Aimee Weber
- http://www.aimeeweber.com
Aimee Weber loves the feeling in her stomach when she is almost, but not quite about to fall backwards in her chair.
Hello???
Hello? Akela? Moo?! Where did everybody go?!
*tries door*
Is anybody in there? HELLLOOOOO?? Come on guys, this isn't funny anymore! I'm cold and there are wolves after me!
This is like that episode of Star Trek where everybody kept disappearing and only Picard noticed it was happening because everybody else thought the missing people had never even existed in the first place. And that kept happening until Picard was the only one left and it turned out he was just trapped in some shrinking universe-type thing and when he himself disappeared he was back with his crew. That was massively cool.
*whistles to self*
Well. I don't think they're coming back. I guess I may as well go too.
Bye.
Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Comes to Second Life
Now you can add (virtual) injury to insult for Scott Adams at his Stick to Drawing Comics Monkey Brain! virtual book signing.
When a "big publisher" finally agreed with the frequent posts on The Dilbert Blog suggesting that Scott Adams turn his funnier posts into a book, the creator of Dilbert and Dogbert came up with Stick to Drawing Comics Monkey Brain! Needless to say, not everyone is a Scott Adams fan. When creating his agenda, he agreed to only 2 book signings. And guess what? One of them is in Second Life. So on the off chance that you can't make it to the California restaurant, Stacey's at Waterford, come on down to the Kula sims on October 30th at 6 pm SLT. Plus he'll be giving away free virtual Dilbert and Dogbert posters, and one lucky fan will win a copy of Scott's new non Dilbert humor book Stick to Drawing Comics Monkey Brain!
Once you're there you can let him know how you feel about him NOT coming to your town! Ask him questions, kick him in the family jewels (yes, I really did say that,) rock em and sock em. Scott's there to take your abuse and answer your questions. This is the first time that Scott's opened himself up to abuse in virtual worlds... Here's hoping it goes as well as the blog abuse.
Second Life Avatars Controlled by the Human Brain
The Biomedical Engineering Laboratory at Keio University has been up to some cool stuff. They recently announced that they were able to control a Second Life avatar using an electrode-filled headset that monitors the motor cortex and translates the data into control inputs for a Second Life avatar. You can see this technology in action in this video.
So how would this all work and what would it mean for Second Life? I'm going to take a stab at it and say ... this is huge.
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) isn't a new technology as scientists have been researching BCI to help the physically paralyzed for years. But most BCI experiments have come from invasive implants that target specific areas of the brain with better signal resolution. Not surprisingly, asking the user base of a virtual world to accept a brain implant poses some difficult marketing challenges. Fortunately, using the electroencephalogram (commonly known as the EEG) as a non-invasive method of getting brain inputs may eventually create a marketable input device for the masses, albeit with some challenges, for example the BCI using an EEG requires training.
Continue reading Second Life Avatars Controlled by the Human Brain
NBC's The Office to feature Second Life
NBC's hit faux reality show The Office is coming to Second Life. Well ... at least Dwight is coming. Photos and info can be found on Just Jared including images of Dwight playing his identically dressed avatar. In fact, you can find the Dwight Shelford's avatar in search featuring a profile that proclaims his love of a variety of NBC Universal movies and shows, and his desire to "calculate the exchange rate between Schrute bucks and linden dollars."
I suspect this all ties in with the show's recent theme where the intern-turned-district manager attempts to drag the Scranton office (kicking and screaming) into the computer age.
Now, I'm a diehard fan of The Office, but as one who lives and breathes Second Life, I sincerely hope they don't paint the virtual world as yet another haven for slightly-twisted, socially inept, loser oddballs. We have our share of Dwights in Second Life, but we have our Jim and Pams too!
(Via anais on Second Life Universe. Thanks!)
What to do with Megaprims
If I had to decide which Second Life feature was the most profoundly useful to me, it wouldn't be the group tools, or streaming movies on a prim. Sculpted prims would certainly be in the running, but the "lumpy" nature of sculpties makes them less revolutionary than I had hoped (they aren't very good for, say, a car fender.) I would have to say, the coolest, most useful, "thank god I have them" feature, summed up in one word is:
Megaprims.
But I'm a little worried right now. Linden Lab appears to be fishing around for what the reaction would be to the removal of megaprims in a recent blog post by Michael Linden. Some cynics may say this is nothing more than an obligatory symbolic gesture before they go ahead and remove megaprims anyways. But I'm not cynical! I'm all sunshine, baby! So go ahead and read what Michael's has to say over at the Official Linden Lab blog. I'll take a shot at addressing his concerns here.
Linden Lab and IBM Collaboration on Virtual Standards
With virtual worlds now firmly embedded in popular culture, the virtual landscape may seem like an archipelago with Second Life, There, Active Worlds, Doppelganger, Multiverse, Kaneva, and many more. Sailing between these isolated little islands is possible, but the voyage is daunting.
One of the earliest sailors willing to make the journey was Wells Fargo who, after creating their virtual presence in Second Life, decided to pack up and move to Active Worlds. While I'm not privy to the details of their migration, I can surmise that the textures were transported to Active Worlds by hand while the geometry data was either exported via scripts so that it could be generated from within Active Worlds, or simply re-built from scratch. Long story short, it wasn't an effortless transition.
