A note to Oz

I am on the second day of an Eve Online trial. While this is driving me a little crazy, it is also food for thought as it reminds me of my own Second Life (SL) newbie experience. As a SL user, or should I say ‘believer’, I find myself inevitably comparing Eve Online and Second Life. (By the way, I join the tribe of ‘SL Believers’ who all see what Second Life is in its current state whilst experiencing tantalizing glimpses of what it could be if it took a couple of shimmies to the left…)

Eve Tyrannis

Delving into Eve Online I find I must wade through quests that double up as tutorials to learn this complex game. Eve Online’s various controls and information features seem complicated to use and employ poor quality typography. The only way to begin to make sense of everything is via endless repetition. The same must be said of SL i.e. it also can only be understood by repetition but the various SL viewers try hard to reduce complexity.

Note I say Second Life viewers… there are so many that it is getting a little confusing. Which viewer shall I encourage new students to use? Which viewer do I know well enough to teach? The orientation stations I like to send students to have not updated themselves to explain Viewer 2. I am tempted to promote the Emerald viewer because that viewer is a logical evolution of the old SL viewer (which means many resident created orientation stations are still relevant). As I have a class coming up soon I decided to check out the official Viewer 2 tutorials and test the whole ‘newbie’ experience with Second Life for myself. My sign up for a new avi went very smoothly and I landed on Welcome Island where the Viewer 2 tutorials were excellent. However, I was stumped at the end of the tutorial when I found myself confronted by 4 destination choices: Shop, Explore, Socialize or Help. What to pick?

Welcome Island's four destinations

I opted for the first destination ‘Shop – Update your look’ and I was startled to discover that the ‘Go Shopping’ teleport placed me under the sea! I had to walk around a bit before locating a sad little dock area. This had about six items on display, all demo clothes for female avatars plus a 7-Seas fishing rod dispenser. I could purchase the clothes for L$25, very cheap (except when you are a newbie with no money). A miserable experience which made Dusan Writer’s recent post Show Up: Your Guide to Helping to Improve Second Life all the more relevant. Dusan quotes Oz Linden’s recent entreaty to SL residents to help Linden Labs by providing “productive useful input”. I hope it is productive  to suggest that the initial destination areas for newbies in Second Life are perhaps the most important locations in this entire online 3D world? A decent web site checks all its links are working and pointing the user to the right content. Linden Labs is responsible for Welcome Island, this is the first point of contact for new customers; you would think they might check those 4 initial destination teleport sites are worth the visit? Eve Online might not have a very accessible dashboard but it does provide magnificent visuals for newbies with views of majestic planets, and graceful space rockets gliding across starlit heavens. At least while you are floundering around figuring out the controls you are doing it against a fabulous backdrop. On the other hand newbies to SL might be stunned into a state of boredom and confusion never to return having drowned their avis on a failed shopping trip.

Welcome Island sends newbie to water logged shopping area

Note to Oz: it seems once a destination is selected on Welcome Island there is no turning back?

Perhaps Linden Labs could allow newbies to get back to Welcome Island?  At the moment you must pick one of those four destinations and good luck with that.

• A ‘back’ button would mean being able to get away from a bewildering location. (See update below).
• A ‘back’ button would make it possible for newbies to retake the Welcome Island tutorials.
• Consider creating high quality and engaging initial landing areas for newbies with helpers available to answer questions.
• Remember that newbies won’t be able to provide ‘productive useful input’ because they don’t know how to (or because they have left following their initial underwhelming experience and will never return).

I know it is unfair to compare a formula driven game like Eve Online with the free form world of Second Life but there are many common experiences relevant to both. After all, Second life was born out of the union between science fiction literature and the video gaming industry; and those not-in-the-know still think SL is a game. That debate aside, it is a simple fact that all online 3D worlds must manage this unavoidable ‘newbie’ introductory phase and create a positive experience for their customers. Newbies must:

• Learn the ‘logic’ of their new virtual environment.
• They must master their control panel or dashboard.
• They must absorb and understand unique vocabulary.
• They must master certain fundamental techniques so that they can travel around and communicate as soon as possible.

