Total Immersion And Nissan At L.A. Auto Show (Read more...)

As there have been some references to Augmented Reality in the last times, I think this news release may be of interest of many of you:

LOS ANGELES ( November 26, 2008 ) - Augmented reality – among the most interactive new digital tools available to marketers, delivering unparalleled experiential engagement -- is hitting the road on its way into homes across America.

Total Immersion (www.t-immersion.com), the global leader in augmented reality, today unveiled its D’Fusion@Home® software to support the introduction of the Nissan cube line at the Los Angeles Auto Show (www.laautoshow.com/Debuts.aspx), here through November 30. For the Nissan cube, users can experience four different “stories” about the new vehicle, exploring its features in a radically new way – all from home. Total Immersion collaborated with The Designory, a full-service and interactive marketing agency based in Long Beach , Calif. , which developed the concept and directed the execution of an augmented reality-packed pre-launch brochure for the cube.

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In the automotive sector, Total Immersion also works with Peugeot, BMW and General Motors, among others. The Los Angeles Auto Show Is one of eight car shows in the country at which Total Immersion will help introduce the new Nissan offering.

D’Fusion@Home, a scaled down version of D’Fusion® Professional, is designed to be compliant with typical consumer systems and addresses mass market commercial solutions. Now, brand managers can capture their target audiences’ attention with an immersive augmented reality experience delivered right at home. Aimed squarely at the youth market, the Nissan cube – and the Total Immersion experience – offers an innovative way consumers can bond with a new brand on their own terms, in an interactive, educational yet entertaining way.

“The launch of an exciting new line like the Nissan cube is a perfect complement for the unveiling of D’Fusion@Home, which offers a singular experience in its own right,” said Bruno Uzzan, co-founder and CEO of Total Immersion. “We’re delighted that Nissan selected us for the introduction, showcasing the new cube and D’Fusion at multiple touchpoints, and providing a unique opportunity where consumers can take home the brochure and have an experience like they never have before.”

At the Los Angeles event, show visitors to the Nissan cube exhibition will receive a special Nissan cube brochure that includes the D’Fusion@Home software, along with four 6-inch x 6-inch tear-out cards. With a webcam connected to a PC, and the Nissan cube D’Fusion@Home software, the cards trigger a number of captivating (if unconventional) views of the cube.


Through the magic of Total Immersion’s augmented reality deployment, the brochure comes alive in 3D -- and through four distinct vignettes, the user controls the action every step of the way. Car configuration and exploration have never been as much fun, as users test out various exterior colors, check out the vehicle’s front console, try on a virtual shag carpet (which just happens to mimic, yes, a real option for shag), and sample other interior appointments.

And since capacity is what the cube is all about, D’Fusion@Home provides a gateway to “magic space,” opening various doors for a glimpse inside. Prepare to check out the disco, a hip lounge with a period couch and lava lamp, and, in the trunk, a refrigerator and a pizza box.

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Total Immersion’s technology is ideal for digital environments that include theme parks and entertainment venues, events and tradeshows, and marketing or advertising solutions. With D’Fusion@Home, Total Immersion makes available to marketers a cross-platform approach for augmented reality experiences, tailored for mass consumer usage.

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About Total Immersion

Total Immersion (www.t-immersion.com) is the global leader in augmented reality. Through its patented D’FusionÒ technology, Total Immersion blurs the line between the virtual world and the real world by integrating real time interactive 3D graphics into a live video stream. Founded in 1999 by Bruno Uzzan and Valentin Lefevre, Total Immersion is based in France and maintains a U.S. presence in Los Angeles . Its solutions are also available through a network of resellers worldwide.

Don't forget to check their website and watch impressive videos of their technologies!

Netbooks For Christmas (Read more...)

Netbooks are the third kind of computer that you may have. They are small computers that seem a laptop but are not too much bigger that your hand. They are small, light, not expensive, and allow you to take them with you in a very comfortable way.

They are limited compared to a desktop PC, but they are very useful for many tasks:

• Check your e-mail and browse the web much better than with a PDA, in the same way that you do with your desktop or laptop computer, with the same or similar applications.
  
• Play emulators, flash games, or virtual worlds with low requirements.
  
• Take your Netbook PC to the bed, to your balcony, or to a cafe or bar, to the library, to the bus... with much more ease than a laptop, as it weights much less and fits into any place.
  
• Write documents, post to your blog, administer your websites, manage your accounts. Almost everything that you do that does not require a powerful hardware.
  
• Use it to read documents, as e-book reader, with the added value compared to any e-book hardware reader that you can edit the docs with it and it's much more cheaper.

This makes them a perfect gift for Christmas. It is much better and cheaper than buying a PDA or some mobile phones (that are not optimal for all this, and have tiny screens). So before buying one of these, consider buying a Netbook.

 
It can become your second PC, that you can take everywhere you go, and carry it in your hands, in the pocket of a backpack, or in a handbag.

Where To Find Netbooks

Netbooks are available on most computer stores. There are also many on Amazon, and you can check the selection of some of the best ones in our Amazon Store, some with Windows as OS, and others that use Linux (Ubuntu, mainly). Most of them are $350 only.

If you consider a netbook as a Christmas gift or just want to make yourself a gift, Amazon can deliver it to your home worldwide.

Save Google Lively (Read more...)

One of our readers, known as Oriste, has posted important information in the comments the previous article:

"The Livelyzens (Lively users) are coming together to appeal to Google to keep Lively alive.

Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available, the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to create art from what is available. All this in a "clean" 3D world thanks to Google's vigilance in getting rid of rooms with inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place to make friends for life – from all over the world with wonderful people.

