I never really considered to jump on the OpenSpace train, but of course a lot of my friends were hit by the latest development, and it’s still not clear what permanent damage the community will suffer.

I just found this touching video (via: Victorian Æsthetic), and wanted to share it.

Das war klasse heute. $Auftraggeber hat sich nach Second Life begeben, vor Ort, in medias res: Ein Programmierer, ein QA und ein Verantwortlicher.
Wir haben an einem Tag mehr geschafft, als man normalerweise mit Emails, ausbessern, Versionen freigeben, rätseln, was der andere nun wieder meint in vielen Tagen erledigen würde.
Ich hab die Hoffnung auf Agile Entwicklungsmethoden, Pair Programming und Code Review vor einigen Jahren mal an den Nagel gehängt, aber da war ich a) selber noch zu unsicher und b) von Luschen umgeben. ;P Aufgegeben habe ich das nie, und mit tx bin ich auch ganz gut auf einer Wellenlänge, dass es klappt. Schön, wenn — wie heute — der Kunde sowas mitmacht, und besonders schön, wenn es funkt.
Ach ja, es wird eine große Ankündigung geben, die Tage. Inter-Grid-Reisen, Virtual Entity Retainment, Virtual Presence. Interoperability.

I had a nice talk with Pherekydes Beaumont about (Weblin and) embedding applications into Second Life. But then, later on, I found that I had been wrong, for a long time. IBM is wrong too. Here’s why:

Pherekydes was right, when he demanded the application in-world, not the SL-Screen a plugin of your calendar client. And I was blinded by old GUI metaphors. We need the future of applications in-world, because the beauty of Second Life shines there.

Since the frustration about what a bummer HTML on a prim actually is, I’ve been thinking, that it would eventually be the better to just keep the interactive application stuff on the good old personal computer flat screen, where it belongs, where it was designed for, and stream it round robin onto the shared media screen (like later, or so). Hey, it would surely end in a mess if there were more than one Avi to type or point and click at the same time. Keep the flat apps where they are now, then switch the screen, and someone else gets the Talking StickInput Device.

OK, that’s plain wrong.

IBM just launched a press release that they are integrating OpenSim in their Lotus Sametime product. A few days ago, on massively there was a post, that Rivers Run Red are building a workgroup application where one can meet in Second Life for some immersive tasks. Sounds cool, eh? But it is wrong. DoubleYou:RonG.

• The Oh, I’ll send it in a second,
• the hey, just refresh your screen,
• the whoops sorry, I snatched your mouse pointer,
• the let’s talk about that — later,
  
• the was that your concept? I redesigned it while you were offline,
• the was that your concept? I redesigned it while I was offline,
• the my-machine :
  
• wrong.

Application in the center…

• The togetherness,
• the Move your ass, and your mind will follow,
• the what do you think
• the thinking the same because we point in the same direction,
• the I’ll do the second floor and we meet in the middle,
• the come, I’ll show you,
• the Loose Coupling,
• the flow,
• The total immersion.

…surrounded by a circle of Avatars.
Pherekydes was right.

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]

In teh blog, M Linden just announced the new Senior Vice President and Chief of Product (whatever that is), T Linden (Tom Hale). Tom is the second former Adobe employee, after Clare Rees, who was acclaimed European Marketing Director a few days ago.

Also, Dusan Writer has a detailed critique on the second big news, that Linden Lab are hiring an external company to build a new “user friendly” client. I really hope that this won’t turn into bad news for us bunch of Linux Furries.

StarCAVE is a high tech Virtual Reality (or better Augmented Reality) projection room, designed for displaying scientific sites of interest, like macro molecules, nano engines/building blocks or star clusters (both ends of the size spectrum, nice). While this is probably one of the few things you just cannot do with sufficient quality in SL, it’s a valid example on why new ideas in VR and VW are needed and helpful for science and education. And it reminds me quite a bit to this case, found on sltalk.de, where a scientist visualizes thermal molecular movement in a SL-like environment (using project wonderland, a java based solution).

(via: kurzweilAI.net)

An interactive timeline of the development and history of virtual worlds. Most amazing, also the technology behind it, dipity.com.