Vote Your Favorite Machinima Second Life Movie (Read more...)

I discovered through Myrl this Machinima contest of videos from Second Life, in which you can vote your favorite.

See the news at Myrl, and don't forget to myrl it:

http://www.myrl.com/myrl/help-us-choose-the-12-best-second-life-machinimas-for-screening-at-the-machinima-festival/item/1702

This is my favorite, which I voted, SLoundtrack, by Irah Anatina.

2 Second Life Contests: Win A Castle Or A Book! (Read more...)

Steampunk Contest

Koinup organizes this contest that consists in that you, as citizen of Second Life, send a photo until October 16, that has Steampunk as main style. Visit the contest here.

The winners will be announced on October 25th here and on the Koinup Blog.

See the latest entries to have a better idea of what kind of things are being sent.

There will be three winners that will get a "Skye Steampunk Castle" supplied by Alex Bader of Skye Estates, and is valued at 15,000 L$ over at SlExchange. Read more here.

Steampunk image by Karmasatyr

Get A Building Guide For Second Life

Metaverse Journal organizes this other contest (see it here), in which you can win a copy of Second Life Building Guide, that is a 120-page book on content creation in Second Life, edited by Killer Guides.

To have a chance to win it, you just have to post a comment at the bottom of this review on what you’d like to build in Second Life if you won the guide. You need to provide a valid email address, so they can identify you as winner.
The winner will be selected at random between the people that comment, and the contest ends at midnight (AEST) on Sunday 12th October. Winners can expect to receive their prize within five working days or so after that.
In this moment, there are only 17 comments, so hurry up!

The Annotated VRML Reference 2.0 Manual (Read more...)

The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual is a book that contains, as its title says, all the documentation of VRML 2.0, plus notes from experts and curiosities. These notes tell you secrets on how to make the most of your VRML knowledge.

I was given this book as a birthday gift. You may ask why buying a VRML book, now that we are starting using X3D, and X3D is the future.
The reason is that X3D in classical VRML encoding (.x3dv files) are almost the same as VRML. So this book tips and tricks are useful for X3D coders too (And still many people use VRML, in addition).


To see what the book is, you can browse its online version here:

The Annotated VRML Reference Online

You will see that it is the VRML Reference, that is always useful for programming in VRML. I use it constantly to see the default values of nodes, their type, etc. Sometimes, when I didn't know how to do something, I had a look to this book to get new ways to do it.

Then comes the second question... why have I bought the printed book? Because reading a book on the screen is very uncomfortable, as it harms the eyes. Having it printed allows you to take it everywhere and read it where you like.

The book is available in Amazon, that's where mine was. I live in Europe and the book came from the USA, so I was expecting that it would arrive 8 weeks later, but was in my house only 1 week after shipped. Anyway, the usual time is 1 month for international shipping.
In Amazon there are many interesting books like this. In many of them, there is the option to buy them new or almost new but used. The used books are usually in good conditions.

Some books, like this one, are also eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.

I have purchased some things from Amazon, and I liked the service. That's why I decided to make an Amazon Store for Hiperia3D (the link to it is the sidebar too). There, I use to put the articles I find interesting for people like us.

This book comes with a CD that contains all the online version of the book, so if you get it you get both the printed book and a copy of the online version. I think I did a good deal when I got it, so I recommend it to you all.

Interview: Mark Hull, Vice President Of Product Management Of Vivaty (Read more...)

Mark Hull is the Vice-President of Products at Vivaty. He ran more than a dozen businesses at Yahoo! (including Groups, Photos and Personals), and also ran product management and marketing at iWin and MerchantCircle.

http://www.vivaty.com/

On his previous interview here, he introduced us to Vivaty Studio and Vivaty Create. The winners of Vivaty Create will be announced before October 13 2008.

In the last times we've assisted to some strange movements of companies to populate their online 3D catalog models without the prior consent of worldbuilders. Vivaty is the opposite: the example of something done right, respecting their rights.

