malburns's blog

I have been doing a weekly vodcast looking at the week in Second Life. It's all bit informal at present but seems at least to be becoming presentable. This is tonight's show which I co-host with Tara Yeats. We are joined by Stuart Wharf , together with Fleep Tuque and Zoe Connolly , in the studio.

Hope you like it. The 2 parts were broadcast about 2 hours apart.

SceneCaster jhas just been announced and here Robert Scoble has an interview with Mark Zohar, founder. He tells us how SceneCaster is different from Second Life and how it'll enable new 3D experiences for Web site owners.

Since putting this up, it seems the embed code for the clip above seems to be for the entire show. The sequence in question is accessed through the playlist button.

NPR broadcast today with Prokofy Neva, Robert Bloomfied and others. You'll know the names - some nice plus for Metanomics and Metaversed too.

The first real run of a weekly chat session I have started with Tara Yeats. The idea is to review the week in SL from a residents perspective and the programme should be live every Saturday at 7pm in the UK - 11am SLT.

http://operator11.com/shows/4091 to watch or join in. It's open house but we can only have 8 guests in the studio with video at any one time.

An interview from SLCC. Recorded by a French company, but in English.

Tonight's programme from the Twitter Vodcast. I join Goldie Katsu to talks about Second Life.

I have posted an archive of slideshows about SL at http://www.slideshare.net/malburns/favorites which may be of interest. Academic, educational and business orientated mostly.

Just a quickie by request here. 

• There is now a search toolbar for Second Life available here - http://secondlifesearch.ourtoolbar.com/ . Sadly it only runs under Windows and is designed for the Firefox browser although an IE version is available. Being a Mac person, I have not been able to test it there.

• What I have looked at however is the "module" version which I embedded in my Netvibes page. It works a treat with quick access to SL articles on the web, SLURLs posted on the web and location links for SL itself. For those who use the web a lot but with a principal interest in SL it will probably be indispensible.

• Essentially, it incorporates all the SL specific utilities like Sloog, BlogHud, Sqawk, SLTweets and Gridmarker - all of which publish RSS feeds which are accessible both in-world and out - thus providing a bridge between both. Search options can be limited to one or more specific sources (eg. "inside" SL only) or can be carried out over the wealth of websites and blogs dedicated to SL on the web. All we really need is a version of the search facility than works inside SL in the other direction.

• Do check it out.

• Immersed as I increasingly am in the virtual world, one of the things I now use more than ever are the HUD devices. Some you waer normally, but others you attach to your screen add features to the interface. Sadly, there are only nine positions available and my HUD count in the inventory now numbers around 40. We rapidly need some kind of HUD for switching HUDs I think.

• I'll come back to this is due course but would love to see comments on readers own favourites. Mine at present are ...

• SLOOG - Provides channel command to keep landmarks and tag them. GRIDMARKER - similar thing but uses drag and drop of landmarks from your inventory and gives you a publishable RSS feed. I use former for private (ish) bookmarks and the latter for public recommendations.

• SLICKR and SLBROWSER. First is an on-screen button and latter is a pop-up browser. Combined, these two enhance SL search facilities. SLICKR records your history in case you forget to landmark, whilst SL BROWSER privides search that will take you to the "exact" location of what you look for.

• BLOGGER and BLOGHUD - both allow me to blog directly from in-world. The fomer is not actually a HUD, rather it is a droppable object that you code with your "blogger.com" blog on the web. As owner you can then post directly to your blog, but best of all it acts as a launcher for your blog when anyone else clicks on it. The latter is a dedicated in-world blog which provides you with an RSS feed. It's on-screen HUD is a dream because the main tags are predefined, so you can use it quickly to post from wherever you are in SL. Other users can quickly find out whats happening too.

• On a side-note, there are now a number of RSS readers you can place in-world in you have somewhere of your own. I finally found one the other day which is only 1 prim and ideal if you have a low allowance. Sadly, that is the one which I have not got working yet! Have seen it working though.

• Twitter users have two in-world choices. SLTWEETS has an awkward interface but acts as an on-screen Twitter client much like "Twitterific" and its ilk on the desktop.Lately however, I have switched to SQUAWK - this does not use any screen real-estate and gives channel command access to not only Twitter but also Jaiku.

• 2L will have voice functionality in chat shortly and, desite a few bugs, works very well on the beta grid. One of the first HUDs I ever used however was SECOND TALK which enables the use of Skype running parallel with SL. You don't need a HUD for that of course, but wearers of the ST device can instantly scan for other users in-world and patch into them without all the normal Skype address lookup. Skype does need to be running already in the background though.

• MYSTITOOL is one of a whole breed of plug-ins that offer an animation over-ride facility, but it has extras which include launching yourself a temporary sky sandbox, avatar radar for 100 metres and chat distance radar separately. Animation over-ride is great for getting out of pickles, butI also like an animation controller at hand. This allows me to move and make gestures of my choosing without searching for them all in the inventory when I want them. I dumped the basic oneI was using yesterday when I purchased a more powerful new one. Guess - what? The one I bought is malfunctioning already!

• So a word of warning here. I have actually "purchased" three HUDS so far to replace those available for free. None of the "bought" ones have done what they advertised, whereas all the free ones seem to work like a dream. There must be a moral in that story somewhere.

