Archives for 2011

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. TUAW (USA) – Enterprise virtual worlds vendor ProtonMedia promises Mac client. “ProtonMedia says that increasing use of Macs in businesses means it’s now developing a Mac version of its respected virtual worlds software ProtoSphere, a virtual collaboration environment. Although the Windows version of its software is built on Microsoft technology, the company says its architecture means it can fairly easily port it over to the Mac.”

2. The Guardian (UK) – British hacker jailed over £7m virtual gaming chips scam. “A British computer hacker who stole 400bn virtual gaming chips from an international gaming company has been jailed for two years. Ashley Mitchell, 29, broke into the Zynga mainframe, stole the identity of two employees and transferred chips said to be worth more than £7m to himself. Mitchell, of Paignton, Devon, sold the chips through Facebook to other gaming enthusiasts and used the money to fund his online gambling addiction. More than 50 million people a day play Zynga games, including Mafia Wars, in which players run a virtual mob business, and FarmVille, which allows users to create their dream farm. Players have to buy chips for their virtual worlds. A black market in cut-price chips has grown up on the internet.”

3. Massively (USA) – Celebrate EQ’s 12 years with a look back and an interview with John Smedley. “Time grows many layers, and this is especially true in MMORPGs. After all, not only are new quests, stories and chunks of content added to a game as it goes along, but the players themselves add their own memories and experiences to the mix. MMOs truly are virtual worlds, and they change over time and become richer. EverQuest is no exception. After 12 years of adventure, danger, and story-telling, the game shows no signs of stopping. What is planned for the game? How will the last 12 years affect the decisions for the next 12 years? EverQuest has been one of the flagships of the genre, but how does a game of its age maintain any type of market visibility?”

4. Victoria Times Colonist (Canada) – ‘Uther’ worldly class offers a real world benefit -dinner. “Imagine that you could take cooking lessons from a top chef in your own kitchen. And imagine that chef is halfway around the world from where you are. At UtherAcademy’s Kitchen Corner cooking school, it matters not if the chef is in Egypt and his cooking school students are in Nanaimo, Whalley or Tuktoyaktuk. Once inside the three-dimensional virtual classroom the chef and his students -as animated avatars -are in their world, talking freely, asking questions and demonstrating techniques in French cooking, knife skills, pickling and food hygiene. When class begins next week, six students will enter Kitchen Corner with chef Peers Cawley to begin 12 weeks of hands-on cooking instruction.”

5. BBC (UK) – Children ‘give playground games a modern twist’. “Children are using their experience of computer games and reality TV shows to give traditional playground games a modern twist, a study suggests. Researchers found aspects of programmes like the Jeremy Kyle Show and Britain’s Got Talent included in children’s imaginative play. Far from destroying their imagination, new technologies help to enrich it, the team from London and Sheffield says. They observed play at two school playgrounds over two years. The researchers from London’s Institute of Education, University of East London and the University of Sheffield, also drew on archived recordings of children playing made by play researchers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – Should MMOs be more like single-player games? “Most of today’s single-player action games like Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed have around 15-25 hours of gameplay. These games share some similarities as the player progresses: the character gains more abilities that affect gameplay (weapons, moves, new mission types, etc), he advanced in a linear story, meets new characters, kills new enemies and often has the chance to explore something extra. Also they all share about the same payment method: you pay around $40 and you have access to all the game for as long as you like. They are also, of course, single-player experiences. In most MMOs today, like in World of Warcraft, you take 20 hours to reach a third or less of the your game progression. And, most of the time, that means little gameplay, hardly any story, a multitude of disposable npcs and tons of variants of the same enemies, all of that often focused on a limited repetition of completing the same kinds of quests with the obvious lack of effect to the game world.”

