Paper 3d printing

You may have noticed a good few references to another pet subject of 3d printers here on eightbar. Well here is another one.
Mcor use the principle of printing out layers of paper that are then bonded together to create a 3d model. That is a really interesting approach, especially given the lower cost of paper versus the plastic based printers.
The other interesting point is the way I got introduced to this. Guy Kawasaki, one of the original evangelists posted it on twitter refering to his truemors website. I follow his twitters and saw 3d printer, so it was a natural conclusion to then post it on eightbar.

Performing, showing off ,positive feedback and recycled content

Back in august over on terranova I wrote a post “What a performance Live Vs Recorded in a multi player world” I have been revisiting the concepts around performance and the ability to interact with people and content in a live sense even more.
The driver for this has been two very interesting mainstream games. Guitar Hero (now at version iii) and Singstar (the PS3 version). The premise behind both these games is as players and users we interact with existing content but add a performance element to that interaction. Guitar hero uses a seemingly amusing plastic guitar, using the buttons on the guitar an pushing the strumming button you are able to play along with songs. The peripheral based bemani (short for beat mania) where you provide responses in time to some sort of music and on screen prompts comes in all sorts of shapes, the dance mat games, bongos, maracas, you name it.
Lets rock
guitar hero II
Also Singstar uses the same principle but instead of pressing buttons to a beat and the tune coming out accordingly it has mics and you sing along with songs. You get a visual feedback of how in tune you are. I had been writing about this over on epredator.com too as its had some surprising results
Singstar Ps3
The point that struck me is that people, normal people not gamers, can see and hear the results of a players performance and really understand if someone is good or bad or just trying very hard. Most things we all do, especially in the tech world are under the covers or obscure enough that people do not understand the artistry. Even regular games, non-gamers will see the top player in the world dispatch several enemies with a single shot before dashing to a new point of cover, and it will look easy. Only other game players see the skill.
These bemani performance games highlight mistakes, highlight perfection but in a field that most people can relate too. In many ways this is reflected in the virtual worlds and metaverses. Here people are starting to see the skill of the build both from trying themselves and also from relating to real life.
If we can make live performance and skills in a business context as identifiable as a good singer on singstar, combined with the ability for people to have a continuous way to practice and refine I think we have some really good results. I am by no means a singer, but I now appreciate the structure of some of the songs I have been singing at a much deeper level than a pure passive listener. It is this ability to delve deeper into existing content, e.g. mr brightside by the killers on Singstar or Anarchy in the UK on guitar hero III, also having repurchased the content for its enhanced involvement. All that music back catalog, fighting to deal with file sharing and without a moments thought I was more than happy to spend another 99p to buy a Singstar version of a Duran Duran song that I am sure we already have on multiple CD’s and MP3 playlists.
So we get to understand content by immersing in it in a very public way and people get to understand our various talents through seeing the performance. It seems an interesting pattern?

Holiday building project in second life

One of the wider eightbar group Anita Cassini in SL told me about a “build a better bauble” project she has got going with some other residents. The basic premise is you build a christmas tree ornanament to represent you or your brand and these all get placed on various trees around SL. The idea is that content creators come together both to show their talents and to also say no to stealing of others work.

Build competition
Photos originally captured on snapzilla

There is a tree here with a notecard giver that says the following

Merry Xmas!

The holiday season has started..

To celebrate we are launching phase I of a campaign to build awareness of how important intellectual property is for the growth and health of the Second life community.

Lets spread the word by showing everyone in SL how good it is to be creative.

How can you participate?

Phase I – Spread the message spread the joy (Launch – Dec 1)

1) Build an ornament Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or any thing that makes you want to celebrate this time of year.

2) Requirements
a) Must reflect you and/or your brand can be as sophisticated or simple as you want.
b) You must be the creator
c) Must be only one object linked minimum 1 prim – max 254 prims
d) Maximum size 0.05 x 0.05 x 0.05 (size of a regular block)
e) Must have an IP message as part of the script (one included here) or in a notecard inside the document.

