Archive for the 'Vint Falken' category
Second Life Business and Social Expo: call for track proposals
October 8, 2008 1:00 pmI haz interesting iPhone photo at Flickr
October 6, 2008 3:20 pm
Wondering why so many persons wanted to see my human, I stumbled over the iPhone 3G camera stats on Flickr. Both me (holding first place, yeey!) and Miss ColeMarie made it in the ‘interesting photographs with an iPhone’ top 18. Which explains heavier traffic than usual. Not so bad if it says ‘21,207 items uploaded yesterday’? Congratz to us both! ;)
In the mean while, the Spontaneously me Flickr pool could use 22 20 18 more photos of SL resident’s humans before I add another mosaic to the collage. Did you submit your human yet?
Confirming London October 6th to 17th
October 1, 2008 11:05 pm
Because previous two times I forgot to tell, here it goes: on October 6th 08.52PM Vint F. will take the Eurostar which - if no fires or electricity break downs or bomb alarms happen - will get her to London by 10.15PM. There she will mistakenly look to he wrong side of the street, almost walk under a charming trolley bus or taxi and make her way through hordes of tourists towards the Rezzable HQ (which she’ll be occasionally leaving for a nap, pizza or hopefully some social life).
This means:
- I get to talk to _real_ human beings without the need of a data connection or phone.
- I have to share my cookies with Lokum (look left).
- I get to ponder which side the chicken looked at first when crossing the street.
- The human will be allowed to visit Camden Town once. On a limited budget.
- Communications are faster & more reliable.
- RaR is within an arm’s length of reach.
- I hope to get to meet up with Rob Danton again.
- Drupal. Drupal. Drupal. And more Drupal. Oh! Need to take umbrella!
- My brain will work in English by the time I return, frustrating the Belgian friends (and partially limiting my thoughts.)
- Way less cigarettes: on the roof (look right) only.
- Wondering if Katharine Berry ever comes to London. (If she does not think I’m to old/math-stupid/arrogant/… for her! ;))
- Adapting to another blend of coffee.
- I get to see how our ‘Project Poseball’ tree is doing. (look up on the right)
- Native English people will be shocked somebody is actually wearing high heels AND carrying a giant laptop.
- Any data that isn’t on my portable disk or laptop will be unreachable for that time.
- iPhone will be taken along to listen to Avatar Song & Prim in my Hand repeatedly on the train.
- … (might add more as I think of them)
Update on Richard Minsky and ‘his’ SLART trademark
September 24, 2008 2:00 pmYour favourite cyber & metaverse related songs?
September 23, 2008 9:00 amTop 10 Most Popular Avatar Names in SL
September 18, 2008 9:00 amFlickrites to fall in virtual love with : Zinc Karas & Illian Garrigus
September 12, 2008 8:07 pmZinc Karas
Not much is known - by me - about Zinc Karas, excect that he’s male, from Greece (find that info in his flickr profile), sells virtual furniture on OnRez and creates some awesome Second Life photographs. Behold yourself:
And last, but definitely not least - I expect all the female avatars to agree with me:
Illian Garrigus
Another highly inspiring Second Life photography artist is Illian Garrigus (Flickr Profile) who sheds a bit more light upon himself with this incredible self portrait (dual-world):
Quote: ‘I wanted to escape from this world, taking with me the good things I had from people I met…. I put on my bag a lot of fast thought, a lot of nice moments, rememberings of many little polygon creatures moved by AOs that gave me less boring night. I was ready to disappear, ready to hit quit and never come back… but, it’s impossible… my friends, it’s impossible… the energy coming out of minds of this world is higher than any illusion, positive or negative, higher than the worst lag, missing texture or freeze… this great common conscience connecting all us and make us stronger to eye of who look at us and don’t understand what we are doing in this world, what we are doing on flickr. love, hate, friendship, honestly, hollowness… reality into the virtuality. I can’t help to live it… I’m sure I learned a lot in these month and mainly in these last weeks, experiences I forgot or I’ve never tried in my RL. for all this. I want to thanks anyone supported me, anyone understood my choices even if wrong without considering a bad person. everything I did, I did with honestly.’
