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Fizik Baskerville (a.k.a Justin Bovington) says:

“Web + TV + Print + Virtual Worlds = Powerful”

This week Virtual Life and World 2.0 entered a new era with Destroy TV and virtual lifelogging in full swing, and the opening of the Sky News sim on Second Life. Sky News launched with a live event and live simulcast from the Guardian Hay Festival. Sky News has partnered with Rivers Runs Red on this watershed project for Second Life. And, the impressive Second Life replica of the real life Sky News headquarters was packed for the launch.

Web 2.0 is a mindset that leaves behind the negative forces of monopolies, and one-way communication. Web 2.0 is not a new version of the internet but the coming of age of the original vision of the internet to serve the interaction and cooperation amongst people (see Daniel Orsolic). And, it will be very interesting to see how Sky News develops 2.0 concepts, e.g., citizen journalism, user generated content on Second Life. For a good round up of a range News 2.0 phenomena see, “What is news 2.0 to you?” It is very exciting to see mainstream news media beginning to explore the collaborative potential of Second Life.

The 2.0 view has now been expanded to all aspects of our world - you can google news 2.o, sex 2.0 (I didn’t actually check the links on this), and enterprise 2.0 - lots of buzz about that (and if you want an inside view on what enterprise 2.0 is about check out IBM on Second Life). And, then there is World 2.o to encompass all the 2.0ed phenomena.

The 2.0 movement can be understood as a drive to revise the world into something better (Orsolic). And, part of the magic of Second Life is that the social and immersive qualities of SL are the quintessential expression of the 2.0 principles of user generated content, community, and collaboration - the heart and soul of 2.0 culture.

I was fortunate to log on, Sunday, at almost the exact same moment that Fizik Baskerville (a.k.a. Justin Bovington), CEO and Executive Creative Director of Rivers Runs Red, arrived in Sky News on Second Life after a 5hr road trip back from the live event (picture above). And, despite being, “at it for 48hrs,” he took the time to talk to me. Also, I saw on my Twitter stream that he even visited Destroy TV later! As the live event was held in the morning, UK time, I missed it. I am a New Yorker, and while virtual worlds herald the death of geography, I am not ready yet for the end of sleep!

But, Epredator, Andy Remblai and Aglernon Spackler from IBM (see Eightbar ) were all there, and three Lindens. And, you can catch up with what happened at the event on Second Life on the
Eightbar blog. Also see a very good post on MindBlizzard, and Sky New’s own advert/machinima for the event. The video grabs below are from this. On the right is Justin Bovington.

Rivers Runs Red now has a team dedicated to Sky News 24/7. Justin explained to me:

a dedicated content team will be on hand for updates - just like breaking news it need to be a 24/7 approach. We’re going recreate scenes when needed. We could in the future reproduce courts etc. Augmented reality - we are really into that. We have partnered with Sky News because they want to explore it too…..adding value, as in Second Life compliments, not detracting from another medium.

We can now step into the news room as it happens. The headlines are specially updated 5 times a day. Future events like the Hay Festival will also be incorporated, plus a lot of surprises to come. Sky News is very excited you just had to watch Sky News over the weekend to see the enthusiasm for all this [also see Adam Boulton's Weblog].

The Level Playing Field and The End of Geography

On Thursday of last week, I went to hear Mitchell Kapor (avatar on the right) and Philip Rosedale speak about The Level Playing Field Institute and Second Life. Philip Rosedale described how:

He was lucky enough to find Mitch at a time when no-body really would have gotten behind what we were doing - the idea of Second Life itself was something that was just outright crazy at the time that Mitch first made his investment in Linden Lab. And, for several years to follow, when Second Life was but a few hundred people using it, Mitch and a small group of angel investors that he inspired were the ones who believed.

Philip Rosedale spoke on the role of Second Life in creating a better world.

Second Life is changing the world, at least in part, by lowering the barriers to doing things for a lot of people around the world. There are people who are able to learn new things, and make new careers for themselves, to change their lives fundamentally because they have access to this environment in which the costs of doing things are reduced to almost zero. And, the barriers between people and the kind of reasons and judgments that people make about each other are virtually eliminated. And, we are left in this new world in which we all have the same opportunity. And what we are seeing in Second Life is that if you give everybody the same opportunity everybody does well. And that’s something that is very exciting and maybe surprising to some people out there in the world to see. But, it isn’t surprising at all for me. And, I really know it isn’t surprising for Mitch, and for The Level Playing Field Institute.

Mitchell Kapor spoke on the “death of geography”

We have lived under the tyranny of geography for all the millennia of human history. And, if you wanted to get together with people you really had to be in the same room. I am in a room full of people and I am part of an event on Second Life………..this is the future that we are making together. You are all pioneers in how we will make this new world.

Then, via IMs to Brainy Aleixandre of the Levelers (the LPFI’s Second Life group), Mitch Kapor fielded questions about the work of The Level Playing Institute. To learn more, please go to the web site. Mitch Kapor presented an open invitation for dialogue and collaboration. Also, see The Levelers blog.

In response to a question that came in from Real Life from a student in SMASH (see picture below from Smashcast blog), “What was the spark you saw in Philip?” Mitch made some interesting comments. Some things he mentioned were:

passion, determination and creativity …… and in addition [Second Life] has never been just a business, never been just about making money, building something bigger, or being successful. Integral, and we saw this very early on, was that it was about making a difference, about making a better world. And, we also see that from our students [in SMASH].

SMASH (Summer Math & Science Honors Academy) is one of the innovative projects to come out of The Level Playing Field Institute.

World 2.0 and Virtual Life

The virtualization of life - the joining of physical and virtual space in meaningful ways - begins to manifest the full possibilities of a 2.0 world. Something that is quite unexpected to some people is that this, the linking of the virtual and the physical, is the key to creating a sustainable future.

