I am one of the 500 Premium subscribers who recently received a home from Governor Linden. I guess I have been seen changing clothes in the sky? Or perhaps it was my penchant for abandoning my homeless avatar in art exhibits for the night? Actually, I know it was just a bit of luck and reckless abandon that won me a home. I had received an email offering me a ‘private setting to relax, socialize with friends and more’. The email told me that the first 500 email respondents would be given the opportunity to sign-up for a Linden Home.  I decided to ignore my mother’s advice and move fast and sign up before reading the small print. This lead me to a web site where I was given a  somewhat limited choice of house styles and once I had selected my house I was asked to name it.

Exterior of my Linden home 'Looming View'

Naturally, as soon as I had the time I signed into Second Life and zoomed over to see what Governor Linden had put under my freebie Christmas tree. I landed in front of my new (ever so slightly boring) house (but remembering the oral hygiene of gift horses I will say no more about that… except that the hobbit burrows look rather cozy). It took me a while to open the front door and I even started to wonder if this was the reason the house had been given away? (i.e. the house lacked an entrance).  I tried to jimmy open the windows with a virtual credit card whilst feeling a little flummoxed and telling myself I really should have read the small print. (Linden Labs have given you a house. To achieve entry: 1. Stand outside aforementioned house. 2.Use your camera to pan through the exterior wall. 3. Locate staircase. 4. Select ’sit here’ position. 5. You will now be teleported through the masonry to selected seating if you are lucky).

Another view of my Linden House (featuring a Kolor Fall palm sculpture on my front step.)

Then I saw Geo Linden standing on the lawn and tried to ask his advice but all to no avail. I suspected that the tiny little mute blue avi was a lawn ornament. This caused me to wonder if all the freely bestowed houses had Linden statues scattered across their lawns? (Visit Marianne McCann’s Snapzilla site to see her album titled ‘Linden Hunting’ featuring 685 Linden photos to date!) It makes a strange kind of sense to consider a range of Linden gnomes scattered across the various Linden housing estates of Second Life suburbia.

Geo Linden photographed by Marianne McCann

I noticed that my mini-map had started to look like a Christmas tree with a loose wire in the fairy lights,  green dots kept popping in and out at irregular intervals as assorted avatars (with premium accounts and 512m of unused tier) manifested themselves to see what Santa Linden had given them. I watched a number of avis head over to the Geo Linden lawn ornament and guessed they were thanking it for the free house and asking him about the door opening trick.

Dear reader, I am happy to say I did manage to get into my house. I even dug out some dusty freebies from my inventory and deposited them in my new abode. However, I have one sad thing to report, my Geo Linden gnome is no longer on the lawn! I guess some drunken students stole it for a prank? Maybe my Linden gnome will return with a photo album one day?

To read more about Linden Homes take a look at the following Linden blog posts. You can peruse the (ever evolving) small print of Linden officialdom and then watch as it dissolves like a crumbled bouillon cube in the active comment columns:

Home is where you hang your avatar’s hat

Linden Home Beta is now Open

sluniverse.com’s discussion forum (Currently full of chatter about about the freebie homes.)

A few words on Linden Homes by Malaprop

When you are first preparing to enter any Web.Alive site (following the necessary download) it seems you are always greeted with a view of your avatar and welcome screen.

I wrote about my first visit to web.alive the other day and was delighted to receive some useful information in my comments section from Joe Rigby, author of MellaniuM – Virtual Quantum Entanglement. As comments can get a little buried out of sight; I have dug them up and transplanted them over to this post, now more folks can see them and be encouraged to go and dabble with web.Alive for themselves.

Steam engine in MellaniuM Dome

Joe’s first message:

Please try out the other MellaniuM web.alive environment at http://ec3v3.projectchainsaw.com or if you would like a balloon ride go the the Tipontia site (sponsored by Ronald Mcdonald House) at http://rmh.projectchainsaw.com

The images in this post are all from the Mellanium Dome, I have not tried out the balloon ride yet. The Dome was pretty amazing considering it all takes place in the browser. I did find myself wishing I could pan around with a camera as I do in Second Life. I also missed being able to fly. Still, it felt like a little adventure to wander around a new virtual world location, like many  virtual world travelers I have a thirst for new sights (and sites). The MilleniuM Dome had a distinctly British flavor to it as it showed off models of a steam engine, the Titanic and a spitfire. Each area of the exhibition space is divided into sections by decorative glass wall partitions.

The Titanic!

Another view of the Titanic model

And now for another word from Joe:

Sorry I should have mentioned that NORTEL’s WEB.ALIVE 3D virtual client offers the capability to have over 500 concurrent avatars not only interacting and chatting in an office complex environment but delivering presentations and filesharing among each other at http://apex.projectchainsaw.com

500 concurrent avatars? Gosh! That impressed me. I have seen two locations in Second Life that could hold 200 avatars. One is the conferencing arena run by IBM and the other location was managed by elves (but of course!) I also heard that there are ways to have even greater numbers of people meeting virtually using special Second Life areas running on a private grid of some sort?

