Clipmarks | Virtual worlds Clips

Virtual worlds carve out new path

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:42:25 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "The first step is to have virtual worlds as a common medium for ordinary people. It has to become far more ubiquitous, more like a toaster than a DVR,"
What virtual worlds do well is contextualise social encounters in a way that social networking cannot do, he thinks.

"Without places it is hard to have activities. The bowling alley or the alcohol does not matter as much as the people but if you do not have the bowling alley or the alcohol it's just an empty room and no-one comes,"

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Virtual worlds carve out new path

If you are walking with orcs in the World of Warcraft or setting up a business on planet Calypso, the real world is probably very far from your mind.

There is a sharp divide between so-called Massively Multi-player Online games (MMOs) which aspire to draw from the real world, such as Second Life, and those, like World of Warcraft, which proudly inhabit a land of pure fantasy.

Cityscape

Hoping to change that is Twinity, one of a growing number of games determined to make a link between the virtual world and the real.

allows users to hang out in some of the world's most famous cities

Twinity is a virtual world from Metaversum with avatars that walk around real cities. Metaversum chief executive Jochen Hummel says people can feel as though they have been to a city.

Networking avatars

"Virtual worlds are about experimenting and doing something different," she said.

Going one step farther, Myrl has created a social network exclusively for avatars.

Anonymity

Tags: virtual, reality

Digado - Digital Adoption

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:19:38 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend

Clip Source: digado.nl

Digado stands for Digital Adoption. Its the scenario I think will be most relevant for the future of the metaverse. A generation that regards 3d as a ‘natural environment’. The Xbox, playstation and PC generation. They will adopt the 3d worlds and see the benefits of the digital distribution, communication, education, information and entertainment as something that has always been part of their lives.

This blog lists my research, opinion and news regarding ‘the Metaverse’. A word I define as being a Virtual, Social Network. The goal of this network can be anything from entertainment (gaming worlds such as World of Warcraft), business and creativity (Second Life) all the way down to simply connecting people in a customizable environment (Cyworld).

The question that Digado tries to answer is ‘how can we use Virtual Worlds in a realistic, meaningful way for the businesses of today and tomorrow’.

Tags: metaverse, virtual, business, social, digital

We'll all be citizens of virtual worlds

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:13:41 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: What is the point of all this? It is quite likely that it will be a natural thing for future generations to meet their friends in worlds such as these, where they can watch the same music or videos while chatting to each other. And if that is where youngsters will be hanging out, then brands and media, including newspapers, will have to be there. Other life-mimicking worlds about to be released include shopping malls such as themall.tv, which aims to emulate an entire shopping mall with scores of high street shops. It claims to have signed up 500 brands.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Most people still look askance if you admit to using virtual worlds where you move around with an avatar or 3D version of yourself. It recalls the technophobic reactions in the early days of the internet. But attitudes may now change for two reasons. First, children are piling into their own virtual worlds, so their parents can get a glimpse of what it is all about. And second, a huger user base is being created, one that is accustomed to virtual worlds and is ready to trade up to more sophisticated ones as they grow older.

Some of the kids' sites have more registered (but not necessarily active) members than countries have citizens. These include Habbo Hotel (more than 100 million registered users), Neopets (45 million) and Disney's Club Penguin (20 million). Up the scale there are spaces such as Second Life and hipihi.com from China. Kzero reckons that there are about 100 million active users of virtual world.

Second, virtual worlds are changing fast

Tags: virtual worlds

The etiquette of social networking

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:56:37 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.macworld.com

The etiquette of social networking

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have turned many social norms inside out. Your online friends may not be friends offline—and you may not be exactly whom you claim to be, either. How to approach strangers online, handle unwelcome solicitations, or make real friends out of virtual ones is stuff your parents probably never taught you. Here’s how etiquette experts would politely navigate the worlds of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Q: I’ve got a strict policy about “friending”: I invite only people I know well. And sometimes people they know. And occasionally complete strangers whose profiles sound cool. Is there anything wrong with that?

