tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-143632412009-11-24T00:26:19.759-05:00Let's discuss the emerging media, the Metaverse, Web 3.0, and all that other fun buzz-wordy stuff.Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-74534498259941714462009-11-20T12:20:00.006-05:002009-11-20T14:07:05.779-05:00

I love the idea of natural controllers and using 3-D cameras to better interact with games and virtual worlds.Working Demo, or Just a Tech Demo?Early this year Microsoft "demoed" Project Natal at E3. I put quotes around it, because a source told me that it was indeed a mock-up. That, and it was abundantly obvious to me watching the video that if they had a working project, they would have had let

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-59123591810722972412009-11-17T16:37:00.003-05:002009-11-17T18:07:23.783-05:00

Tonight I'm going to be a guest on the game show "The First Question", hosted in Second Life and streamed to the web. I caught the show for the first time last week, after a large number of friends had recommended it to me. I am very pleased to be on The First Question. Come learn what periodic element I most identify with! See if I can stump Hydra with a random factoid of knowledge! Come root

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-76197587369933795402009-10-27T13:54:00.003-04:002009-10-27T14:31:31.454-04:00

I saw this at New World Notes:It's the final slide from a presentation Linden Lab Chief Product Officer Tom Hale gave at the Web 2.0 summit. Now, Tom's demonstrated his tech and marketing savvy during his presentations at the Second Life Community Convention this year, talking about the various ways Second Life will evolve. I won't get into it here, but just want to establish that when I disagree

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-75013458493698428732009-09-25T15:14:00.018-04:002009-09-25T19:37:11.302-04:00

Transhumanism: "Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities."It is not a philosophy, as it may sound like some reaction to Humanism. Its beliefs range from using advanced medicine to cure diseases to the extreme of uploading human consciousness into computers

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-73692229375944984212009-09-23T15:36:00.011-04:002009-09-23T16:00:59.873-04:00

Things seem more authoritative when written down. Why are people drawn to biographical stories, even in common TV and movies and other media? Personal blogs? Etc? The written word has a magical property.I am in the middle of a long blog post that I've been working on about 9/11, technology, god, philosophy, and transhumanism. (It will probably become a series of blog posts; it's already really

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-63470957277433347172009-09-10T12:15:00.010-04:002009-09-10T15:31:48.871-04:00

So, last month I went to Second Life Community Convention 5, held this year in San Francisco. There were about 350ish attendees, a mix of professionals developers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and various other Second Life users. Along with the superbly talented and friendly Hydra Shaftoe, I co-ran the Business Track; I was very pleased with the fact that the Business Track rooms was almost always

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-55537170282227511992009-08-20T13:57:00.004-04:002009-08-20T14:01:45.162-04:00

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/check out the hotness!So, from what I gather from the trailer:1. Humans have spaceflight, travel to habitable world (with different atmosphere that can't be breathed by humans.)2. Humans have download-your-brain technology.3. Humans discover alien race, either capture / find dead one and plug human soldier's (protagonist) brain into one of them. (hence,

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-5103719850636215022009-07-03T12:20:00.000-04:002009-07-03T12:33:46.049-04:00

This blew my mind the other day.CNN reports that China has made a decision that all virtual currencies can not be used for any purpose outside of purchasing virtual goods.An Information Week article came out two days prior, but was more ambiguous whether sale of virtual money for real money was explicitly banned.What blows my mind on a smaller scale is that I waited two days before continuing to

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-60127952423586359272009-06-16T12:24:00.003-04:002009-06-16T12:28:25.823-04:00

... and I can't talk about them yet. Solution Provider Conference attendees are under NDA. Inevitably, it will be leaked, and I'll talk about them once they're out there, but suffice it to say -A LOT of long-asked simple features are being implemented in new versions of the Second Life browser and into next year. There's also really smart changes to the Second Life website coming.One thing that

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-33527457952717493552009-06-12T10:45:00.006-04:002009-06-12T11:22:17.001-04:00

Let's cut to the chase. This is what nVidia's working on for graphics-enabled phones (iPhone, Blackberry, etc):Cool, eh?What's cooler is the Postal Service has a released augmented reality app for you to estimate box sizes for your shipping needs, by projecting semi-transparent boxes on top of images of your real items.Augmented Reality is, naturally, perfect for virtual worlds. Here's a

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-29424173011361825142009-06-08T11:31:00.004-04:002009-06-08T12:22:45.143-04:00

Before you call me a hypocrite, understand that I still think handshakes are important. But facial expressions are an order of magnitude more important.Recently, a good discussion has come up in the SLDeveloper mailing list about facial expressions from video. This is, of course, a topic I trumpet every few months here. The discussion on the mailing list soon went back to another old

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-16616243270446745582009-05-11T22:12:00.008-04:002009-05-12T13:16:11.213-04:00

Religious ConvictionsI believe people can believe whatever that they want as long as it doesn't hurt others. In my personal life, I've spoken out against a variety of religious groups that claim to be part of many religions, including my own. I speak out when they do things like promote Proposition 8 in California. When they teach people that the only way to heaven is through suicide. When they

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-9014853480679364322009-05-11T12:21:00.001-04:002009-05-11T12:23:18.621-04:00

As much as I love the beautiful design of the aesthetics of my blog, it's time for a change. It's been a few years, and so a new look is warranted on that note alone. In addition, there are Blogger features that I'd like to use that I can't with my current format, so upgrading will allow me to do new neat embedded stuff.Anyway, apologies are in order while I poke around with a new template for