For an online 3D virtual environment to engage its customers successfully:

• It is essential that new users grasp these basics at a rewarding pace (not sure that the pace needs to be fast but it does need to be rewarding).
• The relationship between reward (the sense of ‘getting somewhere’ and of making purposeful progress) whilst learning the new application must counterbalance the inevitable frustrations of learning that same new application!
• If people enjoy the learning experience they will invest more time and money and willingly engage in the repetitious learning sequence until it eventually becomes second nature.

Now, I am off to fly my space ship over at Eve Online… just need to figure which is the front and which is the back end of my ship, that might help the steering thing? I will leave you with some happy snaps from Second Life’s Welcome Island.

Welcome Island and new look newbie avatar with big tissues in her pocket

Oh no... that parrot keeps repeating everything I say! Oh no... that parrot keeps repeating everything I say!

Oops I am sitting on the sign... (Welcome to Second Life and that uniquely embarrassing 'Sit here' experience.)

Hitching a ride on the white goose in the Welcome Island flight training area

Update to this post.

Thanks to Doreen who left a comment on this blog I discovered that there is a ‘back’ button in Viewer 2. (This is a big help though the button could be improved a little.) It is useful for folks traveling around SL as it allows you to return to a location you have visited at an earlier time. However, it will not let newbies return to Welcome Island and requests that they head over to Help Island Public instead. This is probably aimed at preventing ner-do-wells from harassing newbies on Welcome Island (they can harass newbies on Help Island Public instead).

To make use of the back button:

Locate ‘Places’ in the control panel on the left of your screen and then select the tab ‘Teleport History’ and you will see the locations you previously visited. Teleport History is a little simplistic in that it will not return you to the precise place you teleported from, it always takes you to the official starting point of a location.

Teleport-History in Viewer 2

Love the Ending: Part 2

Cetus is a visual feast and, as they say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’… so, no more words, just pictures (hope I don’t crash your graphics card). Don’t forget to double click the images for the full screen effect.

View of Cetus with Patch Thibaud's Anti-Gravity Pods in middle of the picture

Pagoda by Patch Thibaud with red sky and towers view in the background

Shards of Glyph Graves sculpture tumbling from the moon

Seraph by Pumpkin Tripsa

Avatar ponders Selavy Oh's secret code

More Cetus images can be seen on Cyberloom’s flickr account and in the D.B. Bailey flickr pool.

Love the Ending

Many recent tweets, blog posts and tech news sites have commented on the Linden Labs layoffs. Some commentators are filled with doom and gloom for the future of Second Life (SL). Others tend toward a more matter of fact approach, pointing out that even virtual worlds are touched by the moving shadow of economic recession. One writer, Alex Salkever at Daily Finance writes that social gaming on sites like Facebook’s popular Farmville is drawing people away from mega-social worlds like Second Life. I wonder, is Farmville remotely comparable to Second Life? (Not to mention the fact that most users don’t perceive SL as a game in the first place.) Is Farmville really the place where folks retiring from Second Life’s lag and bustle go to play? I know people who visit Second Life and also play Farmville with their Second Life friends; demonstrating that the general public mix and match their entertainments, and few have a totally singular focus anyway.

Church by Thatch Thibaud of the BOSL & Co Group. In the background you can see 'The Grand Odalisque' (in all her glory) sleeping in the nave.

I understand that Linden Labs is looking at implementing a mobile version of SL for the iPhone and the iPad. I am guessing such applications will be similar to Web.Alive? As there have been different SL viewers around for a while, a simplified, easy to use web application for mobile devices sounds like it could be fun and useful. The skill will lie in maintaining the different levels of interaction (i.e. perhaps permit a range of different viewers with varying levels of complexity that can co-exist alongside each other?) SL just needs to beware the dangers of turning itself and its ‘easy to use’ viewer into something it was never intended to be, a gaming app for distracted people. In the meantime, the wind of change is reaching far into the corners of our favorite virtual world. (For more thoughtful blog posts analyzing the implications of the recent layoffs in Second Life see: Gwyneth Llewelyn, Taturu Nino, Rob Knop, Grace McDunnough and TidalBlog.)

Change is inevitable of course and our response to inevitable change has an intriguing impact of its own… Will we let something like Farmville threaten how we use SL?  When we consider the extraordinary level of creativity that SL makes possible to those prepared to spend a couple of hours learning its tools, then Farmville is like a child’s wax crayon compared to a master oil painter’s palette with SL. Farmville has its place but it is stunningly limited whereas Second Life has unlimited potential.