Bruce Sterling imagines how computers can help us find a way out of an industrial society that is not sustainable and is thoroughly inequitable.

The Emergence of Virtualized Communities

Many projects are still in the research stage. See Ian Hughes’s report on his visit to Tweakfest, and the IBM Zurich Lab, for some interesting examples of research into linking physical and virtual space. The work of Jeffrey Huang and his Swiss House project seemed particularly interesting to me.

The aim here to connect swizz ex-pats with their home country and fellow swiss in other countries. This ‘house’ is in Cambridge, MA between Harvard and MIT. The aim is to create a physical space but have the presence and linkages to other spaces, not by one video conference screen but lots of types of walls, projections, virtual/real world tools.
There are some pictures here of the sort of space created.

Uber Lifelogger

Then there is MyLifeBits, the ultimate lifelogging project from the legendary computer scientist Gordon Bell.

For the past seven years, Bell has been conducting an audacious experiment in “lifelogging”–creating a near-total digital record of his experience.

For an excellent report and a guide on How To Build Your Own MyLifeBits see Fast Company. And, if you really get inspired, you can follow some links in earlier posts on Ugotrade that will give you clues on how you could virtualize your data on Second Life in meaningful ways!

Virtual Space is the New Infrastructure:
Africa Pioneers Mobile Banking.

The development of mobile banking in Africa is showing that economic obstacles created by lack of physical infrastructure and difficulties with currency exchange can be overcome by innovative use of the mobile virtual space. Trading in minutes is so successful in Africa that major banks are setting up m-banking divisions (thanks Neil Caudwell for this link).

GigaOM writes:

While, most in the developed world fret about developing elegant and complex mobile transaction systems - folks who need mobile banking figure out things on their own. Using a little bit of common sense.

Read the full story over on iAfrica.com

Enterprise 2.0 meets Sports 2.0 for a Virtual Tennis Match

As Tara5 Oh, I went to IBM 7, Monday morning, where I met Andy Remblai, Laronzo Fitzgerald (builder and scripter), and Iorek Rasmuson - a tennis fan interested in technology who said he’d come to watch another Second Life first:

I’ve used the IBM online scoreboard for Wimbledon before and I guess this is the next generation.

Andy and Laronzo were working on the build which is open to the public, but still in an early experimental stage. Iorek and I were enjoying virtual tennis despite the appalling weather at Roland Garros. And, it was very interesting meeting the IBM virtual architects (see the IBM on Demand Scoreboard here).

Ian Hughes, who has pioneered this tennis project with others at IBM, sent me a message from Second Life earlier, in response to my questions about when tennis on Second Life would open to the public:

The tri board has schedule, completed matches and matches in progress, the main court will be showing live current match (all being well) or a replay of a match some videos and other things around. We are doing this quite gently as its the first tennis one we have gone public with.

Ian Hughes now has a post and video up describing Tennis in Second Life - Roland Garros. And, 3PointD has an interesting interview with Epredator (Ian Hughes). Virtual journalist, Walker Spaight, does some participatory exploration. Epredator invites you to come on over and take a look.

I mentioned earlier in this post that if you want experience enterprise 2.0 from the inside you may want to visit the IBM sims on Second Life. The IBM Impact 2007 SOA (Service Oriented Architecure) conference (see my earlier post) was an extraordinary example of the convergence of enterprise culture, 2.o thinking, and virtual worlds. SOA is particularly interesting re an understanding of Enterprise 2.0. SOA might be described as IT solutions with a Web 2.0 attitude. Although, there are convergences and divergences between SOA and Web 2.0 as Dion Hinchcliffe explains.

Be there!

The Destroy Television project continues, and it seems anything can happen and does. I dropped in this weekend and found out that hanging with Destroy seems to be a good way to meet interesting people.

Tags: Virtual Reality | Augmented Reality | Mixed Reality | Second Life | Virtual Worlds | Web 2.0 | Enterprise 2.0 | News 2.0 | Sports 2.0 | World 2.0 | The Internet | Sky News | The Hay Festival | Philip Rosedale | Mitchell Kapor | Gordon Bell | SMASH | The Level Playing Field Institute | Destroy TV | Lifelogging | Business 2.0 | Virtualized Reality | Virtual Life | Virtual Communities | Virtual Banking | Mobile Phones in Africa | m-banking |

The Mixed Reality Metarati came out to the Fuse Gallery/GHava{SL} Center for the Arts for the launch of Destroy Television Wednesday night. This ten day mixed reality interactive virtual/real “lifelogging” is an independent, art world foray from Jerry Paffendorf and Christian Westbrook of Electric Sheep Company, with collaborator and curator Annie Ok.

The MindBlizzard Blog posed the question “Who Are the Metarati?” and has begun a list on Metarati.org (Contact VeeJay Burns for more suggestions).

In the category of Immersive Worlds so far there is:

- Philip Rosedale (Linden Labs)
- Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us)
- Jerry Paffendorf (Electric Sheep Company)
- Ron Britvich (WebWorlds, Active Worlds)

I have become particularly interested in the work of a new category of Metarati - The Mixed Reality Metarati (see 3pedia for origin of term Metarati).

Mixed Reality events have been emerging everywhere lately. The millipedes are in the refrigerator now (see earlier post) and moving freely in and out of formerly sealed virtual worlds on many limbs.

MindBlizzard explains - The Digerati emerged from “the age of computers and internet, the age of information technology as we know it.”

And, now the days of the Metarati have come in - “a new era filled with Web 2.0 and immersive worlds.” (Metarati)

The Mixed Reality Metarati, are taking the next step as they begin virtualizing real life and augmenting reality in meaningful ways,” (virtualizing real life is a phrase I picked up on from CJ Chowderhead).

And, these new mash ups of virtual and real worlds, are bringing together art, science, commerce, popular culture, politics and play in new and interesting ways, to create hybrid worlds.

