1. Second Life Gesturebating
2. What Happens When Second Life Ends? Contemplating the End of Time
3. Wonderful World (a Second Life video)
Archives for 2010
Immersive environments and the enterprise: new report
January 22, 2010 by 1 Comment
Erica and Sam Driver from ThinkBalm have released a new report. Titled The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide, the focus is obviously virtual environments suitable for business applications. For those not aware of ThinkBalm, they have a growing stable of reports on the state of play in virtual worlds industry, particularly from a business perspective.
Aside from detailing nineteen vendors out there, the guide provides some useful strategies to assist in choosing a virtual environment for an enterprise. It’s pretty standard project governance and needs analysis stuff, but tailored well to the topic.
One of the key points from the guide for me revolves around the regular question of “which platform is best?”:
The vendors come from a variety of backgrounds and have different specializations and strengths and weaknesses. They are not all targeting the same use cases. Just as office productivity suites today now include separate-yet-integrated applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more, immersive software product suites will evolve to focus on groups of related business problems. Eventually, we envision an immersion layer developing that will integrate with multiple enterprise systems and applications. But this is years away.
I’m a little more bullish on the ‘years away’ aspect. Two to three years, sure, but I’d be surprised if more widespread adoption took longer than that.
Overall, the guide appears to be a rigourous, well-researched piece of work that should provide a useful base for enterprises looking at integrating immersive environments into their operations.
Irish Password
January 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment
During a recent PASSWORD AUDIT at the Bank of Ireland it was found that Paddy O’Toole was using the following password:
MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofyDublin
When Paddy was asked why he had such a long password: he replied ”Bejazus! are yez all stupid? Shore Oi was told me password had to be at least 8 characters long and include one capital”
National Portrait Gallery in Second Life
January 21, 2010 by 1 Comment
There hasn’t been an enormous fanfare about the launch of the National Portrait Gallery’s doppelganger exhibition in Second Life, but there probably deserves to be. For its first foray into virtual worlds, the Gallery has created an impressive exhibition that beautifully showcases the power of digital artwork.
I asked the architect of the exhibition, Greg More (SL: Dynamo Zanetti) to explain each of the exhibits, which he kindly agreed to do. Greg is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT. Since 2002 he’s been primarily engaged in the use of 3D, realtime environments for architecture design visualisation. The RMIT’s island in SL, for RMIT architecture and interior design students, came into existence in early 2007. Greg also happens to be the driving force behind OOM Creative, a local virtual worlds design consultancy
Artist: Cao Fei
It seems natural for an exhibition like this to feature machinima, and it’s certainly a striking one that is being shown. Superficially, it’s a montage of Second Life residents’ faces, but the overall effect is much greater.
Greg: “Developed for the Venice Bienale 2007, this is the only work in the show that wasn’t developed specifically for Portrait Island. Space designed to envelope the viewer into a screen experience, and also marks the limits of the landparcel supporting the streaming video.”
Artist: Patrick Lichty
Aside from the vivid ‘Last Supper’ portrait, which is alone worth a visit, there are also QR codes for each of the portrait subjects, readable by smart phones with the appropriate software installed.
In CodePortraits we can extract these representations from their native environment via Quick Response codes which enable us to watch his archive of footage on our own mobile devices. Viewing these videos on a portable device, that can be played anywhere, at any time, reminds us of the photographs of loved ones and family that we may keep in our wallets, or the earlier tradition of the cameo.
Another fascinating mix of digital media with more traditional imagery.
temporary self portrait in preparation for the singularity
Artist: Andrew Burrell.
The largest work in the exhibition, it’s difficult to provide an explanation of its scope and purpose that’s better than the one provided by the artist himself. In short, the exhibit is a virtual device offering a glimpse of the narratives of the artist’s life, “both remembered and imagined”:
Each of the cubic nodes within the device can forge new connections with its neighbours creating a navigable network of narratives to which the viewer is given access through text and image. The work questions the site of the self and its relationship to the narratives of memory.
Artists: Adam Nash, Christopher Dodds and Justin Clemens
I have to admit this was probably the exhibit that fascinated me the most. The Autoscopia website explains it nicely, but essentially you enter a phrase such as your Second Life name, and you receive (after a wait) a link to a detailed profile of yourself as found on the internet more widely. Try it for yourself and you’ll likely be surprised with the results.
