UgoTrade

Please see Soyapi Mumba’s, (Liloge, MW), post on Twitter and its possibilities in Africa where the use of mobile phones is much higher than that of computers. Mumba also links to some interesting new uses for Twitter that extend the genre of “what I am doing now” in interesting ways. For example, “The train system in San Fransisco (BART) uses Twitter to announce changes in schedules; conference participants use it to post notes of the sessions at the conference and there are updates from news companies like BBC via Twitter.” Also see the Kivathon on Twitter

I have been going through my notes from the VW ‘07 conference. And, I hope to have a post bringing it all together ready by late tomorrow. It was hard to Twitter thoughts while at VW ‘07 because the lap top loaded crowd clogged the local wireless network. But, perhaps, I’ll Twitter some of my thoughts along the way as I write them up. I am going to put the twitter sidebar up that I found through Word Press Guy. And, I will be posting the rest of my interview with Philip Rosedale too.

Questions about avatar identities were a major theme at Virtual World’s 2007. And, one thing that became clear was that these questions are best answered by organizations and individuals who have actually spent time in virtual worlds. The relationship between avatars and marketing is on the mind of the Fortune 500 crowd as virtual worlds increasingly meet the mass market, now through mobile technologies too.

Venture Beat notes how Gemini Mobile, a San Mateo company, says that hundreds of thousands of Japanese are subscribers to S!Town now. But, S! Town is a 3D graphical community to chat and shop in with a customizable avatar rather than a full on user generated virtual world/economy like Second Life. And, the question is, as virtual worlds, increasingly go mobile and the access issues to pcs begin to improve in developing countries: Will the unique characteristics of an open, community driven virtual world like Second Life, or those of a locked down minimally customizable chat room/entertainment venue/shopping mall be the way people come to experience virtual worlds in developing countries?

Three outstanding elements are often pointed out to define Second Life

1) based on community, i.e. more about community than technology

2) user created

3) a market place with a vibrant ecosystem.

Will these three elements mark the experience of Virtual Worlds that is brought to developing countries? Or, will the potential of the digital nature of an avatar simply be exploited rather than explored? We will soon meet avatar clerks who adopt the old salesman trick of adjusting behavior to make themselves more appealing to the avatar shoppers. And, Web 3.0 technologies will be used to draw conclusions from online data gathered as the digital nature of avatars allows the tracking of their every move.

So, how is mobile access to the most open and visionary of virtual worlds, Second Life, coming along? Adam Reuters reports, “Software firm Comverse Technology has created an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world

Master Penguin notes in Second Life Insider: “While the solution requires a PC running a specialized server, this is a huge step towards a fully integrated and portable Metaverse. The cell phone based client not only provides most of the functionality of the standard client, it also allows SMS messaging, instant messaging, and even mobile video streaming into Second Life.”

*The terrible picture is actually an image of Second Life on my Cell Phone (from Master Penguin)

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Tags: Second Life | Twitter | Kiva Talkathon | Web 3.0 | Africa | Virtual Worlds 2007 | mobile technology | cell phones and virtual worlds | avatar based marketing | metaverse | mobile video streaming | Comverse | Gemini | S! Town | virtual economies |

Check out what’s going on at “the nail house.” The whole story on Global Voices Online. Here’s how it starts. “But is Zola really China’s first citizen reporter? Big-name bloggers like Herock, Doubleleaf and Zhan Bin say he is. Out of what Zola says is a ’sensitivity to news’ and desire for fame, on Monday afternoon he hopped on the train, arriving in Chongqing two days later. Armed with a Lenovo cellphone and one thousand RMB, Zola is determined to cover the nailhouse story where domestic media currently cannot.

The subheading on Zola’s blog reads (in English) “you never know what you can do till you try”; a March 23rd post which unpacks the meaning behind a meme now making its way around the Chinese blogsphere, ‘vote with your feet’ [用脚投票], and a second post from the same day looking at the nailhouse situation ends with a wager on how many more days the house would remain standing.”

Day One of the Virtual Worlds 2007, NYC.

Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Linden Labs gave the opening presentation at VW ‘o7, 9am. In an auditorium jam packed with a Fortune 500 crowd gathered to look at, “The Future of Marketing and Media,” Philip Rosedale/Linden stayed true to his visionary, futurist roots. His talk centered on the theme: “What makes virtual worlds special is not that they are 3D, but that they are richly collaborative……We are there together, make things together, explore things together. This was not obvious in 2003. Virtual Worlds will change the nature of who we are. This type of experience changes you, makes you demand change in the real world that is so easy to change in virtual environments…..this technology ends up changing us as people.”

I took this picture in the hallway after the presentation, where the press had gathered to get interviews. Philip is deeply engaged in a discussion. But, he is not explaining Linden Lab’s mission to a key influencer, a reporter from PC (one was waiting for him) or a CEO (and, there were many eager to engage his attention). Even though he was scheduled to leave for South Carolina before noon, Philip Rosedale is taking the time to talk to an educator who asked him how his students can get involved in Linden Labs as interns. And, right after his interview with Fuji Television Network News, he took the time to talk to me (and my ipod!) about Second Life’s possible role in positive global development. Now, that made my day!

I met Philip Rosedale at the back of the crowded theater. In a full house, I was sitting on the floor. And, after his introduction, he sat down there too! So, I asked him if he would be willing to give a short interview for my blog on the role of SL in positive global development. I mentioned how excited I was about the potential of virtual worlds in this regard. And, he was equally enthusiastic, saying this was a very interesting topic. I mentioned I had done a post recently on “Africa and Second Life,” commenting on the advocacy for the role of virtual worlds in positive global development in general, and Second Life in particular, by Mutumwa Mawere. I was quite delighted to hear Philip had read this article in zimdaily.com too!

Here is the beginning of the interview. I will transcribe more tomorrow. But, Day 2 of VW ‘07 starts early, and it is late already, so here is the start.

Me: What are your thoughts about the possible role of Second Life in positive global development?

Philip Rosedale: There is no question that Second Life is in many ways, especially at its early stages, a more powerful transformative cultural educational tool, in a sense, than perhaps it is an entertainment tool. In other words, the greatest opportunity for change and capability that it offers to anyone is someone who is not well connected to the world, and can learn Second Life, and jump in there, and basically instantly be in this $40 million a month economy - this huge base of people from around the world. So I think that developing countries and how they can use Second Life is incredibly exciting. I think that the only thing that we don’t actually really know the answers to as a company is how the broad band enablement, and the typical pc, and how the cost of access or the access regime works in a particular country - with getting pcs connected to the net.
Tags: Second Life | Web 3D | Virtual Worlds | Philip Rosedale | Linden Labs | Africa | global development | Virtual Worlds 2007 | marketing | media | Philip Linden | Virtual Reality |

Servers for the people! (picture from O’Reilly Radar)

Welcome to Net 0! Warana Unwired, a project from Microsoft Research India (see blog), bypasses Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 3D and Web(n+1) etc., etc. and puts the power of servers directly into the hands of the people, replacing pcs with cellphones. This may be the first project of its kind in developing regions “where an entire PC setup has been replaced with mobile phones.” Farmers can use the system to access “essential pieces of information such as the ideal time for planting and harvesting sugarcane, the current market rates of their produce, and payments made by the factories.”

But, as ifacethoughts points out, one big factor in the success of other projects is going to be “the Government regulations regarding this.” As, in terms of information access, the individual farmer is put on the same level as the giants. Also, Abhijit Nadgouda notes, Warana has better literacy rates, and more “industries and people there are aware of rest of the world.” In many places the most urgent need is to apply technology “to ease availability of energy, water, education and employment.”

(See Supercool School for a sneak peak at an “EduBlogger” event - “focusing on new and revolutionary ideas in education,” and, Neverwonderland for an interesting post on finding internet access solutions for rural Mexico. And, thanks Neil Caldwell for sending me the link to O’Reilly Radar. I am always interested to hear about how new ways to reach the superhighway are being pioneered on the dirt road.)

Reinventing the internet and the world wide web.

This story from rural India brings up an interesting and under discussed topic – the invisible layer beneath the visible World Wide Web, i.e., the Internet or Net. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably but this is misleading and gets in the way of understanding all the ways both levels can be approached creatively.