The Grand Odalisque (created by an unknown artist) sleeping below heavenly wings and billowing clouds.

A beautiful illustration of the depth and power of Second Life and its potential for realizing creative collaboration can be seen in the work of D.B. Bailey (architect David Denton) and his friends at Cetus. In fact, D.B. Bailey’s Cetus is so extraordinary it has received the ultimate compliment and is due to be preserved for posterity by Stamford University Library and the Library of Congress. These two institutions have developed a program capable of archiving the entire glorious site. When the digital curtain closes on Cetus (and that will be soon so hurry over) a slew of creative works by SL artists and architects will be saved by these libraries. This may be an obvious point to make, but the reason these two institutions have invented the means to archive the work of virtual world artists is because it is worth preserving! SL art can be outstanding (and sometimes appalling.) However, some truly exciting work is made in SL and we have seen it vanish into the ether over and over again. Machinima and photography capture memories but opportunities to walk in each particular creative 3D space vanish away.

Arcade walkway with moving invisible walls of secret code by Selavy Oh

Finding the means to save the work of virtual world artists presents fascinating posssibilities. DB Bailey’s Cetus is the first to be preserved in this fashion by Stamford University Library and the Library of Congress, and it sounds as though other virtual creations will follow in time. Cetus will no longer be accessible to the public but it will be available for private viewing in the future. It has always been tantalizing to consider how the work of SL artists might be shown in the physical world, preserving Cetus may be the first step towards such an experience? There are other projects attempting to save the works of virtual 3D artists but it seems all such initiatives are in the early experimental stages. In many ways we all struggle to come to terms with the potential of virtual environments. Our brains have difficulty comprehending that which is extraordinary and different. Flying through Cetus in D.B. Bailey’s balloon is a glimpse into the future, at least I hope it is. Cetus is a metaphor for the future we cannot understand, it is full of awe and mystery and imagination. I cannot (or will not) say the same for Facebook’s Farmville. So visit Cetus while it is open to the public in Second Life. Please note that though the creation ‘Cetus’ is being archived away, the artists are not. In fact D.B. Bailey is now hard at work on Locus and you can visit that location and watch it evolving into a new future…

l

Balloon tour of Cetus with DB Bailey

This blog post is titled ‘Love the Ending’, this is not a reference to layoffs or Linden Labs’ refocus; it refers to a picture hanging on the ‘back wall’ of Cetus. If we think of building in SL as an activity that explores the creative use of 3D space, we can see it as an expressive medium like painting. In the physical world the finished painting would be taken and hung on a gallery wall but in the virtual world what usually happens when the work is finished? It must be broken down until it all vanishes away into the abstract folders of virtual inventories. Thanks to these two libraries, D.B. Baileys fabulous creation known as Cetus is being saved for a future where it can be seen again.

Love the Ending..

Double click on these images to see them super large.

Cyberloom’s following post will show more photos of Cetus.

Visit Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/dbbailey/pool/ To see D.B. Bailey’s Creations

NYC Subway gobbled up by Pacman

A video for all game addicts. Look out for Pacman gobbling up New York City Subway and sky scrapers shrinking under a Tetris style attack.

Second Life – Why Would You Go There? #9 – To walk into panoramas (and perhaps even take a ‘kinetic’ shopping trip?)

Q: Second Life – Why Would You Go There?

A: To walk into panoramas (and perhaps even take a ‘kinetic’ shopping trip?)

Interactive panoramic photography is well suited to the internet. Take a look at  360 Cities and ViewAt.org to see 360° views of different (and often spectacular) locations. The photographs are high-resolution images that fill your monitor while also allowing you pan right round the scene in a complete circle. Most images provide overhead views enabling you to study ornate ceilings, fluffy clouds, and even the odd base jumper. These pictures give a sense of space on a grand scale as in Rode to Elfrida.

San Francesco Assisi in Second Life

The only thing missing in the panoramic photo experience is the option to walk into the picture. While the photo resolution is nowhere near the superb levels achieved in the above-mentioned photographs you can walk into panoramas using virtual worlds.

