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 !

Whilst sitting up on one of the usual late night sessions that working in Second Life brings I also had my TV on. The BBC have a tech feature called Click. The program runs at all times of the day.
However, this episode and interview features Babbage Linden and Mike Butcher from techcrunch.com. The film starts with 1 min 30 secs of SL footage before going into the real life interview.
Copybot(a nice explanation of it to alay fears), land owning millionaires, self regulating content, adult content, teen grid,open sourcing and more importantly new business opportunities and business backlashes.
Babbage makes the very valid point, dont just plonk your business in there, enagage with the community, try and understand the culture(s).
So a good 10 minutes to have a look at and use to help convince people.
I am not sure I liked the sign off at the end, but ignore that ‘joke’ and this makes a very interesting piece.

Its daft, but it only took 3 mins to make. Merry christmas, happy holidays. I’m a tree.

Thankyou snapzilla for being there this year too.

Over at there is an article which mentions that the journalist met a Predator AV who ignored him.
I really dont think this was me 🙂 Unless I was AFK, crashed or lagging or really really busy. I dont usually hang in public space and ignore people as thats just rude.
Admittedly the article is looking at the less business like uses of Second Life, so is after a shock angle.
I think many people are learning how to communicate in this environment. I am sure that walking up to a real life predator would not solicit a positive vocal response.
So if it was, by any chance epredator potato, I apologize.