Author Archives: Roo

PlayStation Home and LittleBigPlanet – Sony keynote at GDC introduces ‘Game 3.0’

Posted on by

I know I’m not the first blogger to mention this (even on Eightbar I’ve been beaten. Twice. ) but… Sony’s keynote at the Games Developer Conference was pretty fascinating.

Opening by putting the future of the games industry in the context of Web 2.0,  Sony introduced us to a new Noun X.0, ‘Game 3.0’. Apparently, it’s…

“all about the connected device … empowered by audiences and powered by dynamic content, powered by active communities built on open standards”.

Yes. Of course. Sony gets it. I especially the tip of the hat to open standards.

Later summarised as being a “new era of creativity, collaboration, communication and commerce” (4 Cs; I’m a sucker for a memorable soundbite), the biggest and best example given of ‘Game 3.0’ in action was Playstation Home. It’s an avatar-based 3D virtual world. Home is not a product, it’s a free service. In fact, it’s a “3D social networking service”. Home provides the user with a customisable avatar, and a user interface which includes a virtual PSP as part of the controller metaphor.

Each user will have access to both private and public spaces, as well as a personal hall of fame with 3D trophies (optionally involving video).  Communication options include:

  • quick chat (phrase choices)
  • virtual keyboard (on screen keyboard.. “ho”)
  • USB keyboard
  • voice chat
  • animations

All very nice. But where does the content come from then? Well, it’s a combination of premium content, which users will pay for, and free items that will be delivered by game developers, game publishers, and Sony themselves; the personalisation is delivered not through custom, or user generated content, but by provided content which is either purchased or unlocked by buying games.

Despite the heavy Sony influence in the 3D content used in the demonstration (which included dropping a Sony Bravia television down the stairs)…

“Home is not just about Sony brands and Sony games, it is a much wider network of connected spaces. … Individual spaces dedicated to either games publishers or to game developers or to individual titles.”

Just game content then?

Over time this will extend beyond the game arena to include non-game brands as well. So you can imagine a location built around a famous coffee company or a famous drinks company, clothing company, record company, retailer, magazine, you can get the idea as this will build out.”

Right. But how is the content created?

“This is very very simple to build. As game developers, as content creators you can reuse content that you’re designing for your own games. It’s all using Maya. It’s really simple to build the 3D spaces and we will be providing you with the tools and the SDKs to unlock this and to maximise this. Any surface can be tagged as video. Any surface can be powered by HTML pushed from websites, and you can have individual areas dedicated to games. The way you want to design it as developers is entirely up to you.” … “All of these things are really simple really easy really powerful ways to build community and socialisation around your game brands”

I still have this nagging question. What about user generated content? Am I wrong in thinking that part of what makes something like Second Life so popular is the freedom for every user to create anything they want? Sure, they might not all be builders, but Sony: why are you limiting the building to your partners? What about the creativity of the end users?

In the second half of the keynote we are introduced to LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule (the makers of Rag Doll Kung Fu). I really like this. Seriously fun-looking play, with user content in spades. More words than I can write at videogamesblogger, joystiq, kotaku and more.

Now this is more like it. I’m sure the palette will still be a bit limited, but the community which will no doubt build up around this with users creating cool levels to out-do each other is going to be fun to watch.

House of Horizons grand opening, Danish band Carpark North rocks the crowd

Posted on by

Hosted on IBM 2, the House of Horizons project is a partnership between IBM, Computerworld Denmark and a Danish firm called Innovation Lab. Each of the companies involved has a sphere in a floating bubbleplex, with other shared meeting areas too. The architecture was designed by real-world architectural firm Arkitema and built by Aimee Weber and her team. Partnering with other companies in this way is fun, and organizing a shared space which we can all invite our clients into, as well as hosting events like today, has been a fun experience. It’s a bit like setting up a convention center or a a shared office complex but one in which silly things like gravity and fire regulations are not an issue. All of this is getting plenty of coverage from Computerworld Denmark too, particularly in their Danish-language Second Life blog.