7. Fast Company (USA) – The 10 Most Innovative Companies in Gaming. “01 / Zynga >>For dominating–and monetizing–the social-gaming industry. The largest social-games developer in the world touts hundreds of millions of monthly active users on FarmVille, Treasure Isle, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, and more. But what’s truly innovative is its all virtual-goods revenue model: By creating immersive, addicting games, Zynga has roped gamers into paying real money for make-believe “virtual” goods that let them move up in the games or to give their friends gifts. Although small, those numbers add up: Zynga is already profitable, and it’s valued at more than $7 billion.”

8. The Nation (Pakistan) – The Powers of Thought. “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well, said the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes. True enough. Three days ago, an announcement by German scientists revealed how science is moving towards doing just that. Driving a car using the power of thought is the latest advance in linking the brain to a computer. Scientists at the Free University of Berlin have connected commercially available sensors that record brain activity—technically, EEG, or electroencephalogram sensors—to a computer-controlled sedan, which means the car is now controlled by thoughts. It was obviously not a good idea to do the test on a road, so Berlin’s mothballed Tempelhof Airport was chosen to prove the concept.”

9. Big Think (USA) – Walking Across Campus Whilst Sitting on your Couch. “This might at first sight sound like an oxymoron but it could be part of a future campus environment. Last year a couple of tech start-ups presented their first so called “telepresence robots” ready to be commercialized. The one that got the most attention from the tech scene is AnyBots. Michael Arrington, founder of the popular tech blog TechCrunch even changed his Twitter profile picture to an AnyBots QB after he had had the chance to play around with it in the TechCrunch offices last year.”

10. Computerworld (USA) – Display tech to watch this year: Haptics create a buzz. “If multitouch display technology is proliferating, haptic feedback is helping to fuel the trend. Haptics provide tactile feedback to your fingers as you touch a display by vibrating all or part of the display surface. Haptic technology is on a roll; it’s been adopted in more than 20 smartphone models, including the Nokia N8 and Samsung Galaxy S series, because it can help people interact with touch-screen applications more accurately and otherwise enhance the user experience, says Jennifer Colegrove, an analyst with DisplaySearch. DisplaySearch, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based research firm that focuses on the display market, hasn’t yet released growth projections for haptics, but Colegrove notes that tablet PCs are ripe for the technology. One tablet that already includes haptics is Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which has sold 2 million units since its launch in September of last year.”

Telepresence bots: making meetings interesting

I doubt there’s anyone who’ll claim that teleconferences or videoconferences are the most engaging way to communicate. Sure, you can pull faces on a teleconference or play games on your smartphone out of camera shot, but at the end of the day both methods are poor substitutes for a face-to-face meeting.

Attempting to bridge that gap are companies like Anybots, who are creating telepresence robots that allow a videoconference participant to have a little more control and interaction with a remote team. Check it out:

I’m not convinced on this being adopted widely – I think some other telepresence options and virtual world options offer something even more engaging. That said, the bot is cute and mobile, so it’s definitely an improvement on the status quo.
[via Big Think]

Darth Vader and scale

Just a quick post with some Star Wars humour. I love me a good (de)motivational poster and they don’t get much better than this one:

With thanks to http://verydemotivational.memebase.com/

Virtual worlds and social good: a striking example

Over the years of covering the virtual worlds industry, one of the highlights has been seeing grass-roots fundraising efforts. Using my own country of Australia as an example, significant amounts of money have been raised for the 2009 Bushfires and this year’s series of calamities in Queensland. There’s already planning under way for events to support those affected by the horrendous events in Japan over the past week and Linden Lab are doing their bit as well.

Add to that ongoing initiatives such as Relay for Life and you have a well-established means of making a difference. All of these examples come from Second Life, but at a wider level some serious initiatives are starting to see the light of day.