Tags: social networking, facebook, linkein, etiquette

Games and reality, Which affects which?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:31:38 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: on the other hand, "some biologists think the game could have educational value just by making users think about science, like an entertaining hook into evolutionary biology."

"Ultimately, games are made to engage the people who play them. Provoking wonderment or debate is a good thing. Wright abstracts grandiose topics, and he does it well. Not enough game designers have the stones or the vision to try the same, which is why we get battered with endless versions of Madden NFL (also put out by Electronic Arts).
In the end, that's also why Spore leaves such an impression. It's more than just fun. It's worth arguing about."

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Spore's Intelligent DesignerWill Wright's new hit game is all about evolution. Or is it?

Sims, the best-selling computer game franchise of all time, a virtual dollhouse that let you control the daily activities of cyberhumans

critics questioned the absence of race, pointing out that simulating urban decay without taking ethnicity into account was unrealistic, if not manipulative

Every kid who played SimCity absorbed the underlying message: Taxes are dangerous.

Wright has donated nearly $100,000 to Republican political causes

Sims 2

nhabitants

could breed

You don't make friends in The Sims—you acquire them

"Spore is a video game that is intelligently designed to allow users to create fantasy worlds where evolution really can take place."

people have already cooked up millions of species

Spore will destroy common objections to intelligent design.

Wright

acknowledges the religious component. But he takes pains to point out that it's a caricature of reality

Tags: spore, game, evolution, intelligent design, education

Circumstances differ, the human ain't

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:05:52 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: As long as the human does not change, virtual worlds will only mirror the same old biases. Too bad.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Real-world Behavior And Biases Show Up In Virtual World

Americans are spending increasing amounts of time hanging around virtual worlds in the forms of cartoon-like avatars that change appearances according to users' wills, fly through floating cities in the clouds and teleport instantly to glowing crystal canyons and starlit desert landscapes.

avatars in these elaborate fantasylands responded to social cues to help one another -- and revealed racial biases – in the same ways that people do in the real world.

Even in the surreal environment, users, who were unaware that they were part of a psychological study, succumbed to very down-to-earth effects of social influence.

people exhibited the same type of behavior -- and the same type of racial bias -- that they show in the real world all the time

Numerous studies done in the real world show that people are more uncomfortable with minorities and are less likely to help them.

Tags: virtual, racism

Seminar about Trademarks in Virtual Worlds

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:03:57 GMT

clipped by: Lara Nieberding

Clip Source: virtuallyblind.com

SL Bar Association Offers Free CLE Session in Second Life on Trademarks in Virtual Worlds

The SL Bar Association is offering a free California CLE seminar in Second Life Tuesday, September 9 at 12:00 Noon, Pacific, at the Association’s in-world headquarters (SLURL). The seminar will focus on trademarks, and will be presented by SLBA President-Elect Stephen Wu (SL’s ‘Legal Writer’).

Stephen Wu is a partner in the Silicon Valley law firm Cooke Kobrick & Wu LLP, and is Secretary of the American Bar Association Section of Science and Technology Law. He advises clients concerning e-discovery, electronic records retention, digital evidence, and legal matters relating to information security, privacy, and ecommerce. His litigation practice also includes trademark infringement, other intellectual property, and general commercial litigation matters.

Tags: second life, virtual law, trademarks, virtually blind

“Facing There” - A Virtual World Threat to Facebook?

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:37:40 GMT

clipped by: akipta
clipper's remarks: clipped from: www.allfacebook.com

All Facebook sat down with Michael Wilson, CEO of There.com at the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles. Michael is a tech savvy visionary who was the 4th employee at eBay and an early employee of Oracle. There.com is a popular 3D social virtual world that allows users to build avatars that 1) express themselves in a graphically rich, online environment, 2) communicate with other users in real time via chatting and voice chat and 3) build social networks with other members via their avatars. There.com also creates a thriving virtual goods economy, where users can create, buy and sell virtual goods through an in-game auction platform.

