Endlich: Eingebaute Lippensynchronisation in Second Life

Was die Kommunikation in virtuellen 3D-Welten angeht, vor allem in der Zusammenarbeit mit anderen, ist die fehlende gewohnte nonverbale Kommunikation immer noch ein großes Manko. In Second Life gab es dafür zwar bereits schon lange (kommerzielle) Zusatzprogramme, die z.B. zum getippten Textchat oder auch Voicechat passende Mundbewegungen erzeugen (auch typische vorgefertigte Gesten/Mimikabläufe für Situationen aller Art und sogar animierte Sculptie-Gesichter), aber gerade für Neueinsteiger, sogenannte Noobs, ist es immer wieder mühsam, sich solche Add-Ons zusammen zu suchen (abgesehen von den Zusatzkosten). Über SLtalk bin ich jetzt darauf aufmerksam geworden, dass die Lippensynchronisation bereits im aktuellen Second Life Test-Viewer (Version 1.20.14) eingebaut ist. Man muss es zunächst aktivieren (Advanced Menü mithilfe Shift-Alt-Cmd-D einblenden, dann Character/Enable lip sync Beta auswählen), doch ich gehe davon aus, dass dies in Zukunft voreingestellt ist. Und so sieht es aus:



Automatische Lippenbewegungen während des Voicechats in Second Life (leider nicht wirklich synchron).

Wenn man das kombiniert mit Mimik-/Eye-Tracking Lösungen, die langsam immer günstiger werden, wird die Unterstützung von internationalen Arbeitsgruppen, Meetings und anderen Formen der Zusammenarbeit durch virtuelle Welten immer realistischer für die Teilnehmer.

Hier ein paar Beispiele von Entwicklungen, die in der Richtung gemacht werden:
http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/projects/eyegaze.html
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=UUeqrYEzNi4
http://gazeinteraction.blogspot.com/2008/07/eye-tracking-using-webcamera.html

Und auch der ganze Körpereinsatz ist bereits in der deutschen Forschung in Arbeit: Junge Forscher des Deutschen Forschungszentrums für Künstliche Intelligenz Saarbrücken surften mit dem Nintendo Wii-Balanceboard bereits durch Google Earth und Second Life und hielten dies auf YouTube fest. WEITERLESEN...

How Intelligent Have Second Life AIs Become? [New World Notes]

How Intelligent Have Second Life AIs Become? [New World Notes]

The answer is: not very. Hamlet Au describes his conversation with a “robotar”, a computer controlled avatar and chatbot. He was mostly impressed by the nonverbal movements the helper bot made - she turned in his direction, for example - but there are some bot applications/services available today which allow these things (Pikkubot for example). I should tell him about it, but right now I’ve got to catch a movie :-)

Justin Gibbs wrote an interesting article about NPCs and their role in our future digitized life and I couldn’t agree more with his thoughts. WEITERLESEN...

Virtual goods starting to pan out for Facebook game app developers

Virtual goods starting to pan out for Facebook game app developers

…and not just the venture-funded ones » VentureBeat

Typical virtual good: a Facebook app to waste your time (and that of your friends) WEITERLESEN...

Goethe-Institut opens presence in Second Life

Goethe-Institut opens presence in Second Life



Opening July 28th a private island at this location, including virtual classrooms, exhibitions and a free studio for artists. The Goethe-Institut global network is visualised in the form of a three-dimensional, interactive map of the world. WEITERLESEN...

Schöne Neue Welten: It's Not a Game Console, It's a Community

Nintendo Manager Reggie Fils-Aime, (l) President Nintendo America Inc. und VP Cammie Dunaway (r) demonstrierten auf der E3 das Gemeinschaftserlebnis der Wii-Spielkonsole (Bild: Standard.at)

Deutschsprachige Nachrichtenmagazine (z.B. Handelsblatt, Standard.at) berichten über die Veränderungen, die sich im Spielkonsolenmarkt vollziehen: Der Trend zum Social Gaming, angefeuert durch die seit letzem Jahr immer größer werdenen Beliebtheit von sozialen Netzwerken wie Facebook und MySpace sowie den Erfolg der Wii-Station, Nintendos "Familien-Konsole" (s.u.). Der Trend andersherum: Mit dem Projekt TheGame08 ruft MySpace junge Entwickler in Ländern wie China, Japan, Korea oder Indien dazu auf, Applikationen für Casual Games zu programmieren, die dann auf der (Web-)Plattform integriert werden.
Außerdem gibt es kaum noch neue Spiele, die nicht hochrealisitisch, dreidimensional, online und Multi-Player sind.

