As I am taking a holiday, I will not be blogging for a week or so...
However, when I get back I will have some really interesting stuff to impart (though it will almost certainly have hit the blogosphere by then). In the meantime, keep an eye on the excellent Ugotrade blog.
Thanks for your patience. Al
A few sites you might want to keep any eye on here. Nothing open to the general public yet, but Japanese virtual worlds construction company Melting Dots are building:
I don't really know anything about this sim - I was passing by and thought I should have a look. The sim is called "Ali" and looks to be a private build. I rather like the rocks and hanging foliage, and the general quality of the texture. The overall effect reminds me of Studio Ghibli's Laputa - Castle in The Sky.
High above sits a platform and a large airship called "Prometheus".
And that's about all I can tell you! if you know more, please drop me a comment.
On returning from the mayhem of Glasto, and after a good night's sleep, I checked my mail and found a request from Patou Dumont to spread the word concerning a new Second Life comic book that might appeal to your jaded palates: http://second-news.net/le
The comic has been put together with much more care than I'd ever manage to devote - with much use of poses and camera controls. Take a look, and let me have your views.
This post first appeared at 3pointD... but here you get full set of pictures.
The number of universities entering the virtual world of Second Life never ceases to amaze me. One that I have been keeping an eye on for some time is Princeton. It has been closed to casual strollers while construction proceeds, but following a bit of string-pulling, I was able to get an advance preview earlier this week. I have only one small problem: the amount of information I now have is so huge it is going to take all of my ingenuity -- and there’s precious little of that -- to prune it down to the bare essentials. The sim will not formally open to the public until the next academic year, but much of the work is now complete.
Incidentally, aware that I over-use the term "iconic" I have opted in this post to go with "signature" instead. Time will tell whether this is a sensible move.
My tour guide was the charming and ridiculously well-informed (not to mention often downright hilarious) Persis Trilling, who, apart from heading up the Princeton in-house IT education support services, is something of an expert on the History of Architecture and is overseeing the build in Second Life.
The third major building along the spine is Alexander Hall. Following some hiccups with construction of the simulation, this has been taken on by CJ Carnot of New Media Consortium and is currently being reworked, but even the version I saw was most impressive. Again, as with the other buildings, the texturing brings out a great sense of physical presence. The actual building, built in 1892, was designed (and still serves) as a convocation hall for commencement exercises and other large gatherings. It therefore made sense to preserve this function in Second Life. This is where concerts and many meetings will be held. [Given the current state of reconstuction, I don't have any good pictures of this building]
Off to one side of this trio of signature Princeton buildings lies another jewel -- but this time there is no Real World counterpart. The Art Gallery is the work of Canadian master-builder Scope Cleaver, and anyone who knows his work will spot the style immediately. Persis was full of praise for the way in which Mr. Cleaver has gone about fulfilling his brief: "If Chancellor Green is about Ruskin's seven lamps, Scope’s building has them in spades too. He is just using a different architectural vocabulary.The sense of craft; of expression of essential human qualities and the emotive use of light and space is a lot like the more modest drama of Chancellor Green." She went on: "It's a very nice build, and I think reflects well on the existing major buildings -- each one perfectly modern in its day, in fact, forward-looking. I showed him a lot of spaces that I admired. He did not copy anyone but respected an element of each design. I told him what I liked about each -- so a little Carlo Scarpa; a little Gehry; a little James Stirling."
There is more on this island that I have not covered -- for example, the Prospect Garden, 
and the debating society buildings -- but hopefully this gives you a feel for what to expect in September, when we may all get a chance to visit. Thanks to Persis for giving me far more information than I could ever hope to include in this posting, and for being such a gracious host.
I've not been in Second Life for a few days while I wallowed in the mud and overflowing toilets of Glasto 2007. Bizarrely, in a crowd of 170,000 people I bumped into my old friend Alan on each of 3 consecutive days. I have no idea on what the odds are for that... but they're not great.