• Finally, there is another rather awkward HUD called BABBLER which I make a lot of use of. Simply put, it provides language translation facilities in chat - esstentil when hosting multi-national events. When working properly (it IS buggy) it does a pretty good job of translating what you are saying into a number of different languages. Less impressive is some of the drivel it emits when trying to interpret others around you.

• I've added a couple of new links in the bit below these posts. You can find the links to what I've mentioned here in those listings.

• As I said, comments are welcome. I suspect this is a subject I will be returning to a lot. I'm still exploring details about an educational HUD called SLOODLE even as I write here.

So, until .....

Ok - a quick bit of self promotion here. One of the things I'm doing in SL now is hosing partie for a wonderful "Old Time" dance club called Casablanca. A quick search in SL's events listing for "Casablanca" will produce a list of upcoming events. If you are looking for somwhere to relax and have fun at the same time - wel, somwhat naturally, I highly recommend it. My partner and I have been eating and dancing there for ages as regular customers (which is how we got the job) so it is not an idle boast.We're off to do one in around two hours time - join us if you fancy it! 

 Entering one's Second Life is like becoming young again in more ways than one. The new perpetual disoveries, the new relationships (including very RL-like complications) and the new methods of communication are one thing. Survival is another. Upon embarking into the new world, I decided to start from scratch and that the adventure had to be self-financing or otherwise sustainable if it was to be anything other than an illusiory future. After all, if one is goig to emigrate - doing so with an empty pocket and an open perspective is really the only way of doing it. The feeling of being young started with the rapidity with which I found a personal partner, a creative partner and endless contacts. We then had what seems to have been very lucky breaks with both property and a forum for experimenting with and in this fresh new life. Yet the old world still lurks behind the scenes. All the new horizons are subtly governed by an ethic of "commerce" despite the perception of community. It is not like the colonisation of RL places like America or Australia - it is more an invitation to help shape a land that the old world has already claimed as its own colony. It is as if the "rulebook" on the digital frontier has somehow almost been written already. Yet the charade is all important. This world, or something very like it will also certainly become the human-information interface that dominates our lives within the bext decade. That's RL time of course. That fact that I and others are part of a population that still only numbers around 5 million creates the feeling that we remain able to influence the environment of the frontier itself. What the early residents do will, of course, have a profound effect on how future immigrants will adapt. Mayday will be crunch time for me and our group. The affordability of maintaining our new presence and new lifestyle will become paramount. And that suddenly seems like an odd experience because it means compromise of a very "old-world" fashion. Financing ourselves means doing things we never expected or particularly wanted - and is surprisingly hard work. Some of it rather "goes against the grain" too. Maybe that is the real reason I feel young again. It is the end of complacancy!

Nice to see that SL residents have been so quick to erect a memorial after yesterdays RL slaughter in Amerika. See HERE. There is of course no death in SL - immortality if you will. Exactly why there should be such prevelance of weapons is therefore anyone's guess - hangover from the juvenile gaming era perhaps. Yesterday's "spammer" attack at Laguna Beach was a case in point - anti-gay morons using their avatars for a supposed "terror" strike. A damn nuisnce, but ultimately pointless. No bets that avatars originated in RL USA of course!  SL's population is still only around 5 million. Yet all the power games, the capitalist ethic and the attempts at control over the individual have begun already. The virtual world is a new frontier - surely it should be setting an example to the 1st world by adopting new equitable ways of organising its societies. It is destined to be the interface of the future - I hope it doesn't replicate the faults of the present. Of course, with Amsterdam now officially under corporate ownership, the age of nations may already be a thing of the past! For better or worse, we will see.  

The mysteries of artificial "intelligence". I mostly use an animal for transport in Second Life - faster than walking but still setting an example for RL ethics. "Bird-Mobile" as I rather unimaginatively call said beast (him?) can be ridden of course, but also programmed to follow me, stay still or wander.Wandering is the problem. Whenever idle for too long he tends to wander anyway! The result - somehow finds himself on other islands and ends up in my "lost and found" several times a day. Clearly the beast has an attitude problem but somehow I can't bring myself to dispose of him.Sucker me! 

So back again,

No picture uploads technically yet, so an experiment. This is an embedded slide show of pictures I have been taking for your enjoyment if it works.

You can also find a few of my links to 2L locations by going here ...

http://www.sloog.org/users/Malburns_Writer

Well I tried this yesterday to no avail, but now I am in. Yet another blog - yet another portal.

For the past months and a half I have been neglected other projects a bit. The reason? Exploring th metaverse, which by all accounts will be the type of interface that becomes the norm during the next decade. 3D will rule and our normal browsers and apps will either launch from within our personal virtual living/working spaces or at least in parallel.

As someone formerly involved with design in the physical and 2D world, an element of all this is the new experience. I have chosen to focus on Second Life. I have a huge inventory and a temporary home - plus a group for every opportunity that comes along. It is "Horizon Quest". Experimenting with design and building techniques has been my main interest, but evenings in 2L are taking on new meaning too for the private and social life.

A word of warning folks - don't get too addicted - it's bad for reality!

So we will see what ends up here. I have some images from 2L ready to upload when I find out how. I also make great use of Twitter, Second Talk and Sloog - so watch this space for links. With luck I may also find a way to log stuff here quickly from within 2L.

So, hopefully, back soon. As they say - "AFK"