Many of the worldbuilders that have works on VRML or X3D can recycle them and take part in the new developer's program of Vivaty (Vivaty Create).
Your participation can be rewarded with prizes and being showcased in their site as a 3D artist.
They also updated their legal terms, and you just give them a non-exclusive right to use the submitted models, so you don't loose your property and you can still send your models to other contests.


- Are you going to run another developer program after this one ends?

- We aren’t thinking of this as a series of programs. It’s an ongoing dialog with developers. We had to start somewhere, so we started first by asking for feedback and holding a contest. We could only open our contest to US creators for this round (legal hurdles are pretty scary to open contests worldwide), and we know that’s been a challenge for some. But we want to encourage everyone to send us content- if it’s good, we’ll feature it in Vivaty Scenes! It doesn’t matter where you’re from.

- In what direction will Vivaty go in the future: entertainment, business, games, private networking?

- We are wholly focused on consumer virtual experiences on the web. That could take many forms in the future- if web users want it, we’ll do it.

- Vivaty is now embeddable inside Facebook and AIM. How will you extend your presence in Internet in the future?

- We are eager to make scenes embeddable on every URL on the web and we’re open to any type of integration as long as it’s reaching more web users. Facebook and AIM have been great for integrating into a user’s existing social graph and providing a deeper, more engaging experience than you can have on those platforms in 2D.

- What advantages of Vivaty that make it unique would you highlight?

- A few things…We’re taking a distributed approach to virtual experiences, meaning we don’t want to re-create your friends list or your 2D experience. We want to weave naturally and authentically into what you already know and love.

We’re extremely flexible to the wants and needs of both consumers and brands. We’re web-based and working in an agile development environment, so if someone asks us “can you do this?”, the answer is usually yes…

On the product side, we started with self-expression and we’re now releasing features to make our experience more social, interactive and fun. Recent features like dancing, pets, gifting, avatar customization are just the beginning. We know we have a long ways to go but these are the building blocks for what’s to come.



- Recently, you have added virtual dogs and more than 200 avatar customizations. What other content improvements are coming next?

- We just added Firefox 3 support, dancing and gifting. More gestures like “sits” and clothing options are coming, as well as more emphasis on social hangouts to experience together.

- What are the medium and long term aims for Vivaty?

-We want to define the immersive web… and be the best web-based virtual experience out there.

News: Facebook Ban, SmallWorlds, Custom Content On Lively, And MuveMoot08 (Read more...)

Facebook Bans People For Using Second Life Names
Facebook has started to ban people because it seems they don't like that people use virtual names for their profiles.
Read this in Reuters, Scobleizer, and the Secondlife Newspaper.

Facebook, SL Users do it with good intention. Image by Marlen Slazar

This is something I can't understand, because everyone knows that many people may have a profile on Facebook under their SL names. The identification with their avatars is very intense amongst SL users, and also in other virtual worlds users.

I know that Facebook is a professional network, but they could do some exception to this and maybe add a special kind of "virtual profile" that could be distinguished easily from "real profiles". That would be the way in which Facebook may enter the era of virtual worlds and don't miss this train, instead of banning people for doing something that is natural for them.


Ted Tagami as Vice President Of Business Development At SmallWorlds
SmallWorlds has appointed Ted Tagami, who held the same position in Million of Us, as Vice President of Business Development. Read the news here.


Customizable Content On Lively
If you are on the Association of Virtual Worlds, you may have read this news. Basically, it says that Lively is slowly adding some customizable options to some objects, and also adding the possibility of making derivate products from them.
I have also heard that Lively may be specializing in small 3D games, but this is not confirmed.

"The Evilution of Communication" by Torley Linden

MuveMoot08
At SIGGRAPH 2008 a meeting on Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) and social networking took place. Read the report. It's interesting for all the specialists in the sector.