Spitfire

More from my friend Joe:

I hope you had the anti-aliasing feature and full screen employed makes a HUGE difference to the experience and the quality of the screenshot. Cheers, Joe

I did have a go with this feature and I was really surprised when the screen image popped out full screen. It looked very good but my screen capture would not work with the full screen option which is a shame. Not sure if that was my computer having issues (it is 4 years old and getting a bit dodgy) or perhaps having selected the full screen option the browser extras were knocked out? A thought would be to make sure there are always easy camera recording options available in virtual worlds. Some of us like to take photos of the places that we visit and the avatars we see there. The pictures get themselves into blogs and before you know it – free advertising!

And a quick glimpse of my Web Alive avatar

Most of the time in web.alive you cannot see your avatar-self but you can catch a quick glimpse of your avi in location after you first login. The camera initially swings into the virtual scene by rotating around the avatar before giving you an avi-eye view of the area. Clearly the objective with web.alive is to streamline the technical requirements so that your experience is both stable and of good quality. By simplifying web.alive viewing options you can still have a surprisingly detailed virtual environment managed within the browser.

Second Life on the other hand provides a view with your avatar visible all the time (unless using mouselook). It gives a three quarter perspective (similar to the vantage point in a Hokusai painting) but one where you look at the world by peering over the your avatar’s head. web.alive’s view is more akin to mouselook without the usual sensation of mouselook-motion-sickness!

This absence of self is intriguing as it pinpoints another element of presence that helps us to achieve our total immersive experience. Social presence comprises several elements; one involves creating a  believable sense of others (vital for communication); the next is the ambient presence of a virtual environment and its ability to make us feel as though we are present in both the space and its projected mood; and the third element is our sense of self-presence. Much has been written about the phenomenon of identifying with our avatars when traveling in virtual worlds (not least the debate Augmentalists vs Immersionalists. Which are You?) web.alive gives a hint or two of our self-presence but it limits this particular aspect and I wonder how important this might be?

I love the Mellanium Dome's skies!

And the last word goes to Joe Rigby:

Blogged about the NORTEL web.alive/MellaniuM environments http://rezzable.com/blog/joe-rigby/mellanium-brings-unreal-engine-power-browser-nortels-webalive-virtual-world

Take a look at Joe’s article at rezzable.com. Also visit web.alive and download it for yourself  - see what you think!

My brother just reminded me about this great YouTube video…  I am sure most will have seen it but it’s surely worth seeing again?

Social Media Revolution: Is social media a fad?
Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

This video is produced by Erik Qualman the author of Socialnomics.

There are some more videos on Erik Qualman’s interesting blog: Socialnomics – Social Media Blog and after visiting the blog myself I have reason to believe Erik is a tall man with a great view.

∞

I saw a mention about web.alive a new online 3D webspace that runs inside your browser on the Second Life Educators listserv and decided to take a look. I went to http://apex.projectchainsaw.com/ and  bravely downloaded the exe file. (The download was fast with no signs of N1H1.)

Download security warning for web.alive. Note the publisher is Nortel Networks Ltd.

web.alive license agreement. (I am showing these basic download dialogs to assure you that 'projectchainsaw' is not a virus even if it sounds like one.)

First view of web.alive shows you your avatar staring back at you

I was then shown a very simple direction guide to help me get moving. The Help button provided me with additional easy to follow directions.

I began exploring the area and seemed to be gliding smoothly through the space. It looked like the kind of environment that you find around a large London railway station, an anonymous place designed for hordes of people to rush through. However, on the occasion of my visit there were no other avatars around making it feel more like an early Sunday morning. Everything around me was concrete and glass with small round pods situated here and there reminding me of those little shops that sell croissants and ties to commuters. Screens were set up in these pods and with a simple click these began showing Nortel movie advertisements. There was another screen in each pod that looked as though it could be enabled to show web browsers. (I wonder, does that mean that an avatar could be in a virtual world via a web browser accessing another virtual world via the in-world web browser? In other words we could access layers of virtual environments through web browsers?)

View of pod rooms. (Note the small area map in the bottom right corner of this picture.)

Conference room. The picture in this shot shows the rooftop space I was exploring.

I wandered away to send an email and stopped looking at web.alive in my browser and was surprised on my return to see that someone had been trying to talk to me. I saw an avatar walking away and gave chase. I was helped by a little map at the bottom of the screen that showed an orange dot (the other avatar) while I was indicated by a red kite shape. I finally caught up with the other avatar who told me, via voice, that  he could hear me typing and suggested I try speaking. I was very surprised to find that he could hear me straight away (especially as I normally spend a few minutes getting voice enabled in Second Life). I had done nothing to set up the voice connection, it just worked… good job I was not singing or swearing! I discovered I was chatting to a friendly fellow from Nortel in California who told me there were other environments available to explore (I plan to work out how to access those next.)

