Over on 3pointd Mark Wallace has a piece on the news relating to a BBC childrens version of a Metaverse/Second Life.
Personally this is great news as with a toddler who already thinks her websites are not good as “daddy’s work”. She occassionally sees a screen and says “daddy is that man you” alsowith another one on the way any moment now it is nice to think I will be able to share my kids exploration of all things metaverse and say “I remember when all this was fields”. As well as atleast in part understanding the whole point of this, but hopefully without putting them off the whole thing.
The BBC have a very forward thinking view on many things and a noticeably high quality output of childrens entertainment and education.
I wonder if I can finally get a blue peter badge as a metaverse evangelist?

Some of you may have already visited the Lotusphere build or read about it over at the Second Life Insider
IBM 9 is the place to be to see the Lotusphere pavillion
I was over taking some shots this morning for this post and have already met some very interesting people. Which is after all one of the main benefits of a metaverse. Visiting places and events and experiencing the presence of others there with you.
So here are some snapzilla shots of the build. I am sure the Sim will get very full, but please keep trying and see who you can meet and greet.
There are the rest of the 12 islands attached to have spin off meetings too. Just look at the main map and search for IBM as a region name.

****Update
The SL elements are shown in the video key note

Lots of green dots too

I know I am slightly biased, but this is a very good article in Fortune that covers a great deal of why we all think metaverses like Second Life are so important in all sorts of ways.
For many people this will help answer some of the questions. It is certainly the reference article I will point many people to when I can’t give a personal explanation.
Of course there are more questions to discover the answer too and thats the journey we are all on.

The article with Raph from Areae talking to Aleks Krotoski at Guardian Unlimited which I saw referenced over on 3pointd makes for interesting reading. Though we do not know what Areae will actually turn out as we know that its creators have quite a track record in MMO’s.
Mark Wallace at 3pointd highlights the need for these various metaverses, as they appear, to be able to network with one another in the same way we have seen the rise of the web 2.0 api for people to mash into their own creations. The interconnected nature of the web can no longer sustain overly insular applications. The attraction into Second Life was pretty much cemented by the ability to get data in an out of the environment which then got a lot better with the implementation of http in LSL
This is certainly of interest to us eightbar members here in Hursley which is the home of messaging. Also with Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) being a key design decision implemented throughout many new systems there is not reason to not apply this pattern to metaverses and creations within them.
Even many of our buildings are using the SOA hub template that is populated with much more information on SOA over on our IBM islands in SL.

Image from snapzilla

The official guide to Second Life was something that I initially thought might turn out to be a reprint of the help. It is however much more than that.
I ended up buying it becuase I wanted to a) Have it as a historical piece of memoriabilia and b) becuase of the people who were contributing to it, Mark Wallace of 3pointd , Wagner James Au of New World Notes and Cory from Linden to name but a few.
It is fascinating looking through a book seeing the people you have been talking with, or whose work you have experienced in print.
It was a pity not to see eightbar or any IBM references in there, but maybe that is for the reprint 🙂
It is good that this exists and great that it explains some of the history, ethos and community nature of Second Life. It will help some of the people come to understand SL through reading and then experiencing a metaverse.

I have spent quite a large amount of time with people explaining why Second Life really is not a game. However I do usually point out you can do game like things in it.
So along comes Smokin’ Aces at virtual NBC by the electric sheep.
***Update There is some video over on out to pasture
Now imagine you wanted to immerse people in the story of a film. What normally happens is lots of money is spent buying a licence of a game for a game developer. Then elements of the movie are pulled into a game, with historically mixed results.
Smokin’ Aces is about hired assasins tracking down a target. Now, they team have created a nice rendition of that concept. Players look like they wear a HUD and are given targets. The targets are the other players with HUD’s whilst they are wearing them.
They then have to be tracked down across the entire grid.
The bounty is l$, a.k.a. real money.
Nice ideas such as “Players will have the ability to arm/disarm their HUD at any time to allow their normal (Second) lives to carry on. However, to avoid deception and encourage gameplay, each time a player disarms their HUD, a 10% reduction will be taken from their bounty.” from the instruction site bring some new ideas to gameplay and SL existence.
Maybe its time for an alt to avoid being targetted too much as a member of eightbar 🙂
The game runs from 12th January to 26th January.

Well its just a few minutes, but we have IBM, Hursley and IQ on the television with Paul Mason of newsnight.
Its available to watch here first it the article marked virtual death
****Update You can also read it here and part 2 here
The piece is aiming at delving deeper into who we are online.
There are actually more frames of my 3d print than of me, but thats not a bad thing.
So we get the real Hursley build and Yossarians virtual one on the telebox.
So from about 7mins 20 to 9mins 15 you get to see some other IBM virtual stars and lots of shots of the real fabjectory printed version of the virtual me.

I have been meaning to write about our IBM Sears/CES 07 build this week but I have actually had a bit of trouble finding the time to take the screen shots. However 3pointd have a great write up. Millions of us also stopped by and rebang has a great post too which has a great follow up on home cnc
The build has been getting a lot of interest and so when epredator potato is standing around outside the entrance I have found it much more useful to have some conversations with the passers by, but have not made it in to take the snapzilla shots that I could adorn this post with.
Here I only managed to get as far as the door and bumped into Ultravox Freeman who was busy for us with the team at CES 07 showing all the work and getting very worn out.
My photo shoot of all the great work turned into a CES 07 remote personal appearance on a big screen instead.

I got as far as a kitchen

The whole concept is one of discovering how to help people preview goods in their environment. We have this in a sort of different way with kitchen design firms who come to your house, measure up and render some shots for you on their laptop. This does not replace that but adds to the concept.
This was also built over the christmas holidays, as a few other things you will see soon were, by an ever growing band of people.
It has been great to see such a team rally around and dive into this the past year and the future looks great too.

Well done to the Boris Frampton et al for getting the christmas party going on the IBM 12 islands.
I was working at home and had a few network problems so kept rezzing in and out in my tacky tree costume.

Anyway it was a very packed event.

 
Look at all those green dots !

There were tutorials
A sleigh to ride (thats me as a tree having a ride)

Ice skating

Cool Christmas costumes such as Laina Fallon

There was also a whole load of dancing in the greaterIBM sim Snapzilla pictures of that got lost my network trauma.
Ever seen a tree breakdance. Well you will have to imagine now.

We had several sims maxed out and some overflow to the others so a good few hundred people around.
It was a very rewarding experience to see so many people turn up and join in.
Well done all again !