Archive for January, 2009
Second Life web resources for January 28th 2009 through January 30th 2009
January 31, 2009 1:30 amWhat if… we’re going to war?!
12:41 am
The recognition of Second Life as a “country” on Plurk, together with the online MMORPG World of Warcraft, has lead to a large amount of humorous speculations as to what these virtual countries’ diplomatic relationships would be, might we ever reach the title of “sovereign state”. Will SL & WoW be friendly, neighbouring states, or will this be a start of an endless feud, with many avatar casualties & PR damage on both sides?
Seeing that the nature of both “games” is totally opposite - they care about gold and conquest, Second Life is about land and settlement; they work together to slaughter enemies, we work together to build social networks - and WoW-players must be incredibly jealous and eager to conquer what Second Life players already possess: the powers of avatar sex, prim babies, 15,000 inventory items, land, snowball guns and an endless amount of free accounts, we can’t help but fear they’ll soon stand at our borders and storm governor Linden’s palace.
Rumours that that-what-shall-not-be-named aims for Second Life’s representational seat in the United Nations does not give us much ground for hope to a peaceful solution to this beginning conflict that will shock the whole metaverse. Luckily, on Plurk, we are already debating a general battle & emergency plan as to keep those gready WoW’ers of our grid. What should we do when the Horde attacks? What can YOU do?
- Take all “rotate or slide open on click” scripts out of doors & windows.
- Make sure all your weaponry & defence items are updated to the latest versions & keep them organised in one folder for easy access.
- Contact your friends at LoTRO and beg them to send in reinforcements. (Don’t bother getting the dwarfs, when mistaken for child avatars, they will probably fall under friendly fire.)
Hand of freebie penises - ‘freenis’ - poisoned with damage-causing scripts.Change of strategy by Gereral Whimsy: BOX the Freenis’ first, to stall while we strike, they wont see us coming with a box on their heads.- Particle machine guns will lag them to death.
- Plant mines, saying “click here to mine for gold”.
- WoW characters take damage when falling. We do not. Rez a big prim under their feet, lift them 200m in the air then delete the prim.
- Some WoW creatures are also able to be invisible. Keep CTRL+ALT+T handy at all times! (Strategist Piu)
- Coordinating fighting outfits. All designers should step up and - for once - design practical clothing. Don’t wear high heels! Lara Croft-like boots are ok and even encouraged.
- Reinstate the Cornfield, to send residents with dual citizenship if they refuse to cancel their WoW membership.
- Cloaking: send in the bots! They’ll have a hard time - just like us - figuring out which green dot is real.
- Use a vintage viewer or Nicholaz’, war is not a pretty picture, and little fluffy clouds will only distract you (and your CPU).
- The fashion bloggers will be sent out as undercover spies to join WoW’s realms. In no time and without much effort, they will cause a massive amount of drama and internal conflict within the WoW characters’ ranks.
And if all this fails? I suggest we then drive them all to the Mainland and flood it. But in the mean while, any more great virtual defence strategy ideas to defend all what is dear to us? Leave a comment here or join the conversation on Plurk.
Vint does OpenSim Machinima
January 30, 2009 9:22 amOk, I know it might not be visible, but tons of effort went into this on… first take a look - preferably high quality on YouTube (and if you’re there anyway, please favourite it or leave a sweet comment *grins*) - and then let me explain…
Shot at the Techra, PGA (OpenSim based Grid) & Crimson Shadow
“I’m going to machinima this!” was something that came up in my head all of a sudden when I noticed an extremely high frame rate on the PGA, so there I was, unprepared, with only a demo version of Fraps. Which lead to me having only 30 seconds fragments, of which some even got _lost_ somewhere on my disk. Stuff I know I shot, but can’t find anywhere. Then, next in line was Windows Moviemaker Moviebreaker. It would not allow me to edit anything longer than 90 seconds, well, I could edit it, but it would refuse to safe. So I had to make this one in 4 separate parts, and then glue them together and add the audio track. Hence, not much “alignments” between video & audio, sadly enough. There are 2 things though, that I take full blame for:
- I left the “avatar names” hoovering above the avatars. Basically, because I have no clue how to turn that off.
- I forgot to go into “full view without user interface”. Basically, because I forgot the key combination.
Ah well, next one will be better, I promise, especially if I can get my hands on a SpaceNavigator mouse thingie. ;) In the mean while, I do like the covers I did for Foolish’ “Sweet Home on the Mainland” and “Linden’s Lament” song. What you think? (If you wish to read more about the “Live in the Cornfield” show, or hear the full recording, hup over to my entry on the Rezzable Blog. *hums “Save the Drama”*)
“Second Life”, a country in Plurkistan
January 29, 2009 4:07 am
Numerous, more than 700, Second Life avatars are using the social networking service Plurk. Plurk? Well, it’s kinda like Twitter, but then better, with _real_ conversations and a timeline. But up to now, they were ‘homeless’. They could set their Real Life country in profile location data, but not “Second Life” or a region.