The title *rati, of course, has to be earned through a combination of uber geekiness and extraordinary vision

In the last few weeks, I have attended the corporate mixed reality showcases of Xerox and IBM Impact 2007, and popular culture mash ups from (Spin Martin (Eric Rice), Johnny Ming (Swords), Second Cast live podcasts, and Virtualive.tv). And, I interviewed IBM, Hursley Park Senior Inventors, and RL/SL link creators, Epredator, and CJ Chowderhead.

But, there are a wide variety of the mixed reality projects emerging. Last night, at the Destroy Television launch, I had a chance to meet several other key innovators in the mixed reality field in person.
It was an incredible pleasure to meet Nathanial Freitas (a.k.a. nat mandelbrot). He is the creator with Will Meyer and Jon Oakes, of online media sites such as such as Cruxy, MUX, and ION. (and the Cruxy Player for Second Life). Cruxy has just been selected for:

UNDER THE RADAR CONFERENCE: Entertainment & Media, June 28, 2007, Microsoft Campus - Mountain View, CA
Meet the innovators that are not only shaping the future of digital entertainment and media but are also inspiring the most important audience to do the same: us. We edit the clips, mix the sound, airbrush the pics, animate the avatars, post the video and blog the masterpiece. This isn’t digital evolution. This is digital revolution.

But, also, Nathanial Freitas is a volunteer and Board Member to groups such as the Students for a Free Tibet, Mobile Active, and The Ruckus Society.

Nathan worked with the team that went to Everest to “turn up heat on Beijing Olympics.” He was responsible for all the video streaming over satellite technology that made it possible to get the photo below, of the protest at the Chinese Mt. Everest Base Camp, in the Wall Street Journal. The activists seem to have left a lasting impression on the Chinese Government (see here).

Baghdad Streets In Real and Second Life

I also talked to Mark Wallace of 3pointD and Rik Panganiban. Rik has blogged:

the powerful new interactive exhibit “Baghdad Streets” organized by PT Witte on Better World Island (teleport SLURL). “Baghdad Streets” is an extension of the PT’s real-life-work “bringing the truth of life in the killing zone of Baghdad” to the awareness of as many people as possible. Walking through the maze (I recommend using mouse-view) brings you face to face with the reality of the conflict and its effects on innocent lives. You encounter real stories of people caught up in the conflagration, their daily frustrations, and steps you can take to encourage peace in the region.

PT Witte is Mark Wallace’s real life father, who:

has been connecting students and teachers in Baghdad and New York City for four years via email. Excerpts of these moving communications are at Better World Island as well as the project blog at 121Contact.typepad.com

Conversations Merging Art, Technology, Politics and Play

I had a long recorded conversation with Andy Fundinger. I will come back to some of the ideas we talked about. The topics ranged from the development details of SL/RL interfaces (see his blog for more), to how different cultures on Second Life would want different things out of RL/SL interfaces. And, how at this point “it was difficult to say what the widely used apps will be” (this was the message I also received earlier in the day direct from Philip Linden’s Blackberry!) But, Andy (a.k.a. Ciemaax Flintoff) and his co-developer on some SL/RL interfaces, William Ward, said they might be ready to push a few new apps out to the world, and see how people picked them up and used them.

Their project, “Weather Wisdom - RL Weather in SL, was in the NMC Connect art show.

Here’s the finished in-world build:

And the finished real world controller:

Also, at the Destroy TV art and technology, SL/RL, mashup/meetup were Marshall Sponder artist, blogger and web analyst for IBM, and Matthew Rodriguez. I met them both at MobileCampNYC. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Derek Lerner. But, we met briefly. And, when I checked out Ghava.com later, I wished we had talked. Ghava is an artist collective and agency that explores the collaborative process and its effects on commercial and fine art projects.

And, in the picture below (on right) the award winning machinimist Pierce Portcarrero talking with artist Ryan Ford.

Check out PierceP’s cool mixed reality machinima here.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3D | Web 3.D | Machinima | Mixed Reality | Augmented Reality | Metarati | Digerati | Baghdad | Free Tibet | Beijing Olympics 2008 | Cruxy | Destroy TV | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Reality |

These two pictures are from Nicolas Nova’s Media and Design Lab, Mediamatic Workshop, Amsterdam, May 2007 (see Pasta and Vinegar). The picture on the left is what hybridization is NOT about - rather think from a less utilitarian point of view as in picture on the right. (Nicolas Nova).

This IS What hybridization is about!

Destroy Television (DTV)

If you live in New York City, or can get here, you have an amazing opportunity to participate in a full on hybridization experience, this Wednesday May 23rd:

Go to the Other Here to get:

some background and details (when, where, who, what, why/vision) on the Destroy Television art show at Fuse Gallery, GHava{SL}, dtv.sheeplabs.com, and in Second Life. Take a look, come hang out in New York or Second Life during this Wednesday’s opening, and plan your performance if you want to make a splash in Destroy Television The Movie. On this…..

Invitation To Attend And Participate In The Destroy Television 10-Day Second Life Avatar Lifelogging Art Show Movie…Thing

Destroy Television is the name of an avatar in Second Life who streams live video of her life and adventures to dtv.sheeplabs.com, where you see and chat and influence her movement and camera controls in SL from the web. But wait! There’s more! Destroy Television, or DTV for short, records and shares her life through a process called “lifelogging” or “lifecasting” (to define terms, logging is keeping the record and casting is sharing it live — a popular example of real life lifecasting is the 24/7 mobile camera at justin.tv).

An avatar of Justin in Second Life

We wonder if lifelogging in virtual worlds, that is, taking advantage of virtual worlds having essentially baked-in wireless internet and communications, cameras, GPS, RFID, and meta data about people and locations, will help prototype a more transparent, searchable, and personally and socially and globally understandable real world — the reeeaaally flat world.