I won't bore you with a rundown of who I saw, and who I liked (unless pushed)*. I'm only really sticking up this post to publish a few pictures to share with the band of elder geeks I went with.
First some general scenes - including the all-important Brothers' Bar - home to the mind-melting festival strength pear cider.
And here are the elder geeks during a lull in proceedings:
In the interest of decorum, I thought it best to conceal identities a bit. We didn't really spend the weekend with Elastoplasts gummed over our eyeballs - though somewhere amid that 175,000 there's bound to have been at least one nutter who did.
* Actually - I think I will. The mud - and the huge crowds - made getting about much harder than one'd care to think, but I really enjoyed - in no particular order:
I have just completed what is, by my standards, something of a mega-post. Sadly, owing to a "gentleman's agreement", I will not be posting it to this blog until after the weekend - so you will need to check out 3pointD to see what I've been up to. By way of light relief, and picking up on a comment on my last post from Trojan Bade - about Capgemini - I thought I would share with you some "Capgemini by Night" images:
Right... and now I promise that's it for that subject.
On a different tack, and more because I found myself there and took the pictures than for any other reason, here are a couple of Japanese commercial sites. The first is H.I.S - from the content of the main office this must be a travel agency. While here you can watch a video which appears to be the making of the video. It's all a bit post-modern for me! Anyway, here are some night time views (I will go back again at some point and derive something more meaningful):
On the adjacent sim of "Mirai" you will find this marvellous, as-yet unpopulated palace, which describes itself as a "castle for shopping magSL Tokyo Japan". I can only suggest you go figure:
No deep analysis - I just thought you might like to see these. They are near "Suntory" blogged by my chum VeeJay at Mindblizzard.
Building on yesterday's post, I thought I should pop in to see what the Capgemini France recruitment hall on the island TMP3 actually looked like. By the time I got there it was past midnight in the UK, and long past any sensible French person's bedtime. But I took a few snaps, just to prove I had been there:
The more eagle-eyed of you might recognise the conference table and chairs. Yes... it's evidently my riff of the week: the work of Scope Cleaver - again!
I may be biased - but I think the facility looks pretty neat.
BTW - for the really avid reader - you may have noticed that this is NOT the mega-post currently in gestation!
UPDATE 21-06-07: The mega-post is now available at 3pointD.
Having read in the Mindblizzard blog that the BNP Paribas island in Second Life was not yet fully open I thought I would take a look on the map, to see what else in the area might be of interest - and my eyes alighted on The Blast Machine. Since the name could mean just about anything in the context of Second Life I thought I should drop in for a look.
I've mentioned Scope Cleaver a number of times in the pages of this blog. A master-builder, possibly best-known for his amazingly detailed office furniture and his high-tech bespoke buildings, Scope has now joined forces with another of SL's top designers, Maximilian Milosz, to bring the SL buying public a one-stop-shop for quality furniture and prefabs. They also have plans to develop a community of rentals, and provide a range of SL consulting services.
The twinned sims of SCDA and Maximum Minimum officially opened their doors yesterday. I was my usual, fashionably(?) late self, having been delayed in getting inworld thanks to the excess of basques and suspenders alluded to in my previous post. I met with Scope, who kindly took me on a tour of his sim - though I need to go back, as I ran out of time to look at Maximum Minimum.
Scope has split the construction on his sim into 3 components - office furniture; residential furniture and his offices. The residential stuff is a relatively new area for him, and there's not a great deal there at the moment, but this will grow in due course. The office furniture is more established, with a more extensive selection. I seem to see it everywhere, but Scope told me that, although it sells well, he does not have a wide enough selection to make that much from it.
What impresses me about Scope's work is the exquisite and meticulous detailing. There is also a indefinable "something" that makes his work easily(?) recognisable. He was a bit surprised to hear this observation (again) as he doesn't see it himself. We spoke about his approach to construction: I don't know if this is rare, but he likes the building tools supplied by Linden Lab, as they both challenge creativity and enforce rigour, and are thus ultimately more satisfying to use than fancy 3D tools. I guess it's like an artisan or craftsman in RL, who would rather use basic tools well, than sophisticated tools badly.