Parallel dazu entstehen im Internet immer mehr virtuelle 3D-Welten, die sich im Gegensatz zu Vorreiter Second Life vor allem mehr als Teil des "normalen" Webs verstehen und teilweise schon direkt im Web-Browser laufen. Diese neuen dreidimensionalen Web-Welten zeichnen sich vor allem durch folgende Merkmale aus:

• Einfache, leichtgewichtige Technologie: man benötigt nur einen Web-Browser und ein Plug-In, das sich innerhalb von Minuten installiert
• Niedrige Lerkurve: Im Gegensatz zu Virtuellen Welten wie Second Life kann man sich innerhalb von Minuten bewegen, unterhalten und mit ein paar Mausklicks eigene Räume gestalten
  
• Integration in soziale Netzwerke: sie sind integriert in oder vernetzt mit bekannten sozialen Netzwerken wie Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, AIM
• Junge Zielgruppe: sie richten sich an "Tweens" - junge Leute zwischen 13 und 26 Jahren
• It's social: Es geht praktsich nur um eins: Socializing - eine weitere Möglichkeit, Leute kennen zu lernen, sich auszutauschen, sich ein MySpace in 3D einrichten oder in 3D zusammen shoppen gehen
  

Beispiele hierfür sind Vivaty, Google's Lively, Exitreality, 3B Rooms und Just Leap In - alle in Beta und außer Just Leap In momentan nur unter Windows lauffähig. Auch Lösungen, die nichts weiter als Adobe's Flash Plugin benötigen, sind bereits am Start: z.B. WebFlock von ESC, einer der bekanntesten Virtual Worlds Agencys im internationalen Markt (Sebastian Küpers schrieb kürzlich darüber (englisch)). WebFlock soll die Entwicklung web-basierter virtueller Welten erleichtern, ist allerdings recht kostspielig (knapp 100.000 US$ Jahreskosten).

Zum Reinschnuppern: Hier mein virtual Office in Lively und ein Raum zum Experimentieren in Exitreality und ein Screenshot für Mac User (ja, ich bin auch einer, aber was tut man nicht alles):


Screenshot einer Lively-Szene in einem international besuchten Café

Nintendo, wegen der grafisch unterentwickelten "Mii" Mini-Avatare gern von anderen Konsolenherstellern und Gamern belächelt, hatte mit der Wii-Familien-Konsole und deren "Casual Games", die die ganze Famile vor den Fernseher rufen, durchschlagenden Erfolg. Sony will mit der lang angekündigten "Playstation Home" Online-Plattform für PS3 Besitzer Microsofts Onlinenetzwerk Xbox Live in den Schatten stellen. Wenn man sich die riesige, hochrealistische 3D-Welt anschaut, wird ihnen das evtl. auch gelingen...


Screenshot aus der aktuellen Beta-Version der Playstation(R)Home Plattform, in der sich PS3 Spieler treffen, miteinander spielen, chatten und shoppen gehen können. Eigener, individueller Avatar inklusive


Aktuelles Video eines "Developer Walkthroughs" durch PS Home

Ein Trend, der sich also über die verschiedensten Plattformen - Web und Spielekonsolen - hinweg verbreitet und zu einer schier unüberschaubaren Zahl von unterschiedlichsten Shared Virtual Environments führt, die momentan alle nicht miteinander kompatibel sind (mal von Second Life und Open Grid abgesehen, aber das betrachte ich als eine Plattform).

Wer braucht schon 3D?

Diese Frage erinnert mich nur an Mitte der Neunzigerjahre, als einige Leute fragten: Wer braucht denn ein World Wide Web? Etwas später fragten sie dann "wer braucht denn Video im Web?" und wieder später "Wer braucht denn Social Networks?". Ach ja:"Wie will Google jemals Geld verdienen". Meine Erklärung dazu schrieb ich Anfang Juli hier (englisch): Of course 3D will stick.

Kinder von heute wachsen mit Barbie Girls, Lego Universe, Virtual MTV und deren deutschen Derivaten auf, bedienen die Wii Station und deren Spiele ohne einen Blick ins Handbuch werfen zu müssen und sind es jetzt schon seit Jahren gewohnt, kleine pixelige Avatare durch fantasievolle Welten zu steuern. Teens und Twens lesen weder Zeitung noch gucken sie Nachrichten, stattdessen laden sie lieber selber Fotos und Videos, idealerweise vom Handy aus, in ihre "Community" - auf SchülerVZ, Facebook oder in ihre eigene YouTube/MyVideo/MySpace Seite. Mit unzähligen Webtools kreieren sie ihre eigene chaotisch/kreative Welt, laden Freunde und Freunde von Freunden ein und chatten, simsen und messagen.

Keine Nachrichtenseite kommt heutzutage mehr ohne Video, Kommentare und "Bookmark/Sharing"-Funktionen aus.

Die User von morgen (und heute) lassen sich nicht mit Text-Chat abspeisen und einigen werden die vorgefertigten, restriktiven Baukästen, aus denen man sich etwas zusammen klicken kann nicht ausreichen. Sie wollen die dritte Diemnsion.

Die Baukästen und die Rollenspiele mit festen Regelwerken werden Millionen Anhänger behalten, aber das Web 2.0 ist nutzergeneriert und diese Freiheit, selbst Kreativer und Publisher zugleich zu sein, werden sich die nachwachsenden Generationen nicht mehr nehmen lassen.

Nur dass es dann nicht nur bewegt und hörbar, sondern auch mobil und 3D sein muss. Und natürlich: Immer und überall online.