Heres a little sketch in case you are confused!

The user interface of the future will not only bring smart searching, dubbed as Web 3.0, into the hyperlinked world of Web 2.O – social networks, user-­created taxonomies of content, “and the kind interactivity, represented by sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia.” It will also harness the multiple intelligences and multidimensionality of user generated virtual worlds like SL.

We can already see the beginning of this re-imagining in the current discussion around the future of Second Life. See, Information Week, and a very interesting article, “The Future of the Grid: How SL could cope with millions of concurrent users,” in The Avastar by Gwyneth Llewelyn. Gwyneth is a writer, mentor, artist, futurist, metathinker of Second Life and business manager of Beta Technologies.

Click here, for more about Gwyneth.

In her article, Gwyneth, discusses how LL [Linden Labs] can handle the ever increasing amount of users logging in to SL. She points out that what we understand as the Second Life grid today is “a collection of textures and prim data inside LL’s servers.” And, if LL were to allow “textures to be downloaded from outside the grid, perhaps even allowing users to store them on their own,” their 2000 servers would be able to handle 20 million simultaneous users.” (There is evidence Gwnyeth notes that, “the grid currently doesn’t handle well past 30K simultaneous users.”) But, she asks, if we start thinking of “the grid as just ‘the glue’ between SL clients and servers with no data…..what kind of service is LL providing then?”

People have speculated that Linden Labs will release the server source code as open source, (open source for the client was recently released), and LL has talked about moving more of Second Life to the Web, to reduce the burden on Second Life servers. Currently, “users can create accounts, check whether their Second Life friends are online, and buy and sell land and Linden Dollars using a Web browser (Information Week).” But, for Second Life to be a global interface much like the Web is today, it would have to go public domain, and to move out of the the current cozy nest (see diagram 1 below) to become a virtual reality interface that will replace the World Wide Web ( diagram 2 below).

As Second Life begins to take flight, the mind of Real Life and Second Life, is likely to become increasingly merged. The arrival of 3D voice in the coming months, heralds a new era when the “Second” aspect of Second Life will become more difficult to discern. There is some very interesting discussions on Augmentation vs Immersion (immersion puts the emphasis on the secondness) and what this means for advertising and branding on SL in Second Life Creativity. There will soon be more people on Second Life who have experienced it through voice than without. Friday night, I was fortunate to meet Gwyneth at an opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Neufreistadt. And, she pointed out that voice could well finish of those “pesky” immersionists once and for all! We talked a lot about the changes voice would bring to SL. Soon, “you will soon have 10 million users on Second Life that have only experienced SL through voice …….so who will care if 1 to 2 million people disagree and leave?” Eventually, you’d argue that “almost all those 10 million will come in because they ‘want’ more ‘RL in SL,’ not less, and voice is the best way to give them that…….and soon video mapping of your face on your avatar……”

The Second Life Herald, in a blast from the past, writes: “Conventional wisdom in Second Life suggests those who wish to import the real world into the metaverse are best served by tightly controlled private islands - particularly since many residents seem to prefer to separate second life and real life - and actively discourage RL incursions into their fantasy universe.” The ways things are going, Real Life infringements on Second Life are unlikely to be what is confined to private islands.

_{Golam Amadeus, master sculptor, gives an art lesson/seminar on the Museum of Contemporary Art in Neufreistadt. (photo by Gwyneth Llewelyn, Flickr)}

Currently, some SL residents are extremely wary of the merging of RL with SL, worrying the loss of anonymity with the arrival of voice will mark the end of the creative fantasy worlds that been the heart and soul of Second Life up to now. After hearing peoples’ fears, about the way “old” cultures on Second Life will be affected by the coming of 3D voice, I have begun to wonder whether SL anthropologists and historians were already hurrying to the deep level fantasy communities and doing interviews and taking pictures of these soon to be “vanishing” cultures. Perhaps, these images will soon be part of a hip show at the MoCA examining their “constructednes.”