Autoscopia’s portraits are built using data from internet-based ‘vanity searches’ conducted within the Second Life installation. Each name creates a unique outcome composed of 27 ‘limbs’. Each limb is fed data from websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter etc, with colours, geometry and audio affected by variations in search volume. Data is then re-published via discrete web pages automatically composed through snippets of text and images collected during the search
Artist: Gazira Babeli
The experience of entering iGods can be a little disconcerting. The Greek temple exterior contrasts against the impressive experience of having your avatar transposed onto one of the seven ‘sins’ on the inside:
Move a little closer and the clones come to life, morphing into the appearance of the observer’s avatar; replicating their image back at them. Gaz’s hall of mirrors reminds us that, in Second Life, DNA is code and in virtual worlds this code can be replicated or borrowed. This unnerving experience exposes fears associated with identity theft and the often reluctant realisation of personal identification with one’s avatar.
The Wrap
According to Greg, the main approach for the exhibition, and the build, is not to replicate existing notions of portraiture or exhibition space. “Gill Raymond, the curator, set a really open brief for the project, and luckily on my advice we developed the space over a couple of phases, allowing for the environment to evolve, accomodate the artists developing the work, and tie things together with the website content”.
Feedback from visitors to date has apparently been enthusiastic, with a significant cohort of visitors spending more than an hour interacting with the exhibits. Kudos to the National Portrait Gallery for their investment in the exhibition. Alongside the ACVA initiative and the momentum built by the University of Western Australia’s Art competitions in Second Life, it’s fair to say that Australian art in the virtual world is an incredibly lively part of the wider art community.
Early Dismissal
January 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment
It is near the Christmas break of the school year. The students have turned in all their work and there is really nothing more to do. All the children are restless and the teacher decides to have an early dismissal.
Teacher: “Whoever answers the questions I ask, first and correctly can leave early today.”
Little Johnny says to himself “Good, I want to get outta here. I’m smart and will answer the question.”
Teacher: “Who said ‘Four Score and Seven Years Ago’?”
Before Johnny can open his mouth, Susie says, “Abraham Lincoln.”
Teacher: “That’s right Susie, you can go home.”
Johnny is mad that Susie answered the question first.
Teacher: “Who said ‘I Have a Dream’?”
Before Johnny can open his mouth, Mary says, “Martin Luther King.”
Teacher: “That’s right Mary, you can go.”
Johnny is even madder than before.
Teacher: “Who said ‘Ask not, what your country can do for you’?”
Before Johnny can open his mouth, Nancy says, “John F. Kennedy.”
Teacher: “That’s right Nancy, you may also leave.”
Johnny is boiling mad that he has not been able to answer to any of the questions.
When the teacher turns her back Johnny says, “I wish these bitches would keep their mouths shut!”
The teacher turns around: “NOW WHO SAID THAT?”
Johnny: “TIGER WOODS. CAN I GO NOW?”
Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds
January 18, 2010 by 3 Comments
1. Leading Second Life broadcaster Treet TV (formerly SLCN) has expanded its web presence by creating Treet Business. Two new business shows are on the way to complement the current lineup.
The company has certainly come a long way since its 2007 launch. I’m looking forward to appearing on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe next week to talk about internet filtering.
2. Kzero have some interesting data on the average age of Habbo users by country. Australia is middle of road with an average age of a little over 15 years old. They also have an interesting post on Miss Bimbo, another teen-focused virtual world.
3. A reminder for males aged 18 and over: a Deakin University researcher needs your input for a study on body image in both the real and virtual environment.
4. Linden Lab have employed a Conversation Manager. Wallace Linden has received quite a welcome in the comments on his introductory post, with plenty of discussion on his previous life writing for the Second Life Herald (now Alphaville Herald).
5. Second Life residents are organising a range if fundraising events for the Haiti disaster, with the most comprehensive list found at New World Notes. If any Australians are planning events in any of the platforms around, please let us know and we’ll do what we can to promote it.