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-54475799403203038782009-05-01T15:40:00.003-04:002009-05-01T15:53:07.758-04:00

I've talked about the Uncanny Valley before when it comes to avatars in a virtual world, and how close Second Life is to getting avatars to a convincing level and not be "freaky-looking".The topic has come up again in the SL Developers mailing list in regards to a discussion on whether or not to make lip-sync a default setting in a newer version of the Second Life client. For those unaware, you

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-86635170724168508412009-04-12T09:26:00.003-04:002009-04-12T09:54:39.676-04:00

If you're familiar with Second Life, it's a pun you've heard before. Heck, you've probably even told it yourself. It's a typical straight-faced setup by someone talking about Second Life followed by the obvious punchline. It goes something like this:Person enthusiastic about Second Life: "Something something something Second Life something something avatars in a virtual world something something

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-7831988593906702292009-04-07T11:04:00.002-04:002009-04-07T11:30:15.806-04:00

I have the honor of speaking at two different engagements today, that you can attend virtually in Second Life.First, at 3pm EST / 12Noon PST, I will be speaking at Nokia Connected Worlds - April Edition"Nokia Corporation is proud to announce its April edition of Nokia Connected Worlds. This will be a panel-style moderated discussion about perceptions of non-human avatars in virtual world business

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-87024227401675541142009-04-03T14:31:00.016-04:002009-04-03T20:28:48.803-04:00

Credit where credit due: Charles Stross and his book Accelerando provided the tangible idea of the Reputation Market to me.What is a Reputation Market? Rank EVERYTHING!We as humans been comparing and rating things since ... well, forever. We rank everything:- New York Times Bestseller list- IMDB's popularity ratings of all movies and movie-making professionals- Social cliques we form in school (

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-36705793944241915402009-03-31T10:30:00.003-04:002009-03-31T11:10:41.380-04:00

double-click ground to walkThis is a case of using an already-existing paradigm of navigation. People know what a double-click is from operating system navigation. Other virtual worlds and games use the double-click on the ground as a standard. So, you know the "Go here" function on the right-click pie menu? Why can't that same function be the default double-click action on the land?Look AtHere's

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-74652523073711123832009-03-13T11:15:00.017-04:002009-03-13T17:06:05.650-04:00

So I was pleased to read to read that Linden Lab was re-evaluating their adult content policies in their blog. The blog post also contains links to five discussions on the Linden Lab forums to discuss various aspects. As a business professional, too often I encounter the perception of Second Life (and other virtual worlds) as being inherently attached to adult content. The natural

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-12297104508352808422009-02-12T01:19:00.004-05:002009-02-12T01:49:42.279-05:00

The ultimate question for this century, I believe, is: "Will we control technology or will technology control us?" It's the theme of many modern philosophers and a great deal of novelists and filmmakers, especially in the science fiction genre.Ultimately, technology does neither, at least, until it becomes sentient. Technology is just a proxy for our control over one another. My laptop allows me

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-83065598242838317802009-02-10T11:37:00.003-05:002009-02-10T12:12:35.092-05:00

So, a couple days ago I installed SLim. It lets me do text and voice chat with anyone on my avatar's buddy list, without having to be logged into Second Life's browser. This is nice, especially since on my computer with a good video card and dual-processor and 2gb of RAM, I'm using up over half a gig of RAM, 1 meg of bandwidth, and the entirety of one of my CPUs when I run Second Life.The client

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-11760183495911459072009-01-27T11:38:00.011-05:002009-01-27T14:26:38.739-05:00

DefinitionsMetaverse: An interconnected set of virtual worlds and media where data and identity can move from one place seamlessly into another. This includes 3-D, 2-D, social networks, text and instant messaging, and game-worlds.Virtual World: A world that exists on computers and accessed by multiple users simultaneously.Virtual World Platform: A software platform where the primary or third

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-66677209509477401982009-01-21T12:11:00.006-05:002009-01-21T12:49:21.227-05:00

(disclaimer at bottom)I just received notice today that Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, have acquired two competing third-party virtual goods sales websites. The sites, X-Street (formerly SLExchange until Linden Lab changed their trademark policy) and OnRez (formerly SLBoutique until Electric Sheep Company purchased it and rebranded it.)Here's the link to the press release.So what does this

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-25424529212545327662009-01-20T14:26:00.004-05:002009-01-20T14:30:47.156-05:00

No offense, Chris Sherman, but Sony PlayStation Home Director Jack Buser? As your keynote? The only rationale I can see in that choice is "ZOMG SONY IS A BIG NAME COMPANY!"Otherwise, every other colleague and blogger I've read and/or talked to has agreed:Sony Home sucks. It's an utter waste of time and, according to multiple reports, it's an unsafe place for females to be.Oh, and "Engage" as a

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14363241.post-13321530724705139812008-12-29T23:17:00.010-05:002009-01-23T12:44:58.942-05:00

I just read this - it's a couple weeks stale.So, the US Patent office allows *another* stinker: Worlds.com apparently now has the patent for "a highly scalable architecture for a three-dimensional graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system." - as well as other patents. Basically, they appear to be laying claim on all virtual worlds. Kind of the same way Blackboard was awarded the

Hiro Pendragonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07160049835937278838noreply@blogger.com0