Clip Source: www.allfacebook.com

All Facebook sat down with Michael Wilson, CEO of There.com at the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles. Michael is a tech savvy visionary who was the 4^th employee at eBay and an early employee of Oracle. There.com is a popular 3D social virtual world that allows users to build avatars that 1) express themselves in a graphically rich, online environment, 2) communicate with other users in real time via chatting and voice chat and 3) build social networks with other members via their avatars. There.com also creates a thriving virtual goods economy, where users can create, buy and sell virtual goods through an in-game auction platform.

Tags: facebook virtual-reality virtual-worlds second-lif

"Meet in 3D" button

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:18:33 GMT

clipped by: butesch
clipper's remarks: Another move to blur the lines between "2D" and "3D" internet

Clip Source: www.marketwire.com

Altadyn Invents "Meet in 3D" Button for Any Corporate Web Site

IRVINE, CA and PARIS--(Marketwire - September 3, 2008) - Altadyn, the developer of 3DXplorer, the first "plug-in-less," browser-based web3D platform, today announced the invention of "Meet in 3D," a new concept to standardize immersive and interactive 3D spaces and virtual worlds on corporate web sites. "Meet in 3D" is intended to establish a new standard navigation component, on par with the commonly-used links on the main navigation bar of web sites such as Home, Products, Company, Contact Us, and so on, allowing businesses to add immersive 3D virtual experiences for interacting with web visitors who until now have largely remained anonymous.

Tags: 2d, 3d, 3d internet, altadyn, corporate

From Snapshots, a 3-D View - Amazing New Technology

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:50:16 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: In a Photosynth demonstration at the annual TED conference last year, the presenter blew the crowd’s mind with a photosynth of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, made up of photos mined from Flickr.com. In other words, Microsoft had created a seamless, successful photosynth using hundreds of existing photos, taken by different people at different times using all kinds of cameras.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

How do you describe a place? How do you express its essence to people who aren’t there?

You use the best technology you have available.

In the beginning, there was the printed word (“Dear Queen Isabella: You gotta see this place!”). Then there was audio (“My God, it’s full of stars!”). Eventually, photos (“That’s us in Hawaii. Or is it Cape Cod?”).

Wednesday, Microsoft introduced yet another way to represent a place: Photosynth. This sophisticated technology does a simple thing. It turns a bunch of overlapping photos into a 3-D panorama.

The result, called a photosynth, is a little bit like a virtual world.

You can turn around to look behind you. And at any time, you can zoom forward incredibly far into a photo, since it retains all of its original, multi-megapixel resolution.

Creating a photosynth is free and automatic. You visit www.photosynth.com, click to install the necessary Web browser plug-in, and start uploading your photos.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: web, 3d worlds, photosynth, microsoft

Law and Order in the virtual universes

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:26:25 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: i think it is interesting the way a community is being built.

from the article: "In 2006, Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, canceled Marc Bragg's account for violating the world's policies on real estate deals. Bragg sued Linden, saying he legally owned the content he created in Second Life, including land and businesses. The suit was eventually settled, and Bragg's avatar was restored.

Authorities also have intervened in crimes committed in online worlds. In the Netherlands, for example, a teenager was arrested for stealing more than $5,000 worth of virtual furniture in a world called Habbo.

"This is such a nascent area when it comes to the law," said Sean F. Kane, a partner in the law firm Drakeford & Kane. "If a certain world allows you to be a thief, is it a crime or just an aspect of the game? Should real-world law apply?"

there is much thinking to do, involved...

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Virtual Worlds Get Real About Punishment

In the online community Cellufun, troublemakers found guilty by other users get their virtual alter egos placed behind bars. (Cary Torkelson)

Virtual worlds have often been called the digital equivalent of the Wild West, where animated alter egos can live in a fantasy frontier. But in some of these universes, a sheriff has come to town.

Slipping a four-letter word into an instant message now could land a user in a virtual timeout. Repeated attempts to make friends with an uninterested character could result in a loss of blogging privileges. And if convicted of starting a "flame war," or an exchange of hostile messages, a user may endure the ultimate punishment -- permanent exile.