The space was launched this morning with a concert from Danish band Carpark North, who recently announced the gig on a Danish music news site. Sorry to our cousins in the US, but having a big event which is convenient for those of us in European timezones, and makes Americans wake up early (or, more likely, stay up late) for one was a pleasant change. 🙂

Not so long ago a few of us were planning where in IBMland the House of Horizons should be based…

Then, before long, it was a building site. Under construction. (Get it? How mid-90s web is that?)…

 

But recently, floating above the cloud level, some bubbles appeared…

The sim was very full this morning. 70 people in IBM 2, with another 34 in surrounding sims, many of them waiting to get in…

The gig went really well. Lots of cheering, whistling, clapping and and people calling for more…

I confess I’d not heard of Carpark North before, but I really enjoyed their music. I also really liked the ambient stuff that was playing before the gig got started. (Anyone know what that was?).

Aimee’s construction of the floating soap-bubble idea is really well executed, and looks beautiful. Well done to IBM’s lead SL architect Jessica, who made sure everything ran smoothly, even changing the sim time to night as the concert started, which really made the lit stage stand out.

Come by and see it. There are teleports at ground level to get you up to the bubbleplex (I don’t know if that’s the preferred term by the way, but it’s a word I like). Once up there there’s plenty to explore. There are a couple of contests running at the moment, one to submit a Second Life news story or anecdote for inclusion in Computerworld, and another for the best gadget or artifact. Two L$10,000 prizes to be won on 15th March.

Drop into IBM 2 and visit the floating House of Horizons some time.

Mitch Kapor on techno-utopias

Posted on by

I’m currently reading Bruce Sterling’s ‘The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier‘. It’s “Literary Freeware” and can be found online in several forms. I’m a sucker for clean simplicity, so I’m loving the early-90s-HTML version archived at MIT.  I’m learning all sorts of things, including a lot more than I previous knew about the EFF.

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus, co-founder of EFF, and these days an investor in Second Life, gets a big mention in chapter 4, and these facts really caught my eye too.

  • Apparently his surname is pronounced KAY-por. I’ve been doing that wrong forever. Oops.
  • The name Lotus is a reference to Eastern mysticism, something Mitch had a long-term interest in.
  • Lotus bought VisiCalc and quietly extinguished it. I didn’t know that.

Best of all though is this quote:

“I’m very opposed to techno-utopias. Every time I see one, I either run away, or try to kill it.”

Of Lotus, EFF and Second Life, I have to wonder which he ran away from and which he’s trying to kill 😉

Web 2.0 and virtual worlds introduction presentation

Posted on by

I’ve uploaded the current version of my usual presentation to SlideShare. It sets virtual worlds in the context of Web 2.0, as well as giving a potted history of my interest in Second Life and current IBM activities in the area.

Click through to the presentation itself for some handy links on many of the slides. Feel free to add your own comments and questions to it as well. On my own blog there’s a fairly detailed overview of what I actually say when giving this presentation which you might enjoy too.

Long tail spam

Posted on by

As you probably know, Eightbar runs on WordPress. Akismet is a pretty good spam filter. Viagra, casinos and all manner of unspeakable nastiness and vile unpleasantness has no chance of getting though. On the other hand, how can I expect it to spot and handle comment spam such as this one we received this morning…

This site contains relevant information about irregular verb french.

Yes, those pesky spammers, realising spam filters are too clever for them, have begun harnessing the power of niche spam. Or, as Tim O’Reilly might nauseatingly put it “monetizing the long tail“.

Today we’ve had all of these make it through Akismet and into the comments:

  • irregular verb french
  • world of jewels category
  • knitting pattern for sweater
  • steam turbine
  • scratching with long nail
  • cochlear implant controversy

some of which are amusingly eclectic and downright odd (I particularly grinned at the first and the last in the list).

Meanwhile, Akismet did manage to catch:

  • transnational bus malaysia
  • rest area usa
  • girlie lake
  • professional resume writing services
  • Reviews on drilling through brick wall
  • Delete this spam!

So there is hope yet. The last one, I think, was not really trying very hard though.

So, my apologies if you see the odd bit of comment spam in Eightbar. I hope it is at least weird enough to make you smile.

Five in Five

Posted on by

IBM recently announced its thinking behind “five innovations that will change the way we live over the next five years“. Apparently influenced by the Innovation Jam results, some of the ideas are whacky, others are intriguing  while one is, for some of us at least, a reassurance that we’re on the right track.

The five in five are…

  1. Healthcare prognosis: more flexible, accessible, affordable
  2. Real time speech translation will become the norm
  3. The Internet moves to the 3rd dimension
  4. Micromanaging our environment down to the nano-level
  5. Get ready for mind-reading phones

There’s flash version and a non-flash version too.  Here’s the full text of the 3D Internet one, which helps flesh out what this term will come to mean.