We also touched on sculpted prims, and it comes as no surprise that Scope is not a fan, at least not when it comes to using them in his own work. He was happy to oblige with with a quote: "The answer you are looking for is: They look good as mushrooms...[but] I think the main problem I have about them is precision."
It will be interesting to see what sort of community emerges out of this union of 2 leading designers. I only wish I had a fraction of the talent these guys have... b*stards! :-)
On getting back this evening from going to see The Rocky Horror Show currently touring the UK (and no, I didn't dress the part) I found an email waiting for me from Kate Allen, advising me of the following, that I thought I should mention to you, gentle reader, as it may stimulate your brain-buds:
15 - 24 June
For the duration of Architecture Week, the Design Museum in collaboration with sculptor Kate Allen - aka ‘Fraser Fonda’ - will share live online Second Life experiences with visitors to the Design Museum (London) via a screen in the café. Visitors to the café can view the places, buildings and events ‘Fraser Fonda’ attends including a series of special events between 3 -5pm each day. Click here to see details of the special events in Second Life between 3-5pm GMT (note it says GMT [actually BST] which is SLT+8).
Basically there's a talk a day. I reckon, what with the day job and all that nonsense, I may only actually make this Sunday's meeting. As for next weekend, I shall be up to my 'nads in mud and pear cider (festival strength) at Glasto!
+++
Another event to watch out for is The Guardian (or as we Brits affectionately know it, The Grauniad, owing to its reputation for typo errors) is putting on Secondfest in the near future. For all I know, you read it here first!
One of the first academic sites I visited in Second Life, back in the days before I started this blog, was Great Northern Way Campus . GNWC is a collaboration between 4 Canadian colleges: The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. The Finning Tractor Corporation donated a chunk oif their site just east of downtown Vancouver, on Great Northern Way, and this is where the Real Life campus has taken shape.
GNWC came to Second Life in the second half of 2006. Using the services of Canadian master-builder Scope Cleaver, they erected a large, ultra-modern facility on one of the mainland sims (Erie , if memory serves). The build was tied in with their Masters of Digital Media programme.
Today, while pottering around my local neighbourhood in SL, I happened upon the island "University Project." I put 2 and 2 together, and made a calculated judgement that this was something to do with "projects" and "universities" (though perhaps, in the singular) and therefore could be interesting. An added bonus was the fact that I could actually get in.
It turns out that GNWC have de-camped from the mainland and now have a whole sim to play with. Scope's building has come over intact, but now new buildings are emerging. This is still early days, as you can see from the bottom-most photo, where the objects are still textured in "plywood", but it will be interesting to see how this develops. It must be a relief to get off the mainland!
If you've never seen around a Scope Cleaver building then can I recommend you pop along to see this one? I think it's just brilliant.
Finally, you might find this PDF interesting and entertaining.
Just an excuse to post some piccies - they've been scarce in recent days. This is the first of the weekly Geek Meets I've been able to make, arranged by 57 Miles of metaversed fame (well maybe not fame yet, but he's getting there!). 57 had arranged for representatives of 3 of the major technology companies in SL to come and talk to the group. So we had folks from IBM, Intel and Sun giving us a 5-10 minute chat, each followed by a Q&A. Doubtless some keen soul will post the transcripts, but I will limit myself to impressions.
The mighty epredator potato (God I'm embarrassed typing that name) of IBM is a long-standing evangelist for virtual worlds and gave us some useful insights into the whole shebang. He's been inworld a long time - and it shows. The presentations from Intel and Sun were interesting too in their different ways. For me, it seemed that Core, the guy from Intel, did not really have the full lowdown on SL - or maybe I don't - but I didn't feel his description of server virtualisation would advance SL's availability, stablity or scalability (OK, maybe scalability). Whereas, Klaatu from Sun - though he made some interesting interjections about load balancing - seemed to be there mainly to promote network.com, "CPU power on demand." Although greater brains than mine may find good uses for this facility in SL, I did not feel that the examples given would actually work. For example, "rendering of sculptured prims" was mentioned - yet this happens client-side, and would not benefit from a slow link to remote CPUs.
