Gwyn%u2019s Home » The Schism Around Voice: Multicasting vs. Broadcasting
Interesting post by Gwyneth Llewelyn on what SL actually is, and how voice might change it. Her analysis is broadly in line with mine, SL (or at least virtual worlds) are a medium, and a syncronous one at that.
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Neat map of major RL brands in SL from Kzero, who also have a good directory of SL brand sites.
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Head pose estimation and control of attention of wearable robot - Google Video
All it needs is a parrot costume!
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YouTube - Playstation Home - PS3 - Complete Presentation GDC
I always said SL shoudl get onto consoles.
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Over the last few months we've been playing with an SL-Google Earth mashup using our NewsGlobe app. That work put us into contact with Hayduke Ebisu from the SL Science Centre and Envirolink (and our neighbour in Nari), and Stephane Zugzwang who has built a VR Room in SL (where you stand withing a complete sphere on whose walls are projected hi-rez 360 degree images.
It was only a matter of time before we worked out how to get our NewsGlobe feeds plotted on the inside of one of Stephane's huge spheres, so that with a suitable Earth image you can watch news stories and other global data appear all around you - we call it GeoGlobe. Stephane has done a great job of creating a really compelling interface, complete with flying data points.
For more information read the post at the
Envirolink blog, which also has a SLURL to the demonstrator. If you would like to know more about the system, have a personal demo, or have a real-world application then please contact us, Hayduke or Stephane.
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3pointD.com » Blog Archive » Next-Gen: Web Integration in Virtual Worlds
Not bad take on why VWs are important and where they are going from 3pointD.
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Spent yesterday at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit subtitled 'Are you ready to play in the age of personal media?'
Overall it was a bit of a disappointment. Like several other recent events it appeared to be playing catch-up, still talking about media and new media, not old media and media - or just media.
The best panels were on radio (but with a woeful lack of focus on podcasts) and games (with Justin of Rivers Run Red doing a credible piece on Second Life, and some good stats on Habbo Hotel (30m registrations but 1m a month and 30 min sessions).
The session on mashups and geoloc just talked about mobiles :-(, and the TV session focussed on IPTV and established players rather than Joost and YouTube.
One of the few initial insights was about the fact that audience doesn't equal community and the notion of 'the people formally known as the audience' - referring to UGC.
However things took a definite turn for the better in the final session with Tom Loosemore (the BBC's web 2.0 guru), Alan Rusbridger (Editor of the Guardian) and Andy Duncan, CEO Channel 4. Alan had a wonderful meaningless diagram that he talked to in delightfully random way (whilst making complete sense), Andy spoke real sense and namechecked SL a couple of times, but Tom was the real star. Yes he was more pessimistic about SL, but was spot on around things like the increasing role of the "editor", and the way that media companies need cope with both an older generation that is not IT savvy, and also working out how to cede to control to the upcoming YouTube and MySpace generation.
My own take on the whole day was seeing the media company of old a a vertically integrated business of creator-commissioner-scheduler/aggregrator/selector-transmitter.
What we've seen over the last decades is the transmitter role separate and fragment (seeling off UHF transmitters, then using Broadband) and creators move out into the independent sector. We now see the audience moving into the creator sector to. The next step has to be the separation of commissioning and scheduling. Increasingly I am the scheduler - whether through Listen Again, or podcatcher or my PVR. All I need is a commissioner to actually pay someone talented to make the good content (and in many cases that is self commissioned, eg by the podcaster).
For the future perhaps, as Tom indicated, the real rolefor the BBC and big media organisations is purely as reputation stamps and commissioners. I'll choose to schedule in something I've never heard of because it comes with the BBC stamp of approval - through inclusion on their schedule or form their commissioning. Of course the other model is that I base reputation on peer recommendation (or peer subscription). And if I build my schedule then I can share that with others, or buy into others schedules. This applies increasingly across all media - TV, radio (or rather tele-audio, radio is completelyy the wrong label and caused all sorts o wrong assumptions in the radio session), and even print (in the form of RSS and self-printed newspapers - surely an idea who's time has come again.
A decade or so the Guardian produced a demo of an A4 self-printed newspaper on Tyvek indestructible paper. That is the sort of vision that was missing at this conference, and the dis-integration issus above are what it should have been discussing.
Oh, and the best bit. At lunch I'd been talking to this guy from a search engine marketing firm about SL, about how its search is broken, about whether Google would buy it, and how it might develop in the future. At the end of the conference the same guy, aka Richard Gregory, COO Latitude, stood up as the event co-sponsor to draw things to a close and invite people to the reception, and he spoke about about SL, about how its search is broken, about whether Google would buy it, and how it might develop in the future! My words were ringing in my ears.
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YouTube - Guild Wars Vs World of Warcraft Dance Contest
Great fun bit of machinima.
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BBC - Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed talks about the social issues around virtual worlds such as Runescape.
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Wiki of the guys behind the SL Ecosystem. Keen to keep a sgement of Daden Prime as an a-life reserve.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual worlds set for shake-up
Big media firms are rushing to copy the success of online games like World of Warcraft, a conference has been told.
Millions of dollars are being spent trying to emulate the massively multiplayer online game, experts at the Game Developer's Conference said.
"We are going to have so many failures it is going to be unbelievable," said Mark Jacobs of Electronic Arts.
The panel also predicted that non-gaming MMOs such as Second Life would be prevalent in the short term.
Speaking at the San Francisco event, Mr Jacob, who is currently working on Warhammer Online, said: "There is going to be a lot of corpses, rubble all over the place.
"There is so much dumb money. Mass media is coming in and saying we want to be just like WoW."
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Sony unveils its new 3D universe
Sony is hoping to replicate the success of social networks and Second Life with a feature called Home.
Playstation 3 gamers will be able to meet, chat and share content with friends inside a 3D universe.
"It's about community, collaboration and customisation," said Sony's Phil Harrison at the Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco.
Gamers can buy furniture and clothes, while publishers and retailers are also expected to offer 3D spaces.
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Just been notified by Linden Labs that Daden Prime has been delivered. Not showing on the map yet so need to use the back door to get in!
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Graham Bleathman Illustration - Homepage
Looking for some diagrams of Tracy Island for my SL island and found the home page of the guy who did loads of TV21 cutaways. Even some original pages for sale.
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Almost as good as Better Life. Superb SL based Machinima.
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Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D Web
Woudl be good to get this running in the UK as well.
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SPACE.com -- Project Orion: NASA's Next Spaceship Takes Shape
I'm sorry, but that's an Apollo Command Module. The Orion of the 21st Century is a sleek shuttle rising gracefully to an catherine wheel space station as in 2001, not a throwback to the 1960s. It makes one feel that NASA ought to just give up and ask Branson and Burt Rutan to take over.
And no first flight til 2015, and no moon til 2020.
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Not the faintest who they are, but they own the Uvvy island where the SL World Transhumanist Meetings are held.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | NSPCC books in to virtual hotel
I keep telling clients that much as I love Second Life it isn't the only world in town, and they need to chose the most appropriate world for each project.
As an example NSPCC has set up in Habbo Hotel, a long standing isometric teen virtual world. Habbo Hotel UK now attracts 750,000 unique users each month, aged 11-18. There are localised Habbo communities in 29 countries. The company behind Habbo said that as of December 2006 more than 66 million Habbos have been created around the world.
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