I’ve been teleporting around the smashing new Hypergrid experience this last night, and all I can say: Watch out, Second Life! All reasoning saying that Opensim would split the small scene into so many divided grids and cultures is nonexistent for me from today on. And OpenSimulator actually is the Apache of 3D environments.

Ah, and a Happy Birthday to OpenSimulator!

I’ve described the new URL scheme for Second Life and Opensim Grids and places in a previous article. Now with the latest update from subversion, the normal

python setup.py build ; su -c “python setup.py install”

is working under linux. Also I found how to run the URL handler directly from Firefox 3.0.5:

On my system, it is not sufficient, to simply define the protocol handlers in the about:config of Firefox.

network.protocol-handler.app.rezzme     (string) /usr/bin/rezzme.py
network.protocol-handler.app.rezzmes   (string) /usr/bin/rezzme.py

In addition to that, I had to define 2 boolean values, like:

network.protocol-handler.external.rezzme   (boolean) true
network.protocol-handler.external.rezzmes  (boolean) true

After that, the test URLs open fine by clicking. Please note, that the Urls need quite some time to open, while it works very fast from the commandline. Dunno why yet…

Update: The bad delay appears only when trying the example.net-link. Just ignore that^^

I found a nice new project yeasterday: The rezzme:// URI scheme is a method to bookmark virtual places that goes far deeper than the secondlife:// or SLurl system, which both are limited to Second Life.

Usage (examples):

• rezzme://example.net:9000/ (Log into a certain Simulator)

• rezzme://Torrid%20Luna@primforge.org:9009/ (" with a certain Avatar name)
• rezzme://opensim.zurich.ibm.com:9000/zurela/128/34/23 (Go to a special place within this Grid)

Of course, just defining a new URL scheme does nothing yet,  you need a program that understands the URL scheme.  Under http://forge.opensimulator.org/gf/project/rezzme/scmsvn/?action=AccessInfo there’s a protocol handler, written in Python/Qt4, that is able to parse the rezzme-Scheme and bookmark the URLs. It even enables you to define several different clients to open certain adresses with, so if you want to use the Meerkat or Hippo viewer for a certain address, this is no problem.

The handler is available for Win and Linux so far, a Mac version should follow soon. It simply saves the bookmarks and defined clients in 2 files in your home directory, .rezzme.clients and .rezzme.bookmarks. By adding the rezzmy.py program to your Firefox config you will be able to start these clients by simply clicking a Web URL.

Way cool.

Not wishing to disappoint, I begin at Wikipedia, and note this intriguing definition of International: ”In American English, “international” is commonly used to signify “outside of the country”.  For the rest of us (non-American English!), the word “international” would describe interactions between two or more Nations as in “an International football match”.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/01/02/…review-of-2008-and-a-peep-into-the-future/

(emphasis added by Torrid)

Second Life goes international, or better: US centric SL becomes aware of the “here be dragons” areas. That’s the underlying message of the current post at blog.secondlife.com. Old news, but probably a big surprise for the american folks: most residents are not from USA. Then follows a anecdotic list of interesting “unamerican” projects and sims. How come that reminds me to “hungary is a country??!?“?

Anyway, a nice start into 2009…

And yeah, copypastaing “…” instead of “…” from your M$ Word Processor into an URL is probably not a good idea, I know a handful of RSS libs that will soon bail out…

(Also testing this flickr album plugin).

[flickr album=72157611887920740 num=20 size=Square]

Big Spaceship are about to launch the new website layout for Second Life. On Katt Linden’s Flickr page there is a preliminary screenshot:

(via&thanks: Filterraum/Twitter)

[read this article in english]

Primforge sind ausserordentlich stolz und erfreut, das weblin Gate in New Berlin in Kooperation mit der zweitgeist GmbH der Öffentlichkeit zu übergeben.

Weblins — das sind kleine Avatare, mit denen man auf normalen Webseiten herumspazieren kann, um zu chatten, mit Freunden gemeinsam zu surfen, über aktuelle Themen auf der gerade besuchten Webseite zu diskutieren, oder einfach um präsent zu sein, und auf der eigenen Website Besucher zu empfangen. Seit 2006 sind sie — von der Hamburger Firma zweitgeist erdacht — im World Wide Web unterwegs. Ich bin immer wieder erstaunt, auf wievielen Seiten, die ich jeden Tag absurfe, sich gleichzeitig Weblins treffen.

Im neu eröffneten weblin Gate in  New Berlin kann man nun seinen voll ausgestatteten Second-Life-Avatar von unserem professionellen 3D-Fotografen Weblin Paule ablichten lassen, und dann direkt mit seinem persönlichen weblin weitersurfen.

June Trenkins probiert die weblin avatarstation.

Für SL-Residents ist das eine tolle Möglichkeit, den eigenen Avatar, die liebewonnene Identität unkompliziert ins gute alte World Wide Web mitzunehmen, und für routinierte Weblins eine einfache Art, sich mit allen Mitteln, die Second Life zu bieten hat, ihr persönliches Aussehen zu gestalten.

“Win-win” könnte man sagen, oder einfach: “Best of both worlds”.

Edit:

• SLTalk haben gestern das weblin Gate ausprobiert, hier ist der Bericht.

tx Oh was at the Orange Island interoperability meeting. And he made an audio recording of the conference, I am hearing right now. Way interesting, the idea of merging 2D / Web2.0 with 3D / Web3.0: Instead of bringing the web to SL, take your avatar (and your friend’s ones) from SL to the two-dimensional Web and back.

Weblin (on the more flat side of the VW scene) seems to be an important part of it, because it exists with a good user base, has an open and transparent architecture, and it is really useful by itself.

[audio:http://primforge.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/interop-panel.mp3]