Jeder wird "Content" erstellen und verbreiten (und wenn es nur Buchtipps sind) - die Auswahl dessen und die Fähigkeit, vielen Menschen eine Art virtuelles Zuhause zu bieten, wo sie sich wohlfühlen und immer wieder gerne hinkommen, wird zukünftig eine immer größere Rolle spielen. Nicht Content, sondern Community und Identity is King - und ich denke, dass grenzenlose Freiheit bei der Erstellung des Contents und der Repräsentation seiner selbst (Avatare, Profil) ein Schlüssel zum Erfolg von solchen Community-Plattformen sein wird. (Das geht von einem Bild/Video/Musik-Mix bis hin zu eigenen Kreaturen und Universen, siehe z.B. das neueste EA-Spiel Spore, wobei hier noch Baukastenprinzip herrscht).

Und um sowohl die eigene Identität als als eigene Kreationen und das virtuelle Büro oder Zuhause nutzen und teilen/zeigen zu können, muss man sie natürlich "mitnehmen" können. Wir brauchen also Gateways, standardisierte Übergänge zwischen Tausenden von verschiedenen virtuellen Welten - mindestens für den kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenner unserer Identität (Avatar und Profil) .

Stichworte hier sind Interoperabilität und Data Portability. Es gibt schon deutliche Anstrengungen in Richtung Vereinheitlichung und Akzeptanz von "social data" wie z.B. OpenID, OpenSocial und die Dataportability Group. Da arbeiten viele gute Leute dran, unter anderem auch welche, die sich in Web 2.0 und Web 3D, namentlich Second Life, engagieren (z.B. Blogger und Entrepreneur Christian Scholz aka Mr. Topf) und somit die dritte Dimension im Blick haben, wenn es darum geht, 2D- und 3D Räume zu verbinden. Pixelsebi hat auch zur Dataportability in virtuellen Welten (englisch) ein paar interessante Gedanken zusammengetragen.
Ein interessanter Ansatz - evtl. als Zwischenlösung - ist auch Myrl, eine Website, die eine Art web-basiertes Bindeglied zwischen den vielen virtuellen Welten werden will (Liste der Welten).

Ich träume davon, dass ich irgendwann je nach Lust und Laune (oder Aufgabe und Ziel) zwischen den verschiedensten virtuellen Welten hin- und herspringen kann, ohne über Plattformen und Plug-Ins nachdenken zu müssen - denn das wichtigste ist, wen ich treffe und warum - nicht womit. WEITERLESEN...

Myrl - connecting 13 more virtual worlds including lively, imvu, vMTV and Twinity within the next days. Myrl is a social network for the Metaverse, a cross-worlds platform aiming at bringing virtual worlds on the web and connecting users from multiple virtual worlds. Myrl.com (beta)

Myrl - connecting 13 more virtual worlds including lively, imvu, vMTV and Twinity within the next days. Myrl is a social network for the Metaverse, a cross-worlds platform aiming at bringing virtual worlds on the web and connecting users from multiple virtual worlds. Myrl.com (beta) WEITERLESEN...

New World Notes: When Will Microsoft Go Big On Virtual Worlds?

New World Notes: When Will Microsoft Go Big On Virtual Worlds?
WEITERLESEN...

The Daedalus Project: Our Virtual Bodies, Ourselves?

The Daedalus Project: Our Virtual Bodies, Ourselves?

(via naki)



The survey results suggest that we tend to be just like optimized selves and the real world stereotypes hold in virtual worlds as well: women are socializing, graceful explorers and men are over-achieving sociopaths…ah well :-)



From the survey: “(…) much of avatar choice seems to revolve around mirroring; taller people prefer taller avatars, older people prefer older avatars, male players prefer more masculine characters, and female players prefer more feminine characters (…)” WEITERLESEN...

Afternoon Reading: How Google Achieves Consciousness

Afternoon Reading: How Google Achieves Consciousness



Image via Modern Life is Rubbish. Edge’s recommendation of a really great scifi story by science historian George Dyson, brother of techbiz genius Esther Dyson. Greetings from Douglas Adams, too….  Jump into the story right away: Engineer’s Dreams WEITERLESEN...

Virtual Worlds at a glance - nicely segmented by sector, genre, age. Optimized version with recent updates (Lively etc.) of Kzero’s Universe graph. Thanks again, Nic Mitham! Virtual Pursuits - Who’s on the Radar? : Kzero

Virtual Worlds at a glance - nicely segmented by sector, genre, age. Optimized version with recent updates (Lively etc.) of Kzero’s Universe graph. Thanks again, Nic Mitham! Virtual Pursuits - Who’s on the Radar? : Kzero WEITERLESEN...

Spore on the iPhone! Spore Origins will come out in the iPhone’s App Store on September 7th, the same day as the full game arrives for Mac and PC. Too bad that every species you create belongs to EA forever… (iPhone SDK) (via Gamerawr)

[youtube=http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=u5xA8-XvjNk&eurl=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/07/video-spore-on-the-iphone/] WEITERLESEN...

“It’s actually about people making things together.”