As well as talking to Gwyneth, about the future of SL, I did much of what I would do at a RL opening - check out some of the art and schmooze with press (yes, there were other bloggers and RL press there, including Aleister Kronos, Team Mascot, Redakisto Noble), artists, curators and other key influencers with drinks and hors d’oeuves in hand. Hey, its an art opening, I’m a New Yorker - this is not just Second Life its Second Nature!

And, when I was lucky enough to run into Gwyneth Llewelyn, I lost no time tapping into her deep understanding of the culture of SL. Gwyneth was at meetings in 2004 and 2005 hosted by Philip Linden when he said: “SL will never have voice, unless the technology evolves.” And, she noted, in 2006, he said, “we’re looking at some interesting technologies that will allow ‘voice’ to be as customizable as your avatar.” But, in the end, market pressures have brought 3D voice into Second Life without the kind of morphing technologies that would protect the anonymity that makes Second Life a second place, rather than an extension of Real Life. In 2007, he finally conceded that he was losing terrain to the competition. So, as Gwyneth pointed out, any new “3rd Life” or “After Life”, will have a window of perhaps 2-3 years. Then they will face the same issue.

“Voice is not just about ‘lack of anonymity,’ though; it is about a different conception of how a virtual world should work. I’m fairily confident that the ones relying on the lack of voice to protect their anonymity will not be the ones more affected (they are, as said, a small minority, of just a couple millions, which will fade out over the years). Instead, it will be the ones that will heavily use voice that will shape the ‘new’ Second Life, and it will be a quite different place, in the sense that old things that were possible only with chat will have to be done differently.”

I cannot, in this post, do justice to all the brilliant observations Gwyneth made on how voice would change the culture of Second Life. But, for a full analysis see her latest post, The Schism Around Voice: Multicasting vs. Broadcasting.” Second Life’s chat utility is a journalist’s dream delivering a full color coded transcript with a few clicks of the mouse. The transcript of our discussion is 24 pages long! Here is a little sample. Gwyneth is talking about the advantages of reading.

15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: A good example of this are the “news tickers” on the TV news… you know… they have became very popular in the past decade,
[15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: the advantage, of course, is that in a few seconds,
[15:36] Gwyneth Llewelyn: you can put all news there
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and you don’t even need to have the sound on
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: so all TV stations do it that way
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: it’s not by “chance” or because it’s technologically more advanced,
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: but because you can convey much more information, much faster,
[15:37] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and people *do* have short attention spans
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: I give always the following example: every day people bombard me “oh, just listen to that podcast, it’s just 15 minutes and very interesting!”
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: my answer is: “sure — is there a text transcript of the podcast somewhere?”
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Because that takes 1 minute to read,
[15:38] Gwyneth Llewelyn: and I can read 10 podcasts in the same minute, at the same time
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: While with ONE podcast that takes 15 minutes… i can’t do anything else!
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It requires my full attention.
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’s *great* if I’m in the bath, though — LOL
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: or driving
[15:39] Tara5 Oh: yeah i know what you mean i was just thinking i was going to ask you if there was a way to save a chat history because this was a very interesting conversation and i missed half of it!
[15:39] Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh, Ctrl-H, Tara
[15:40] Gwyneth Llewelyn: It pops up history, ie. the whole chat gets into a scrollable window

“Voice will kill multitasking, social events, and the uncanny ability of interacting with dozens (sometimes hundreds) of people *at the same time*. This, for me, is far more important than the “anonymity” aspect overall. It’s obvious that it’ll be far better for one-to-one communications (but why don’t people use Skype or even a phone for that?), short business meetings (which don’t require text transcripts), and, naturally, presentations, seminars, classes, conferences, announcements, live music events, and all sort of “broadcasting” events (one person talking, many listening). It’s of no use for “multicasting” events (all people talking, all listening). So SL will lose all of those slowly over time.

Does this worry me overall? Well, not really; “different” is not necessarily “bad”. But when thinking what tools like SL can give us — real-time multicasting ability — I’m sorry to see it go away. For me, it would be the same as having a new world-wide regulation that would require all bloggers to shut down their sites (which do allow asynchronous multicasting through comments) and register with public or private publishing companies that will provide them with broadcasting abilities, but no simultaneous feedback from their readers. I would certainly adapt, but also miss the joy of being a reader and an author at the same time — one of the most important things (or even “freedoms”) that the Web has given to us. SL has given us the ability to do that in real time, and now it removes it — so I’m obvious sorry to see it go away! I just hope that the creativity of using voice as a new geekish tool will compensate with new, interesting uses for that technology, that will give the “New Second Life” some new potential.”

