Whilst doing a long 2 hour customer demo I happened to be flying around the IBM islands. You may think that I must know everything that is going on but the joy of discovery still pervades the metaverse with so much happening.

I noticed Timeless “multigadget” Prototype’s excellent London Eye build on IBM 3. Its well worth a look. I had hooked Timeless up with Boris Frampton and the greater IBM guys, but had not yet seen the eye arrive anywhere.

I saw it originally as a part of the Walk for Life charity event last year.

Take a look when you get a chance its very good secondlife://IBM+3/132/193/139/

Picture from Snapzilla
Whilst on Timeless have a look at Adam’s article over at Reuters about the real life multigadget that someone has created.

I should have blogged about this earlier the official red nose day site has a link to some real red nose places for comic relief in Second Life
We should have all done this as a UK based charity with a world impact.
So its not too late come get a tshirt

* Oli Itoku’s House (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mindulle/12/197/137)
* Corro Moseley @ Daden Limited(http://slurl.com/secondlife/nari/15/240/125)
* Valentino’s Design Studios (http://slurl.com/secondlife/achado/231/165/88)

One way and another epredator in Kaneva managed to get on the early beta so I have been wandering around the new virtual environment. Or as has been pointed out myspace with 3d.
I am sure that this will get a lot of press and be very popular, but as 3pointd points out, it is another place you have to upload content to and seems less geared to the mashup culture that we have all become used to.
However, that did not stop me. Last night I adorned my mini apartment with a picture of me in Second Life.

I also managed to set up eightbar as a private group and get us a conference room.
What it really lacks for me personally though is the creative freedom that we have in Second Life. The ability to change anything, build anything, express anything is lost at the moment in something like Kaneva. or There.com
I am sure that will change as more worlds emerge, but it really is a key part. Its the difference between a website and wiki. It would appear to also be like PS3 Home in that regard.
This is not wrong, companies want to own the brand experience, and provide support and control. However in this self organizing wave we have now I am not sure it is enough? Just my virtual tuppeny.

I have had lots of conversations recently about where things are, where they are hosted what platform they are on. This applies not just to metaverse conversations but photos, films and mobile devices.
Whilst there is clearly a current technical need for things to exist somewhere, either as part of a service or just personal storage the concepts of grid computing and peer to peer networks are likely to start to help us not consider where and what version, but just what do we have. This applies in a business and creative context.
Take this image for instance from snapzilla (which I read is about to have a major upgrade too)
Now, does it matter the path we took to get this photo? It happens to be a real life photo of Stae Youngs car on a texture in Second Life with epredator potato standing in front of it and the snapshot mailed through to snapzilla.
The services are all there to choose the way to make this composite image, and it also represents a point in time event in a metaverse.
However, I could have used photoshop to composite up the photo. I could have used green screen and a video to matte the two together the list goes on.
The point is the image is there, has some provenance and story behind it as part of a conversation Stae Young and I were having on a private Second Life island. Its now part of this blog entry so is being built upon.
If we can move data and creations around like this, in an easy way then we are able to combine things, as with mashups, to create things we need wherever or whenever we need them.
Does it matter is this is Second Life with a picture in it?, or some metaverse as a plugin in a browser? No not really. It matters that it was quick, simple and the “place” we both happened to be at the same time to allow us to have and document this conversation and collaboratively produce this picture.

Epredator Potato nearly managed to get (virtually) to a fellow Eightbar affiliate members sessions at the sxsw conference. The electric sheep were screen burning it into Second Life but a slight time calculation problem meant I missed the session.
I wanted to be there as my ex Wimbledon Collegue John Ascent Stage Tolva was chairing a session on Business Models for Virtual Worlds. Also on the panel was Eric Rice so it all seemed very relevant, socially linked and very interesting. I had been following it all on twitter during the lead up. Luckily 3pointd covered it properly, and I managed to get along to sheep island albeit to chat to the assembled crowd including Sir Babbage of Linden.
Lets hope I dont mess up the same way at Virtual Worlds 2007 as I should be there in molecular form.