“It’s actually about people making things together.”
—

Really » Blog Archive » I’m in ur browser, chatting in 3D

Nice blog post about all the buzz (quoting Rosedale, Linden Labs founder) and I couldn’t agree more. It’s about facilitating collaboration in an ever-changing, globalized and internationalized (business) world and about using modern bandwidth and technology in order to reduce travelling time and costs, cultural barriers and borders. And, additionally, about fun. Always :-) WEITERLESEN...

“The 3D Internet will change how we live. Real life will never be the same.”

“The 3D Internet will change how we live. Real life will never be the same.”
—

Wall Street Journal, July 17


Like I predicted a week ago (yeah I know, that’s lame :-)), the serious papers are picking up the discussion and development that was stirred by the launch of Google’s Lively and a couple of other web-based virtual world clients in the new media blogging scene. From the article: “The allure of the 3D Internet is easy to see. What auto maker would be content to put 2D pictures of a new SUV on its Web site when it can offer buyers a virtual, first-person drive down a snowy mountain road? What sculptor will want to display 2D photographs of her work when she can invite collectors on a guided tour of her virtual sculpture garden?” WEITERLESEN...

In early closed beta: Just Leap In - 3D worlds on the web (Mac and PC)

It's still very early - one week old, no customizable avatars, no multi-user fuctionality yet, but the graphics are excellent, fast, with realistic lightning, physics and much more - and it all runs in any normal web browser as a lightweight plugin on Mac and PC.
No learning curve at all - anybody can create anything with it in minutes. The Canadian company announced more features to come, like multi-usability and customizable avatars (and user generated 3D content) and "Deep social network integration". We'll see. Of course there's the data portablilty problem more than ever - who is going to define/implement a standard for all those 3D worlds? We need to be able to jump from space to room to world looking vaguely alike like we are jumping from one web page to the next. Well take a look at this new world:

Video by: olympiodorus WEITERLESEN...

“The next time someone tells you to settle down and pick just one thing for your career (…)...

“The next time someone tells you to settle down and pick just one thing for your career (…) I recommend you reply as follows: “I appreciate your concern, but since I don’t share your dream of becoming a prized poodle, I must reject your advice as being utterly stupid” Then challenge them to a round of disc golf. :)”
— What If You Have Many Different Interests and Cannot Commit to Any of Them?

WEITERLESEN...

Path 101: What are people with similar personalities doing with their careers?

Path 101: What are people with similar personalities doing with their careers?
Interesting project: your participation will help them develop an effective personality quiz - one that helps people figure out what like-minded people are doing with their careers. Take the personality test and help the Path 101 team build enough data to be useful to many people. WEITERLESEN...

Technology Review: The Virtual World as Web Browser

Technology Review: The Virtual World as Web Browser

3-D data in Second Life: the tree shown here changes color in response to real-time stock-market data.

WEITERLESEN...

The Power of “New”: the appeal of “new” is hard-wired into our brains

The Power of “New”: the appeal of “new” is hard-wired into our brains
WEITERLESEN...

Why do virtual worlds matter? Do real people matter to you?

Do people matter to your company’s products? Are you interested in new clients and reduced costs? If so, why aren’t you preparing your company for shared virtual environments / 3D Web / the Metaverse? Or did you think a private island in Second Life is the answer (it din’t work! Bummer)? Think of the year 1993. How did you do business back then? How did your product manager communicate news to customers? How did you stay in contact with your (international) clients and team mates? Did you have international clients back then?

There was no WWW yet. There was no IM (instead for geeks). There were very few mobile phones.

You didn’t watch YouTube videos on your iPhone back then. But you do now. And your costumers do, and the journalists, too. Well , it’s different now. What changed? Everything. The Web 1.0 changed our way to communicate - news, private communication, advertising, dating, meeting, making appointments and collaboration. The Web 2.0 is still changing everything - the information goes to the user, not the other way around, and you’re still trying to get a grasp on that while everybody is getting nuts about 3D virtual worlds.

Wasn’t that supposed to be just a hype? Second Life is dead, isn’t it? And now Google is doing stuff in 3D, too?

Why do people want to connect in a virtual, pixel based make-believe world when there’s phones or emails? Come on now. Think back. Remember. Then think forward and get used to it. Welcome to the new world. Scary, isn’t it? Well not for us. Here’s a nice short video about the scary stuff. WEITERLESEN...

Stunningly realistic humanoid avatars coming to Cobalt platform soon

Stunningly realistic humanoid avatars coming to Cobalt platform soon

Stunningly realistic looking and moving avatars are coming to Cobalt, an emerging multi-institutional community software development effort to deploy an open source metaverse browser/toolkit application built using the Croquet SDK. Croquet was specifically designed to enable the creation and low-cost deployment of large scale metaverses. It is especially interesting because of its impressive collaborative features like multi-user multi-language real-time document editing in a shared 3D virtual environment

WEITERLESEN...