Damn! I meant to keep this brief! Anyway - here's some piccies. First up, some shady-looking characters! epredator, me, tara5 and Poinky.
And here's some other bods, followed by snaps of our 3 presenters: Epredator, Core and Klaatu.
The pink-faced fellow is VeeJay Burns of Mindblizzard. I think I prefer his non-photorealist face!
This was a well-attended meeting with the sim full. Get there early if you want to attend the next one!
The recent announcement that Mindark had won the competition to build a new virtual world for China, using the popular Entropia environment has led to a lot of questions. Some, no doubt, have come from disgruntled competitors - but as I don't fit into that category I thought I would take a look at one of those questions, to try and understand what the heck is going on.
The press release for the Entropia win in China makes reference to a projected "7 million concurrent users", generating "over $1 billion annually in commerce." Given that Second Life struggles to support maximum concurrency of around 45,000, and with the projected numbers for Entropia many orders of magnitude greater, this begs the question:
"How realistic is the projected user concurrency for Entropia?"
Unlike SL, which provides regular updates of this information on its website and its client software, Mindark apparently keep this information under lock and key. However, some trawling of the internet has turned up an estimate of around 10,000 concurrent users from a total resident count of around 500K.
Virtual World News interviewed John Bates, Entropia Universe Evangelist, and David Simmons, MindArk’s Business Development Director. The subject of concurrency was covered during a wide-ranging discussion:
»Possibly the biggest advantage, though, is the size of the world. It can hold seven million concurrent users, and MindArk isn't worried yet about reaching the cap. "We’re not even speculating about maximum capacity," Bates said. "It’s not going to be tomorrow, but it will be very soon. We just hope technology will have gotten better. We anticipate it being the fastest of its kind." «While admiring Mindark's ambition, one cannot help but feel that the case is being grossly, obscenely over-played. I am not privvy (who is? I wonder) to the underlying architecture of Entropia, and therefore cannot make assertions about its ability to scale. However, given that the hype is suggesting a thousand-fold increase, I would conclude that this degree of scalability is an unjustified assertion on behalf of the vendors. You may prefer the more pithy comment from 57 Miles at Metaversed (see the last sentence).
Thanks to Matteo at Gabetti, who brought to my attention the following event:
Achieving Product And Branding Excellence In Second Life And Other Virtual Worlds
September 25 - 26, 2007 · Thistle Hotel Marble Arch, London, UK
Why should I attend?
Second Life, the 3D internet world inhabited by over 5 million residents, is fast becoming the place for companies to test products, launch ideas and even run their entire business. With realworld companies like Adidas, American Express, Coca Cola and Toyota all clamouring to set up their virtual “islands”, how are you going to compete in this world unless you move fast?
Announcing Europe’s first ever conference on virtual marketing – How to become a household name in a virtual world.
This one-stop-shop will get you started in the fastest and most cost effective way possible.
Showcasing the best corporate islands, plus a hands-on tutorial to show you exactly how it’s done, your time out of the office will be the most valuable you spend all year.
Who will I meet and who is speaking?
This event is being specifically researched and formulated with these attendees in mind:
I made a fleeting reference to the Italian property company, Gabetti in early March. Today, I received a notecard containing some interesting updates. If I read the following correctly, they seem to be suggesting that the current Beta phase of their engagement in Second Life is due to last 5 months, with completion still some 6 to 7 weeks away. They set themselves a modest, not unrealistic earnings target for this phase, and seem to have exceed that not once, or twice, but eightfold! My hearty congratulations!
Project start date: March 8, 2007
Project end date (beta phase): July 31, 2007
Project business objective: 250.000 L$
Actual business level: +2Mo L$
Actual properties: +200K sqm
The card also contained information on upcoming seminars and conferences. It will be interesting to hear the outcome of these:
SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES
June 14 - Milan - Italy
Web 2.oltre conference - http://www.web2oltre.it
Our CEO Maurizio Monteverdi/Morris Gabetti will be interviewed by David Orban/Davidorban Agnon on the actual and future strategy of the Gabetti presence in Second Life.