One such initiative is being driven by a leader in the social gaming sphere, Zynga. Creators of the (in)famous game Farmville amongst others, Zynga.org is devoted to raising money for worthy causes, using Zynga’s worlds as the vehicle. It marries two very powerful forces: virtual goods and a desire to help others. Using the current Haiti disaster as an example, 1.5 million dollars was raised and significant amounts are expected for the current tragedy in Japan:

Twelve hours after the earthquake struck, on Friday, March 11th, 8pm pst, Zynga launched in-game initiatives that made donations possible across a number of our most popular games, including: CityVille, FarmVille, Zynga Poker, FrontierVille and Words with Friends. Vampire Wars is now live with a campaign, as well, and YoVille and FishVille will soon launch theirs.

The impetus for doing non-profit work is always multi-faceted. Aside from the obvious aspect of being community-minded, most companies also know the good PR such activities draw. The huge number of social virtual world users is an obvious area where demonstrating good corporate citizenship is increasingly important. Zynga because of its size has drawn some substantial criticism over some aspects of its games / worlds, and initiatives like this help balance the equation a little.

Definitions to be applied

ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.
AUTHOR: A writer with connections in the publishing industry.
BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.
BOSS: A personal dictator appointed to those of us fortunate enough to live in free societies.
CANNIBAL: Someone who is fed up with people.
CHICKENS: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.
CHILDHOOD: The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.
COMMITTEE: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
COMPROMISE: The art of slicing a cake in such a way that everyone believes they received the biggest piece.
CONFERENCE: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.
DENIAL: How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist.
DOCTOR: A person who kills your ills with pills then kills you with bills.
DUST: Mud with the juice squeezed out.
EGOTIST: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.
ETC: An abbreviation that makes others think you know more than you actually do.
EXPERIENCE: In the working world, something you can’t get unless you’ve already got it, in which case you probably don’t want any more of it.
FATHER: The banker that nature provides.
FITNESS: Salvation through perspiration.
GOURMET: A food fetishist.
HANDKERCHIEF: Cold Storage.
HOOKER: A working woman commonly despised by people who sell themselves for even less.
INFLATION: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.
JEANS: Lower half of the international uniform of youth, the upper half being the zits.
KLEPTOMANIAC: A thief with breeding.
LECTURE: The art of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the lecturees without passing through the minds of either.
MOSQUITO: An insect that makes you like flies better.
NEIGHBOURS: The strangers who live next door.
OFFICE: A place where you can relax after a strenuous night at home.
ORG ASM: The punchline some women just don’t get, generally because their mates have a tendency to rush through the joke.
PARASITE: A base creature that extracts a living from the lives of others, like a tapeworm or a biographer.
QUAGMIRE: Any situation more easily entered into than exited from eg., a guerrilla war, a bad marriage or a conversation with an insurance salesman.
RAISIN: A grape with sunburn.
REDNECK: Popular term for a rustic male, but rarely employed when addressing one in person.
SECRET: Something you tell to one person at a time.
SKELETON: A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.
SMILE: A curve that can set a lot of things straight.
TEARS: The means by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine water-power.
TOOTHACHE: The pain that drives you to extraction.
TOMORROW: One of the greatest labour saving devices of today.
VOTING: The right of our citizens to do as they please behind a curtain, as long as they do it alone.
WHITE SUPREMACISTS: The most convincing argument against the theory of white racial superiority.
WRINKLES: Something other people have, Similar to my character lines.
X-RAY: A diagnostic tool used to detect existing cancerous growths and create new ones for future examinations to reveal.
YAWN: An honest opinion openly expressed.
Y-CHROMOSOME: A line of defective genes designed for men only.
ZOO: A pleasant and instructive wildlife park, lately denounced for depriving animals of their right to starve or be eaten alive in their natural habitats.

Japanese Tsunami: advertising fail

Advertising can be intrusive at the best of times (and yes we do run ads on this site but nothing too full-on). When advertising really fails is when it doesn’t recognise the context in which it’s being presented. One of our readers, Graham, sent a link through showing one example from yesterday’s terrible events in Japan. I’ve captured it, take a look for yourself:

It’s just one of those unfortunate things, but it again shows how far we have to go with contextual advertising. Or am I overreacting?