Lively not a "go lightly"

My very cartoonish avatar sitting in a kind of bare office (visit it here and move around the furniture if you care) - this is what Google’s new 3D chat environment called Lively looks like. You can’t do much yet except picking stuff out of a catalog and arrange it (adding Hyperlinks or an occasional picture and YouTube video), but there are still a lot of issues to solve during the beta season (a lot of people have experienced the problem “being stuck at “joining room..”. You’ll have to create a brandnew Google account, sign in with that in any empty room and go through with creating your avatar, then everything should work fine. That worked for me even on a Mac using Boot Camp, Windows XP Pro and IE7.)

And although this is really far away from being usable as anything but chat (and we had that 12 years ago with Palace, eBar etc.) I think it’s important for the 3D web that someone like Google launched the product now. I’ll be happy to boot up Windows on my Mac if you care to meet me there and if you like to try out stuff. Just mail me. WEITERLESEN...

Why asking for help is easier than you think and actually helps others to live longer

I just found this interesting bit on the PsyBlog: “Ask for help, but don’t ask for too much”. People notoriously underestimated how likely others were to help them by as much as 100%. The reasons are our difficulty to think like another person (egocentric bias) and the social pressure the other person is put under.

There’s two very practical messages coming out of this research:

1. If you want help, just ask. People are much more likely to help than you think, especially if the request is relatively small. Most people take pleasure in helping others out from time-to-time.

2. Make it easy for others to say no. The other side of the coin is that most of us don’t realise just how hard it is to say no to a request for help. Other people feel much more pressure to say yes to our requests than we realise. If the help you need is likely to be burdensome then think about ways of making it easier to say no.

I’d like to add more interesting facts:

• other studies have shown that helping actually makes people feel better that being helped


• older adults helping others are healthier and live longer

In fact studies by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) from 2002 showed that older people reduce their risk of dying by nearly 60 % compared to peers who provide neither practical help nor emotional support to relatives, neighbors or friends.

Well - to me those studies suggest two things:

• If you’re young and clueless or just in a bad spot do ask for help. It’s not only that your problem will most likely be solved because others usually say yes, but at the same time you help another person to feel better and live longer


• you might learn something (from asking) that you, once you get older, can use to help others - extending your own lifetime and improving your health significantly.

What more could we ask for? WEITERLESEN...

“Platforms like Lively and Vivaty or technologies like Flash and Unity are all (just different) ways to create web based interfaces for the Metaverse”

“Platforms like Lively and Vivaty or technologies like Flash and Unity are all (just different) ways to create web based interfaces for the Metaverse”
— Sebastian Küpers, The Impact of Lively and the recent Proceedings in OpenSim Interoperability WEITERLESEN...

Nice summary/obituary (?) of Vivaty, the social web-embedded 3D world that launched 9 hours before Google's "Lively"

Nice summary/obituary (?) of Vivaty, the social web-embedded 3D world that launched 9 hours before Google's "Lively"

Just hours after Vivaty’s launch Google came with Lively - another web-embedded 3D world/3D enhanced chat room. Lively has fewer features and cartoon-like characters appealing to teens more then adults, but since it’s Google (think ads, reach and world domination) it could be that Vivaty’s days are already over. Anyway: here are a few interesting facts from the Techcrunch article: “It is deep linking into the 3D Web. Since they have regular URLs, each 3D scene can be linked to from the regular Web. Even objects within each room can each have their own URL. (…) While Vivaty is hosting all the rooms to begin with, its technology is architected to become distributed, like the Web itself. Vivaty Scenes are created using standard Javascript and PHP, and can be hosted on standard Web servers.(…)

WEITERLESEN...

Techcrunch: Virtual Worlds Are So Hot Right Now: $345 Million Invested So Far This Year

Techcrunch: Virtual Worlds Are So Hot Right Now: $345 Million Invested So Far This Year

My prediction: Financial Times and Wall Street Journal will pick up on this, then German top managers and journalists will read it and after that we’ll see another wave of unreflected, but this time anyway welcome news coverage of what is going on in the web world (German news magazines declared the 3D web dead because they thought it’s just Second Life and they didn’t get it. But hey, they didn’t get the World Wide Web as late as 1996…)

WEITERLESEN...

“The Web will just become more 3D over time”

“The Web will just become more 3D over time”
— TechCrunch. Well that’s what I have been saying all along and I am glad we reached the next stage now. Can’t wait for the phase when we’re just getting down to business (like, uh, using it) instead of speculating all day about such a natural development
WEITERLESEN...

Lively - Google’s try at 3D web-embedded rooms. An that’s what we have been waiting for? Cartoon characters and the Facebook integration is not as slick as Vivaty’s but well…it’s still Google. No Mac/Linux support either (yet), but that’s nothing new in the 3D world of beta launches. At least now all of a sudden everybody sees that the future web will not exist without a 3rd dimension. That’s the power of being Google and it’s good for the development of even better solutions, although Google usually optimizes its products over the years and there’s more to come (think Earth, ads and trading virtual goods and ads again)

Lively - Google’s try at 3D web-embedded rooms. An that’s what we have been waiting for? Cartoon characters and the Facebook integration is not as slick as Vivaty’s but well…it’s still Google. No Mac/Linux support either (yet), but that’s nothing new in the 3D world of beta launches. At least now all of a sudden everybody sees that the future web will not exist without a 3rd dimension. That’s the power of being Google and it’s good for the development of even better solutions, although Google usually optimizes its products over the years and there’s more to come (think Earth, ads and trading virtual goods and ads again)
WEITERLESEN...