June 19 - Turin - Italy
Mondi Virtuali conference - http://mondivirtuali.top-ix.org/
Matteo Penzo/Matteo Quadrifoglio and Marcello Merlo/Merz Vandeverre will showcase the backstage and the current results of the Gabetti/SL project.
June 22 - Milan - Italy
Virtual Worlds 2007 seminar - http://tinyurl.com/234ykk
The Gabetti/SL team will show case how's creating a business presence in SL, the speech will feature the presence of Carmen and Luciana Gabetti, two of our virtual agents.
A very (very!) short post this one. Resuming my recent riff on Japanese builds I went wandering among the scattered islands of the Great Western Ocean to see what took my eye, and found myself on Japan NGO. This island is very much in its early stages, so does not really give much information away to the visitor yet, though if you are Japanese you will already be able to get a good feel for its purpose.
At present there is a landing zone and a number of website URLs, though these are not yet active links. They all, however, refer to pages within the site http://voluntary.jp, which I take to be targeted at charities in Japan. Further into the island is a small seating area, with a couple of inscribed granite slabs - one in English, one in Japanese. Rather than transcribe (and translate!) the text - you can read it for yourself below:
And that's about it really. There's a number of buildings under construction - but it is too early to tell when the site will be complete. Let's say, a couple of months. :-)
After spending the weekend in the virtual Far East, tonight it was time to visit virtual Central Latin America - Mexico to be precise.
Rather than hack out some lumpen words of my own it seems reasonable to quote liberally from the many notecards that can be picked up here: "Visit Mexico and the Chichen Itza exhibit exist to raise awareness and promote preservation of this ancient world heritage site.
This exhibit attempts to convey an overall feeling of Chichen Itza; however, as a Second Life exhibit, liberties have been taken in creating a visually compelling display. Visitors can explore the ancient architecture on display at Chichen Itza by taking a guided audio tour from the back of a Mayan inspired butterfly or exploring on foot. If you choose not to complete the audio tour you can find information on Chichen Itza by exploring the site and accessing information kiosks placed at various points of interest throughout the exhibit."
"Chichen Itza is currently included in an international campaign known as the New Seven Wonders of the World. Using modern communications technology including the internet, the world’s population is joining together to vote. It is a goal of this project that at the New7Wonders Final Event on 07.07.07 Chichen Itza will be included in the Official Declaration as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World." If you wish to support this effort, there is a voting facility, after which you can pick up a free Mayan warrior and/or princess outfit - or you can vote online here.
As well as the main pyramid, you can visit the sweathouse, the Cenote ( water-filled, limestone sinkhole) and assorted ruins, waterfalls and forest walks, while dragonflies and humming birds flit about your head.
You can also enter inside the pyramid, where there's another pyramid! "It was common practice in Mesoamerican cities to periodically build larger and bigger temple pyramids atop older ones, and this is one such example. Archaeologists discovered a doorway at the base of the north stairway that leads to a tunnel, from which one can climb the steps of the earlier version of El Castillo inside the current one up to the top room where you can see religious Jaguar Throne, carved of stone and painted red with jade spots. The design of the older pyramid inside is said to be a lunar calendar, with the newer pyramid being a solar calendar."
It's an impressive and informative build.
A number of travel organisations have now come to Second Life, but this is the first I've seen that uses quite so many 3-letter abbreviations: SBB CFF FFS. (though mercifully the island name has been shorted to SBB 1). The reason for the 3 sets of initials is easily explained. This is the Swiss Federal Railways (German: SBB, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen; French: CFF, Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses; Italian: FFS, Ferrovie federali svizzere). The nature of the company is apparent when you visit the island, though it is still very much at a formative stage.
