Ginger Mandelbrot, a Hursley master inventor of some note has created something that I found fascinating both in Second Life and with real life potential.
He has built a ticking, rotating slat machine in Second Life to prototype an amazing cool idea.
The “timeframe”, currently previewing on Hursley private island ticks over the seconds using a collection of black and white slats, not unlike an old fashioned notice board. It represents, each second, a unique point in time by the status of the slats. This is also a date not just a time, and that is important as you will see.
In this video you can see CJ, Ginger and I waiting for a significant slat rotation.

Here is a still of a point in time on the timeframe from snapzilla

I asked Ginger to explain his thoughts on this, and this is where it gets really clever the second quote for the non unix geeks.

“The TimeFrame displays good-old geeky Unix time, which started on 1-Jan-1970, and will count the seconds until a fateful day in Jan 2038 when it rolls over the 31st digit and either goes very negative, or back to zero again, depending on how your applications decide to handle it. There will be (or was, depending on when you read this) a fairly momentous moment on 20th March this year at 15:38 GMT, when the 26th digit rolls over. The 27th digit won’t roll over until Apr 2008. ”

“it’s a piece of “conceptual art” that has a genuine purpose (unusual!). I’ve been thinking about it for a while, as something to build in FL, but it would be quite hard to build and expensive, so I thought I’d prototype it in SL so I could see if it’s really as cool as I imagine it’s going to be! It’s basically a clock, inspired by those indicator boards they sometimes have at train stations, with the slats that flip over with that lovely clacking sound. It’s reallly hypnotic to watch, but also has a real purpose: do you know when Google Earth did the last fly-by of your house? No, of course not. But if you have a TimeFrame in your garden, then next time you get snapped by a satellite or a fly-over, you’ll have a lovely bar-coded timestamp right there on the photo!”

So did you get that, you put one of these in your real life garden, and you get a unique timestamp of anything that takes a photo. Of course it works in SL too. I am going to run one as a HUD. A unique barcode timestamp on any picture.

When you think about this, which I have now, you have to say wow!

***Update
A timeframe has been placed on IBM 1 on Hughes Marina outside the Virtual Universe Community clubhouse

Whilst doing a long 2 hour customer demo I happened to be flying around the IBM islands. You may think that I must know everything that is going on but the joy of discovery still pervades the metaverse with so much happening.

I noticed Timeless “multigadget” Prototype’s excellent London Eye build on IBM 3. Its well worth a look. I had hooked Timeless up with Boris Frampton and the greater IBM guys, but had not yet seen the eye arrive anywhere.

I saw it originally as a part of the Walk for Life charity event last year.

Take a look when you get a chance its very good secondlife://IBM+3/132/193/139/

Picture from Snapzilla
Whilst on Timeless have a look at Adam’s article over at Reuters about the real life multigadget that someone has created.

I should have blogged about this earlier the official red nose day site has a link to some real red nose places for comic relief in Second Life
We should have all done this as a UK based charity with a world impact.
So its not too late come get a tshirt

* Oli Itoku’s House (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mindulle/12/197/137)
* Corro Moseley @ Daden Limited(http://slurl.com/secondlife/nari/15/240/125)
* Valentino’s Design Studios (http://slurl.com/secondlife/achado/231/165/88)

One way and another epredator in Kaneva managed to get on the early beta so I have been wandering around the new virtual environment. Or as has been pointed out myspace with 3d.
I am sure that this will get a lot of press and be very popular, but as 3pointd points out, it is another place you have to upload content to and seems less geared to the mashup culture that we have all become used to.
However, that did not stop me. Last night I adorned my mini apartment with a picture of me in Second Life.

I also managed to set up eightbar as a private group and get us a conference room.
What it really lacks for me personally though is the creative freedom that we have in Second Life. The ability to change anything, build anything, express anything is lost at the moment in something like Kaneva. or There.com
I am sure that will change as more worlds emerge, but it really is a key part. Its the difference between a website and wiki. It would appear to also be like PS3 Home in that regard.
This is not wrong, companies want to own the brand experience, and provide support and control. However in this self organizing wave we have now I am not sure it is enough? Just my virtual tuppeny.

I have had lots of conversations recently about where things are, where they are hosted what platform they are on. This applies not just to metaverse conversations but photos, films and mobile devices.
Whilst there is clearly a current technical need for things to exist somewhere, either as part of a service or just personal storage the concepts of grid computing and peer to peer networks are likely to start to help us not consider where and what version, but just what do we have. This applies in a business and creative context.
Take this image for instance from snapzilla (which I read is about to have a major upgrade too)
Now, does it matter the path we took to get this photo? It happens to be a real life photo of Stae Youngs car on a texture in Second Life with epredator potato standing in front of it and the snapshot mailed through to snapzilla.
The services are all there to choose the way to make this composite image, and it also represents a point in time event in a metaverse.
However, I could have used photoshop to composite up the photo. I could have used green screen and a video to matte the two together the list goes on.
The point is the image is there, has some provenance and story behind it as part of a conversation Stae Young and I were having on a private Second Life island. Its now part of this blog entry so is being built upon.
If we can move data and creations around like this, in an easy way then we are able to combine things, as with mashups, to create things we need wherever or whenever we need them.
Does it matter is this is Second Life with a picture in it?, or some metaverse as a plugin in a browser? No not really. It matters that it was quick, simple and the “place” we both happened to be at the same time to allow us to have and document this conversation and collaboratively produce this picture.

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.