Well all that may be changing with a recent announcement that Linden Lab and IBM will be working together on standards to bridge the gaps between virtual worlds. The announcement included several areas of focus with the overarching theme that users will one day be able to move freely between virtual worlds including "Universal" Avatars, Security-Rich Transactions, Platform Stability, Integration with existing Web and business processes, and Open standards for interoperability with the current web.
Continue reading Linden Lab and IBM Collaboration on Virtual Standards
What Would You do With a Hundred Thousand Lindens?
A funny thing happened to Gordon Wendt on his way through Midnight City. He won $L100,000. To help promote the soft release of their interactive in-world news kiosks, PR Newswire (full disclosure, they are a client of Aimee Weber Studio) is giving away four prizes of $L100,000 each (one of which was claimed by Gordon yesterday). For the next few weeks, a codeword will be embedded in some random press release at some random day or time.
Continue reading What Would You do With a Hundred Thousand Lindens?
Second Life in Doonesbury
Second Life just got a mention in G.B Trudeau's Doonesbury ... and it wasn't bad! The positive coverage from the otherwise notoriously snarky political comic comes as a welcome relief after a prolonged spell of ugly press. If parody is the sincerest form of flattery, then we should all be turning beet red right about now. (Thanks to Neptune Rebel for the heads up!)
The Sound of Sleep
The arrival of streaming voice services in Second Life brings a whole new horizon in wonderful opportunities ... and some unexpected pitfalls. Some residents fear that voice demolishes yet another wall that enables our comfortable suspension of disbelief separating fantasy from reality. Others fear that voice will expose SL gender benders, while still others fear that the refusal to use voice will leave them ostracized from the groups who stand motionless as the social action takes place on a hidden stream.
But some people are more relaxed about it all. Very relax. No really, I mean seriously relaxed. In fact, they are fast asleep. And snoring. For about an hour.
Credit Where Credit is Due
There's an interesting post by Forseti Svarog over at SLOG regarding Linden Lab's habit of using resident IP for promotional purposes without attribution. Long story short, Linden Lab used Forseti's iVillage fashion show video, but not only did they fail to credit him, they literally edited the video to remove the existing credits!!
I actually had a conference call with Catherine Smith and former LL Marketing director David Fleck about this very issue about a year ago. At the time the problem was a series of Linden Lab press releases that not only failed to credit the residents responsible for the projects, but were easily misinterpreted as crediting Linden Lab for these projects!
Plastic Duck ... Our Hero? A Case for Megaprims
While perusing the Modeling Certification wiki page I noticed an interesting requirement being proposed ... "over-sized prims," specifically, megaprims. The fact that these essential building tools would be mentioned as a must-know for all professional content creators comes as no surprise to me. I use them constantly as do most of my peers. But would Linden Lab actually make them a requirement for certification? That would really surprise me because of the somewhat uncomfortable history the lab has with megaprims.
Folks have requested larger sized prims for as long as I can remember. I personally made a request almost two years ago on the official Second Life forum, but to no avail. Then along came a guy named Plastic Duck.
Continue reading Plastic Duck ... Our Hero? A Case for Megaprims
A Second Life Summer Epiphany
I guess after a well deserved vacation in Maine, it's time to drag my sand-covered ass back to the Insider and resume my relentless, steadfast, unwavering pursuit of ... oh god I wish I was still on vacation! I can still smell the surf on my unwashed bikini (available soon on eBay.)
Speaking of vacation, some loyal Second Life Insider readers may recall that earlier this December I wrote about our beach houses, the very ones where I spent a sizable chunk of every summer since I was a little girl. It was by modeling the location that my family holds near and dear that I was able to make my Grandmother understand what I do for a living.
Well, I have an interesting twist.
Here be Anthropomorphic Dragons
The latest gem from Randall Munroe's cryptically named Web comic, xkcd features an ingenious map of the online community world ... and Second Life is featured! The Second Life Island can be found just off the shore of Lineage and Words of Warcraft, sandwiched between the Noob Sea and the Sea of Culture.
Belgian police patrols Second Life to prevent rape
A little while back I wrote an article entitled Just Killin': Avatar Murder, which was about the possible escalation of treating virtual crimes as though they were real crimes. The gist was, if we start treating the simulated acts of pedophilia as a crime despite the fact that no real life pedophilia had occurred, then we will have lost any justification that protects other simulated crimes from regulation or scrutiny. The most obvious virtual pastime at risk is killing including war games, action adventure games, etc. But the next crime I predicted that would follow was simulated rape.
Well here we go: Belgian police patrols Second Life to prevent rape.
Continue reading Belgian police patrols Second Life to prevent rape
Second Life Loses Feliciaa Feaver to Cancer
Today beloved Second Life resident and Relay For Life supporter, Feliciaa Feaver passed away after a long struggle with cancer. The grief we feel from her loss is the price we pay for the love and friendship she so freely gave. Painful as it is, it was worth it. Discussion at Second Citizen
When you loose a volunteer - Feliciaa Feaver
When Reality Is Too Real: For Feliciaa Feaver
RIP Feliciaa Feaver