View with shallow canal (accompanied in web.alive with watery sound effects).

For now web.alive is in beta so anything I write that sounds judgmental is obviously a little unfair. Having said that I certainly feel that they could be braver with their sound effects and environment. Perhaps they will take these extra steps now that they have created such an amazingly smooth operating technology? Still, I really missed the lighting available in Second Life and this made me realize how important lighting is to conjuring up atmosphere.  This got me thinking that virtual environments have an  ‘Ambient Presence’  as opposed to Social Presence which describes the sense of the human being behind an avatar. ‘Ambient Presence’ describes the almost unconscious hooks which help immerse us in the sense of being within a physical space when in a virtual, computer generated environment. Ambient sounds and atmospheric lighting play important (almost subliminal) roles when it comes to absorbing us into an immersive experience.

View of city scape below (accompanied by traffic sounds that sounded very like a large drowsy fly).

My work involves communicating with over 100 sites all across America. I would love to find a cheap online vehicle that could really compress distance and make it possible for people to communicate easily when the whim takes them. That is, create a virtual space where I can talk to a colleague in another state as easily as I can walk across to someone else’s office in the physical world. Second Life has the ability to create beautiful spaces with ambient presence and avatars with Social Presence but the operating controls and intense hardware requirements keep ruling it out. web.alive has conjured up an excellent program that is astonishingly easy to use and can run in a browser. All it needs now is a little more imagination and it could become a major rival to Second Life for business and educational users. One more thing,  I keep forgetting web.alive’s name! I wonder if they plan to keep it?  I honestly prefer the name projectchainsaw! At least I can remember that!

Some shadows on the roof for some much needed atmosphere...

Note: For more information: A quick check through Google found additional mentions of web.alive. Take a look at Digital Media Consultant’s post titled ‘Checking out lenovo’s eLounge’. Also see the web.alive blog and http://www.projectchainsaw.com/

Updates November 19, 2009 :

• Just discovered that web.alive does not run on Macs
• ThinkBalm have created their own virtual office/meeting area on web.alive. Also see the post about ThinkBalm on Joe Rigby’s blog MellaniuM (Visit these two sites for direct links to ThinkBalm’s web.alive connection site.)

Sky and desert

AM Radio’s installation of satellite dishes has closed. Thanks to the NPIRL group notice from Bettina Tizzy I knew the exhibit was about to vanish away so I flew over to the location to grab a few final hour photos.

Satellite dishes and jeep by AM Radio

Dusk in the desert

Listening to the stars

More
Film of satellite dishes moving through listening cycles titled  ‘Waiting For You’ by AM Radio available on Flickr.

Check out the AM Radio Group pool on flickr as well.

I managed to get another trip into Burning Life before it fizzled into a sprig of charcoal. I spent my time riding the Carousel of Progress reproduced in Second life by Jandai Writer. The juxtaposition of entertainment mediums was thought provoking to say the least. There was my avatar within the virtual world of Second Life watching the Disney animatronic avatar discussing (in folksy Disney fashion) technological progress in the Twentieth Century. Jandai Writer provided two ways to experience the Carousel. You could perch your avatar upon her virtual carousel and watch sets depicting kitchens through the century pass you by. Alternatively, you could sit in a tent and watch the movie that shows the original carousel experience as seen by a theater audience. (How is that for layers of ‘mediums’ piled upon each other?)

Cyberloom rides the Carousel of Progress

Disney meets Second Life courtesy of Jandai Writer (First kitchen tableau)

'Modern kitchen' tableau 2

Watching the 'Carousel of Progress' in Jandai Writer's movie tent

As Burning Life ends today you will have to watch the ‘Carousel of Progress’ via YouTube instead (see below).

Visit Jandai Writer’s blog at Coffee Break

I have been traveling and found myself away from good Internet connections. I knew Burning Life was alight and could not visit! All that art and no access! Anyway… finally back to my familiar computer and stable cable connections. After wandering around for a while I found this very fine tower created by Francis Bagration location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Hardin/193/111/24/

Tower by Francis Bagration

Two beautiful spiral staircases begin at the base of the tower

Another view of the tower's base plus great balls of fire!

Cyberloom at top of tower checking out the floating mushroom...

