I managed to turn up late to Adam Reuters interview with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime today. There was a good crowd when I got there and a few of us who sat not having pressed play on the audio feed. I feel such a Noob!
So I was not surprised I did not get my question in, which equally for Nintendo of America may not have been relevant. I managed to miss the 7 minute window on Amazon in the UK that took the preorders for a Nintendo Wii. This was a bit dissapointing, but I was on the page from 9am but had to do some work and managed to miss the 7 minutes that the console was available.
The Wii is yet another console powered by an IBM processor, like the 360 and the PS3, so I should have viewed getting one as work, but Second Life got on the way.
I also wanted to ask if Nintendo will mind seeing Avatars that look like the Wii Mii that people will be able to create on the Wii. Large bobble headed manga style AV’s


All pictures from Snapzilla
At the event I bumped into Moo Money who asked me if I had received her IM. It is slightly unfortunate that my two islands tend to notify my of things not being able to be dynamically created because they are so full with my fellow eightbar members builds. This in turn caps my IM message delivery and so I tend to loose a lot of IM’s. Now my home email gets them, but as I have been busy inviting the now 600th eightbar member my mail tends to fill with “has accepted inventory offer” combined with “object x has exceeded parcel limit”. So in the middle of all that and the other spam I tend to miss some requests from people. I apologize and will get on top of that!

A while back I bought some Scions from Toyota. I had not blogged about them much, but as Algernon was doing a demo I thought I would perform in front of his audience. Its flippant, but only took a few mins, what I need now is some buses.



All pictures from snapzilla

I recently did an interview with Lukas Chadbourne over at the Second Life News Network
Lukas has put it together into a very nice article, so thankyou Lukas.
Also Irving WB has joined us in Second Life as he writes on his blog.

Picture from snapzilla

Rob Lawrence of dna.co.uk, who used to work with us all here as Creative Director sent me this link to Sketch Furniture by FRONT.
Using 3d motion capture in real space, capturing the sketch and putting it off to a 3d printer.
This is the sort of advance we will start seeing as we all become more accepting of 3d. Which used to be afew skilled designers with high end workstations, but now is open to many more people.
Imagine sculpting Second Life objects in real space, let alone printing them out.
We have lots of people who are now navigating 3d space in SL, and feeling that the mouse and keyboard inetrfaces are restrictive. We have had to adapt to using the keyboards and mice but many more styles of interaction are just around the corner, and commercially viable. You only have to look at the wii controller.
I am sure as the MMO clients get more open source we will see more stylish and human friendly interaction with the building tools and ways to explore the space.
So just as many other things are all reaching maturity at the same time to create this user created, 3d, multi user experience metaverse experience (which used to be VR) its time to start looking at all those haptic devices again.

Well done to our IBM Virtual Universe Community on arranging another great event. This time the halloween helpfest.
It is great to have a theme, and one so well suited to Second Life.
Lots of people have been showing up in all sorts of cool costumes with gadgets galore.
The pictures explain it a lot more, but it was great seeing Judge work the crowd into a frenzy of pumpkin building, whilst the rest of us went around showing off
Whilst the subject matter is fun, the reasons are serious, as a social networking and learning experience it has grown our community a bit more, and let people gte more up to speed on what can be done. It would be very unlikely to get all those people in the same physical space for a 30-60 minute gathering.
No avatars were harmed during the course of this party.


I was very much enjoying my new AFK animation, involving the gallows from “Sick-N-Wrong” (just search in world you cant miss them and my blood gushing from Nicka whippet

Someone got killed

With this crowd who knows who did it !



Lots more pictures on including these on snapzilla

I was really happy to see Aimee Weber’s post on 3d Weather Visualization over on the Second Life Herald.
Partly becuase people kept asking me if I could do rain clouds over the Wimbledon build instead of my single line of text, and partly because real data and pushing that into Second Life is the main reason I and my eightbar collegues started in Second Life.
The principle of using Second Life as a Situational Application (or in web 2.0 parlance a Mashup) builder seemed obvious to me and it is good to see these builds appearing. Ok so its only a mashup if it is next door to another data driven application. But as we know with SL its very easy to rez two builds together.
By combining the tech feeds with Aimee’s talent for building has created something way more engaging.
We do off course need a UK one as we are the most obsessed about weather, then I can rez a working tennis court next door to one and have a full mashplication working.

With the advent of services such as fabjectory and now having come across this fab@home on the rebang blog it would seem we are beginning to get the glimmers of where all this Second Life and metaverse technology may take us.
What was holding back home fabrication was a way to create and distrubute 3d models suitable for home fabrication. We previously had also been lacking the social, open source, user created content skills and acceptance of this being a way to work. Now we have the collision of both, Second Life an ability to share and experience 3d models, and easier ways to build in 3d and then eaiser ways to fabricate.
There may be environmental reasons to home fabricate, or at least local area fabrication. Whilst the fabrication materials have to be shipped to the point of use they must travel much more efficiently that odd shaped products on a lorry. Consumers also have to travel less distance in order to receive their product. True the fabrication units are using electricity and chemicals, but I am sure that a trade off and carbon footprint can be established and measured for this.
If nothing else we are learning to all be both consumers and providers of service. Its very “Long Tail” to consider selling specialized things, one or two in a run to customers who really want the widget.
If nothing else the need to hold products, to feel form factor and to have an increased attachment to the experience whether in Second Life or Real Life will drive this to a commercial size proposition.
I would love Yossarian’s Hursley House printed out on my desk.

I really want my custom Reeboks from SL in RL.

All images from Snapzilla

I have put a video on you tube of a quick walk through some of the Wimbledon demo from back in June.
It was not a major machinima production but just to preserve the “old” ideas before we use the space for anything new and improved.

Here come Nissan to SL courtesy of the electric sheep and Tequila\.
I had to go to bed early last night, so I was not on the grid, not on Second Life. This was because I had a customer session to go to in London, which needed a 5:30 am start to get up and going. That also meant I was not on SL until 1pm here in Southbank.
So the phrase the early bird catches the worm really does not apply to this case.
As I logged onto SL and my Firefox Sage RSS feeds whirred into life I was sent a note by the Counting Sheep Group and saw the Out to Pasture post, telling me Nissan had now opened an island, and in SL had sent a nice car to me.
I have an affinity for all things automotive, especially having been part of the IBM Vauxhall web team for many of the formative years of the web. So I was straight over there (after I had rezzed my own car to check it out).

This is more of a stop press post as I have not explored yet, but saw this wonderful device as I arrived.

Yes a car dispenser. Lovely idea, and very well implemented. On its own it was worth the visit.