I ended my last post on Second Life with Philip Rosedale’s legendary proclamation, “I’m not building a game. I’m building a new country.” [interview to Wired, 2004-05-08] Which, Gwyneth notes, “received a serious blow when Linden Lab removed the telehubs. It was clear that what would follow next was a jump to private islands, where you can devise your own urban planning, and that there wouldn’t be “one country”, but “several communities” inside the same virtual environment.” But, I will be following up on Aleister Kronos’s very interesting comments on this notion of Second Life as a country/countries, and what that means for laws and governance - Utopian Anarchy or Dystopian Chaos - in a another post. But, I am beginning to think Second Life is neither a game, nor a country. Rather, Second Life is about the reinvention of our world.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.0 | Internet | Web 3D | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | World Wide Web | Philip Linden | Philip Rosedale | Mulitcasting | Chat | Marketing | Voice Chat | IM Chat | global development | wireless networks | digital divides | Microsoft Research | |

Owner Wu Ping accepting interviews from media (pictures from Global Voices Online)

The “nail house,” blogged on Ugotrade on March 10th , and March 22nd and Boing Boing, March 12th, and again on March 23rd (hey, I can’t resist pointing out again how I scooped Boing Boing twice on this one!), and many other English blogs after that (also see Virtual China). On March 22nd, Peering Into The Interior translated an interview with the owner. Now Global Voices Online points out, it is also picking up steam fast again on the Chinese BBS’s. “Smelling a story, journalists from all across the country rushed to the city [zh] to see what would happen when the owner, Wu Ping, ran out of time to evacuate her ‘nail house‘ at midnight on March 21. In the meantime, Wu set up her own blog and released this video.

“Nail House” at Night!

Check it out! A pioneering “bridge blogger,” has done a translation of this long interview with China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” giving “an inside look into the local politics of relocation and the kind of difficulties people face if they chose to fight the developer.” ( see Peering into the Interior and for more holdout stories boingboing)

Second Life is a very amazing place. All in one day I ran into Eggy Lippmann (photo above and see Late Night with Eggy…), Runitai Linden, Plastic Duck and Ice Brodie on SL’s beta voice grid. I live in New York City - a place where it is easy to find gatherings of interesting people - but, I think, only on Second Life could such a fascinating mix of visionaries come together.

It may sound strange, even indirectly, equating the term visionary with a legendary griefer, as Plastic Duck is reputed to be (and he did play a few pranks on me). But, it seems, Plastic is engaged in pushing the limits of the web in his own way.

In the conversation between Runitai, Plastic, Ice and I, the beta 3D voice performed well. I met with Eggy , visionary founder of Beta Technologies, earlier that day. Eggy, very generously, spent a great deal of time with me sharing his deep understanding of SL (more on this later in the post). Our conversation was so engaging I didn’t think to ask much about the beta 3D voice at the time (which gives an idea of how well it is working). But, I emailed Eggy for some of his thoughts on beta 3D voice later.

Eggy wrote back: “The 3D aspect doesn’t seem very realistic. Would be good to have something like an arrow with a name pointing to people who are speaking offscreen. Paying attention to a voice conversation is a lot harder, as any interruption may cause us to permanently lose track of what people are talking about, since there is no log. Also, it’s easier to decipher mangled text, at least for me, than it is to understand people with a weird accent, or if there’s noise on the line etc. Voice conversations also don’t seem to scale as well as text ones, because of concurrency. Two lines of text never interfere with each other, but people speaking at the same time can’t understand what each other is saying. IRL, there are numerous little body language cues that have been fairly well studied, that people use subconsciously when engaging in a conversation, to figure out when it’s ok to speak, etc… this does not carry over very well to the internet, or SL.”

(Note: Eggy adds in his comment that while 3D voice needs some redefining, “I actually like the voice feature as it is, and plan on using it a lot.”)