You arrive on a station platform, with a carriage waiting for you to board. Adverts link to the railway website. Next to the platform is a sandbox area where you are encouraged to try your hand at making a model railway. Vending machines next to the sandbox supply track of various shapes on demand. Finally there is a terminal for requesting train timetables by use of the SL chat facility. The build is very much in its infancy, and this is as far as it goes at this time. Here are a few images to digest:
The texture used on the railway carriage is over-stretched, resulting in blurring of the text and the the transparant areas used for the windows.
I seem to be on something of a Far Eastern riff this weekend. Here's the latest in this medley of Oriental delights.
I reported a while back on Suruga Bank's then new island in Second Life (as well as name-checking Korea's Acid Crebiz), and have checked back from time to time to see if it was open. Last night, while rambling in the general vicinity I thought I'd give it a pop - and this time I was able to gain access. If you look on a Satellite Map view, the site looks completely black - and there seems to be a good reason for this. The entire site seems to be contained within a huge expanse of blackness. There is no terrain as such, rather a number of coloured discs and something akin to a space station, floating in space against a backdrop of stars. The effect, to my jaded eyes, was refreshingly new and exciting.
A teleport system will take you each of the 3 disks. On two of these you can watch videos, including (what looks like) an introduction to Visa cards and their benefits. I would like to know a bit more about this, since I am off to Tokyo at the end of the month, and have read that credit cards are not widely used for payment. The video goes some way to supporting this assertion, since it does seem to be "Credit Cards 101" - fun though! It made me chuckle a couple of times.
The main theme of the build is "d-labo" (dream laboratory) which links with this website. As far as I can tell, this ties in with the opening of Suruga Bank's new branch (if that is not too small a word) in the prestigious Tokyo Midtown tower. It looks like "d-labo" is either the project name, or the name of the company designing and managing the build in RL. Certainly the Second Life "d-labo" shows many of the features to be found in Real Life. The builders in Second Life seem to be the busy Japanese virtual worlders, Meltingdots (who offer their own portal into SL here). But enough of the blather - to get the idea of the place it is best to view the pictures:
The guy in the video is spouting the virtues of Visa cards.
I think the main aim of this sim is to promote Suruga Bank's opening in Tokyo Midtown. You may argue - largely successfully - that Second Life is not an ideal promotional channel. But be that as it may, I really like this build. It shows a lot of humour and imagination, while also looking to address the client's brief of co-ordinating the SL channel with other promotional channels. If some can explain to me the subtleties of the d-labo website, then I would be grateful!
Way back (in SL terms, at least) at the end of February I mentioned a guy/company that I'd spotted that went by the marvellously surreal name of Acid Crebiz. I have tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to gain access to their/his/her island and tonight I gave it another punt, more in hope than expectation. Well it seems that persistence eventually pays off. OK, much of the island is still "no access" but there's enough there to give me great optimism for the future of Second Life in Korea.
"What? Where's Korea come into this?!" Sorry, if you didn't follow the link above, Acid Crebiz is Korea's first Second Life development company. I assume the island and its new neighbouring sim "Korean Town 1" are intended to showcase their/his/her work. At the moment you might think there's too little to see, with most of the land closed off. But I have to say I think it's fab. OK... I'm a huge fan of detailed, 3D textures - and this island is full of them. I think the look and feel is fantastic - and a great advert for Acid Crebiz. Indeed, for those who care to give it a punt, I would be interested in yout views after comparing this with the Webstar island, blogged earlier tonight. They are quite different - but then so are we, the ramblers of Second Life.
But my main reason for posting this entry is so I can show you the island, and let you draw your own conclusions:
(though my piccies are a bit crap compared to the real thing)
I went the the Southern Seas of Second Life for the first time in a while this evening and stumbled on the island of Webstar, belonging to Japanese 3d computer graphics and web design company... umm.. Webstar. They have a section of their website given over to Second Life, but not being a whizz at any Japanese alphabet* I can only surmise that they will be building on their existing strengths to offer construction and promotion services in Second Life.