The Internet moves to the 3rd dimension

The popular online immersive destinations, such as Second Life, will evolve into a 3-D Internet, much like the early work by AOL and Prodigy evolved into the World Wide Web. The 3-D Internet will enable new kinds of interactive education, remote medicine and consumer experiences, transforming how we interact with our friends and family, teachers, doctors and more.

Imagine being able to virtually walk the aisles of your favorite stores, interact with experts and even virtually try on clothes, all in the convenience of your own home. Or if you could recreate the blueprints of a room in your home and test out different appliances, cabinets styles, colors and more.

Kids can experience things that they could never access through traditional means. For example, they will be able to walk through rain forests or visit ancient Rome.

Today, 3-D virtual worlds are emerging on the Internet that have a very realistic look and feel to them.

Working with a broad community, and leveraging decades of experience in supercomputing, visualization and work with the three major game platforms (Microsoft’s XBOX 360, Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PlayStation 3), IBM hopes to help build out this next generation Internet, one that is open, immersive and 3-D.

The site also points to Ian’s Wimbledon YouTube video, though neglects to mention the follow up Australian Open project.

To whoever was behind this (yes, IBM is a big enough place that I have no idea), nice one. A great eye opener to get people thinking about meaningfully near-term ideas.

I is for IBM

Posted on by

if you’re in the UK and get a chance to glance at pages 14 and 15 of the today’s Independent, you’ll see they have published an A-Z of Second Life.

A is for Avatar, B is for Building, and of course, I is for IBM…

“The computer giant is one of a growing group of businesses to cash in on SL, where virtual dollars can be exchanged for the real thing (see Dollars, Linden). Last month IBM built 12 new islands in SL, where clients and the public can visit special projects, including a partnership with the US electronic retailer Circuit City. Together they have opened a virtual shop where potential real-world customers can view products. The firms have also experimented with an interactive home theatre, where residents can recreate their living rooms and choose the best TV to fit. One island includes a social area for 900 IBM residents and company alumni to swap ideas.”

Of course, stats which change quickly are very difficult to keep accurate, and since they heard it was 900 (probably fairly recently) the number of IBMers in SL has already risen to over 1600. Still, nice IBM made it into the list (along with Linden Lab, Newsnight and Reuters. Grab a copy if it’s still at your local newsagent.

Open Source Second Life client announced

Posted on by

I was very encouraged, back in October, to hear Jim Purbrick (AKA Babbage Linden) confirm Linden’s plans to “open source Second Life as soon as possible“, starting with the client and eventually opening up the server too. I’m excited to report that the first part has finally happened, and today Phoenix Linden announced the open source Second Life client.

This is an important step. Remember the recent technical Town Hall meeting? One lovely quote from Cory:

“As we’ve talked about, the long term goals for Second Life are to make it a more open platform. Part of that process is learning how projects like libSL can be beneficial to all of Second Life. We should be thrilled that we’ve built an interesting enough set of technologies and communities that people want to tinker and explore. In the long run, this is why we’ve talked about wanting to be able to Open Source eventually. My hope is that in 2007 we’ll be able to get there.”

Yay for Open Source. This could mark the start of a very important shift in Second Life’s development, from being a closed-source proprietary platform to something more open, taking contributions from the wider community.

Business Communicators of Second Life – today’s meeting

Posted on by

Yes, it’s cross posted from rooreynolds.com. I really am that lazy.

I was delighted to be asked to present at today’s meeting of the Business Communicators of Second Life.

I decided to keep it fresh by not pre-preparing my presentation, and typed the whole thing as I went. I took questions as I went, which really helped as I was able to adjust what I was saying based on what people were interested in hearing.

We met on Info island, where I counted 23 people in the audience, including the fabulous Torley.

I mainly covered the history of what IBMers have been doing in Second Life, how we got where we are, and what IBM’s recent announcements will mean. (By the way, I really must blog on Eightbar about the new 12-sim complex IBM announced today. Perhaps I’ll stay up and do that now). Inevitably, the conversation was wider than just Second Life, and we talked a bit about the virtual universe and the 3D Internet.

Linda has the transcript up on the SL Business Communicators blog, but I’ve uploaded it here too.