Brian's World

Hi Res version can be downloaded here.

Yay to Grace Buford (Cylindrian Rutabaga inSL) for getting featured on CNN…. and Yay to me for having CNN use a bunch of my in-world video clips from Second Life in the segment!

Corey and I created a Christmas Display in the virtual world of Second Life. Video is below:

Hi Res version can be downloaded here.

Check out Rez in the virtual world of Second Life. Very nicely done environmental landscape project!

Hi Res version can be downloaded here.

On April 17, 2008 some residents of the virtual world of Second Life™ (SL) put together a Day of Remembrance to celebrate the lives of their friends in the virtual world who had died in real life.  The event was very well organized and seemed to be well attended by a few thousand people that passed in and out of the regions throughout the day.  There were a number of live performers and DJs that utilized the ability to stream audio into the virutal world to entertain the crowds that gathered. In the early morning I had the pleasure of dropping in on a group of live musicians located somewhere in Asia. Various DJs played music throughout the day and several other live musicians and performers shared their amazing talents with the many folks around the real world who chose to come together in a virtual world to enjoy these events.

I know that some people see virtual worlds as “just a game” or view them as “not real” but to many they are a place where they can interact with other real people and build real friendships, business collaborations and all kinds of relationships.  Do we view sites like Amazon.com as stores that are “not real” just because they’re made of bits instead of bricks and mortar?  It is unfortunate that much of the mainstream press often prefers to focus on the seedier parts of SL, including sex and “marginal activity” when in fact I rarely see this kind of thing going on out in the open in my virtual travels.   Thats not to say these things don’t happen in SL – it happens there just like the real world but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the predominant thing that the mainstream press makes it out to be. I think the Remembrance Day event showed the humanity and the real power of the technology to bring people together.

In any event, Corey and I decided to create a small video to document the Remembrance Day event.  There are both a low-res/quality Youtube version and a higher quality quicktime version below. Hope you enjoy it!

Remembrance Day Video Hires (Quicktime hi-res)

OK – so Leopard was not really so mesmerizing that I have disappeared for 6+ months.  The fact is I have been insanely busy working on some projects and such that winded down in March/April.  I promise some updates here, including:

• Areview of my Amazon Kindle
• A review of my Lenovo X300 Subnotebook with Solid State Drive
• Updates on my use of the virtual world of Second Life(TM)

While cleaning out the closet in my office this week I came across an old friend in a box at the bottom. It is kind of ironic that I found this right after getting the new iPhone from Apple. Times have certainly changed in the last 14 years! (Click here for historical info).

I have created my first Web 2.0 designed for the iPhone™.  It takes the statistics feed from Linden Labs for Second Life™ and formats it for the iPhone display. The implementation is AJAX  using the Spry framework from Adobe and updates the data every 60 seconds. If you want to check it out visit:

Second Life Statistics

Many of you know that I am an avid user of the 3D virtual world called Second Life^TM (SL) by Linden Labs.  I first heard about SL from the This Week in Tech podcast in the spring of 2006 though I have been most active with the system in the past 6 months or so.  I realize many people think of it as a game and put it in the same category as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) but I think it is something different – a platform for building interactive 3D virtual technologies.

 What is Second Life?

SL is basically a virtual 3D interactive world rendered in a computer application (called the Viewer - now fully open source which I find encouraging) that runs on personal computers running Windows, OS X and Linux.  The virtual world is simulated on a grid of thousands of servers (each called a “sim” – short for simulator) that together along with a number of other servers (which manage the inventory of virtual objects, virtual money, etc.) provide a fairly immersive simulation of a virtual world.  The Second Life system means different things to different people – some use it as a role playing game for fun, others use it explore facets of their own lives that they are unable to experience in real life because of social stigmas or laws in their country.  Others, like me see Second Life as a very neat platform for building and developing virtual technology.