Data Blogging - an advanced form of blogging.

Collecting the traces of new interaction partners is a trend in hybridization.

Question: Why would objects want to blog? Why would I be interested? (see Julian Bleeker’s blog on Techkwondo)

Answer: Traces (where you have been where you are going in a geospatial sense), history, (”turn a history on interactions into a continuous experience - object to learn from their histories”), content production (see The Aibo [the toy dog] That Blogs), and agency - e.g., having a voice in cultural circulation on public networks -streams, feeds, trackbacks, permalinks, wiki and blog posts.

Critter Cams from Nicolas Nova

And, we cannot ignore, reality mining and lifelogging’s shadow “big brother” (Justin cop helmet cams are all the rage too now).

Hybridization at an “Unconference”

Jose Marinez, at MobileCampNYC, presenting on, “The Poor man’s SMS Gateway.” There are instructions for setting up the SMS gateway on his blog

On Saturday (May 19th) our whole family went to MobileCampNYC. For a very generous description of our presentation, “Metaverse and The Mobile Space: Intersection or Inclusion,” see Marshall Sponder at WebMetricsGuru.

Nokia (who unveiled a beta mobile web server) lavishly sponsored the event and supplied an abundance of Nokia 95s, some of which were given away. A bit disappointed not to get one the Ugotrade family went shopping for their N 80 IE’s that evening with our co-presenter on “Metaverse and The mobile space, Rich LaBaca.

While as Dave Winer, Scripting News, commented:

People don’t seem ready yet to accept that knowledge is distributed through the room, we’re here to be taught.

I felt MobileCampNYC, an “unconference,” did maintain the feeling of a hybrid event. Presentations from corporate giants rubbed shoulders with more down to earth innovations such as “The Poor Man’s SMS Gateway,” Dave Harper, founder of Winksite, Cocoa UltraSMS, Paul Notzold - txtual healing ” (see Marshall Sponder for an excellent write up ), “Mashup your phone with GPS” - WHERE.com, Mexuar - who will soon be announcing a very interesting new app. for Second Life, and then there was the Ugotrade family road show!

Akaalias uploaded this picture of Ugotrade junior to MobileCamp’s Flickr pool noted:

This DS contained a Revolution R4 card with a microSD memory card embedded in it. I wasn’t expecting to get out-teched by a someone under 10. (noted by Everyplace )

Many thanks to everyone who played with UJ while I participated. As Akaalias observed in the title to this picture, Ugotrade Junior was on a mission to “Remote Control the Camp.”

Also, Timo Arnall flew in from Norway, just for this conference, and gave an inspiring presentation on Physical Hyperlinking.

Timo covered a lot of ground. He outlined many technologies for physical hyperlinking, and their creative uses in intereactive marketing and community projects. Go to Timo’s blog to really get a feel for how creative and far reaching his thinking is.

Timo has put many of his wonderful slides up too - RFID, “smart posters,” Bluetooth marketing - “turn on bluetooth to receive something naughty,” building size QR codes, Semapedia’s hyperlinking, experimental and niche market projects such as one to tag the provenance of craft items and unusual interpretations of QR codes, and much more.

Metaverse Roadmap

I have been quite absorbed with the Mirror World, Augmented Reality, and Lifelogging quadrants of the Metaverse Roadmap lately. This picture is from Jerry Paffendorf’s (futurist for The Electric Sheep Company) blog. See here for much more on the Metaverse Roadmap project and where lifelogging and reality mining all fit in a vision of the 3D Web.

Jerry Paffendorf points out that:

massively multi-user avatar environments in whatever form, are and will become even more of a driver of the other areas [in the picture above] because of their capacity to purely simulate things digitally and because they inherently have RFID, GPS, WiFi, and metadata out the kazoo baked right into them.

You can, for example, prototype any imaginable augmented reality application inside of a virtual world, which may also be a mirror world, before you put it out onto the street, or inside of a building, or wherever out in physical space.

He also explains the importance of lifelogging and indicates what might be the future of lifelogging.

recording your actions and experiences both in the digital world and/or in the real world to create a picture of yourself over time that you can revisit to learn from and share with other people.

Linking Real Worlds and Virtual Worlds

My post on CJ Chowderhead’s virtualized lab on Second Life (in this picture with his duck that reports temperatures from Real Life locations) was picked up by several other blogs including Rob Smart’s blog, Disordered Cogitations, and Mark Wallace from 3pointD, who had this to say:

This is just one kind of application that could start to make Second Life a much more useful place. I’d love to see entities and conditions being tracked around SL in real time. Why? Because there’s a ton of information to be extracted from a digital environment, which can then be applied to real-world problems from logistics to marketing to sociology, you name it. That said, this won’t start to get really interesting until we have a nearly plug-n-play solution. Which is probably one of the things IBM is working on. Keep your sensors tuned.

All About Mobile Life also linked to the post and pointed me to the work of Mike Conway, Instanceof Idea, who has been working on “mashup info in the 3D world” in Second Life.

Mike Conway uses the freely available tools, that you and I have access to - such as Ruby On Rail’s, to get data both into SL and out to RL. He has some pretty nifty ideas he’s working on too.

He seems to be working on a storm display map that is somewhat interactive. For example, you can point and click on a storm icon on the map to bring out more information presented in what he calls flyouts (very appropriate considering dropdowns and popups are in widespread use today). He also has at least one GPS app with 2-way data. Although, he admits that the data out side is a bit buggy. The weather map also appears to have 2 way gps functionality. That is he can get the real world location of a truck and show its 3d icon on a virtual map updated as it moves. Furthermore, he talks about sending some new GPS location to it and having it go there.

Mike Conway seems to have quite a lot going on considering he is working with text streams like, RSS feeds, rather than the data input/output that IBM’s MQtt manages.

