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May 2009
The Archives
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05.23.09Linden Lab Needs to Think (Tank): Perms and the WorldMaybe my posts have become way to long, or I've become more obscure, but for whatever reason my recent post on the permission system in Second Life didn't get the response I was anticipating until today, when Jacek posted a long reply - which I'd call thoughtful if there wasn't the claim that I had been "taken in" which is a short form I suppose for "duped", something that firstly implies that I was duped BY someone, and perhaps I have, but I'll explain by whom in a moment. In the post, I pointed to a recent JIRA which proposes changes ...
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05.20.09Second Life to Add Voice Morphing Controls, Voice Mail and Avatar Phone NumbersIf there was one thing I wished for Second Life voice it would be for a higher fidelity of sound - every week we struggle on Metanomics with the audio, sometimes slip over to Skype for better quality, or sometimes get lucky and find that voice is fine. Many times, it's an issue of the user's head-set, but at other times it's the quality of voice in SL itself. So while I'm hoping for improved quality, Second Life is adding - well, cartoon voices. Venture Beat today reports that Linden Lab will be launching new voice features that include avatar phone numbers: "Kingdon ...
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05.18.09Paths of Least Resistance, or Why C/M/T Should Remain a PainMark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, promised that efforts towards greater content protection in Second Life were 'coming soon' in response to a series of questions following his recent appearance on Metanomics. "That is a huge topic and one I am not going to cover here except to say we hear your concerns and we are working on some things that can help. I’ll check with the team working on this area to see when they might be ready to talk about our work." Now, I don't know who the team is exactly. I can barely figure the difference between ...
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05.12.09M Linden ReduxI've been incredibly impressed with the depth of Mark Kingdon's follow-up to his appearance on Metanomics. His latest set of comments managed to wrap up most of the remaining audience questions, although there were a few deferrals. In particular, his response to questions about IP and content protection open the door for....well, for something, let's just hope it's something that actually helps and not some clever new scheme with perms. See the Metanomics blog post for his full reply. A few highlights. CONTENT/COPYRIGHT PROTECTION That is a huge topic and one I am not going to cover here except to say we hear your ...
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05.10.09Metanomics Synth-esizedA basic Photosynth of the stage area of Metanomics. Could really use more photos to make it a bit richer, I suppose. Strongly suggest you go to full screen mode, or visit the Synth here. Another, with the full region, which tends to 'split' the photos into groupings (use the thumbnail view to focus on a section): Or view it here.
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05.10.09Mapping Home: Virtual Worlds and the Geography of DesireLinden Lab's decision to create a continent in Second Life for explicit adult content had me picturing wagon trains loaded up with dance poles and avatar, um, attachments. We had been told the frontier days were over, after all, and with new management it was time for a bit of geographic relocation, a partitioning of the States, newly articulated geographies and a bunch of self-governed cities behind the firewall, or on private regions at least, the days of "one world" had ended back when they allowed direct teleports, I suppose. After my initial reaction it felt like things had settled down ...
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05.09.09M Linden Gets Real: Metanomics Discussion and Second LifeIt has been a crazy exhilarating week with the launch of Metanomics and it was wonderful to see the venue and the Web site live, and so first, a big thank you to everyone. I'll post about this at more length, but taking on Metanomics has been yet another personal eye-opener facilitated by virtual worlds. I've said this in other ways or at other times, but I believe that if you want to understand how social and immersive media are going to upend the way we think about collaborating, the nature of the enterprise, the challenges and opportunities around identity ...
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05.05.09Quick Hit: Dynamic Shadows in Second LifeBy way of Bettina Tizzy at NPIRL, a video by Lordfly Digeridoo of dynamic shadows in Second Life: Now - I have to say, this stuff is gorgeous. My problem is....and I have no idea why, I can never get shadows to work. Dynamic shadows are built into the Second Life architecture and are hidden away in the viewer code, they're just not active. I had found a compiled version of the client with shadows activated some time ago, installed it....but nothing. And I'm running a high end machine that was built to render. Ah well - if you can get it ...
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05.03.09Setting the Stage: Metanomics and M LindenA New Season of Metanomics Wednesday, May 6th at 1:00 PM SLT Setting the Stage: In Conversation with Mark Kingdon Please make note of the new day and time. Second Life URL to the event hub. We held a community forum for Metanomics this week and introduced everyone to the new stage and set for the show. It was a bit of an emotional moment for me. When I first asked Keystone Bouchard to help with the build I wasn't sure what to expect and, well, my brief was kind of lame frankly: "make something cool that people will love" and he sort of ...
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05.02.09The Future of Education in Virtual Worlds: My Discussions at Orange IslandA big thanks to the folks at Orange Island for putting on an amazing series of panels and presentations on education in multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs). I didn't have a lot to add to the discussions other than to maybe set a bit of context, but the presentations that followed were pretty incredible - great examples of where education is at, what methods are working, the challenges and experiences. Mogulus archived the presentations. You can catch my discussion on Mogulus (it takes a bit to get rolling but it's there! Forward to about 24 minutes to where I'm introduced). Click "On ...
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