 

‘Pimp your virtual worlds site’ 2011

With the growth in virtual worlds, there’s been a parallel growth in people writing / podcasting / creating content about them. Whether its Second Life, Entropia, Blue Mars, OpenSim or anything in-between, we want to hear about it.

If you have a blog / podcast / machinima you’re mighty proud of, then post a link in the comments so everyone can check it out. It also gives me a great opportunity to add new sites to our links.

So pimp away!

Pregnancy Q&A

Q: Should I have a baby after 35? A: No, 35 children is enough.
Q: I’m two months pregnant now. When will my baby move? A: With any luck, right after he finishes university.
Q: What is the most reliable method to determine a baby’s sex? A: Childbirth.
Q: My wife is five months pregnant and so moody that sometimes she’s borderline irrational. A: So what’s your question?
Q: My childbirth instructor says it’s not pain I’ll feel during labour, but pressure. Is she right? A: Yes, in the same way that a cyclone might be called an air current.
Q: When is the best time to get an epidural? A: Right after you find out you’re pregnant.
Q: Is there any reason I have to be in the delivery room while my wife is in labour? A: Not unless the words ‘child support payment’ means anything to you.
Q: Is there anything I should avoid while recovering from childbirth? A: Yes, pregnancy.
Q: Do I have to have a baby shower? A: Not if you change the baby’s nappy very quickly
Q: Our baby was born last week. When will my wife begin to feel and act normal again? A: When the kids are in university.
Q: Am I more likely to get pregnant if my husband wears boxers rather then briefs? A: Yes, but you’ll have an even better chance if he doesn’t wear anything at all.
Q: Are birth control pills deductible? A: Only if they don’t work.
Q: What is a chastity belt? A: A labour-saving device.
Q: Can a mother get pregnant while nursing? A: Yes, but it’s much easier if she removes the baby from her breast and puts him to sleep first.
Q: How will I know if my vomiting is morning sickness or the flu? A: If it’s the flu, you’ll get better.
Q: Since I became pregnant, my breasts, rear-end, and even my feet have grown. Is there anything that gets smaller during pregnancy? A: Yes, your bladder.
Q: What is the most common pregnancy craving? A: For men to be the ones who get pregnant.
Q: The more pregnant I get, the more often strangers smile at me. Why? A: Because you’re fatter than they are.
Q: What’s the difference between a nine-month pregnant woman and a model? A: Nothing, if the pregnant woman’s husband knows what’s good for him.
Q: I normally wear a size 34-C bra. Now that I’m pregnant, should I continue to wear a bra? A: Not if you don’t mind switching in the future to a size 34-Long.
Q: Ever since I’ve been pregnant, I haven’t been able to go to bed at night without onion rings. Is this a normal craving? A: Depends on what you’re doing with them.
Q: What position should the baby be in during the ninth month of pregnancy? A: Head down, pressing firmly on your bladder.
Q: How long is the average woman in labour? A: Whatever she says, divided by two.
Q: What does it mean when the baby’s head is crowning? A: It means you feel as though not only a crown but the entire throne is trying to make its way out of you.
Q: What are forceps? A: Giant baby tweezers.
Q: Does labour cause haemorrhoids? A: Labour causes anything you want to blame it for.
Q: Will I love my dog less when the baby is born? A: No, but your husband might get on your nerves.
Q: Under what circumstances should a baby not be circumcised? A: When it’s a girl, for starters.
Q: What is the grasp reflex? A: The reaction of new father’s when he sees new mother’s breasts.
Q: What happens to disposable diapers after they’re thrown away? A: They are stored in a silo in the Midwest, in the event of global chemical warfare.
Q: Where is the best place to store breast milk? A: In your breasts.
Q: Is there a safe alternative to breast pumps? A: Yes, baby lips.
Q: What does it mean when a baby is born with teeth? A: It means that the baby’s mother may want to rethink her plans to nurse.
Q: How does one sanitise nipples? A: Bathe daily and wear a clean bra. It beats boiling them in a saucepan.
Q: What are the terrible twos? A: Your breasts after baby stops nursing cold turkey.
Q: What is the best time to wean the baby from nursing? A: When you see teeth marks.