The island is an eclectic mix of styles, ranging from beach huts, to an Indian palace and a glass and steel office box, replete with training centre. Then just to add a bit more spice, there is a small fun park with, it must be said, the accent on "park" rather than "fun". The island is well kitted out with meeting areas of all sizes, and at least one dance area. In fact, they've crammed quite a lot into this sim.
For a creative company I have to say I was disappointed. OK, the build quality is better than anything I can manage, but then that's hardly a challenge. But compared to other builders I thought the textures lacked depth and there was a general absence of flair. Also, aside from a link to the website there was little information to be had - well, none that I could find. This is not a brand new island, so any teething problems should have been handled by now. If they host events here - as seems likely - they do not choose to advertise them on the site. So I am left confused as to the purpose of the build, since I think it does no favours to Webstar.
Next door is the TVstation sim, but despite promises of a teleport it did not seem to want to allow me in. So I have no idea what it has to offer. In any event, here's a picture so you can stand a chance of working it out for yourself.
* A situation I need to rectify as I'm off to Japan in 3 weeks time for a holiday!
I've collected a miscellaneous collection of stuff over the last couple of days, some of which I thought I would share with you - not that you'd necessarily find them interesting. First up, here is a friend of mine (in the middle) - no names, no packdrill - who has been well and truly "ruthed". This is normally a temporary state, where an avatar is not able to load its normal settings, and so defaults to Ruth - as it were the "Eve of Virtual Worlds". Perhaps because he was using the SLeek (character-based) viewer for SL, it proved to be a permanent state - at least on this visit to Second Life. His normal avatar is a sedate, white-haired, white-beared man of "a certain age and girth", so he may prefer being Ruth - I just don't know. Behind my friend is Kathleen Millionsofus, while trying to distance himself from this gender confusion is another good friend, VeeJay.
Next is another Firstlook (WindLight) viewer picture - this time of sunset near New Alville. The exotic floating structure isn't mine, but I like the piccy.
Finally, here's some snaps I took at Icarus. TerryAnn (and chums) has been working on a new holodeck room - for mice. In a twitter conversation regarding sleeping arrangements for these members of the family Muridae I had suggested a disused sardine tin. In the event, she was able to whisk up a rather impressive tuna can. The room has a number of fun features, including a picture depicting Schrödinger's cat, and the secret plans for getting cheese without being caught by the cat (peering in through the mousehole). The holodeck is a cool device - and even cooler in the hands of people who know how to use it. Here's a link to an earlier post I did on Icarus - it is a really nice place to visit, and is a great example of what SL residents are doing for themselves.
Now here's hoping that all of these links won't set off the Blogger cret-bots again.
A version of this posting first appeared at 3pointD.
Comcast, the largest provider of cable services in the US — and one of the world’s leading communications companies, providing broadband Internet and a host of other digital services — have had »an island« under development in Second Life what seems like an eternity. I have tried on numerous occasions to gain access, since it looks rather intriguing on the Satellite Map view. Last night I gave it another go, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself standing in front of a teleport board, offering all manner of interesting pursuits. I had not picked up any hints that this site was due to open, and certainly the only other person present when I arrived was a developer, beavering away on various bits of fine tuning.
The build, from Millions of Us, is really too much to describe in one post — but I will give it a go. Most of the island is geared toward entertainment, with much for the seasoned traveller to try out. The main feature is a snaking tubular arrangement, which brought to my mind images of a particularly bizarre accident in a pipe factory. This turns out to be a raceway where up to four players can compete against each other, around three laps of the tubular track, in zippy little flying cars. Unfortunately, as a solo adventurer, I evidently didn’t count as a team and it flatly refused to rez me a race craft*. I had more luck outside, where I took the opportunity to ride (and repeatedly crash) a rather skittish jet-ski. Again, a track has been laid out to allow you and your friends to race these unmanageable brute. In subsequent conversation with Kathleen Millionsofus I whinged about the jet-ski and was informed that it had now been "de-tuned" to a level more suited to an old geezer like me.