A virtual world for mobile devices, called Cellufun, has established a courthouse, where rule-breakers are indicted by their peers

Some worlds have devised their own versions of jail, where boredom is the punishment

VZones, created the Void

holding cell

Tags: virtual, social networking, laws

Nine Years to a Positive Singularity

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:44:35 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: ieet.org

Dr. Geortzel makes clear that the goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a real thinking machine that can achieve a variety of complex goals, and can understand what it is, that it is, and that there are other beings that it can interact with – differs significantly from typical narrow AI application systems. AGI needs to be able understand what it has learned in one context and transfer it to another context.

How do you create an AGI? Goertzel considers one possible path to AGI is through the use of virtual worlds as incubators for nascent artificial intelligence systems. This frees developers from the constant challenges presented by sensors and actuators in the physical world, but more importantly, virtual worlds offer an environment for large-scale collaboration among AI researchers.

( MP3)

Tags: ai, singularity

Parents, guardians, and teachers can best protect kids online

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:23:31 GMT

clipped by: douchrti
clipper's remarks: Another great article from the TrendMicro staff.
Get the family together and go over the dangers online.

Clip Source: newsletters.trendmicro.com

Social Networking and Young People: Know the Risks

As kids return to school in August and September, many of them also return to their home computers, which they increasingly use for school assignments. But, in addition to their scholarly pursuits, teens and tweens will likely use their computers for social networking and other online entertainment. Many kids are fascinated with the freedom, anonymity, and social interaction afforded by social networking sites, chat rooms, blogs, message boards, and virtual worlds. But they may not be aware of all the risks.

Tags: social networking, kids, cyber dangers, id theft

Intelligence and Empathy

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:09:18 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: He stresses that the human mind does not qualify as a completely ‘General Intelligence’ but lies somewhere on the spectrum between AGI on one end and ‘Narrow AI’ on the other. This is one of several reasons why he does not expect AGI to be achieved by mimicking the workings of the human brain.

He describes how our brains fool us into believing that we understand our actions and decisions when we don’t. And why modeling an AI too closely on the human brain might make it too, vulnerable to false notions.
He also says, ‘I think virtual worlds are going to be absolutely critical to the development of Artificial General Intelligence.’ As well as ‘Right now connecting AI’s to virtual worlds is probably the best way to get an AI to have a general human-like embodied experience.’

Clip Source: ieet.org

Ben Goertzel, noted scientist, author, futurist and pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, is today’s featured guest. Topics he discusses include: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the singularity, transhumanism, human immortality and how long he expects to live, and why (like your host) he is a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers.

Highlights of the interview include: The mechanism of human empathy seems to have been identified, and so can be reproduced in AI; even AI that is radically different in its thinking from human beings. Doctor Goertzel explains that this empathy is not based on emotion, and he emphasizes that he does not want to create an AI which is governed by its emotions.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 13, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 74 minutes]

MP3

Tags: intelligece, ai, empathy

Augmented Reality, Soon in your cellular...

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:30:50 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Interesting.

Clip Source: www.openthefuture.com

The Metaverse Roadmap Overview, an exploration of imminent 3D technologies, posited a number of different scenarios of what a future "metaverse" could look like.

The four scenarios -- augmented reality, life-logging, virtual worlds, and mirror worlds -- each offered a different manifestation of an immersive 3D world.

Of the four, I suspect that augmented reality is most likely to be widespread soon;

moreover, when it hits, it's going to have a surprisingly big impact.

Augmented reality (AR) can be thought of as a combination of widely-accessible sensors (including cameras), lightweight computing technologies, and near-ubiquitous high-speed wireless networks -- a combination that's well-underway -- along with a sophisticated form of visualization that layers information over the physical world.

Imagine holding up an iPhone-like device, scanning what's around you, seeing various pop-up items and data links on your screen.

That's something like what an early AR system might look like

Clip Source: www.openthefuture.com

[Video]

Tags: augmented reality, computing, virtual worlds, metaverse