IBM IMPACT 2007 SOA event in Second Life

This picture is from the IBM Impact 2007 SOA conference that was streamed into Second Life.

SOA (service orientated architecture) is the bridge between IT and business that IBM has been pioneering. And, as far as I can tell it must be hot, hot, hot! I feel I have to mention this event, even though I need to wrap this post up. The event had the flavor of a kind of corporate Woodstock, not just because it was on an extraordinary scale for Second Life (see video on Youtube to get a sense of this), but because one got the feeling that something about this gathering was going to have a big effect on the wider culture.

And, in terms of being a global cultural mixer, it was an extraordinary event. There were multiple cultures and languages. And, aided by translator HUDs, Real Life and Second Life, and pop and corporate cultures, intermingled and exchanged ideas in kaleidosopic patterns hardly imaginable in Real Life. I am on my way back in-world as soon as this post is up!

Tags: Second Life | Web 3.D | Web 3D | Web 2.0 | physical hyperlinking | hybridization | reality mining | lifelogging | mobilecampnyc | barcamp | unconference | Impact 2007 | IBM SOA | augmented reality | mirror worlds | virtual worlds | lifescasting | Destroy Television | sensor mapping | GPS | QR codes | mobile space | mobile innovation | Nokia | bluetooth marketing | RFID | interactive marketing | WiFi | Metaverse Roadmap | blogjects | geospatial mapping | SOA | IBM on Second Life | data blogging | virtual worlds | virtual reality |

2D bar codes, or “QR codes,” made their debut (input as data) in Second Life today, thanks to the efforts of Dave Conway-Jones “CJ Chowderhead.”

This morning, CJ kindly spent time doing an interview with me. But, of course, if you are lucky enough to meet an inventor, what you really want is an invention! And, CJ Chowderhead did not disappoint. He came up with a solution to an on the spot request to bring a 2D bar code into Second Life, not merely as a texture or image, but as a QR code sent as data and readable by a mobile phone from within 2nd Life. If you project that image full screen (while in SL) a phone should be able to read it.

The QR code in this pic points at the eightbar blog. And, so yet another way to bring 1L and 2L (RL and SL) together, or at least build a small bridge between them, is born. Could it be a seed for a form of hyperlinking in Second Life?

Dave Conway-Jones” is a Senior inventor, IBM Hursley Park, Winchester, UK. He works in the “Emerging Technology Service Group.” In real life he builds and experiments with sensor networks designed to monitor real life, real time devices. These are often used for asset monitoring systems and process control. (If you are not familiar with these terms think Dow jones or your personal stock portfolio for “asset monitoring,” and robotic production lines or automated lab analysis for “process control.” Not that either of these are the actual applications that CJ is working with - at least as far as I know. I’m just trying to establish a general understanding.)

Virtualizing Real Life in a Meaningful Way

I can use Second Life to virtualize my real life sensors and see them in a more meaningful way - or more. abstract way or more interesting way - or whatever else we feel like (CJ Chowderhead).

For this project they use the IBM MQtt messaging system that Ginger Mandelbrot invented to hook all the monitoring devices together. And, Yossarian Seattle (also Rob Smart of Eightbar and creator of the much lauded SL Translator HUD), created the link from MQtt to Second Life so that messages can flow in and out of Second Life.

CJ explained to me what is going on in these pictures of his virtual office in Second Life. And, here is some of what I picked up on (we talked on skype, so I didn’t have the SL chat log to go back to!).

The floor plan is of the offices surrounding CJ in Real Life. The blue balls with white designs represent active Bluetooth devices. The pyramids scattered about the floor represent other people working, with the color designating things like physical presence or telepresence. The flame in the pic on the left is a probe under the lamp, “so when lamp is on the temp goes up.” The black rectangle in the righthand pic is a RL door (so CJ knows when someone enters his lab).

I don’t remember what CJ said about the flowerpot. But, a good guess might be that it represents the output of a bevy of environmental sensors such as temperature, humidity and light, the same things that a plant would need to thrive. I am also guessing about the building with the smoke coming out of the chimney. But, it could well represent air quality monitors.

I do know about the the duck on CJ’s shoulder though! It speaks and says:

“Quack ! The temperature in CJ’s 1st life Greenhouse is 24.0 degrees C,” or for outside or inside CJ’s house - randomly.

The pink bunny slippers no doubt represents someone always hopping around, dealing with so many different issues and problems like we all do occasionally.

Sensor Map projects have a lot of potentially very cool applications, and huge societal implications. 3pointD recently posted on this, “mirror worlds,” and Microsoft’s recent offer of “unrestricted funding” for the development of geospatial and mapping applications.

Mobile Phones as a Virtual/Real Interface

CJ explained how they use mobile phones as an interface to the data (represented in SL) both for input (voice, text, and now even bar codes!) as well as for output in the form of dashboards (think of a car dashboard of gages and other information presented in the form of instrumental readouts).

Semapedia - hyperlink your world:
QR codes will be a hot topic at MobileCampNYC

A Semapedia tag going up!

For those who have not yet been introduced to QR codes, they are a way of representing more information than can generally be put into your standard grocery store bar code. One of the big adopters of this has been Nokia who developed software for many of their phones to be able to translate these into URLs and lookup web pages of appropriate information about something near where someone has placed one of these 2DBC’s.

Semapedia is collecting and mapping sites where many of these QRs have been placed.

Our goal is to connect the virtual and physical world by bringing the right information from the internet to the relevant place in physical space.

To accomplish this, we invite you to create Semapedia-Tags which are in fact cellphone-readable physical hyperlinks. You can create such Tags easily yourself by choosing and pasting a Wikipedia URL into the form above. Once created, you put the Tags up at their according physical location. You just hyperlinked your world! Others can now use their cellphone to ‘click’ your Tag and access the information you provided them.