Illian apologising for his ‘Macaroni English’, makes me suspect his real life self originates from Italy. Anyway, this photograph - a friend’s death - is what first did catch my attention, and made me sob a few - real life - tears:
Make sure to browse his flickr stream for a lot of funny, sad and absolutely stunning surprises!
Web 2.0 & Virtual World evolved Social Behaviour
September 10, 2008 8:26 pmIt is already researched and more or less proven that Second Life can help you improve your real life social skills. It’s not just that, we - avies * - also behave like our human counterparts:
… avatars in these elaborate fantasylands responded to social cues to help one another — and revealed racial biases – in the same ways that people do in the real world. In both of the classic social psychology experiments used for the study, one avatar tried to influence another to fulfil a request. The way the door-in-the-face (DITF) experiment works: the experimenter (in this case an avatar) first makes an unreasonably large request to which the responder is expected to say no, followed by a more moderate request.
As expected, the avatars — similar to people who participated in the same experiment in the real world — were more likely to comply with the moderate request when it was preceded by the large request than when the moderate request was presented alone. They exhibited a psychological tendency to reciprocate the requester’s “concession”: the change from a relatively unreasonable request to a more moderate request. The experiment’s moderate request: “Would you teleport to Duda Beach with me and let me take a screenshot of you?” In the DITF condition, that request was preceded by a request of the avatar to have screenshots taken in 50 different locations — requiring about two hours of teleporting and traveling.
Apparently, we - avatars, but it knowingly or unconscious - are not free from ‘virtual racism’ either: On one of the most striking findings, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the requesting avatar was dark-toned. The white avatars in the DITF experiment received about a 20 percent increase in compliance with the moderate request; the increase for the dark-toned avatars was 8 percent.
Conclusion? Interactions among strangers within the virtual world are very similar to interactions between strangers in the real world. Duh. Over at Sciende daily, they think that is something to worry about, something I do not see reason for? Add to that the fact that how we threat strangers - and add ‘a contact of a contact of a contact contacts’ - has changed severely in the last few years ’cause of social networking sites like facebook, myspace, linkedin, … and you get a real interesting situatinon.
* The study was conducted in There it says, but strangely enough, they are using Second Life terminology like ’snapshot’ and ‘teleport’.
Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
Keeping track of your friend’s futilities
When Facebook first introduces their ‘news feeds’ (an overview of all changes & actions on your Facebook friends’ profiles) there was a huge uproar: ‘Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why? Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.‘
Another great example is ‘microblogging’ where people post - fairly irrelevant - things like ‘What did I have for lunch’, ‘What will I have for lunch?’ and ‘What birthday gift should I get my stepdad?‘. This sharing of personal (futile) data has gone even further: ‘When the new iPhone, with built-in tracking, was introduced in July, one million people began using Loopt, a piece of software that automatically tells all your friends exactly where you are.‘
It’s charms? Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter or Facebook feed isn’t interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.
How do you decide on you contacts & friends?
But the offer of possible Twitter, Facebook & Plurk friends is huge. And you can hardly keep track of them all. How do you decide who gets added as a friend or contact, and who gets refused? And how harsh are you at making those decisions? Do you fear you’ll hurt their feelings when refusing friendship? And whom do you offer friendship too? I have two different rule sets for this, it seems:
- Real Life: Mainly using Facebook (human & Vint share an account) and earlier on ICQ & MSN. I won’t easily initiate a friend request. There are a whole lot of people from my region, schools, etc on there, that I know off, talked to, but don’t care about much. I really need to consider someone a real life friend before I engage into offering friendship, that is about 4 people I met at parties or through friends that I feel sorry about we did not get the chance to talk more (yet) aside. As for accepting friendship, I am likely to not refuse, if I - if only shortly - met you in real life at a party, at a friend’s, … I fear I will be rude by refusing. So I’ll add them, but not bother to read their stories, … .