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. Singularity Hub (USA) – Your Car is the Arcade: Driving Simulator Uses Real Vehicle in Virtual Worlds.”Daredevils have an insatiable need for speed, but they play with fire when pushing their vehicle or driving abilities too far. Tag Systems offers a unique solution by transporting the motorist and their physical car to a virtual road, a first in driving simulation technology. Sensors collect real-time performance data on an actual automobile, giving you a first-person perspective in 3D world. Basically, you can accelerate, steer, and brake inside your own car as you would on the open road, but the vehicle is driving in place on steel rollers. This one-of-a-kind VR system allows drivers to approach 150 mph on renowned Formula 1 courses, compete in Fast and Furious-style drag races, or even cruise the surface of the moon.”

2. VentureBeat (USA) – DEMO: Next Island opens time travel for its virtual world. “Virtual worlds haven’t fared well as users migrate to social networks. But that hasn’t stopped David Post from launching Next Island. Today at DEMO, the company is formally launching an awareness campaign for its virtual world and enabling the key feature of the world that could be most appealing for users: time travel. Next Island has been in the works for nearly three years. The virtual world opened for its first beta test in December. The world has since grown to nearly 2,000 users and the company is drawing attention to the high quality of its 3D graphics and the sheer creativity of its sci-fi adventure themed world.”

3. The Hollywood Reporter (USA) – Nickelodeon Enters MMO Games Space with ‘Monkey Quest’. “Nickelodeon used GDC 2011 as the coming out party for its first entry into the massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming space. The company unveiled Monkey Quest, a new family-friendly, free-to-play MMO game based on an original property, at a party held at AT&T Park. The game, which encourages players to work together to solve puzzles and partake in challenges, was also available throughout the week at the Unity booth at Moscone Center. Monkey Quest will go live in April. Nickelodeon has a rich lineup of popular gaming sites, IPs, and virtual worlds. Addicting Games and Shockwave are two of the top gaming destinations online. Addicting Games offers more than 4,369 games and provided over 102 million game plays in December 2010. Shockwave serves more than 1,800 games and provided over 47 million game plays in December 2010.”

4. Mashable (USA) – Inside One Man’s Kickstarter Quest to Build True Artificial Life. “Virtual worlds have long been populated by creatures that interact, reproduce, compete, evolve and die. But by and large, they do so because their behavior is programmed by developers. These efforts can produce complex virtual ecosystems, but they’re not quite the digital reflections of what happens in nature. Life in the real world is “programmed” by DNA, but its form and behavior are determined by the random mutation of genetic code, not by the intentions of a developer. Computer scientists have always been intrigued by the prospect of creating “artificial life” — that is, digital genetic code that can sustain itself over generations and adapt to meet the demands of a virtual environment without human interference.”

5. PC World (USA) – The History of Stereoscopic 3D Gaming. “In 1968, Ivan Sutherland of Harvard University created the first stereoscopic computer display (nicknamed the “Sword of Damocles” for the unwieldy size of the apparatus that hung over the user’s head). Sutherland’s experiments with virtual worlds began in 1966 at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and they culminated in the invention of the first 3D head-mounted display and the first virtual computer environment, a wire-frame simulation of a room (shown here).”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – Bigpoint U.S. Developing Universal Monsters MMO. “Bigpoint Inc., the U.S. based subsidiary of German browser-based games publisher Bigpoint, announced that it is working with Universal Pictures on an MMO based on Universal Monsters. Unlike SEE Virtual Worlds’ upcoming online world also using the Universal Monsters license, this project will be a third-person, multiplayer action RPG in which players fight against famous film monsters from Universal’s catalog like Dracula and The Wolf Man. Bigpoint’s San Francisco studio, which has been working on the project since early February, says it “aspires to capture the integrity of each property and include some of the early film techniques used in bringing the original monster characters to the silver screen.”