The Watch – virtual worlds in the news
January 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment
1. Macworld (UK) – CES: Money for nothing? Virtual goods market takes off. “Social networking and multiplayer online games are fueling dramatic growth in hard cash earned from goods that exist only in the world of online make-believe, according to companies in that market gathered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For mainstream consumer electronics vendors, last year may have been “a year none of us would wish to repeat,” as Consumer Electronics Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro put it in a speech opening CES Thursday. Industry revenue dropped 7 percent in 2009, he said.”
2. TechCrunch (USA) – PlaySpan: $30 Million Spent On Virtual Gifts Over Holiday Season. “Should we be considering virtual goods when evaluating online holiday spending? We’ve seen that e-commerce spending over the holidays was strong, with consumers shelling out nearly $30 billion over a period of a few months. Now, virtual goods platform PlaySpan reports that digital goods have seen a similar, if smaller trend, with Americans spending $30 million on virtual gifts in November and December of 2009. It’s no surprise that the digital goods world saw strong sales over the past year; the business was projected to make $1 billion in 2009. And as virtual goods are booming, various startups have emerged to capitalize on this growth by facilitating the exchange around these goods.”
3. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Intel: OpenSim supports hundreds of thousands of objects. “While most virtual worlds are limited to “thousands†of objects in a single location, OpenSim can support hundreds of thousands, according to a white paper published by Intel this month. As a result, OpenSim-based virtual worlds — like the Intel-backed ScienceSim grid — can be used to simulate complex environments for training, education, physics and chemistry, natural resources and urban planning. “The potential for other types of applications is far-reaching,†the company said. “In the health care arena, for instance, physicians might use ScienceSim to simulate the outcome of reconstructive surgery or visualize medical concepts, such as the impact of asthma or smoking on lung function, or how diet affects the circulatory system.”
4. VentureBeat (USA) – Venture capitalists are bullish on the future of game funding. “Game investing is still going strong, even though it did take a hit during the recession. We calculated that game companies raised $600.5 million in 2009, down 36 percent from the year before. But game-savvy venture capitalists are still bullish on games. We did a roundtable Q&A with some of the best-known investors, in conjunction with the launch of Interactive Age, a new magazine focused on the business of games. The magazine is edited by N. Evan Van Zelfden, who has written for us, and will debut around the time of the Game Developers Conference in March.”
5. News.com.au (Australia) – Avatar perfection causing depression. “AN IDYLLIC planet populated by blue aliens is an ideal setting for cinematic escapism. But the world of the sci-fi epic Avatar is so perfect people have admitted being plagued by depression and suicidal thoughts at not being able to visit the planet. Set in the future when Earth’s resources have been depleted, director James Cameron’s film tells the story of a corporation trying to mine a rare mineral. The humans clash with the natives – a peace-loving race of 7ft tall, blue-skinned creatures called the Na’vi, who exist in perfect harmony with nature.”
6. Wall Street Journal (USA) – Caught in the Web. “Ever since the Internet began to make its way into everyday life—beginning roughly in the early 1990s—commentators have worried over its cultural effects, fearing isolation, regimentation, a loss of privacy or a loss of sustained thought. Back then, Jaron Lanier was one of the pioneers of immersive virtual worlds and helped to popularize the term “virtual reality.” Those were the days when the Web’s promise seemed bright and limitless. Mr. Lanier was one of its champions. Now, as experience has set in, his outlook is decidedly gloomier. In “You Are Not a Gadget,” he sounds an alarm about the social-media technologies of the so-called Web 2.0, arguing that they reduce individuals to mere cogs in a mob-based, crowd-sourced apparatus. “Technology criticism,” he says in defense of his own role in this debate, “shouldn’t be left to the Luddites.”
7. Mashable (USA) – Star Trek Moves into WoW Territory With New Online Game. “he Star Trek fan’s equivalent of World of Warcraft is now playable thanks to an open beta test — and you don’t even have to spend $60 to buy the game as long as you can put up with a few bugs. While Star Trek had become a struggling franchise in recent years, the blockbuster movie reboot from J.J. Abrams that hit last May renewed interest online and elsewhere. Right now the easiest way to get a key to play Star Trek Online is to sign up for an account at gamer download mecca FilePlanet, but more choices will come.”