This inspired Moggs Oceanlane and other influential Second Life Plurkers, often with a karma - Plurk’s ranking system - way above that of the average atomic - to start a quest for “recognition of Second Life citizenship”, or at least location data on Plurk’s getsatisfaction.com page: Avatars want to find one another too! A successful quest, I should add:
Today, Plurk officially added “Second Life” as a country on their location list, allowing ‘plurking’ avatars to easy find each other and browse ‘Second Life’ rankings. On getsatisfaction.com, Amir Salihefendic even responded: “As of today “Second life” is a country on Plurk :-) We may explore some more integration with “Second life” later on.” Woot! One small step for an avatar, a large one for mankind avatarkind. On Plurk, the joke of the day is: “Next, a seat in the United Nations?!” :D
And me? Until I feel more ‘virtual’ than ‘real’ and we have social health benefits in Second Life, I’ll gladly stick to Belgium as an excellent country. Thank you very much for the offer though! ;)
Second Life web resources for January 26th 2009 through January 27th 2009
January 28, 2009 1:30 amIndian telecom operator organises “Follow your Heart” talent hunt in Second Life
January 27, 2009 9:03 pm“Tata Teleservices Limited, India’s youngest and fastest-growing pan-India telecom service provider, is extending its hugely successful Suno Dil Ki Awaaz brand campaign into the Virtual World of Second Life with a first-of-its-kind Virtual Talent Hunt. This makes Tata Teleservices the first Indian telecom operator to enter virtual worlds.” ‘Follow Your Heart’ is a platform for amateurs (artists/musicians/photographers) to showcase their talent at the Tata Indicom Island in Second Life from January to March 2009.
(watch video on youtube
(and listen to utterly cute pronounciation of “virtual world”!! ;))
Tata Teleservices’ build is located at the virtual “Bombay” in-between “Bollywood” and the “Bollywood Hills”. It contains a small orientation zone, a party/events area, a gaming zone, exhibition areas for the talent hunt and even a virtual football - as in soccer - field. Architecture is futuristic and well done, but could use some shading baked into the textures.
The whole area is oriented around the “Follow your hart” talent hunt and the “Suno Dil Ki Awaaz” phone network, that “lets you connect with like-minded people and make friends in Second Life using the SDA phone!”.
Prizes for the talent hunt are amongst others an Apple iPod Touch 16GB for best in Music, a Nintendo Wii Game Console for best in Art and a Digital SLR - Olympus E520 for best in photography. There’s also a “Be A Bollywood Star!” star game - which I sucked at, got stuck at the first mission objective after “press start” - with HUD.
Tata Indicom
The “Tata Indicom” island was realised by Indusgeeks, the official press release you can find on their blog. More information at tataindicom.com/sl and at tataindicomsl.com you can login to your account to upload photographs, art or music after registering your avatar at virtual Bombay (SLurl). New residents can get register an avatar at tataindicom.com.
For a “virtual first” - although a talent hunt is not, NBC did so earlier - this is definitely impressive. As far as I’ve seen, no rule states that non-Indian citizens can not join the talent hunt, so let me know if anybody of you does so! :) I only fear that with a limited amount of new registrations, and in-world voting, exactly this voting can be easily spoofed by using alts? Ah well, some snaps:
Get educated, in Second Life
10:00 amRory Cellan-Jones reports from the BETT show in London, the world’s largest educational technology exhibition: “One firm (Mark Mullis of Middlesbrough City Learning Centre?) from the north of England is using the virtual world of Second Life to showcase a new school that, for now, does not exist. Construction work on Acklam Grange School has only just got underway, but developers at Middlesbrough City Learning Centre have created an exact representation of what it will look like in Second Life. The idea is for teachers, pupils, and governors to see exactly what the new school will look like, familiarising themselves with the layout and spotting any potential problems before the building goes up.“
Take a look at the YouTube video here, UK residents can watch the video here on the BBC website as they are not allowed to watch it on YouTube. Disregard the BBC describing Second Life as an “internet phenomenon” (ok, we can live with that) and a “virtual social networking site” (we’re Facebook 3D with un-real people! yeey! errr?!!!).
From the SLischool wiki: “As the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ initiative moves forward a large amount of money is being spent on buildings that we hope will provide effective learning spaces well into the future. Mistakes in the building of these schools can cost thousands of pounds to put right. However, imagine if you could build the school in a 3D virtual world, to scale and have the key stake holders walk around and interactively engage with the building as part of the consultation process. It would enable spaces to be experienced, mistakes to be spotted, placing of equpment equipment* and furniture to be tried out and familiarisation with the new building to speed up. Interactive functionallity functionality* could be built into all aspects of the building to allow anything from art work selection to trying out automated lunch purchasing systems.”
If the pupils are allowed to walk around in their “new” school, then is this located on the Teen Grid? A “private” grid in agreement with Linden Lab? Or are they using OpenSim?
* Spelling errors in a school project? *grins and says “tssss!”* ;)
Swim, Vint! Swim!
January 26, 2009 8:27 pmIs there a purpose to Virtual Life?
10:00 amThis one made me giggle, trice: “What is SLex? When a boy avatar and a girl avatar and the men behind both avatars love each other very much, they rez some pose balls and text dirty to one another until a wife/girlfriend walks into the room and asks what in the hey is going on. The end.“
These are words by - Girl Wonder - Tymmerie Thorne, where she protests the fact that we are being treated as “SLab rats”. According to Miss Thorne, every thesis, survey, … involving Second Life, focusses on SLex, romance, dating, flirting, … more than any of the other possibilities as there are entrepreneurship, education, non-profits, role play & gaming, fashion, … .
I must say, I haven’t filled in much surveys re:Second Life lately - less hype, less surveys? - but certainly, most of the documentaries made do focus on virtual affairs, sex and betrayal. So do most news stories. That much, that you’d - almost - start to believe the only thing we rezzed for was SLex. Or did I miss any good, constructive stories & research papers that were released recently? If so, please hit me up! SLex is not a necessity for procrastination in the virtual world, so what is the purpose of our - virtual - lifes?
Image credit: Tymmerie Thorne