Please visit our website http://livelyzens.com and participate in the Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative potential of Google Lively. Please also sign our online petition http://livelyzens.com/petition.aspx

We kindly request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and interaction amongst adults."

If you like Lively, spread the word and sign the online petition, as a final effort to keep it alive.

Wishing the best for all these users and their creations,

Lively Disappears (Read more...)

My colleague Bruce Lehmann, the Administrator of WBandD, told me that Lively was going to disappear from the virtual worlds scene. This December 31, 2008 Lively will be shut down, as you can read on their official web site.

For worldbuilders, this means that their works will disappear too. For this, they tell you:

"Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image, but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact.

Between now and the end of the year we encourage you to capture all your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms." (Lively website)

This is something that is not enough for creators, as Len Bullard says on his site. I agree, people should be able to download their creations, but this is something, as Len says, that happens when one doesn't build using open standards like X3D: when there are problems, you can't take your work and re-publish it.

Other interesting article that speculate about the reason of closing can be read at RealityPrime. One of the possible causes that this article considers is that Lively was just an experiment for Google, and when they faced the complexity of virtual worlds they just closed it. The complexity of sane behavior (why people do what they do) and of insane behavior (how to stop the problems).

Worlds In Motion also offers an official answer that says that they just want to focus "on our core search, ads and apps business." This coincides with what RealityPrime suggested.

Many groups, forums, sections in big associations like the AVW where created featuring Lively and its users. Even virtual worlds gateways like Myrl have added support for Lively. All this work is now lost.

How Did This Happen?

Everybody knows that when I reviewed Lively months ago, it was one the worst of the options selected. I was forced to include it in my 6 systems review because it was so widespread since the beginning that not doing it would have been a crime. In addition, it was promising, because Google was behind it, and Google has great products like Adsense, Blogger...

The reasons are explained in the articles that I referred, but I can add that Lively had entered into a dangerous spiral that was damaging Google's brand itself. This is why they abandoned the project.

The reasons:

• Google is a too popular, big and reputed company that can't risk damaging their brand launching poor quality products. For this reason, Lively should have been kept in closed beta (invitation only) for a long time before releasing it.
  
  
• The excess of hype was unavoidable by Google. Everything that Google does provokes a lot of buzz. This worked against Lively, because we all expected a smashing app that may compete against the best ones, and Lively was just an early alfa application.
  
  
• No one at Google wanted so much hype. It get out of their hands. It was too soon.
  
  
• High expectations and the many bugs originated lots of bad critics to Lively. This, joined to the lack of security to control the kind of contents posted, damaged Google's brand.
  
  
• Google realized that they would need a lot of resources (not only economical but also workers) to fix this quickly.

Lively would have lasted if they had perseverated, added original features, some sense of community... Also, even if it is not too much orthodox, returning to closed beta may have helped.

As others have said, Google realized the enormous task that developing a virtual worlds platform is. And competing with big established platforms or well-rounded solutions meant a big inversion of money and work. There was not enough motivation, so they just closed.

Developing a virtual worlds platform is not only making something that looks like a 3D game. It has to do with human behavior, and how we act in community. This is a very complex task that is not done in our free time.

News Machine Gun: Linden Prize, Paint Your 3D Models, VRML On Chrome, And More! (Read more...)

Announcing the $10,000 Linden Prize
The Linden Prize will award one Second Life Resident or team with $10,000 USD, paid in Linden dollars, for an innovative in-world project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate. Send your application before January 15, 2009. Finalists and the winners will be announced before April 30, 2009.

Painting your 3d printed models - Shapeways
Shapeways, the 3D printing service, has produced a video in which they tell you how to paint your 3D models.

VRML On Google Chrome With Cortona3D Viewer 6.0 Beta
ParallelGraphics starts beta-testing of Cortona3D Viewer 6.0 Beta (previously known as Cortona VRML Client).

It works as a VRML plug-in for popular Internet browsers such as Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome. 
  
You can download Cortona3D Viewer 6.0 for free. I have installed it on my system. This is a screenshot of my Google Chrome running a VRML world of CyworX. It would be even better if Cortona asked you on which browsers should it be installed.

Some improvements that I would like to highlight:

• You can choose between different toolbars or hide it.
• It runs on Firefox 3.0 and Google Chrome, that are the favorite browsers of many of us.
• It incorporates Phong lighting support.
• The graphics quality and speed are much better than in previous versions.

SceneCaster Facebook Game
SceneCaster and Millions of Us launched their first casual game for Facebook, The Quest for Eternal Life. Read it here.

Koinup now supports OpenSim
Open Sims residents can easily now share their avatars, screenshots, opinions and everything else on Koinup.

Demo of  Precomputed Radiance Transfer Using Kambi VRML game engine
Kambi VRML Game Engine has added a demo of Precomputed Radiance Transfer. This is a technique to make high quality self-shadowing by soft shadows under dynamic lighting.

Vivaty Message Center
Next time you install the newest version of Vivaty Player, you will see that it adds a small icon in your Windows task bar (you can disable it if you like).
This is the Vivaty Message Center, that even when you’re not logged into Vivaty in your web browser, you can still get the latest updates when your friends log in or drop by your scene, so you can then jump in and join them.
It will tell you when your friends have logged in, sent you a gift, commented on your scene... You can customize it to just get the messages you want to receive.

Torley Linden Video: Script Editor Featurettes
Shows some of the interesting features and tips of the Script Editor.



Twinity
Twinity has added some exciting features like: Five Star Rating System, an In-world map that allows you to navigate the city using a Mini Map located in your toolbar, and the ability to give gifts to others.