8. Science Daily (USA) – New Computer Vision System for the Analysis of Human Behavior. “A consortium of European researchers, coordinated by the Computer Vision Centre (CVC) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has developed HERMES, a cognitive computational system consisting of video cameras and software able to recognise and predict human behaviour, as well as describe it in natural language. The applications of the Hermes project are numerous and can be used in the fields of intelligent surveillance, protection of accidents, marketing, psychology, etc.”
9. VizWorld (USA) – State Of The Second Union: VizWorld on Second Life. “Ever since I first read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of the Metaverse. A virtual world that completely destroys physical boundaries, allowing us to interact and mingle in a virtual space across vast distances with similar realism as being physically there. I’ve seen several virtual worlds rise and crumble, but none as persistent as Second Life. I first tried Second Life back in February of 2006, and after a single day I never returned. It was interesting, but almost overwhelming in its potential so I left it for a “later dateâ€, which never arose.”
10. VentureBeat (USA) – Saints Capital takes stake in Second Life owner Linden Lab. “Secondary investment firm Saints Capital has acquired a stake in virtual world startup Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life. Venturewire reported that Saints Capital acquired the stake from an existing investor, and that Linden Lab was not involved in the transaction. That means that one of Linden Labs’ current investors or employee stakeholders sold the shares to Saints. Linden Lab declined comment.”
Embarrassing Medical Moments
January 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
1. A man comes into the ER and yells, ‘My wife’s going to have her baby in the cab! I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady’s dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly, I noticed that there were several cabs — and I was in the wrong one..
Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Antonio , TX
2. At the beginning of my shift, I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient’s anterior chest wall. Big breaths, I instructed. Yes, they used to be, replied the patient.
Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle , WA ..
3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct.
Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a, ‘massive internal fart.’
Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg
4. During a patient’s two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications. Which one, I asked?
The patch, the nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours, and now I’m running out of places to put it!
I had him quickly undress, and discovered what I hoped I wouldn’t see.
Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body!
Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.
Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk , VA.
5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, How long have you been bedridden?
After a look of complete confusion, she answered….Why, not for about twenty years — when my husband was alive.’
Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson, Corvallis , OR
6. I was caring for a woman and asked, ‘So, how’s your breakfast this
morning?
It’s very good, except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can’t seem to get used to the taste,’ the patient replied.
I then asked to see the jelly, and the woman produced a foil packet labeled ‘KY Jelly.’
Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit , MI
7. A nurse was on duty in the emergency room when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered.
It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery.
When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green, and above it there was a tattoo that read, ‘Keep off the grass.’
Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient’s dressing, which said, ‘Sorry, had to mow the lawn.’
Submitted by RN, no name.
AND FINALLY!!!…
8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams. To cover my embarrassment, I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly.
The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me.
I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, I’m sorry.. Was I tickling you?
She replied, No doctor, but the song you were whistling was,
‘I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener.’
Doctor wouldn’t submit his name (Can’t blame him!)
A boy’s first condom
January 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
I recall my first time with a condom, I was 16 or so.
I went in to buy a packet of condoms at the pharmacy.
There was this beautiful woman assistant behind the counter, and she could see that I was new at it.
She handed me the package and asked if I knew how to wear one.
I honestly answered, ‘No, this is my first time.’
So she unwrapped the package, took one out and slipped it over her thumb. She cautioned me to make sure it was on tight and secure. I apparently still looked confused. So she looked all around the store to see if it was empty. It was empty.
‘Just a minute,’ she said, and walked to the door, and locked it.
Taking my hand, she led me into the back room, unbuttoned her blouse and removed it. She unhooked her bra and laid it aside. ‘Do these excite you?’ She asked. Well, I was so dumb-struck that all I could do was nod my head. She then said it was time to slip the condom on.
As I was slipping it on, she dropped her skirt, removed her panties and lay down on a desk. ‘Well, come on’, she said, ‘We don’t have much time.’
So I climbed on her. It was so wonderful, that unfortunately, I could no longer hold back and KAPOW, I was done within a few minutes.
She looked at me with a bit of a frown. ‘Did you put that condom on?’ she asked. I said, ‘I sure did,’ and held up my thumb to show her.
She fainted.
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