And, that night in a small group, we talked and listened easily and the conversation was on fire!

We covered many topics ranging from the great success of The American Cancer Society’s Second Life Relay for Life (Ice is an enthusiastic participant), to exploring the social changes 3D voice will bring to Second Life (perhaps, the biggest challenge will be to residents who adopt an alter gender on SL), the future role of Second Life in positive global development, and server level ideas for securing the grid against attacks. As you can imagine, Plastic had some interesting contributions to make here. Anyway, it was the wee hours of the morning EST before I could pull myself away!

For a great video on Second Life Relay for Life go to Tao’s Thoughts on Second Life.

An Interview with Eggy Lippmann

Click on the video grab above to see a video from The Xerox Innovation Group - one of the expanding-the-mind-of-Second-Life type of projects (also see Language Lab) that are a specialty of Eggy Lippmann - founder, principle software architect and visionary of Beta Technologies.

Eggy Lippmann has been involved since the early days in Web development and Second Life. After talking with Eggy, I felt I had a new understanding of the unique place SL has in the the evolution of the Web, and the way SL creates communities and relationships (some so strong that they turn into virtual marriages/partnerships) through an immersion in a rich multidimensional virtual world.

In SL relationships are built on shared experience in many niche worlds where people have a deep investment in their carefully constructed virtual identities. For example, the care residents put into constructing their avatars and finding things they enjoy doing together, e.g., playing house and adopting pets and children, or going out to virtual venues with friends.

SL provides the opportunity for people to talk about and experience niche content, with like minded friends, e.g., seeing an avant-garde film, dancing in a techbeat club, or being a “furry” outsider. See New World Notes for a round up of events in March 21 -25. People can find friends on SL who share their interests. In RL our friends are often acquired through proximity and circumstance and are drawn from only a few social spheres - school, work, and one or two recreational venues.

There has been some misunderstanding in the corporate world of the special qualities of Second Life (see Information Week). But, Eggy is clear and articulate about how old “push” marketing ideas, where brands push their message out over an already existing channel must be replaced by “pull” marketing ideas on Second Life. The focus is now on integrating brands into the worlds of rich content and social connection that are the forte of SL. It is the “pull” of these worlds that has driven SL’s tremendous growth. Perhaps, the skate board ramps I saw being developed on the beta grid when I ran into Eggy will be the playground of SL skaters riding on branded boards in the coming months (see video of skateboarding on SL).

But, as Eggy points out the power of Web 2.0 - hyperlinking is yet to be integrated into Second Life. “We don’t even yet have the equivalent of the early ‘web rings’. In SL, communities need to be better united. It’s hard to move land and content around. There is no such thing as a hierarchical directory of content categories/communities. There is only word-of-mouth/social discovery of places. Someone into sci-fi stuff should be able to easily navigate back and
forth between all public places with sci-fi content on the grid. And in SL, scripts cannot truly teleport people to places over 300 meters away. Moving people between different places on the grid should be easy to setup by the newest of users, and encouraged.”

But there is no doubt in my mind that these and other ways of expanding our connections with each other will soon be here. And, while Second Life may seem a long way from current ways Web 3.0 is described, e.g., in John Markoff’s definition, “as a set of technologies that offer efficient new ways to help computers organize and draw conclusions from online data.” I am reminded of Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Gardner proposed eight different intelligences - “word smart,” “number/reasoning smart,” “picture smart,” “body smart,” “music smart,” “people smart,” “self smart,” and “nature smart,” to help us understand the potential of children and adults. A much wider range of smarts are tapped by Second Life than the conventional Web. And, the relationships formed on SL are often intense, typically, built on doing things together that we really love, activities that give us a great deal of pleasure, whether that is playing house, virtual skydiving or exploring the far reaches of our fantasies. I am beginning to think that some of Gardner’s ideas of multiple intelligences might be a richer way to understand the Web’s evolution, rather than “labels that tend to indicate improved versions of the same thing,” e.g. Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. The founder of Second Life, futurist, Philip Rosedale says, I’m not building a game. I’m building a new country.” And, I am delighted to be watching, participating in, and “bridge blogging,” about SL’s emergence. The relationship between SL and other developing countries is new terrain yet to be explored.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.0 | Web 3D |Web 3D voice

Click on the picture above to see the first three webisodes!