Getting high - floating above Francis Bagration's Tower with mushroom assist

And finally, a visit to the peculiar outhouse with its homage to Elvis

Steam wyrmling and Bryn Oh's mayfly sculpture

Bryn Oh’s Robo Insects are on display in virtual Vienna’s Natural History Museum in Second Life. Cyberloom went to pay homage with avatar dressed as a steampunk dragon and soon began to feel ‘at one’ with the virtual sculptures. Then, after communing with the ‘Mayfly’ exhibit (above) started to think the Robo-Insects needed to be set free… liberated into the thin virtual air of Second Life. However, dear reader, reason prevailed and Cyberloom switched avatars to view the rest of the exhibition as a more ordinary avatar (wearing steampunk clothing) and somewhat less prone to the emotional over reactions of steam dragons and steampunk robots.

Close-up of rhinobot sculpture

Cyberloom inspects Bryn Oh's jellytronics

Closeup: Bryn Oh's steamclock

Inspecting the Retelevise

Beautiful steam wyrmling (or dragon) created by Daryth Kennedy and available from the Isle of Wyrms in Second Life.

Q:  Second Life – Why would you go there?

A: “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
- Kurt Vonnegut (Quote taken slightly out of context.)

Cyberloom is returning to Locus in this post, at least that is where I begin. The truth is DB Bailey showed me a glimpse of the underworld… There is a special place to stand high up in the mountain tops of Locus, and once you have located this perch you can use your camera to zoom down through the pixel thin rock crust to  see a great cavern reveal itself below. DB explained to me that this is a place that can be glimpsed but never visited. My first attempts to use the camera disoriented me and I fell off the cliff face into the cold sea far below. On my second attempt my avatar eyes were able to penetrate the rock wall.

The edge of Locus #1

The underworld looked a friendly enough place, there were swirling gas clouds and strange abstract shapes moving through the steam and/or smoke. DB said this location was his favorite place in Locus, he said he liked the  ‘painterly effects’ conjured by the gaseous haze. After DB left (to move furniture around the tepidarium and check the large naked giant was sleeping peacefully) I took the opportunity to pan my camera around the underworld of Locus. I discovered I was able to swing the camera around and peer out from the underworld into Locus.

The edge of Locus #2

You must go to Locus and seek out the underworld for yourself and I know that it will look quite different for you. I imagine that is part of the mystery that constitutes the underworld? That is, it is some form of mirage metamorphosing into different hallucinations for each of us? The most intriguing aspect of this strange journey is that DB Bailey invited me to examine the furthest extremes of his avatar-made island. He designed the space in 3 dimensions, it is a space we can venture into and explore yet it is all an illusion. The virtual world of Second Life invites us to indulge ourselves within the  illusory space, it coaxes us into its very center and we oblige by operating our avatars so that they accord with the illusion. Now, the intriguing invitation handed out by DB Bailey is for us to travel with our virtual cameras to the extreme edges, or limits, of the illusion to see what happens next. At the very least we see the illusion begin to fracture…

The edge of Locus #3

Speaking for myself, I keep returning to wander this illusionary world of Second Life because it shows me ideas in visual forms, and juxtaposes those images with their accompanying thoughts,  in random fashion. This process (a visual version of the die game in The Dice Man) reflects each individual player’s own mind and preoccupations. It can also generate new insight and understanding into ourselves and others in both our First and Second lives. In other words ‘playing’ Second Life can be a thought provoking process for some of us because we hover around its seams chasing some philosophical insight or other. Mind you, I end up with more questions than answers and feel very much an amateur trying to play the game of another book. I am referring to Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game “a game which is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics.” (Wikipedia)

The edge of Locus #4

On the other hand, perhaps a simpler way to say all this is to describe this shared virtual space as a consciously shared dream? But then, what is a dream? It could be described as the ‘join’ between our conscious and unconscious worlds. But the dream analogy feels too easy and dismissive because  the surreal vagueness of dreams can be like a drunk having a profound turn of thought. (Difficult to credit dreams and drunks with too much attention because they so easily slip away later with a ‘did not mean it’ or ‘forgotten it all’ message). I am joining DB Bailey now and encouraging you to intentionally stand at the very brink of the virtual world with (relatively speaking of course) a fully functioning conscious mind, and see how far you can go with your camera before the scene before you begins to disintegrate.

The edge of Locus #5

There is a group on flickr called ‘Bug Hunters of Second Life’ that helps people figure out what has gone wrong with their display when the Second Life illusion breaks unexpectedly. I once found another flickr group that invited people to submit their photos of random SL aberrations but I cannot find it now (there are 3,682 flickr groups with the Second Life tag after all!) This invitation from DB Bailey to balance on the edge of what is visually possible in the virtual world, then deliberately pan out of world with your camera is like being given the Subtle Knife. The subtle knife can cut portals through the boundary fabric of different worlds thus enabling the characters (of Philip Pullman’s ‘Dark Materials’ trilogy) to walk through to alternate realities.

There is something poetic about seeing my virtual camera as a subtle knife… I am off to cut another portal… see you later aligator…in another reality crocodile.