There has been much hype in the press over the past year about SL.  Some of it positive such as real life bands like Duran Duran coming into Second Life, IBM’s presence in the virtual world, or Sun Microsystem’s holding a press conference.  Some of the press has also been negative – focusing on the “adult” imagery and activity in SL (yes – like many emerging technologies – some of the first adopters of it are from the pornography industry) or the fact that there are a disproportionate number of virtual shopping malls within the SL world.  The reality is somewhwere in the middle.  Reuters has established a virtual bureau within SL and provides news from within the virtual world.

Second Life is a 3D virtual world that has:

• Facilities for real people represented as “avatars” to interact with a simulated environment and with other avatars.  Avatars can communicate by typing to each other (voice chat is in beta testing) or by activating gestures that cause the avatar to animate and make audible noises (my second life avatar can dance significantly better than my real life body!).  Avatars can explore the virtual world by walking around, flying (yes you can do this), or riding in virtual vehicles.
• Virtual land consisting of virtual parcels of real estate that are simulated and rendered by servers. These land parcels can be bought and sold.  Each land parcel represents a slice of land within the virtual world and controls how many objects you can have on the land (the larger the land, the more objects you can place on it) to control the load on the servers.
• A platform for creating virtual content using building tools to create objects.  Objects are made out of geometric primitives (called “prims”) and can have textures (JPEG images) applied to them.  These objects have digital rights to control copying, distribution, etc.   These objects interact with each other and avatars through a physics engine that is part of the simulation.
• A scripting language called LSL (Linden Scripting Language) that is very PHP/C like and provides a means for giving interactivity and “intelligence” to virtual objects.  The language has a extensive library of functions for interacting with the virtual world, other objects, avatars, etc.
• A virtual economy with a currency called Linden Dollars. This economy facilitates in-world businesses that can sell virtual objects they create and provide services to other avatars and businesses. Linden dollars can be purchased for real currency or can be “converted” back to real currency. It is possible to make real money in Second Life this way.

What do I do in Second Life?

Well Corey and I have a private island which is basically 65,536sm of land (and allows us to have 15,000 object primitives) simulated on a dedicated CPU core in the SL grid (info on private islands - yes, they’re expensive).  To give you an idea of the capabilities of the technology here are some pictures of some of the things we have built or arranged on the island:

• House and Gardens
• Lighthouse and Marina
• Corey’s Tree House
• Behind the Main House
• Waves and Beach

And some pictures inside the house:

• Game Room
• TV Room
• Dining Room
• Kitchen
• Living Room
• Library
• Office
• Bedroom
• Bathroom

Obviously the concept of a house in Second Life is rather superfluous because avatars have no need to eat, sleep or take care of other biological functions but building and arranging this house shows the power of the technology and tools to mimic the real world. Many of the objects in this house are “functional” – doors open and close, the television can display streams of video from the internet, chairs can be sat upon, the globe in the Library room rotates, the fish in the fish tank swim, etc.

For fun I have been building a replica of a certain cartoon house on a Fox television show. Check out these pictures of my virtual 742 Evergreen Terrace:

• Outside Picture
• Foyer and stair well
• Family Room toward Kitchen
• Upstairs Hallway and Foyer

Here is a video tour of the island in a virtual helicopter (excuse the quality – it’s hosted on YouTube):

Why am I doing this?  Well partly as a hobby because it’s fun (its a lot like model building without the stinky glue and broken pieces) and mostly because I think its a really neat emerging technology.  Will technologies like Second Life become Web 3.0 and create a 3D web?  Time will tell but for now I am enjoying it and even exploring some possibilities for using the technology within the healthcare field for serious purposes. If you want to join me in Second Life – download the viewer and send me an email for my details otherwise stay tuned and we’ll see where it all goes…..

I know… I know…. The comment spam problem caused me to shut down the blog last summer and it was supposed to be back up in a few weeks… Well this is a few weeks. I will be posting some reviews over the next couple of days:

• Apple iPhone
• SecondLife

Stay tuned!