Over at out to pasture Giff from the Electric sheep has written about the Text 100 Second Life island. Text 100 are a very large PR firm. This is a case of wheels within wheels as the article is about a piece of machinima that Text100 have done to show businesses the value of Second Life. Ironically the eightbar team are busy creating our version of one of those.
Also I was contacted a few weeks ago, by a representative of Text 100 as IBM is one of their clients. You may see the IBM logo on their Second Life build in various places in ads and films.
They were asking me what the point of Second Life was, and to be able to give them why I and more recently ‘we’ were interested and active in Virtual Worlds, so that we could do a press interview. It is good to see these sorts of firms representing themselves in this space too.
Once again the direction and trend mirrors that of the original web, though moves much quicker, as certain sectors discover what they can do in Second Life.
The build, which has a very ESC distinctive feel is unusual in that it is floating islands and strange angles. So it does break the mould a little.

I am not sure why all our favourites are on the wall, but no eightbar. Oh well never mind.

Over at 3dpoint there is a very good article (as per usual) on the Virtual Worlds session at Austin. These examinations of where we currently are, what the key players in the new industry are thinking and saying are important words at a pivotal time. Also they gel with my thinking on the subject. I first put up MMORPG on a post-it note brain storm session back 2000. I had no idea we would be where we are today on 2006! I certainly was not expecting that my job title would have become “metaverse evangelist” and that I would be working in this medium full time.
As a company we have a number of key things going on both internally an externally. I wont let the virtual cat out of the virtual bag just yet though as I am just about to go on holiday for a week, and shock, horror, I am likely to be totally off the grid. So far in the past 6 months it seems something new, interesting and pivotal has happened almost every day. I hope, as the article says, I can keep up with the rapid changes.

Jeff Barr has had a nice blog report written up over at the click heard around the world
He also mentions that he drove the event at the NMC campus, in his virtual Toyota Scion as created by millions of us
I have to admit, being in the UK I have no idea what a Scion is.
It is of interest though as I cut my web teeth back in 1997-2000 on the Vauxhall website, where we did lots of interesting firsts as IBM, including trying to do what Second Life is doing with a small start up from iceland called Smartvr. Just a few years too early. I also remember at Hursley a Ford Galaxy demo with an old style VR helmet.
Aagin this goes to show that the ideas have been around but now the technology is maturing to teh point that Jeff can drive an accurate model of his car to an event and also pitch his companies web services to an audience he can see.

Christian Westbrook of the Electric Sheep Company has written about a text to speech application that he created. He cites the fact he had missed blogging about his babel fish translator and that Yossarian Seattle had got all the press for his translator HUD 🙂
We had been talking about voice to text but we have been beaten to it in this case.
It will certainly benefit from the soon to come change for http requests per object, assuming thats how it works.
Its well worth a l$25 rating for building skill.

As has been reported in a number of places politicians are starting to come to the metaverse. I will be politically neutral here. However it does bring up something that a few of us were discussing the other day.
We met with Asif Noorani from Epiphany Productions, to discuss how we work in Second Life and show some of our other projetcs off in the Real World. Asif mentioned he was a big fan of the West Wing and one way and another that led us to a mad idea. Many of the meetings in Second Life tend to be people gathering in spaces and staying still.
Now in West Wing much of the interaction happens in fast bursts as the characters walk down the coridoors.
So what if we just replicated a coridoor/conveyor belt for a specific type of meeting. i.e. rather than those with a fixed place, or the ad hoc instant messaging across places. When you want someone’s full attention for 30 seconds to 1 minute then both teleport to the West Wing coridoor.
You are giving one another the ability to have full attention, and indicating that by your presence but you are also indicating that this will be fleeting, yet you still have avatar expressions and non verbal exchanges whilst walking.
It very easy to build in Second Life, but what other new meeting metaphors are there out there?

Its about 30 mins until the u2 in sl event. Being at 4pm SLT it’s a bit late, even in a holiday weekend for a uk visit. However I am a bit of fan and like to support things like this. I have done the tourist thing…..

I have also had a little play at being in the band

The crazy thing people may not understand is that their presence and way of arriving at these event puts load on the server

Normal webservers each person connecting puts on an equal amount of load. But here you can arrive and exhibit your personality with bling and prims attached to you that add processing load to the server.

UPDATE: It was a great event, they kept it initmate to 70 people, so the lag was minimal. The crowd certainly got into it. Another great event

Yossarian Seattle one of eightbar’s prominent builders and scripters will be off the grid for a few weeks as he is getting married today. In Real Life I might add.
Over at new world notes there is a great article about Yossarian’s language HUD on New World Notes. This recognition is a great wedding present for him, and I am sure Second Life will feature in his best mans speech.
Whilst very active on Hursley private Island Yossarian has gone out and explored and worked with the rest of Second Life too.
As a keen photgrapher and flickr user has has created a very nice gallery located next to the superb newbie centre of New Citizens Inc at Kuula. This is landmark I send everyone starting to get to grip with Second Life as they join eightbar.
Anyway, congratulations for Mr & Mrs Seattle to be.

In this excellant write up on 3dpoint.com Mitch Kapor’s speech at the Second Life Community Conference gets an airing.
The short term and long term impacts are discussed, but it is clear that Mitch Kapor knows a disruptive technology when he sees one.
Also on his own blog