San Francesco Assisi – Interior

Maybe the time is coming when stunning photography will be employed in 3D online environments? The Second Life location San Francesco Assisi shows scaled photographs ‘stitched’ together and placed within a careful 3D rendition of the basilica. While obviously it cannot be compared to the experience of really being there, it is fun to explore the location both inside and outside. You travel with your avatar through archways, up staircases, across plazas, into and out of grand halls and religious chambers.

San Francesco Assisi – Interior view 2

As companies explore virtual environments to sell products, we will see shops such as the one featured in Toledo, Mezquita de las Tornerias in 3D online spaces. Added features will allow us to virtually ‘walk’ in and wander around freely. We will determine where we want to look, and we will be able to ‘touch’ items. Objects in Second Life can be clicked upon to trigger scripts which in turn cause items to transform before our eyes. Rezzable’s King Tut exhibit in Second life allows us to interact with display items; we can opt to see their finer details enlarged for better viewing. We already visit online sites where we can change the color of clothes or zoom in upon pockets and buttons. Future interaction with salable items will be more fluid and kinetic and closer to real life shopping but without the aching feet.

San Francesco Assisi interior 4

San Francesco Assisi in Second Life created by the Project Assisi Group.

Panoramic Photo Reminder

Mikhail Blavatskiy: B.A.S.E. in Sankt-Petersburg

Toni Garbasso’s: Rode to Elfrida

Bernard Custard Gascó: Wandu Palace, Valencia, Spain

José María Moreno Santiago: Toledo, Mezquita de las Tornerías, tienda.

‘Melt’ and the sad blue eye

'Melt' - A Second Life Art Installation organized by Radio Signals

I found Melt under the Showcase tab located within Second Life’s Search feature… the listing said:

“This installation on thin ice” displays the work of 25 SL artists who were told to create art with only the following words in mind: drowning, melting, polar bears, arctic , culpability, corporate greed, inevitability and extinction…”

There is much to see at Melt but be warned the sky by Jojorunoo Runo is fabulous and you will find yourself mesmerized by it. The wintery light bouncing off the water and ice flows (created by Radio Signals and Stoic Ixchel) help to create a vivid, crisp, cool space. You can hear the sea surging around the ice flows and giant polar bears (created by Miel Nirvana) can be seen lounging around in the cold ocean. Jojorunoo Runo, creator of astonishing skies, also made ‘Artic Prototype’ a truly strange iceberg. I clicked on the iceberg to see if I could land my avatar in a sitting position but instead found my avi lying partially immersed in the freezing sea. (A little inadvisable.) I watched as waves splashed and sprayed over the ice and my avatar, then I panned out with my camera to discover the beautiful blue eye! My avatar was lying on a large animal of some sort. I moved my camera back and forth, and peered beneath the ‘Artic Prototype’ but I could not make out what the weird creature was. I just know it had a sad blue eye that looked back at me without blinking while its eyelashes waved like reeds in the arctic wind.

'Melt' Installation in Second Life. Cyberloom explores Radio Signal's ice patch

Napping on 'Arctic Prototype' (Created by Jojorunoo Runo)

The sad blue eye. (Part of 'Arctic Prototype' by Jojorunoo)

Cyberloom’s wardrobe:

Illuminating Top Hat Mk II by Dredpiratebob
Steampunk Engineer’s Backpack by Fenrir Reitveld
Dragon by  Vilem Beaumont
Trilogy Coat by Disembodied Hand

Art installation ‘Melt’ organized by Radio Signals.
Location of ‘Melt”  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mirror/126/134/21/

Second Life – Why Would You Go There? #8 – To be a dancing banana

Dancing banana avatars (wearing Rubik Cube skirts) enjoying a bop at Muddy’s Music Cafe

Q: Second Life – Why Would You Go There?

A: To be a dancing banana…wearing a Rubik cube skirt (of course).

These Dancing Banana avatar outfits were given to Friday night guests at Muddy’s Music Cafe. Music provided by DJ RayJay Baxton & Hostess Jaide Xue who was on hand with banana wearing wardrobe tips.