7. Detroit Free Press (USA) – Virtual caribou help scientists unearth Lake Huron’s secrets. “On a computer, Bob Reynolds watches caribou run across a wilderness of spruce and lagoons on the edge of Lake Huron. A few of the creatures pause to graze, while the rest move slowly across the tundra. What’s unusual is that the caribou herd is simulated. They are moving at their own whim across a virtual world that mimics an ancient land bridge that existed 10,000 years ago, but now is submerged beneath the waters of Lake Huron.”

8. Silicon India (India) – Indian Gaming Startups Are They Really in the Game? “he Ferrari whooshed across the Lamborghini and there comes the hit point – it’s the Jackpot – Oh yes, it’s the undying NFS, the car racing game. For some the virtual adventure is the perfect idea of gaining nirvana, and even a 10 year old’s combat skills can reign supreme in the game world. Today, gamers constitute 41.2 percent of the total Active Internet users in India, a whopping 89 percent increase from the 2007, as per a report by IAMAI. The growth has been lucrative enough to build up the confidence of the newbies, who have just entered the quasi-penetrated market. Younger people are growing up with the Internet and online games. As they enter the workforce and continue to have greater purchasing power, the market for gaming in India will expand dramatically. “Virtual gaming is definitely big now after 2010. It is about $1 billion market in U.S. and about $8 billion worldwide. It’s huge in Asia Pacific mainly in China, Japan, S. Korea, while India is yet to gain the same speed,” says Sumit Gupta, CEO of BitRhymes.”

9. Wired (USA) – Clive Thompson on How Games Make Work Seem Like Play. “In summer 2009, the UK’s Guardian newspaper had a problem: an enormous pile of receipts. British politicians had been caught filing what would total millions of pounds’ worth of bogus personal expenses. To try to quell the uproar, the government scanned hundreds of thousands of receipts from members of Parliament and dumped the files online—giving reporters the Herculean task of analyzing them. The editors at the Guardian fought back. They turned the task into a game—and invited the public to play. A Guardian programmer named Simon Willison created a clever web app that would present you with a randomly chosen receipt. If it looked dodgy, you could write a quick description of what you’d found, then hit a big Investigate This! button to send the receipt to the paper’s reporters. A leaderboard tracked which contributors had made the most finds. The goal: to get people competing to be top dog, just like on Xbox Live.”

10. Examiner (USA) – Lag strikes Mardi Gras in Second Life. “Going to Mardi Gras in a virtual world instead of New Orleans has some real advantages. No airfare, no hotel bills, no travel time. While it can’t equal being in New Orleans in person, it’s more realistic for most of us. Until lag strikes. If you’ve been in a virtual world any length of time, you know what lag is. It’s like you went to New Orleans and suddenly, instead of a hurricane, the laws of physics went haywire. Gravity increased. Air became thick as molasses, making walking impossible. The speed of light plummeted to barely a crawl. There are huge blotches of the scene around you, walls, floats, costumes, that you simply can’t see. That’s what lag is like, and it struck Mardi Gras in Second Life hard today.”

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

1. The ABC’s Island in Second Life continues to have a bunch of activities going, with regular building tutorials back on the agenda and plans underway for Easter events.

2. The University of Western Australia has released a book: 100 Treasures of UWA and one of those treasures is the UWA’s Second Life presence.

3. Some great brain food on virtual goods and intellectual property rights can be eaten right here.

4. As of now, the number of registered virtual worlds accounts is just under 1.2 billion. Even when you factor in people like me with fifty accounts, there’s still a lot of people to meet in-world.

5. In case you didn’t realise, Linden Lab is like an ultra-fit blind-man positioned under a falling piano. Head piano-tuner and CEO Rod Humble has thanked everyone for their input on what they’d like to be doing in two years in Second Life.

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