Twitter Users Second Life Meet Up

The Meet Up organized by 57 Miles of Metaversed today was packed with Twitterati and Metarati whose uber connecting creates flows all around the Web and the Metaverse. Apps like SLTweets, Twitterbox, Squawk, Jaiku (see Metaverse’s 5 ways to integrate your Second Life into the web), Flickr (and see Mashable for more on SL plus Web 2.0 Virtual World Mashups) and Snapzilla (post cards from life #2) were probably all in action this morning as the chat ranged across many hot topics. Wrestling Hulka was posting to Tumblr.

Johnny Ming sported a Jaiku sign - showing his continued allegiance to just saying no to the unpleasant symptoms of Twitter cat allergy?

Chisel’s Inventor, Vyrnox Ming, talked about a HUD that “works rather well with the Electric Sheep Company’s search.

And Fox Diller, of Crystal Studio, explained the work they have done running 120 sims for their client Sprott-Shaw with their own grid/asset/login/sim services. Also, Fox has a Second Life client running on the Motorola Q Smartphone.

This was my first Twitter Meet Up on Second Life. But, if you want to know what is happening on the frontiers of Virtual Worlds and Web 2.0, it is a good place to hang out. And, even though there were a lot of avatars, 57 Miles did a great job of welcoming all. See you next time!

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Augmented Reality | Semapedia | physical hyperlinks | Twitter MeetUp | IBM Hursley Park | sensor maps | lifelogging | virtual reality | internet of things | social media | social networking | IBM inventors | QR codes | virtual world mashups |

Ugotrade Goes To MobileCampNYC, Saturday, May 19th.

My friend and partner in many R & D adventures, Otto Leichliter, veteran of Ericsson’s Messaging R & D team, 3D vision, robotics, special effects for film and television, and system development, will be helping me lead a discussion, “Metaverse and The Mobile Space: Intersection or Inclusion” at MobileCampNYC .

We will talk about how the standard pipeline of WiFi will transform cell phones, from the “mashup consumers” they are now, into true interface engines that open up the relationship between real and virtual worlds. And how, as the metaverse meets the mobile space, 3D printers/fabricators may be both the killer app. for virtual worlds and sustainable development.

But, the topic is wide open. And, if you would like to help us lead this discussion, please add your name to the wiki page.

A Fab@Home Model 1 Fabber. See PopSci - The Desktop Factory

Roboticist Hod Lipson wants you to stop shopping and use his portable 3-D printer to make your own stuff.

I hope to see you at MobileCampNYC, if you live in the Metropolitan NY area. Please add your name to the wiki now if you want to attend as there is a limit of 100 people! MobilecampNYC is a BarCamp:

BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. The name is a playful allusion to its origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off from Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing luminary, Tim O’Reilly.

A BarCamp in progress in Chennai, India. Original image at Kiruba’s Blog.

WiFi to link Virtual and Real Worlds

The difference between WiFi and all the various cell phone protocols currently in use is the equivalent to the difference between public access and pay per view.

WiFi is based on the TCP/IP networking communication standards and not some oddball proprietary standard that only Telcos provide.

TCP/IP is the network standard and must ultimately become the mobile phone standard as well if cell phones are to become true linking engines between virtual and real worlds. Otherwise phones will continue to be (as they are now) consumers of (costly) services, that are regulated and restricted and far from open source or user friendly.

WAP, 3G , GPRS, WAP (Wireless Access Protocol), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)?, 3G, GSM, EDGE, TDMA, CDMA - don’t worry if you don’t know all these - the point is that WiFi can leapfrog them all with direct access to the internet, and that includes internet telephony and (with the resolution of bandwidth issues) access to virtual worlds like Second Life.

People used to talk about service anytime, anywhere - it shouldn’t matter if that’s a real or a virtual anywhere.
Zygmunt Lozinski, IBM

And, as bandwidth obstacles diminish, there will be, increasingly, a natural interaction between virtual and real worlds. And, our experience of virtual and real mixed mode events, and augmented reality events e.g. Second Life HUDs (Heads Up Displays) integrated with Real Life events will not, of course, be limited to qwerty keyboards and monitors.

The integration of virtual and real worlds in the mobile space has significant implications for developing countries and sustainable development (see several earlier posts on Ugotrade on role of mobile phones in developing countries, and also see earlier post on Bruce Sterling and Splimes).

Building Bridges Between Virtual and Real Worlds:
It doesn’t have to be all headsets and Sci Fi.

Bridge building between virtual worlds and real worlds via the mobile space is not merely in the realm of speculation. Last Friday, I was fortunate to spend time with Ian Hughes (a.k.a Epredator), Metaverse Evangelist, Senior Inventor and Innovation Catalyst and Consulting IT Specialist, with about 17 years in IBM. My inspiration to do the discussion on “Metaverse and The Mobile Space: Intersection or Inclusion,” at MobilecampNYC came from this meeting with Epredator on Second Life.

I met Epredator on one of the many IBM islands on Second Life. And, he took me to several locations during the interview. However, IBM’s presence on Second Life is far to extensive to cover in one post, so I will come back to other aspects of IBM’s exploration of virtual worlds and Second Life in later posts.

It was very exciting to have this opportunity to meet one of the pioneers of the merger of virtual and real worlds. Ian Hughes brought Wimbledon to Second Life and this project is an outstanding proof of concept demonstrating how real data can be gathered pumped to the web and to Second Life, and also to Real Life to produce a mixed reality event.

On Eightbar Ian Hughes describes a number of different ideas that were demonstrated by bringing Wimbledon to Second Life. He explained to me:

We gather the real data and pump it to the web, pump it to SL, and also to real life scoreboards on-site……so if someone wants to see the hawkeye replay, or overlay the line call, we have all the data. And, with a WiFi network we can merge the two.