Of course 3D will stick - like pictures, video and sharing did.

Robert Scoble asked this morning if now, that more and more virtual worlds run in regular web browsers more people would not only try them out but actually stick to using them. He refers to a demo of Vivaty, another 3D shared space running in a normal web browser (to be precise, only in Internet Explorer and only on PC, like most of them do. He’s as appaled about that fact as I am). There are other compaies doing the same and even better: Exitreality already supports bebo, MySpace, friendster and more and lets you create whole planets. With Vivaty and Exitreality you can create and decorate your own 3D room or space and “show off your stuff” and invite friends to chat and party. Vivaty can be easily embedded in your existing social network (Facebook and AIM at this time, with more to come) and in this way is simply a more media-rich and more entertaining way of socializing. It adds one dimension to the flat web pages. The only reason I am not offering you a virtual office right here to meet you and show you what I do is the fact that there is no cross-platform 3D solution available as of today. But that’s going to change within the next months.

As I am fond of saying: our kids grew up running around with pixelized avatars through half-bred 2.5D environments on tiny screens and they share almost everything publicly on the web…they won’t care for flat pages once the third dimension is available. And so won’t the adults. The company giving them the third dimension in a web browser and full integration with their social media/networks of choice wins. Big time. Why?

Do you remember the early nineties? There was no web. Nope, no web for “regular people”. There were hyperlinks- but they were linking text pages to another and only geeks in universities used them. 1994 the World Wide Web came around and within a year everybody started using it. Adults, no kids. Because it was running in a cross-platform application on every single computer and displayed pages like we were used to see them: text and pictures, nicely layouted like a newspaper. And there was an added value:

More media, combined in one place and instant access.

We never had sound in our newspapers. But we knew sound from the radio and the TV. And we couldn’t search or click through a whole library in a paper. Now we could have it all - in a web browser. Then came video - ridiciulously tiny 160x120 postal stamps with flickering images pretending to be video.

But we wanted video in our web pages. And animations.

“Kids stuff, poor quality, this will never substitute watching the news on TV” Sounds familiar?

No serious online newspaper has a homepage without TV-quality video and Flash animated charts.

Then we started uploading, first photos (2D, still), then videos (2D, animated) and music (first recorded, then we created our own). And all along we wrote stuff - it’s  called blogging today and it’s easier that it was once.

And we wanted to chat. To connect. To meet people.

We chatted all this time in various forms, even before the web, because that’s who we are - we are such a social species that we die if we can’t socialize. And when chatting went mobile we often rather text then phone. Kids never call anyone - they IM. They Twitter. You do. One can ask “Why? The phone has a much better quality!” and “Why would anyome rather meet in a text-based (!) chat room than in real life?” and they’re missing the point. The point is people just do. People are different except for one thing: they need to connect. Everyone in their own way. The new way is 3D.

Do I want more media in my browser, adding a dimension we all know from the real life? You bet. But only if everybody has access! No luck for the companies ignoring the Mac users.

That’s why I think: any 3D engine with the following specs will “stick”: It

• runs in a standard web browser on all platforms


• lets people with no doctorate in 3D graphics create something (a room, a space, a world)
  
  


• integrates/aggregates all the stuff that’s already out there (Flickr, YouTube, you name it)


• and most of all: lets people connect, meet, chat with their (optionally) individually designed avatars


• uses standard micro-payment systems

Those are the most basic requirements and I am only talking about web based 3D spaces for social situations (private and business).

We live in a three-dimensional space. It’s just natural that we would like to add that extra dimension to our web life, too. And the only reason we don’t have that yet is technical limits. Like it was the case with pictures, sound and videos.

Here’s the qwik video demo of Vivaty Robert recorded with his cell.

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Are you a Virtual World Whore? Virtual Addiction, Part 1

Are you a Virtual World Whore? Virtual Addiction, Part 1

Thoughtful article about behavioural addiction and the common mistaking the medium (Internet) for the message (addictive behaviour).  “Do you crave the fun, excitement, and pleasure of virtual worlds to the detriment of the rest of your life? (…) It’s a compulsive behavior, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Everquest, Second Life, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Internet porn or gambling (…)”. Read on: The Metaverse Journal - Australia’s Virtual World News Service

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“You can easily get noticed in any community simply by participating. Yes, other factors do matter, but just by participating you’ll build an audience that “the popular kids” can’t get to”

“You can easily get noticed in any community simply by participating. Yes, other factors do matter, but just by participating you’ll build an audience that “the popular kids” can’t get to”
— Robert Scoble, famous tech blogger, explaining with hard facts why he has more followers on Friendfeed than even more famous creator of industry-leading Techcrunch blog Michael Arrington. Scobleizer » The “Participation Premium” « WEITERLESEN...

Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies

Nothing new, but a timeless compilation of important social studies, from the Halo Effect over the Standford Prison Experiment to Conformity. The blog author, a Psychologist from London, asks his readers at the end which study tought us the most about human nature. Obedience to Authority by Milgram leads with 23% as of today. If I look at my everyday life and at what people I know do most of the time, I’d vote for Cognitive Dissonance. There seems to be nothing better than to justify something stupid with a very good reason just to balance out your brain (because our brain hates to feel unbalanced). Here’s a recent example of how politicians use to do that.  PsyBlog: Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies WEITERLESEN...

Facebook, YouTube and Second Life fastest growing sites in UK

There’s life in the old dog yet. Social media and virtual worlds Second Life and Club Penguin are growing, and it’s official. Recently published data from Nielsen Online, reported on by Net Imperative shows the surfing destinations of UK residents. The research covers the period May 2007 - May 2008. The top ten (in total minutes) include two social networks (Facebook and Bebo) two email sites (Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail) and two media players (Windows Media Player and iTunes). Read more here: Club Penguin and Second Life make it into top 10 fastest growing UK sites : Kzero

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Your life will be flashed before your eyes. Prototype contact lenses that include LEDs and circuits could become a tiny personal display. Think augmented reality, such as superimposing text messages or direction arrows on your view of the world. It’s coming… Technology | The Guardian

Your life will be flashed before your eyes. Prototype contact lenses that include LEDs and circuits could become a tiny personal display. Think augmented reality, such as superimposing text messages or direction arrows on your view of the world. It’s coming… Technology | The Guardian WEITERLESEN...

“At a certain point in the future (…) the smarter, faster, smarter, faster cycle will have allowed us to remake aspects of our world - and, potentially, ourselves - in ways that would astonish, confuse, and maybe even frighten earlier generations. To those of us imagining this point in the future, it’s a dramatic transformation; to those folks living through that future point, it’s the banality of the everyday.”

“At a certain point in the future (…) the smarter, faster, smarter, faster cycle will have allowed us to remake aspects of our world - and, potentially, ourselves - in ways that would astonish, confuse, and maybe even frighten earlier generations. To those of us imagining this point in the future, it’s a dramatic transformation; to those folks living through that future point, it’s the banality of the everyday.”
— About Singularity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, your decision. Open the Future: Singular Sensations WEITERLESEN...

It's your sneakers talking. And they'd better be Polite, Pertinent and Pretty

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Web pages turned into a web of data and the future illustrated in the movie Minority Report is nearly there. This is an annotated slideshow of a presentation that Matt Jones (Dopplr.com) and Tom Coates (Yahoo! Brickhouse) gave back in April at the Web2.0Expo in San Francisco (watch fullscreen). It’s quite long and in the end more and more interesting only to user interface designers, but the first 35 slides (yeah I know) cover topics like ubiquitious computing and what Wired founder Kevin Kelly called “personal informatics” (think Minority Report) with many excellent examples that are not science-fiction but available today “and for less than 30 US$”. Personally I can’t wait until my adidas sneakers finally start talking to all the homeless Volkswagens, probably arguing about who is supposed to be taking me home (after checking with my bathroom scale to see how I’m doing on the health front…). Well and if Matt and Tom have their say, our devices will be polite (respecting our prefs, privacy and being transparent), pertinent (telling us about our empty fridge while standing in front of an open supermarket) and pretty: why shouldn’t interfaces to the networked devices and web services of our future not be as beautiful as they can be? I just hope my iPhone earring will be blogging by itself by then, knowing what I’d want to share from talking to my neuroimplant in the amygdalae. WEITERLESEN...

2028 - Volkswagen's vision of the automotive future

Video about Volkswagens’s vision of our mobile life in 2028. In essence:

• we don’t have cars anymore (at least we don’t own one…)


• we run around with a WLAN router in the middle of a park and our all-knowing artificial assistent is nagging us while we spend quality time with our children


• we order customized cars out of thin air like we’d phone for a taxi today


• our “car of the moment” is following us, waiting for us and is “thinking ahead” because it’s supposedly more intelligent than our best human assistants are today

This has also been described very well and highly entertaining in the near-future thriller “Rainbows End” by Vernor Vinge among dozens of other visionary things WEITERLESEN...

Virtual world analysis for 20 - 30 year olds. This is the segment of current and upcoming virtual worlds tailored towards 20 - 30 year olds. It is an update of the “Universe-graph” by Kzero, a virtual worlds consultancy.

Virtual world analysis for 20 - 30 year olds. This is the segment of current and upcoming virtual worlds tailored towards 20 - 30 year olds. It is an update of the “Universe-graph” by Kzero, a virtual worlds consultancy. WEITERLESEN...

How to elegantly switch to FriendFeed without loosing Twitter followers

Beware: This is only interesting for socialnetwork geeks ;-)
I think I found an elegant switch from Twitter to FriendFeed while still letting Twitter know about your updates (but without any double-posting).

