The Metaverse

links for 2008-02-26

• WSE abandons Linden Dollars
  "Luke Connell's 'fictional' stock exchange, the World Stock Exchange (or WSE) has abandoned the use of Linden Dollars for reasons which seem a little confused and unclear other than apparently fear, uncertainty and doubt."
  (tags: secondlife finance wse economics)
• Class Action Against Second Life Brautigan & Tuck Holdings?
  More fall-out from the occasionally-shady world of Second Life businesses - this time, a potential class action suit against an alleged ponzi scheme.
  (tags: secondlife finances economics crime)
• A 3D struggle: Immersion vs Usability
  An interesting post on how interfaces and usability affect the ability to truly immerse yourself in a virtual world.
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds)

Broader View: New Media Consortium and Sun Microsystems to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project | KnowProSE.com

Broader View: New Media Consortium and Sun Microsystems to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project | KnowProSE.com:

"One of the weaknesses of worlds such as Second Life is their inability to handle collaborative works with data. OpenSim, the community open source project that is beginning to rival Second Life, has HTML on a prim - but is HTML enough? We're really talking about a difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, as much as I hate those terms. I can haz AJAX?"

I never have really understood the obsession with HTML on a prim within virtual worlds, let alone AJAX. Until you have totally immersive VR, the virtual world experience is always going to be like any other application - in a window, on a screen with other windows along side it. And in those other windows, you can run other applications.

Of course, it's neat to be able to collaborate with other avatars in a virtual space. But does that offer a better user experience than simply using document collaboration tools like, say, Google Docs? Or shared workspaces? I think the answer is "no" - and until we have immersive VR, I think that's going to stay the case.

links for 2008-02-21

• IBM Creates the Chic Accessory for Designers IBM - TheStreet TV
  IBM tools for fashion in Second Life...
  (tags: IBM SecondLife fashion)

links for 2008-02-17

• Second Life on the eeePC
  Lordfly manages to get the tiny Asus running Second Life. Personally, I'd prefer to see a text-only client, but in the meantime.. this will do!
  (tags: secondlife asus eeepc)

realXtend gets up and running

realXtend joins OpenSim:

"OpenSim is a free and open standard virtual world server founded at the beginning of 2007 by a small group of developers. The OpenSim platform can be used for creating and deploying immersive 3D Virtual Interactive Environments. The realXtend project's mission is to assist in bringing forth the next generation of virtual reality development by focusing on interoperability technologies, usability and real-life application support. realXtend brings to OpenSim professional experience and development in the realm of 3D engine programming, voice over IP and network support, and is contributing many new features such as improved 3D graphics and voice chat."

Of course, until we actually get a lot of people around using OpenSim, we won't know how well it really scales, and whether it can really match the performance of Second Life servers. And, until Linden Lab open sources its own server code, we won't really know if OpenSim is a dead end.

But the addition of realXtend is an indication of what the Lab has to open source sooner rather than later: open source development models encourage fast turnaround of new features, "experimental" forks which can feed back into the main trunk, and much more besides.

The end of Linden libertarianism

A great comment by Wagner James Au on the recent blog post by the Lindens cracking down on ad farms:

"Does this mean the Lindens are rejecting libertarianism as a failed experiment? Maybe. Just as likely, they're doing this mainly in preparation for the time when the Second Life servers will be open sourced. That's when the libertarians will move their unregulated banks, controversial sex, and other banned content to adjoining nations. The Lindens, by contrast, will offer a loosely regulated mixed economy, a market and society regulated and beautified by the Lindens."

Yes, it certainly feels that way. And that's not really a bad thing: with servers being open sourced, there will be other options (possibly even linked to the Linden Grid) which will cater for more, ahem, interesting tastes.

Calling furniture makers - Clever Zebra needs you!

Call For Partners With Furniture | Clever Zebra - Open Solutions for Virtual Enterprise:

"Now, we're looking for new partners to release sets of office furniture into open source. The furniture would consist of basic chairs, tables and other interior decor you'd typically find in a commercial space. We've already built the office, and we're just looking for the person who wants to furnish it."

links for 2008-02-14

• From Rural Life to Second Life - PR.com
  New Hampshire-based web design company opening a presence in Second Life.
  (tags: secondlife business)
• Second Life tackles virtual nuisances - Financial Services - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com
  Robin Linden talks to Silicon on the issues facing Second Life.
  (tags: robinlinden secondlife griefing)

Upcoming downtime

This blog will be going down for a few hours at some point over the next few days, as I move from a hosted install at Typepad to a brand spanking new Wordpress install. If you subscribe to the FeedBurner version of the feed, you won't notice - but either way, URLs and so on should remain the same.

Second Life... running on an iPhone?

Yes, that is Second Life running on an iPhone... kind of. According to Tech Digest, it's really a very different kind of proof of concept:

"In a layman's nutshell, all the processing is being done NOT on the iPhone, on a central server. All that's being streamed to the iPhone is the visuals - essentially, a video feed of the Second Life environment. Then, when you tap the on-screen buttons to move, or type in a message, that's sent back up to the server for processing."

Personally, I'd settle for being able to IM from my phone to avatars in Second Life, and hopefully we won't have to wait too long for that...

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Second Life