- Virtual World: My behaviour here is - strangely enough - exactly the opposite of with the real life befriending behaviour. I am more likely to just add someone who’s avatar name rings a bell as ‘achieved this’, ‘is interesting’, ‘knows what he/she’s talking about’ and ‘hell, I don’t know them, but they are surely doing interesting stuff I want to keep an eye upon’. On the other hand, I’m also much more likely to refuse friendship from an avatar name that does not ring a bell (or a human I don’t know that does not state his avatar name). Mainly because else it would become impossible for me to keep track, but also because well… they are just avies… . :/
What is the maximum number of ‘friends’ a person can have?
In 1998, the anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued (pdf link) that each human has a hard-wired upper limit on the number of people he or she can personally know at one time. Dunbar noticed that humans and apes both develop social bonds by engaging in some sort of grooming; apes do it by picking at and smoothing one another’s fur, and humans do it with conversation. The maximum numbers?
- apes: 55 friends
- humans: 150 friends
So what about you’re 100+ facebook friends, you’re 80+ twitter friends, you’re 300+ Second Life friend list and you’re 100+ plurk friends? We should divide those ‘friends’ into two types of contacts: your close, intimate circle of friends and what they call ‘weak ties’. In the dark ages, before the internet bloomed (and boomed), you would have quickly forgotten about those ‘weak ties’: met at a party, abroad, at an old job, … and never heard of or seen again. But now we get regular short updates about their lives which makes us feeling ‘related’, and that makes ‘weak ties’ a good thing: ‘Sociologists have long found that “weak ties” greatly expand your ability to solve problems. For example, if you’re looking for a job and ask your friends, they won’t be much help; they’re too similar to you, and thus probably won’t have any leads that you don’t already have yourself. Remote acquaintances will be much more useful, because they’re farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out.‘
But to much ‘weak ties’ can also have negative side effects: critics warn that having to much personal information on to much people spreads your emotional energy too thin, leaving less for true intimate relationships. Following people (almost) solely online, might create a bond with them that’s almost ‘parasocial’ - imagine the bond you have with your favourite artist - in stead of being friends: ‘They can observe you, but it’s not the same as knowing you. For more on that, read Danah Boyd. Another danger is that if you already know every little detail about someone’s life, you do not feel like you need to take the time anymore to visit them in ‘real life’, thus expecting Facebook or the like to make up for - very much needed - quality real face to real face time.
A return in time
Remember those stories of your parents, whom tell you if they were up to no good, the next morning, the whole village knew? Social networking sites and the internet in general return us to that era in time: do something wrong or extremely embarrassing, and the next day, all of your friends will know. Write something down in a fury, and it will be archived by Google forever. And not participating it just like missing out on the weekly tea & gossip moment: you have no idea what the others are up to, and even worse, have no idea what they are saying about you. There’s a reason why I have a Google Blogsearch alert on “Vint Falken’. ;)
The ‘internetz’ and social networking have changed the internet - for the average user - from the perfect tool for privacy and reinventing yourself to a place where - if you want to do that reinventing - you sure as hell need to get your lies together well - as I’m sure some Second Life users can testify! As said in the ‘Brave New World of Digital Intimacy’ article in the New York Times (where the second part of this post is based upon): “History: ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog’. On the Internet today, everybody knows you’re a dog! If you don’t want people to know you’re a dog, you’d better stay away from a keyboard“.
Get to know yourself (through web 2.0)
Another side effect of microblogging and social networking tools is that you are likely to get to know yourself better: ‘The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.‘ Add to that that you are getting more feedback on every day activities - ‘I ate 4 eggs.’ ‘Hmm, not healthy!’ or ‘I have not smoked for 24 hours!’ ‘Great, keep up the awesomeness!’ - which will also influence your behaviour (hopefully in a positive way). You need to think more about how to phrase something - often in under 140 characters - so others can easily understand. This makes you think about the essence of the act or thought you’re writing about: ‘The process of, say, describing a horrid morning at work forces you to look at it objectively. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself.‘
For more, I suggest you go and read the New York Times article, it’s really worth a few of your thoughts regardless if you’re a heavy social networking addict or a light user, and even if you totally detest the whole online befriending business.
