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The Archives
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06.17.10Prospect ParkThe first expenditure of the (Prospect Park) commissioners was to hire a topographical engineer, which specialist was Egbert L. Viele, the original Chief Engineer for Central Park. Viele examined the premises and composed a written report, in which he indicated his conviction that "the primary object of the park [is] as a rural resort, where the people of all classes, escaping from the glare, and glitter, and turmoil of the city, might find relief for the mind, and physical recreation." The city grinds down its dwellers, he says: "while on the other hand nature in its beauty and variety never palls ...
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06.06.08Google Earth Unbound – Is THIS Virtual Earth?Google Earth (GE) recently announced that it would make a plug-in to allow GE to run in a browser (thus far, for Windows only). GE expects to see its mashups on the Web, in its words, "with many more applications than ever before." GE is careful to note that the entire application is not being converted into a browser, but only that the plug-in will run, which will enable developers to create applications and enable UI features. While the plug-in will not have all the features of the full GE client, it is still a favourable development for developers who can ...
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04.19.08Virtual Worlds: The Future is in Video Games?My first virtual world was SimCity. Stuffed at the bottom of a drawer somewhere is a printout of the city I created - printed on a dot matrix printer of course, and I figure I still have the MS-DOS floppy disks somewhere. And sure, it didn't have avatars or presence, but it was the idea of interacting with a world that was persistent whether I was paying attention to the screen or not (when I'd get the right set of conditions there was nothing finer than to let the PC run all night and come back to find the city ...
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04.15.08Facebook, in 3DWell, not really. But Vivaty, a start-up from California, is testing 3D virtual chat rooms in Facebook. In this mini-world, new socializing options become available, which is a good thing for chat rooms, which are in need of revitalizing. But it's also a step closer to the 3D Web everyone has been envisioning. And, the technology will be available through a browser rather than a download, which removes one tiresome aspect of installing new programs onto your computer. I'll let the New York Times' Brad Stone describe it: "Vivaty turns a flat profile page into a three-dimensional live chat room. Users choose ...
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04.13.08My Avatar is Portable (and itsy bitsy)Thanks to Digado for pointing out a few advances related to the development of avatars. I was particularly stunned by the animation demo coming out of RealXtend, which is increasingly pushing the boundaries of what a "grid" can do (try hosting 80+ avatars and 100,000 prims on a sim! There's still glitches but they're onto something over there). I've talked before about how the metaverse is already here, it's just hidden off in little corners. Now Weblin let's you carry the avatar concept of the metaverse with you - primitive, sure, and it's really just a "flat" chat client that is ...
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04.12.08Content is Copiable, Land is Free, Long Live the CreatorsThe Second Life world is built of unintended consequences, and as such is a test bed for what comes next as the metaverse arises. In New York, I scoped the booths and sat in on the workshops and listened to Sibley (or watched Sibley, is more like it, he has expressive hands) who gave the following presentation of the technical obstacles on the road to paradise: [slideshare id=339178&doc=vwspring08presentationforweb-1207513945147064-9&w=425] Sibley argues that the broader economic incentive to participate in virtual worlds is a feedback loop which funds that next phase of development, and he identifies six buckets in which development needs to take place ...
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04.05.08Is the Metaverse Less Real if Madison Avenue Says It Ain’t? (Report from the Virtual Worlds Conference)The Virtual World Conference was a sort of giddy hallucination for me, never having been before, and maybe I'm LUCKY (based on other reports) that it's a bit more somber and less gushing than past events. Everything feels a bit more gray these days, constant drizzle in New York (gave me a cold) and all these "bad vibes man" coming from Wall Street and Main Street and CNN, but for me it was a thrill to see the Lindens, and Philip, who was looking well barbered and tanned in his Neko collar and visionary vision, all the Californians seemed to ...
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03.22.08The Story Box: Second Life & MagicThe new CEO of Linden Labs will have no shortage of advice, but I've been struck with the notion recently that in all my thinking about content theft, lag and crashes, 3D cameras and other gizmos, that I've found myself saying one too many times "now, practically speaking", which is a watch word for adult talk and serious nodding and probably the writing of a memo. I owe it to a good friend, who manages to keep me honest and in touch with some deeper vibration (and to whom I owe an apology for not writing back - this blog ...
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09.17.07Metaverse – RoadmapThe Metaverse Roadmap is the working vision for where it's all headed. The Roadmap tries to unravel the future by looking at two continua against which there is uncertainty: focus of identity and focus of technology. Uncertain because, well, to cut through the futurist clutter "who the hell knows". "To construct our scenario set we selected two key continua that are likely to influence the ways in which the Metaverse unfolds: the spectrum of technologies and applications ranging from augmentation to simulation; and the spectrum ranging from intimate (identity-focused) to external (world-focused)." So the road map gives four scenarios seen in the picture ...
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09.14.07Hope in the MetaverseSo here's the theory: the Internet was the beginning. Made things faster. Information more ubiquitous. Communication speedier. Ability to connect across boundaries. Commerce conducted with less friction. We can shop from home! FedEx the new post office. Did it change the basics of how we work, think, perceive, or feel? Sure, it transformed but was it transformative? Social change, upheaval, new political systems? Debatable - in some ways yes, in basic building block ways no. 3D Games: changed the way we play. Warcraft, Everquest, Sims Online. Play as goal oriented. Isolated, perhaps, but immersive. Then Facebook, mySpace...social Web. Take it all, smash it ...
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