It doesn’t have to be all headsets and Sci Fi. I could hold my mobile phone up and use the screen as a viewer through which to superimpose the data.

Mobile - “anywhere you need it” in virtual and real worlds: overcoming patchy connectivity

IBM caused quite a stir at the recent 3GSM World Congress where Zygmunt Lozinski showed off a service button that calls someone in Real Life and patches them in to Second Life. In an interview to BBC Click Online, Mr Lozinski said:

So for example, you can make your avatar ring a bell, like in a hotel lobby, and that would send a message to the owner of that area, to their mobile phone, to say ‘there’s somebody who’s interested in talking to you’. Because obviously you can’t spend your entire life in a virtual shop hanging around waiting for someone to stop by and buy something.

You can then see a photo of the avatar who’s calling you. You can then record a video with your mobile, and send that back so your potential customer can see that video being played to them on a video wall in the virtual world.

In effect, IBM’s model removes the need for people to exist within a virtual world.

If you’re traveling you may not always have good enough connectivity to interact with people in a virtual world, even if you need to. People can communicate irrespective of whether they’re in the virtual or real worlds.

Helping people link to virtual worlds despite patchy connectivity will have significant implications for the role virtual worlds can play in positive global development.

“3D printing is a real killer app. tacked on the side of Second Life,” says Epredator

Epredator stood for a capture session in SL, and then received a parcel from Michael at fabjectory containing “this excellent Epredator potato figure straight out of a 3d printer,” (see eightbar for more great pictures).

In my interview with Epredator, he brought up how important local manufacturing elements, 3D printers and Home “Fabbers” could be for sustainable development.

We spend a lot of time shipping products around, packaged to travel. [This could be avoided in many cases] if we rezzed them in the real world at the point we needed them from basic raw materials.

If you want to buy a product from a website and you have local 3D printing we only have to ship the model information.

Well as you you can see, my chat with Epredator left me with a lot to think about. There was so much ground covered that I will have to come back to these ideas in later posts.

As I mentioned in my previous post, and see eightbar, at IBM, Hursley, they are dreaming up the internet of things at every opportunity they get!

I do hope, if you can, you come to MobileCampNYC to discuss some of these ideas about blurring the lines between virtual and real worlds and linking the Metaverse with The Mobile Space.

MobileCampNYC is bringing together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals from the NYC metropolitan area to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility. MobileCampNYC hopes to support the many voices helping to unlock the potential of a truly digital life. Topics may include - but are not limited to - mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.D | Metaverse | Virtual Worlds | Virtual Reality | Augmented Reality | Barcamp | MobileCampNYC | IBM | IBM on Second Life | Zygmunt Lozinski | Epredator | WiFi telephony | open standards | internet connectivity | 3D Printing | home fabbers | 3GSM | fabathome | home fabber | fabjectory | Wimbledon on Second Life | digital divides | social entrepreneurship | positive global development | sustainable development | internet telephony | internet of things | splimes | Bruce Sterling | mobile innovation |

These pictures are taken by Yanahin Wauja, the indigenous photographer and filmmaker who is featured at the beginning of my previous post Virtual Amazon and Metaverse Evangelism. He has a real eye for both the artistic and social relevance of photography. The women are throwing Manioc paste at the men, a very daring and provocative act at the entrance of the men’s house, a place that is usually restricted for women.

Yanahin does not have a Flickr page and shoots on an SLR camera as getting prints downloaded to CD is expensive in the nearest town. And, he does not have a way to easily share them once they are on CD or DVD.

He is co-directing a project with Marcelo Fortaleza Flores about the Wauja mask dance and its representation in Western cultures.

Yanahin and other Xingu media makers, and Xingu technorati, who got their own digital cameras with their own resources, like Yukai Wauja and Akari Wauja (pictured below in a photo taken by Marcelo Fortaleza Flores), or like Adalberto and Paulo Wakalitesu (the man in the picture who climbed a tree to get better cell phone coverage - see my previous post), and many other indigenous folks who own equipment, take many, many photographs. But, their work has few channels to the world beyond their community. They say, “Why is it foreigners are the only ones capable of distributing the photographs they take of our culture when there are ways we could do it ourselves?”

If nobody thinks that what you are doing is dangerous you are doing something with no power to change the world. Bruce Sterling

Since I have been blogging on Ugotrade, it has been suggested to me more than a few times that the possibility of indigenous communities being involved with the internet in general, and Second Life in particular, is “dangerous” for them.

“Won’t the communities become over-run with pornography?” was the concern voiced.

“But, I suppose 68% internet use in the UK is connected to pornography,” the questioner continued (I have no idea where they got this stat from?).

I haven’t heard many credible voices for preventing internet use in the UK lately on those grounds though.

No More Silent Things, Things That Don’t Blog, Things That Don’t Link!

If no-one is discussing you as hype. you are not being loud enough. Bruce Sterling

This picture is from the prize winning Virtuool Design for Reperes (for more go to SLAmbling.) And, for an amazing view inside the (reputedly) 3000 - something prim head go to Torley Linden’s flickr page and another gorgeous night view.

Bruce Sterling imagines how computers can help us find a way out of an industrial society that is not sustainable and is thoroughly inequitable. But, he acknowledges, “it is hard to dream up something that will actually work.”

Bruce Sterling imagines a time when the biosphere is no longer full of silent “dead things” - i.e. things that do not evoke any knowledge. These are “non spiming dead things.” The secret to sustainable development is to bring the “dead, non spiming” things of our biosphere to life.

To see “some kind of Spime theme song” - Royksopp’s “Remind Me,” go to Bruce Sterling’s blog.

