics in Second Life about a year and a half ago, and gave a great demo at SXSW06 of a vibrator that could be remotely controlled by an Xbox controller. Now he’s got his sights set on Croquet, which should provide fertile ground for the kind of remote sexuality of which qDot is a master. Plus which, if there’s anything that’s going to focus attention on a platform that’s not getting enough, it’s sex. What I loved about qDot’s rap at SXSW was that he sees teledildonics not so much as a tool for cheap Internet hookups as a way to bring couples who are separated for whatever reason closer together. For qDot, it’s more about the love than about the sex. Stay tuned at Slashdong, his blog, for continuing reports.

Shattered after SXSW? Wiped out after Virtual Worlds’07? Can’t wait for SLCC’07, but still in need of a Virtual Worlds fix? Fear not! Help is at hand in the form of the International Technology Expo, ITE’07. This time you won’t need to leave home, as the event will be held inworld from April 20th-22nd, with a grand opening on Friday, April 20th at Noon SLT/20:00 GMT. (more…)

As 3pointD continues on our path to world domination, we’re proud to introduce to readers a new contributor: Second Life resident Aleister Kronos, who’s been quietly blogging over at Ambling in Second Life for some time now, and doing a great job there of turning up unexplored corporate islands and other newsy tidbits from the virtual world of Second Life. A Second Life resident since early 2006, Al role-plays a technical architect for a European IT consulting company in real life, which apparently gives him lots of time to amble around SL. That’s good for 3pointD, and we’re very much looking forward to having his reports on the blog. Stay tuned for his first one shortly. W00t!

John Swords and I recorded a couple of new Metaverse Sessions while we were down at South by Southwest, one with Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online and one with Jamais Cascio of World Changing. Johnny has just posted Ethan’s session (incorrectly labeled #9, even though it’s #10), and there’s some really interesting stuff there. Ethan talks about how Google Maps was used to heighten political awareness in Bahrain, how LiveJournal has become the blogging tool of choice for politically active adults (not kids) in Russia, and the “cyber-utopian dominant narrative” in which everyone gets along in the same online place. We also explore some interesting question of how cultural backgrounds inform the use of technologies, questions that don’t get much discussed (or thought about) in most our metaversal questions. A really cool guest to have for the Sessions, and highly recommended listening.

MySpace recently announced it would hold a mock presidential election on January 1st and 2nd of next year. (Results will be posted on MySpace’s impact channel.) While that’s obviously not very virtual-worldy, I do think it’s worth noting here, because it’s going to focus a huge amount of attention on one of the most compelling sites of digital identity-making on the Web today. Not that MySpace lacks for attention, but most of that attention perceives it as a novelty. It’s only in the last couple of months that sites like MySpace and other lifelogging-related spaces are starting to be taken more seriously, as important bellwethers of the culture. I’m looking forward to seeing what the coverage of this is like in the press. I’d also love to see “global” polls held in the virtual world of Second Life. Anyone want to set that up?