Now, what is so special about dancing banana avatars you may ask yourself? Well, I will give you a theory to ponder…I arrived at this theory following three days of attending the SharpBrains Virtual Summit titled ‘Technology for Cognitive Health and Performance’ held back in January (you can see the agenda and list of speakers over on the SharpBrains Summit site). One message we heard repeated at this conference was just how important it is for our brain health to experience both novelty and challenge as we age.  In recent years there has been considerable publicity for various brain games and a few fortunes have been made from the electronic versions of such games. The publicity has hinted that these games may prevent mental decline and keep our brains young etc. However, research does not prove that playing these games is quite the easy solution we would like to believe for avoiding diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. The SharpBrains Summit suggested that we need to adopt a similar approach to brain fitness as we have towards cardiac fitness (both are related to each other). Brain fitness tends to reflect our lifestyles i.e. exercise, eating right, social relationships, getting enough sleep plus finding challenging and novel ways of stimulating our aging brains with new learning. I would like to add to this recipe the importance of a sense humor and playful imagination. Now (with a fanfare of virtual trumpets) this is where the banana avatars enter onto the cognitive stage.

Banana avatar with Rubik Cube skirt (the skirt rotates through a range of color combinations).

As I have mentioned before, I teach Second Life to seniors with the average age of  72 though I often have older students including a sprightly 90 year old. (The 90 yr old told me that she loved to travel and Second Life gave her the opportunity ‘to go traveling’.) I believe Second Life has the capacity to provide layers of  ‘brain fitness’ experience. For a start, there is no doubt that it takes time to master the Second Life interface. I heard that IBM considers it takes 90 minutes of training to get its staff up to speed to enter the virtual world for a meeting. I am quite certain that it takes those same IBM staff days before they feel comfortable and confident enough to go gadding round Second Life without assistance. Linden Labs are endeavoring to make the whole user experience easier especially for newcomers. However, the fact that it is tricky to master presents a stimulating mental challenge, and it is the type of challenge that helps with brain fitness. Second Life (inadvertently) provides layers of ‘brain-gaming’ experience because once someone has mastered the basics they can then begin to explore the platform where they will inevitably encounter many puzzling challenges. These challenges are tied to running the technology (their own computers plus the platform) necessary to witness and participate in the vast array of visual sights. Students also find themselves laughing at both themselves and each other as they struggle their way through the surreal landscapes on their computer screens. After all, once a person has mastered how to wear a banana avatar, it is difficult to remain serious as you play this immersive 3D brain game. By the way, if you are reading this post and are unfamiliar with Second Life please be assured that you do not have to turn your avatar into fruits and vegetables to play! The banana avatar epitomizes the brain game perfectly as it provides both novelty and challenge.

Exploring Sweetlemon Jewell’s Omega Point in Second Life

Second Life is largely created by its users, and many of  these users are remarkably creative individuals who have collectively turned much of the platform into a vivid and highly imaginative space. However, if truth be told, many of these Second Life locations require us to use our problem-solving skills to witness the scenes in their full glory. For instance, when we visit a location such as the wonderful Macbeth Island we must solve various incidental puzzles to follow the play as it unfolds across the island’s moody landscape. Layers of thought are piled into the installation turning it into a cerebral Photoshop of Shakespearean ideas. Hidden triggers are embedded in objects to activate your entrances and exits from the various scenes, books loaded with notecards triggered by virtual touch lie scattered about, each scene draws us further and further into the depths of Macbeth’s disintegrating mind. (See ‘Second Life -Why would you go there?’#4 Foul Whisperings for more information about Macbeth Island. )

Virtual Macbeth – The Path of Temptation on Macbeth Island

As users of Second Life, we become fluent with its interactive pie charts, scripts, and animations, and we are not concerned by the fact that we must often experiment before we can interact with different objects within its 3D spaces. Perhaps there is even a little embarrassment that the world is so complicated to use? Blog post after Second Life blog post speculates upon the potential of the application (for education, training, meetings and socializing, etc.) while also mulling over its complex interface. Well, maybe we are looking at this from the wrong angle? Perhaps figuring out how to move about and participate in this virtual environment is an essential part of the whole experience? Sometimes when I am teaching my classes, I think if I could take an MRI of the room by scanning down from the ceiling, the MRI screen would show our brains lit up like a smoldering forest of little wildfires!

Steam and Spitfire in the MellaniuM Dome

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!

Socialnomics by a tall man with a great view.

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.

∞

web.alive from a Second Lifer’s vantage point

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.)