3) You can participate if you have created unique content in SL and/or belong to one of following groups:
a) You are a scripter, builder, artist, designer, machimaniaographer, and or participate in the performing arts.
b) You are a blogger, writer,
c ) Art promoter, museum owner or represent a RL corporation.
c) You are a Secondlife mentor, a tutor or a teacher
d) If you have a created a group that has 50+ members

What to do with it.
a) Send your ornament (named “[Your Name} Ornament”to Anita Cassini in a folder
1) Notecard with brief description of who you are and what you do for everyone to see it (Holiday message would be cool too)
2) Ornament – no mod is ok – but needs to have copy/transfer perms for it to be distributed and placed in the vendor (will be sold at 0L)
-Add the script to include IP message
you can add a notecard giver and a landmark if you wish.
3) A photo of your ornament with you or without you in it.

b) You are encouraged to display and distribute your ornament at your store, in shop_on_ rez and in slexchange, and any other way you wish to make available to the community.

Add a poster of your oranament

Additionally exhibit halls will be placed at IBM SOA Adventure , Nicky Ree – Tropical Orchard sim, Sarg Bjornson’s Prim Heart Amusment Park Matika Textures AM Pro Rides
If you wish to host and exhibit hall please IM Anita Cassini, so she can make the ornaments received available to you.

And remember
*A community message : Copying and Stealing of creative content and using it without permission of its original creator is wrong and illegal. Please do not encourage such activities and do not buy stolen goods.*

Anita Cassini on SOA island

Metaverse Chess

Every now and then we like to give out some sneak peaks of our internal metaverse. Here is one of a little torque based chess game I have been working on. I thought I would never solve the final bug, but at last it worked. This is film of it running on my local machine and server, but it will be deployed into the main corporate one very soon.
The premise was to not enforce any rules other than 2 pieces cant be on 1 square. The underlying development is really a model view controller one. There is aserver state to determine what piece is where. That model is changed by actions in the world.
The player walks to sqaure, waits 2 seconds and is allowed to select that piece, then walks to another space and waits 2 seconds and is allowed to place the piece. The delay is because triggers are used on each square to determine relative positions. I had to stop those triggers going off straight away as it meant you could not walk across the board without getting spammed.
The pieces are just letter based place holders, a selection of sets will be available.
We can of course apply the actual rules of chess and validation to the underlying model, but you dont in real life do you 🙂 I also need to make it multi threaded, at the moment it relies on people taking turns and moving off the board, but a free for all where more than one piece can be moved at a time allows for all sorts of user generated games with an ordinary chess set.

Lots of guildmasters

We had a 2 person race for the 6 monthly elections as guildmaster of our virtual universe community here in IBM land. The VUC covers many places and is a community of interest. We that the two main candidates Holly and Pranab have agreed to now have dual leadership of the community. This is really cool and very west wing. Both of them have been significant activists in eightbar and our presence in virtual worlds, so its all good.
So we have 2 guildmasters and we can now see how that works, yet more experiences to share. Well done Ada and Locutus 🙂 W00t

Experiments in blogging

Followers of this will have noticed a blip with a slightly bizzare comment, that no doubt will end up in a flame war of some kind with “Tina Bell”.
Whatever the bizzare reason for trying to deal with how I operate and damage that in some way I am not really overly bothered.
However, the things I say and do outside for my company are genuine. Am I always happy…. No.
My post that leaked out was more about the concept of the enterprise and it not being an entity that you can deal with.
So I deleted the comment (something only usually reserved for viagra adverts) I am sure it will get posted again elsewhere, after all its out there. I hope as much attention is given to things when they get sorted out and I write how happy I feel. For the record this was my personal post on how I feel at the moment I just chose not to use eightbar (a group blog and a virtual world blog about innovation) as the place to express this.
Interestingly Tina Bell took exception to some of my thoughts over on terra nova. Quite odd really but it take all sorts and I appreciate the conversation. Maybe just not on eightbar 🙂
**Update This is the link to my latest personal post should the conversation need to continue