Weblin, a 3D chat overlay on your browser (IE or FF)
September 8, 2008 8:21 pm
If I remember correctly, weblin used to advertise with ‘bringing the virtual world to the web’ … or something like that. Weblin - by Zeitgeist - ’s far from a virtual world (yet), but the concept of layering the avatar on top of normal websites is surely fascinating and well executed:
- You have a cute little avie that is customisable using the ‘avatar creation kit’.(takes 100×100px animated gif up to 50kb).
- It has a ‘monetary value’, named ‘Kala’ that is described as ‘the virtual weblin currency’. (Purchasing those is not yet possible. You receive 150 Kala (Kalas?) on start.) But, from the Weblin’s ToS (see below): The user accepts that kala is not paid out in real money and that kala may not be transferred between user accounts.
- Weblin points. You get those as a reward for activity. Use them to unlock features & avatars.
- Contact list. See which of your befriended weblins are currently online.
Mute button. Always handy! ;)- Private chat. Duh!
- Integration with del.icou.us, twitter, stumble upon and even a self hosted WP install.
- Dating. As you’re on the same wegpage, you’ll surely have the same interests? What I love about this one is that weblin Flirt is standard disabled. So they don’t bother you with it unless you do state you’re looking for a relationship.
- Basic animations: jump, dance, wave and even better… decline/refuse.
- …
Weblin SiteKit
Using the Weblin SiteKit designers may now use JavaScript to add custom functionality to their website’s for the - over 1 million Weblins to enjoy. They can make custom locations, enable world filtering, supply custom animations and much more. Interested? Best start with their Code Documentation or take a look at an example custom site.
My Weblin Goals
Up to now I did not succeed at:
- Acquiring some virtual item to put in my backpack and/or inventory.
- Bump into other weblings on secondlife.com or vintfalken.com. (There was a large troop over at The Guild on YouTube, though.)
- Having a decent conversation on weblin. Convo’s have always ranged from ‘how old are you’, over ‘bonsoir’ to ‘hi!?’.
- Making time to make a custom .gif ‘vint’ avatar.
- Collecting much Weblin points.
- Acquiring any kala. (The basic questions, how does one make money in this virtual world!?* ;))
- Find out how to give a virtual object and/or avatar out and if this is possible. Would be quite kewl to give something to each Weblin avatar that visits vintfalken.com.
Test it out - currently on Internet Explorer & Firefox, for using Weblin with FF you will need to install a plugin - and share your opinion, what do you think of Weblin. Is it worth to be called a part of the ‘metaverse’ or is it still 3D chat in stead of a virtual world? Does it have a future? What’s most promising, Google Lively or Weblin?
* Creating Content
Besides using the Weblin Sitekit to create specific websites aimed at Weblins, you can also create and sell your own animated avatars. I quickly created two weblin avatars and put them up in my Weblin Shop. (.gif is far fro my expertise, if you want to purchase one for 10 Kala, I suggest you take the ’sticky cute avatar’, it has more animations and the one with the heart is actually really cute. try ‘kiss’ under actions) So we have the theory on ‘how to make kala / money on Weblin’ more or less down. But errr… how are people supposed to get to my shop?
Weblin’s TOS
And then there is of course the ‘General Terms and Conditions of Business for Zweitgeist GmbH’ that you need to agree upon. Some excerpts:
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§ 3 Performance description
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(d) Additional services exist within the context of use of weblin, which are offered at a cost (hereinafter “additional services”). Services provided at a cost include e.g. the use of virtual objects, participation in games and events.
(e) The services provided at a cost can be obtained using the virtual weblin currency (”Kala”). Kala is placed at the user’s disposal at a cost via a number of different payment procedures.