The Problem:
1. For whatever reasons you enjoy using FF more than Twitter. But:

- Twitter still has a huge fan base and you (the tech geek, blogger, magazine) probably have far more followers there than you have Friendfeed subscribers. So you don’t want to just “leave” and break up with Twitter altogether, loosing readers and loyal friends

- you are probably tired of either having to post short updates to both services manually (!) in order to serve both flocks

- or you already cross-post or re-post your FF stream using Twitterfeed.com to Twitter, but you don’t like to spam your followers with double entries or everything that’s been imported into your Friendfeed (and most of it doesn’t make sense in a tweet with 140 characters)

Well, I found a solution the other day that works well enough for me (thanks to Opensource Obscure and evilgenius):

1. remove the Twitter import from your FF services (and post whatever you would have tweeted before directly to FF instead of Twitter)

2. get a Twitterfeed account and set update settings to 30 minutes (YES, that seems to be the catch, I’ll come back to this in the end)

3. feed your Friendfeed RSS using the following format to Twitterfeed:
http://friendfeed.com/yourFFnicknamehere?format=atom&service=internal
This way only original FF messages will show up in your Twitter stream. No imported stuff.

4. For bloggers: “Wait!” you ask, “how do my Twitter followers know about a new blog post now?” (without having to extra post this redundant info to FF, where it’s already showing up because you’ve imported it)

Just add another Twitter feed to Twitterfeed.com using either “blog” or “tumblr” behind “service=”.
Example for a Tumblelog:
http://friendfeed.com/yourFFnicknamehere?format=atom&service=tumblr
Example for any other blog:
http://friendfeed.com/yourFFnicknamehere?format=atom&service=blog

The result is that you never have to twit again. You’re probably more engaged in conversations on FF than you are on Twitter anyway. Still, when you “share something” or use the FF bookmarklet it’ll be tweeted to your loyal (if somewhat stubborn) followers. Except the comments. And when you wrote a new blog entry it not only shows up in FF, but in Twitter, too.

The only drawback I can see here is, that Twitterfeed’s highest frequency is 30 minutes. But wait a minute. Worst case: you finished your most excellent blog entry ever and want to let the world know instantly. But only your FF followers will get the cake that fast, Twitter might hear the news up to 30 minutes late.

First: that’s what they get for being sooo 2007 and second: nothing much changes for them anyway cause they’ve been off most of the time these days. Happy feeding!

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“Around the world, universities, and even the US Department of State, are turning to online virtual worlds...

“Around the world, universities, and even the US Department of State, are turning to online virtual worlds to create cultural exchanges. In these immersive, 3-D environments, users from around the globe can collaborate in ways that were previously impossible.”
— Study abroad through Second Life | csmonitor.com

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Look like yourself in Twinity...or rather not?

I just received news from Twinity, the virtual world that builds real cities (along with real names and realtime weather/daytime, but I’ll talk about that later).

The Twinity team promoted ther new “Photo Fit feature”: “Want to personalize your virtual you? In Twinity, you can individualize your avatar to look just like you do in real life!” Just upload a photo and then adjust your avatar until the little pixel thingy looks JUST like yourself in real life. While this could be exactly what you don’t want when entering a virtual playground, there are other situations - for example business meetings - where that feature comes in handy.

Well, while I like the possibility very much and think that Linden Lab should long ago have offered an easy way to import a portrait picture and transform it automatically to 3D (you still have to use expensive thirs party services to do that) their demo pictures fail to convince me. Look here:



I don’t know about you, but to me all Twinity characters look a little neckless and women are repeatedly broad-shouldered (to be honest I think the woman in the following picture is a transvestite).

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Serious Fun: “Fronterra OLIVE ist die virtuelle Welt für Corporate Anwendungen” - Stefan Weiß, FUTURELAB (German). Yes, their platform has some significant features for corporations and professional set-ups that Second Life lacks. But it’s still only available for Windows. I can’t run a conference or presentation (for which OLIVE is really well suited) professionally while excluding whole departments or even a small group of attendees. It just doesn’t work without cross-platform compatibility guys!

Serious Fun: “Fronterra OLIVE ist die virtuelle Welt für Corporate Anwendungen” - Stefan Weiß, FUTURELAB (German). Yes, their platform has some significant features for corporations and professional set-ups that Second Life lacks. But it’s still only available for Windows. I can’t run a conference or presentation (for which OLIVE is really well suited) professionally while excluding whole departments or even a small group of attendees. It just doesn’t work without cross-platform compatibility guys!
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German Education Round Table in Second Life with Jean Linden

German Education Round Table in Second Life with Jean Linden (sitting next to an alien in actual UFO): Attending a panel about the current status of German educators in SL.Posted by Second Life Resident Windfairy Welles. Visit SL5B Linked. WEITERLESEN...

iPhone 3G What’s New - das Video in Bildern

iPhone 3G What’s New - das Video in Bildern. Und hier das Promo-Video von Apple. Neben UMTS, GPS und Zugang zu speziellen iPhone-Programmen über iTunes kann man sich auch Microsoft Powerpoint and Apple iWork Dokumente darauf anschauen. Plus Exchange/Push-Dienste
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