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

I happened upon a post on mind hacks about morphing an average face from lots of faces. I really like morphing images, even its a very 80’s pop video thing. So naturally it seemed a good idea to see who I was, on average, in Second Life.
This has led to a spate of these, so expect to see some unsual eightbar images in the next few weeks. Roo has some classics in the pipeline. Not all Second Life related.

The set of images on flickr had a comment that led to SqirlzMorph

Another odd chain of events. I have mindhacks RSS feed because Daz said he did not like that sort of thing, this led to a morphing post that caught my eye, to a piece of software used by a flickr user that I then talked to Roo about as we were in the office which led to a hey Second Life avatars that might work, which then got posted on youtube, and blogged here.

I think I am blending a little bit a la Eric Rice

I am currently enjoying the SL time shift and watching Walker, Catherine, Wagner and Aimee doing an event about the ‘book’
Aimee and I had some fun with the book cover whilst waiting



There were lots of good questions, the odd sim problem that kept us all amused and a good vibe. Plus I like the book so it was a nice addition to be able to hang with the authors and stars and a whole host of ’03’s as well

Once again 3pointd has found something interesting. This time we do have a bit of a headsup on this. QEDWiki is a situational application building tool. The basic premise is to use the principles of a Wiki but allowing people to pull in services and feeds as part of the wiki.
The wiki approach lets people pull together a mashup and then share it with others. In a business context the aim is to do the same thing as tends to happen with shared spreadsheets. Business people often are happy to build a spreadsheet with some business information pasted in then share that with collegues. To many of us this is Web 2.0 mentality anyway, it is a natural rearranging of data and sharing of data. Now remove the cut and paste of the data, make it a live feed, place it in a Web 2.0 browser context and you have a situational application builder.
In many of the Web 2.0 presentations we do we have been explaining QEDWiki and alike for the past year as it comes out of the Emerging Technology organization that serveral of the Hursley eightbar crew are part of or have been part of.
One conversation point is usually around the reliability of the feeds and mashup sources that a business user may pull together. What happens when in meeting the requirement for a business problem the mashup becomes so important that it is a business critical system? (it is going to happen) What happens if a public feed, a mapping system for example, is no longer is available?
These are very valid points, but I regard the mashup as a very quick way to solve an immediate problem and protoype things that, then need to be hardened into a business application. It is much better than an esoteric design document that is full of theory.
I have often related Second Life to a mashup application too. Its ability to absorb feeds and data from the web, and to share in real time with other users fits the same model.