(f) A more detailed description of the possible methods of payment and details of the additional services currently being offered and their equivalent value in kala can be found in the current price list. The price list can vary for individual users, depending on a user’s “reputation” in the weblin world. The user can always view his current reputation in his weblin character profile.
(g) The additional services and articles purchased using the virtual weblin currency kala are stored as data sets on zweitgeist GmbH’s servers and are made accessible to users complying with these Terms and Conditions of Use. When additional services and articles are being used, the corresponding amount in kala will be withdrawn from the user’s virtual account.
(h) The user accepts that kala is not paid out in real money and that kala may not be transferred between user accounts.
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§ 7 Use of weblin characters
(a) The user declares himself to be in agreement to use weblin characters and all of the functions contained in the user portal exclusively for the purposes provided for by zweitgeist.
…
(c) The user may not contravene legal regulations, offend common decency or infringe third-party rights (rights to the use of a name, intellectual property rights and data protection rights, etc.) by means of the form, content or use of his weblin characters. The user is in particular obliged in his capacity as a member not to show any pornographic content or content glorifying violence or inciting peoples, not to call on other members to commit criminal offences nor provide details of how to do this, and not to offer nor allow to be offered services containing pornographic or erotic content (e.g. nude photographs, peepshows, etc.).
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(e) The user declares himself to be in agreement not to offer or advertise products or services for commercial purposes.
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(h) Zweitgeist reserves the right to bar access on the part of the user to specific or all weblin characters at any time without providing reasons. The Kala credit balances on the user’s barred weblin account may not be used.
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(j) The user recognises that weblin characters created by or for him, e.g. drawings, photographs and profiles are accessible by the public. Entries marked as “private” and file uploads (in particular, images) may be publicly accessible due to operational errors on the part of the user or due to illegal access by a third party or due to errors in the computer software that cannot be ruled out due to the current state-of-the-art.
(k) Zweitgeist’s liability for the unwanted publication of content (articles, photographs, etc.) is excluded, insofar as zweitgeist cannot be accused of intention or gross negligence.
§ 8 Copyright material
(a) Users may not download or use copyright-protected material (e.g. graphics, in particular animated avatars, sounds, etc.) provided by zweitgeist or a third party. Users may not duplicate, reproduce, transfer, sell, publish or use this material for commercial or any other purposes.
(b) The materials referred to under Paragraph (a) remain the property of zweitgeist or the third party, who place them at the disposal of the users.
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General Terms and Conditions of Business of Zweitgeist GmbH, Hamburg, Germany.
Status: 07/2008
Yesterday’s SL Bloggers party & auction was just awesome. My admiration - as usual, btw - for leading lady Veyron Supercharge and her side kick Tiessa Montgolfier. Where Jene Tempura was the best selling male avatar - more than 20k L$ - both Zoe & Codie broke SL Blogger sales records with dazzling amounts such as 50,000L$/blogger. But congratulations to all who had the nerves to get on that auction platform!
How did I do? First, I should mention, I bought myself two SL blogger slaves: Mickie Nikolaidis - which besides being utterly cute stays a mystery to me still, can anybody get me some linkage for ‘micky nikolaidis’? - and well known blogger Rheta Shan. I lost bids on amongst others Jene Tempura and Nadine Nozaki. Where Mickie will be used as SL photography slave, Rheta was donated to Mistress Codebastard Redgrave.
And whom did I went up with? Well, I’m delighted happy to tell that I may now - for a short while - call Her Royal Red Highness my Mistress, and Rheta Shan, Gabby Panacek, Marx Dukek and Jessyka Richard my sisters. Although… I always did want a brother! ;) Now just to find - non-sexual, I did put down some limits - ways to keep the Mistress happy and proud of me!
Best outfit award - which has no prize attached - goes to Mr Keeme Brown for his lobster attached to ****. He & his team also get the ‘best totally silly but hilarious entertainment on voice’ award. Regardless if you won a slave, got sold, met new people, or bumped into old ones again, I think we can all agree that this SL blogger’s party was a huge success and we should do this monthly again. Who’s up for organising the next one?