Thing Links

Sterling’s “internet of things,” “geospatial web,” “ecology of things” - we must try and find the words along the way - may take thirty years to come to fruition. But, a working model, is beginning to emerge from virtual real world mash-ups.
If you want to see some examples, go to eightbar and get an insider’s view on how IBM Hursley’s Distinguished Engineers (DE) work on dreaming up the internet of things at every opportunity they get! Also, see TimeFrame in Second Life.

Web 2.o and Virtual/Real World mashups

I took the picture on the right of Buddahead performing for the Virtualive.tv event Canal Room, NYC, Friday, May 11th. I left a little early so I could go back home and see the the same event on Second Life. But, I arrived just as the show was ending! Fortunately, I met Earth Primbee who kindly sent me the picture on the left taken in Second Life and other great pictures.

Virtual and Real mixed mode events are the new frontier on Second Life. Morpheus Media is revolutionizing music marketing and liberating bands from record label bondage with simultaneous stagings of virtual and life concerts.

True hyper-linking has yet to come to Second Life and other virtual worlds. But, go to Metaversed to find Five Ways To Integrate Your Second Life Into The Web.

Metaverse Evangelist, Roo Reynolds in his presentation at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium in Second Life and Real Life pointed out that virtual worlds are set in the context of Web 2.o, and that Web 2.0 is not a standard you can adhere to. It is in the words of Ian Davis, an “attitude not a technology,”

Web 2.0 is a social world of social networking, user generated content, and people connected and connecting - “everyone wants to be loved.” see Roo’s brief notes from the event.

“Real” Dreams in “Virtual” Worlds

I took this picture when I visited the awesome and inspiring new sim by Virtuool for Amazon. For the full story on the soft-launch of this 2-sim Amazon Developer island, targeted at developers using Amazon Web Services, go to SLAmbling where there a number of great photos that give a feel for the overall design.

This is the conference center for Amazon Developer island. It is an amazing piece of virtual architecture that like the rest of Virtuool’s work really does live up to their trademark:

“gravity free builders”

When you walk through a Virtuool build it is like walking through a painting of light and space.

This picture seems to show what I was thinking, at the time. I was giving the, “What You Want Machine” a whirl and imagining all the dreams that could be built on Second Life!

A good way to get a feel for this gorgeous sim is to go to a rezzing kiosk and rez a tour boat to navigate along the river as this gives you a nice point of view of the island. Here I am taking a boat tour.

Second Life - Where Creation is Never Split From Experience

The Virtuool sim Celestial Isle is not only set up to show case their work, it is a collaborative design environment where they develop new projects.

Jim Purbrick of Linden Labs opened the Eduserv Foundation Symposium with a brilliant talk (Eduserve will be posting all the presentations soon) on how people have used the unique collaborative learning environment of Second Life to create business success out of ingenuity and a PC (also see Forbes story).

Purbrick brought up a number of stories of successful Second Life entrepreneurs who eventually quit their day jobs to live their entrepreneurial dreams on Second Life. Purbrick listed some of the unique qualities of Second Life that enabled people to leave often very successful, but not always interesting, Real Life jobs to build much more interesting, and more fulfilling, careers on Second Life.

Collaborative, On-demand, Situated Learning

Purbrick elaborated in detail giving many wonderful examples of how the collaborative, on-demand, situated learning environment of Second Life, where creation is never split from experience, created the conditions for so many virtual world success stories.

One of the amazing things about the learning environment of Second Life is there is always someone there to help you learn. And, in a world where to get started on building a dream you just point at the ground - dreams are being built everywhere you go. When I asked Joshua Culdesac to talk to me about Virtuool, not only did he show me around their fascinating builds. He and Virtuool’s other principal Piper Pitney (who dreamed up the head idea), also showed me how they created their builds.

Here we are in the sandbox on Amazon Developer Island.

“Real” Success in “Virtual” Worlds

There are many wonderful stories of how people have developed successful businesses on Second Life. And, I will cover more of these stories in future posts. But, in my travels on Second Life this week I met some interesting 3D Architects who discovered their talents and developed them on Second Life.

This is Washu Zebrastripe who began on Second Life in 2002 (she was 20 years old in Real Life). She found her husband and career on Second Life.

Washu is now a building team leader for Beta Technologies. She builds content and helps her ‘team’ build content for companies wishing to create a presence for themselves in SL with Beta Tech (see my earlier posts for more about Beta’s work on Xerox Innovation Island).

Here are Earth Primbee (left) and Grafx Newbold (right) 3D architects/artists on Second Life. They have built this wonderful sim, Inspire Space Park, at night while holding down day jobs. They are getting ready to make their work on Second Life more central. Earth and Grafx explore the borderless nature of Second Life. The picture on the right shows me trying out their “orbital fall,” one of the many innovative and fun parts of Inspire. If you can’t afford space tourism in RL check it out, and have some fun floating through the celestial spheres .

Earth has some gorgeous photos of the Inspire Space Park here. Earth is also a champion Kung Fu Fighter on Second Life!

For another nice example of someone making Second Life their life see Rinaz’s video (see my earlier post) that she has just uploaded to Ugonet.

The dEadly mOb is Researching Second Life

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Alice Springs, Australia! The dEadly mOb is currently researching Second Life with the idea of exploring how they can also participate.

The Internet Cafe at the Gap Youth Centre, Alice Springs (on left). The Ali-Curung crew (on right), digitizing video and making their own short films… Check out the Ali-Curung Pages.

The dEadly mOb “seeks to serve an Online Community of Indigeous young people who actively interact with and upload to the website, expressing their views, hopes, activities and talent.

I look forward to talking to them more, and hearing about their exploration of Second Life.

Tags: Second Life | Web 2.0 | Web 3.D | Virtual Reality | Virtual Worlds | Metaverse | Virtual World | Indigenous Media | Virtual Amazon | metaverse evangelism | Wauja | Xingu | Wauja Mask Dance | Splime | Splimes | Thing Links | Bruce Sterling | Internet of Thing