Click on this picture to hear the song!

“Hometown Baghdad” premieres March 19th on Salon.com in the first stage of a launch across multiple distribution outlets.

Watching these clips is an incredibly powerful experience. As I watch the videos from Hometown Baghdad, I sense the possibilities for making the world a better place expanding as the video progress bar moves along.

A new window has opened onto Iraq - a view not seen in the media coverage, up to this point that, “has focused on the politicians, the troops, the insurgents or the religious fanatics.” As I watch the story in these Hometown Baghdad videos unfold - ordinary Iraqis in their homes, schools and places of work - I feel a personal connection to these brave people trying to make the best of appalling circumstances and get on with their lives. Also, I feel optimism. Seeing Iraq in a new way like this may lead to discovering new paths to peace. Thank you, Chat The Planet for giving us this opportunity.

Web 2.0, and the rapidly evolving multidimensional environments of Web 3D (exemplified by virtual worlds like Second Life) may provide a new way for us, as global citizens, to realize even our most lofty aspirations for positive global development. As we get to know each other, and make relationships beyond the fairly limited range of identities and opportunities for connection available in our day to daily lives, (and offered in conventional “push” media), a new understanding and era of cooperation and collaboration can emerge across cultural divides. Hometown Baghdad is a ground breaking example of how this will happen. And, please, don’t forget in the new digital democracy viewers are distributors. All of us can play a part in telling the untold story of the Iraq War.

Please, make the connection and spread the word!

You can see the press release for the fascinating story behind this innovative co-production with a group of Iraqi filmmakers in Baghdad. Here is a short excerpt:

“The people profiled in ‘Hometown Baghdad’ are not the usual figures that dominate the media’s coverage of the Iraq war: They are young, smart ambitious Iraqis struggling with everyday concerns in the middle of a deadly war.” The approximately 35 “webisodes” that range from one to three minutes long, tell “the stories of three young Iraqis who are struggling to survive in the most dangerous city in the world. Saif is a 23-year-old recent college grad with dreams of becoming a dentist. Adel is an aspiring rock musician whose hopes of forming a band are continually dashed by the violence and tragedy surrounding him. And Ausama is a 20-year-old med student whose family is repeatedly threatened and endangered by both American and insurgent forces.”

Technorati Tags: Baghdad, Documentary, Iraq, iraqi, media, video, vlog, war, web, series, SecondLife, Web2.0, Web3.0

Please send your new designs to Michael. See new photos for your design.

Technorati Tags: Baghdad, Documentary, Iraq, iraqi, media, video, vlog, war, web, series,

Hometown Baghdad has created a wonderful opportunity for netizens to work together with Iraqis towards healing Iraq. Please spread the word to all the web designers on your networks! HTB is looking for a new pod cast logo for their iTunes distribution. This web documentary series follows the lives of a few young Iraqis trying to get by in Baghdad and launches online on March 19. But, you will have until Monday to submit your podcast logo design.

Mike writes about this series and March 19th launch date:

“That date is significant because it is the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. A lot has changed for normal, everyday Iraqis in these past four years and hopefully our series will show the world what their lives are like today. However dramatic and moving these stories are, we intend this series to be apolitical. Perhaps it will spur some dialogue or make a few people think differently. And that may be good. But as filmmakers and producers, we simply want to introduce these people and tell their stories.”

Also, check out the interesting comments from Iraq on the HTB blog about the selection of a photo for the logo design. As HTB gets more pictures in from their team in Baghdad, they’ll post them here so you can use those pics if you like. And, Mike writes, “since we really like the font that was used in the past logo, I’m including a PNG frame of the series open. Feel free to grab that and incorporate it.”

PNG File

Also, Mike adds, “Since it’s for the iTunes podcast logo, it needs to be 300×300. And keep in mind, the logo will be tiny so make the font big enough to read. Send in your redesigns to me at mike@hometownbaghdad.com and I’ll post them here. And by the beginning of next week, if we get one that we think is more appropriate for the series, we’ll use it. ”

I can’t wait to see the new design!