I have only highlighted a few of the points of interest, but there is also a display area, a meeting area and a viewpoint. I looked for the jet-pack station, but I was pushed for time and didn’t find it on my first trip. However, on a second jaunt I was able to grab a jet-pack. This, in turn, leads to the rezzing of a number of floating rings that you need to fly through. I assume there's some kind of points scoring involved, but I didn't spend long enough at it to find out.
This will be a fun place to come with friends and just play — perhaps one for the “Things To Do” group in Second Life. I don’t see much sign of Comcast branding, and the purpose is not clear, but it looks to me like Millions of Us may be applying some of the lessons learned from their successful Pontiac Motorati site to provide a community site in Second Life that tallies with Comcast brand values. This would certainly be a more subtle approach, and indeed has been confirmed by the builders, who added that the theme is linked to the current "Comcastic" TV campaign, featuring (I'm told) a shlock 50s sci-fi theme.
I assume we can look forward to an official launch in the near future.
* It turns out that this was due to incorrect land settings - and should now be fixed.
A version of this was first posted at 3pointd.
Anyway - what of the facilities? The bulk of the island is taken up with the virtual Sky News studio. While I am not completely au fait with a news studio, this one certainly matches my mental image of one. There are interview areas, a large presentation screen (a feature of the real-world Sky News studio), and a dais for the anchorpeople. Behind the scenes there are cameras, lighting and sound rigs, desks, autocues, mixer desks and all the other paraphenalia one would expect. The effect is very impressive, in that it looks like a well-rendered visualisation of a real world environment.
And here is the nub of my concern with this build. A lot of energy has been expended in mimicking the real world, but the actual interactive content is low. I could find just one set of Web links, to the Sky News weather Web site, while there is a video headlines stream, re-purposed from the Sky News Web site. Visitors can also cycle through a number of stock news backgrounds (”knife crime”, “education” and so on) on the large presentation screen.
Outside, there are a couple of mockup sets. The first is #10, Downing Street; the second, a cordoned-off police incident tent. I have no issue with the former, but the latter is in dubious taste. Indeed, that oday’s headline video on the web site featured just such an incident tent, but over the spot where a young woman’s body had been found.
In terms of freebies, the key item is a Sky News TV that you can take back to your virtual home, where it will deliver the headlines, showbiz news and weather. You need to have land rights as it achieves this by setting the “media content” field to the relevant Sky News (mp4) clip. These clips could do with a refresh as they appear to be a couple of days old, and not keeping pace with the Web site. The news TV is a cool idea, though I would have preferred it if it was written so as not to fiddle with the media settings on my land.
Rivers Run Red are promising that a lot of new features will appear in the coming weeks. According to Justin Bovington, CEO and Executive Creative Director, quoted on the Ugotrade blog: “A dedicated content team will be on hand for updates — just like breaking news it need to be a 24/7 approach. We’re going recreate scenes when needed. We could in the future reproduce courts etc.”
Given the metaphorical tumbleweed blowing through the site, and the general lack of further real-world involvement since its launch, I am having serious doubts about this. It has all the hallmarks of a one-off event, rather than an ongoing commitment. OK, granted the purpose is to serve up news, so the site characteristics are not key — but without regular traffic the Sky News TV sets will not get distributed, and the Sky “news how you want it” multi-channel initiative will have little impact on Second Life.
UPDATE 8th June:
On 3pointD Peter wrote: "
Aleister,
Again, I have to throw my opinion in here as well. I attended an event last night on the SKY sim, an inciteful and interesting discussion with the SKY Crime correspondent, Martin Brunt. This was excellent, as Mr Brunt took questions and gave us a tour of the SKY NEWS centre. As a Brit, who watches SKY NEWS a lot, it was a treat to get this first hand interation.
Does this start to answer your issue on sustainabliity?"
Answer: Yes. I am pleased that Sky News is showing a sustainable approach. It will be interesting to watch their presence evolve.
This mostly appeared in 3pointD as I've been unable to post for a few days due to a hiatus described above - so despite the official date on this, it was not released into the wild until 4th June.