This is being reported all over the place and may be quite a coup for Sony and the PS3. They have unveiled the first shots and stories around a ‘free’ virtual world that PS3 owners will be able to use and interact with via the Cell powered game console.
Some of the finer details will come out in time, it would appear that it certainly tries to trump the Xbox 360 Live service and achievements by placing game awards and bragging rights in your digital world aparment for your friends to come on by and see with you.
3Pointd has some footage, also Eric Rice has some links other coverage such as this MTV article hint and even more of the depth and attempt to contrast with what we have in Second Life.
We have had a bit of a buzz on twitter about it tonight too, and an important point Aidy rasied around how closed the platform is likely to be from content creation and external data feeds. After all if it gets too easy to build things then that would challenge the games content?
If it does have mashup power too though, this could become a very interesting angle on virtual worlds and enhance its acceptance even more.
I usually pitch about the Playstation generation entering the workforce, knowing how to move and kill in 3d so easily accepting business applications in the metaverse. Well now the PS3 generation will know how to move and socialize and work in 3d metaverses too.
All that and Lego are planning a virtual world too, which is linked in terms of generational acceptance and expectancy of the presence of virtual worlds. Construction fits into the Lego concept, and fuels the the post PS3 generation. Also lets face it we all still love Lego. Though Roo used to trade rare Lego on ebay so he wins on the Lego front.
Having a generational migration path through the various platforms, some for play some for work, raises all the questions about how we represent ourselves in each and how we are able to move between them. Is the answer meta conversations like twitter or a morphing portal between worlds that prepares you like the apparent ritual of leaving the Second Life teen grid when you come of age?
Its going to be interesting finding all this out.

A good number of my collegues, Yossarian, Idz and Copter to name but a few have started making movies. It is an art form that I am very interested in as I used to do things with cine cameras and film splicing when I was a lad.
Before getting to the art of it, you have to figure out a few technical things. In my case a new computer with dual graphics cards helps greatly.
Having changed machine my old editing software is no longer, so I am just seeing what I got prebundled.
Either way, we now have youtube to show things 🙂

It was in glorious HD but of course gets a bit crunched for the web.

BBC Click interviews our extended Eightbar family with Zygmunt Lozinski, an IBM master inventor in Barcelona at the 3GSM conference, about Second Life
The film and interview is about what really got us interested with Second Life in the first place. The ability to communicate out and communicate in.
There is a fly through of the junkyard playpen that is Hursley and IQ in Second Life, with some shots of what is left of Wimbledon, Hammy’s Tower and some of the odd bits and pieces. On the TV the eightbar specialist group name is clearly seen, a little harder on the web version.
It then moves to the public IBM islands where a stand was created to communicate with the real stand at 3GSM through mobile devices.
As Zygmunt points out being connected anytime anywhere should not be restricted to the physical world, but can encompass the virtual.
The programme website is here with a watch now button. When it moves to the archive I will update this article.
The time indexes to catch this are 21:10 to 23:13 on the video.
It fits with many of the things we talk to everyone about, then blend from web 2.0, the connectedness of things. It also makes a change for it not to be me or Roo on the TV 🙂
Sorry again if the BBC usage policies mean that its hard to get to watch this elsewhere.

Several things reminded me of the fun I had with Quest For Fame a game that had IBM all over its packaging way back.
Primarily it was the appearance of Steven Tyler of Aerosmith at the brits then on various radio shows. Quest for Fame in its jazzed up version had Aerosmith songs in it, real ones and the band in cut out film form. QFF was a bemani style guitar game, with a very clever plectrum. The plectrum let you rock on a tennis racket and strum with the music. It made for both the need for real rythm in a guitar context (just you did not need to do the chords) but it also pulled you into the song and made you a part of it.
The other thing that had me thinking about this was Daz and how much he likes guitar hero plus I am looking forward to this making its way to the 360.
With all the inventive Wii control excitement, our diving into virtual worlds Second Life etc and producing chips for all the major games consoles maybe it is time for Quest for Fame to make a comeback?
I need to see if I can find my old plectrums, plug them in and get them pumping data into one of the many cool Second Life instruments.

Over at Rebang there is a post and video of some of the work Lucasarts are doing with their Kinematic and situationally aware character engines. For those of us who are software engineers, gamers and a little bit artistic we appreciate the depth of work that goes into producing systems like this.
Recently we have had several conversation relating to the lack of this sort of physics modelling in Second Life. Many of the more techie of us are busy building little skeletons and physics models that in normal game engines would be part of the middleware.
Now there is some element of intellectual challenge and coding and design art to this. However if we had the middleware for better simulations and physics modelling we could then spend the time on the valuable applications.
One example is a slow burn sideline project sparked by some of my collegues. One of being able to use sign language in Second Life. The basic avatar is not equipped to deal with the subtle movements required. So I have started to build some hands. Of course this then has led to having to start to build a joint structure. Anyone who has used poser of avmitor will know how usefull if is to be able to just position arms and legs allowing for the actual joints, aka kinematics


The hands also can have another use, for those of you who remember kenny everett’s TV
shows