We are all starting to gather for the Universal gig for Chamillionaire. Its all very exciting, both technically and the fact it feel like a gig is about to start.
Mickey Curtis of Play.Fm is say right behind me, Nyna Slate who I met last night ( a very long term resident is also in the house, and Owner232 who last night was a new resident and has now got the hang of it all.
Having just mentioned U2 in SL I decided to check out the venue, before it all kicks off tomorrow.
You will see from the pics that U2 In SL is a virtual tribute band. The dragon island the venue is on has lots of posters for things relating to making povery history, which is warming to see.
Aswell as the U2 in SL area playing keyboard on stage I also moved up the hill to play on some decks too.
So how is all this relevant? Well with the work I have been doing on wimbledon to see the sort of events we could build in SL, it is good to see that many of the metaphors that have been built in these other events are the same as the ones I have been trying to explore. The different ways you can interact, and be part of something is key to why SL is so engaging and important.
Chamillionaire has some representation in Second Life. The Universal Motown island (just search in SL to save me doing the SLURL, you cant miss it) has a soundstage gig area. Cham is apparently going to be doing a personal/virtual appearance at a gig tommorrow.
Rather cleverly there is a ticketing system, you go to the ticket office and answer a question about the real video.
Dire Lobo from InWorld studios was around when I popped in. You will notice I like to go to the places when they are empty before the event and see whats going on. It is interesting to feel the empty and then full atmosphere of a place.
Anyway they are doing lots of nice things, they have VIP booths, a stadium/set that I got to hang around on. They also have a light mixing desk so the event can be controlled in world. There are tshirts for sale and lots and lots of links to Amazon, ITunes etc to buy the album. Not to mention its streaming over the sim all the time too.
Another band, Hinder, is also represented in the area but the the primary event is tomorrows PA.
It will be good to see any machinima footage that comes out of this, and how the gig works. Now I just need to be able to answer that question. I have not seen the video for the song I was asked about. Primarily, and ironically because I always seem to be on SL or blogging about it!
Nyna Slate a long term resident of SL turned up, who works on some other very cool things, so I got to find out about U2 in SL.
More to follow….
Last night Roo and I managed to both attend a carnival procession in Second Life. This was a celebration with floats (user created obviously) that drove past all the onlooking avatars. Aside from being very entertaining, creative and generally a good laugh, where else would you get a carnival to celebrate the birthday of an operating system/website?
It had many floats by many well known people in the metaverse. However one that got a lot of attention and a fair few photos was the Linden World float. It was a very particpatory event as the guys on the floats gave shouts out to the crowd, and vice versa. So Everyone felt noticed and involved.
It was also quite entertainng how some of the floats got stuck, just like in real life, and the lead float, a gient cake, disappeared into the distance. Well done all though, it was a blast.
I am currently watching a streaming video session at the electric sheep company’s media island hooking up with san fan and the real conference. At the moment they are piping in Dire Straits which is the only problem so far!
A few of us have a had a good chat and made a few contacts, so its doing what it needs to. Over 40 people here to, and its running well.
Rob and I have ended up at the celebration dome on party island. Its not conblogging, not vblogging. In fact I am not sure what it is. We are all listening to some streaming music, cheering the good songs, like the Weird Al mickey take of James Blunt. Its all very exciting, and I hate night clubs!
More of my snapshots as they happen
It is a strange concept that the users and providers of Second Life are having a party, a virtual one. Its been a focus for the past few weeks to gather together plans and venues for various celebrations for the third birthday.
It is an inidcation of the sense of ownership and community, combined with the type of platform this is that causes this sort of outburst of planning and activity. There are even sites in world that are advertising the various events. Something for everyone. Speeches, music, tutorials, races the whole shebang.
I hope I will be able to attend a few events, as happens with the real world, its good to be seen at these things.
It looks like the Supernova conference (which has IBM as a partner and Linda Sanford from IBM speaking) is going to be held with a virtual extension in Second Life. The electric sheep company have done the build and I believe there is a Yahoo branded HUD to go with it.
This link is the SLURL for it June 22nd 5:30 PDT
So hopefully a few of us will be able to attend the conference without having to fly to the US.
OK, Regina Spektor has, with Warner Brothers previewed her album in Second Life. (She also uses Myspace for such things). Now, I had not actually come to this a fan. Not becauase its not very good, but just because I had not heard her work. Bear that in mind as I gush forth with a tale of serendipity.
So being into all things SL I had noticed some blog entries about the upcoming album in SL event from a major artist, it was on my list of things to do but I had not until tonight been. It only happened a few days ago BTW!
Chain of events….. My Flickr RSS feed for the second life pool had some pictures from Pathfinder Linden (who is Community manager/Rep for Linden Labs). So I saw the photos, clicked on the tiny url which led me to the SLURL. This sparked up my second life client and ported me straight to the location. A small New York style loft apartment. A really nice build by Aimee Weber. Taking up a suprisingly small amount of real estate.
A reel to reel was playing very high quality music that instantly caught my attention.
So I am sitting in a loft apartment in New York, which is effectively a 3D album cover listening to an album preview.
That would have been enough, yet somehow the words of the song playing were so spooky that it is untrue. Song 4 – “On the radio”. The lyric being something like “On the radio we heard November Rain, that solo is really long but is sounds pretty nice. We listened to it twice, cos the DJ was asleep”
November rain (Guns and roses) is my Wife and I’s “song” we had it played for the first dance at our wedding. She is away this weekend doing a charity walk so the whole thing brought a lump to my throat. Soppy I know.
Anyway, Advertising works but not always on me, but if we could bottle these sort of connections and make it seem like fate or somehow personal. Well……?
So I will be buying the album, just I am not sure. Do I download it for my iPod, order the CD on Amazon, Walk around town and enjoy the experience of shopping for it?
BTW I just noticed that the album on the table in the apartment is clickable, it opens up the album sleeve, click once more and it flips it to show the lyrics. Beautiful.
This article which I happened upon via the river run red, red papers has some very interesting briefing level material for marketing executives. Rivers Run Red are one of the top design and delivery agencies in the Second Life economy (and some others). They did the radio 1 gig, the xmen iii premier and a few other things.
The CMO article says watch these things as they will be changing the future. Some you may recognize from our previous blog posts about other work we do here.
1. Internet Data Mining
2. Virtual Worlds
3. Decision Markets(Attention Markets)
4. Neuromarketing – (admittedly not our specific bag, but medical imaging falls into this)
5. Automated Behavior Recognition – Which revolves around sensors actuators, motes and data mining
Yes just one article, but interesting how Second Life/Web3.0 etc is linked with the elements of emerging technology
Just so this does not get too serious though.
Here is me shooting myself in the head playing russian roulette in SL
In talking about Second Life to people, and in particular the late night building sessions with new people coming along to my Hursley item all the time to ask how things are going, I realized that in all the protestations of ‘this is not a game it just look like one’ I was starting to get asked why it was not used for games too.
Well those of you have have experienced the mainland in Second Life will know games exists. There are casinos and gambling games to get your precious dollars from you virtual pockets. There are racing leagues and race tracks. Large scale quake style combat arenas.
My personal favourite though is “Les White” and his Sim invaders. A cabinet that looks like the real thing and rezzes the space invaders in 3d above the cabinet. There is something very circular about all that as back in my youth seeing space invaders got me into computers. I hope thats a virtuos circle not a vicious one!
Its a nice example of function in a box. Homebrew coding mixed with old school design, re-rendered for web3.0.
Game3.0 anyone?
Also check out Wagner James Au’s review of Russian Roulette sweeping SL
