Just received word from Michael Frumin, R&D Technical Director over at Eyebeam, that he’s released a Maya 2 Google Earth script. I know exactly what I want to do with this, but guess I’ll have to sign up for a premium version of Google Earth, huh? Oh well.

For those using Maya, grab the plug-in on the Eyebeam website (Link). I’m not sure with which versions of Maya this script can be used (based on the website, I suspect he used Maya 6.5), but I’ll be trying it with Maya 5.01 so wish me luck. Hopefully, there’ll be pictures at 11:00.

{Update: Unfortunately I’m having no luck with my version of Maya. Looks like the Mel script will need a little tweaking.}

Here’s a kind of follow-up to a recent entry of mine (Link). There’s a story over on C|Net (Link) about real life people meeting in virtual spaces and forming relationships in real life; an appropriate story considering it’s Valentine’s Day. I know a lot of people are going to make a face when they hear this, but then these same people probably buy into the airbrushed images on the covers of fashion magazines or get upset when they hear a story on the nightly news that has absolutely no discernable impact on their real life whatsoever.

By the way, the virtual world Valentine’s Day “cards” have been flying fast and furious (I’ve even received a few). So where are American Greetings and Hallmark and all the other greeting card publishers? They basically turned this holiday into a cultural event didn’t they? You’d think they’d be out there providing a nice service for customers… and garnering some brand recognition. I’ve not seen or heard of any of them operating inside a virtual space other than the heavy-handed stuff where they form high-level business relationships. It certainly looks like opportunity is moving to not just another door, but another state – and these companies don’t have a roadmap. Is it really so hard to figure out a way to capitalize on this? So far every card I’ve seen is handmade by the sender.

And btw, this isn’t just a knock on the greeting card publishers out there. If you’re in the wedding supply business, you should be getting your brand on, people. I know one Second Life wedding planner/organizer who can’t keep up with all the weddings. Yet no real world company has contacted her to see if they can provide (branded) content.

Unreal.

Entirely by accident I happened across this video (Link) a couple of days ago of a “sand painting” performance from the SICAF Seoul 2003 conference.

Out of curiousity I went surfing for some background since obviously it’s a few years old and I should have seen it earlier (I’ve been interested in sand animation since the 1970’s and this would have caught my attention had I read about it). Was it not posted on some of the sites I regularly visit?

Well, after a bit of research, it’s apparent that it was mentioned… plenty of times. It just slipped past me somehow; perhaps lost in the noise of the internet. And it might have been lost to me forever, except now I notice that you can also find it on Google Video (Link), on LookAtEntertainment.com (Link), on non-video hosting niche websites, and probably on plenty of other sites. It seems as if the recent introduction of video hosting services has helped this one to crawl up the “Long Tail” further and further from the niche circles that originally took notice of it and into my Sphere of Reception.

This now gets me to wondering if I’ll ever see Mark Sullivan’s Super 8mm short “Nightspeed” (don’t bother looking for it on either his personal IMDb profile or his business IMDb profile; he made it sometime around 1979-80 while he was still a talented kid).

I also wonder what would happen if his film were uploaded to one of the viral-video hosting sites. Could it be tracked without the conspiracy-theorists out there crying DRM-foul? Seems like injecting the distribution bloodstream with some old-content dye markers could yield some fascinating insight into how online distribution systems are evolving. While I’ve no doubt whole businesses are set up to do this very thing with new content, I’m guessing no one is really tracking the old stuff like this sand art performance video.

Well, in any event, if anyone knows where I can find his “Nightspeed” short online, I’d pay to finally see that thing.

I wonder if I’m a market of one.

(p.s. – If you’ve not seen the sand performance video, it’s both safe for work and entertaining)

{Image source: some uncredited video of the performance}

Seth Godin has posted a curious entry called “Categories and the short head”. Curious because as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t seem to really say anything. From his post (Link):

The reason you should care about all this: you are in a category too. So is your organization.

And you have a lot of influence over what category you’re going to be placed in.

For example, there are a lot of software products (fireclick, hitbox, etc.) that measure analytics. Unfortunately for these guys, in the very same category is Google analytics, which is free. Google is now the official short head of analytics, and as long as you are in the same category as they are, you’re in trouble.

Okay. That seems pretty self-evident. The minute anyone shows up offering a product or service for free, the rest of the people in that category are screwed. Got it. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the truth in that. (Note: This is where I expect Seth Godin to pull a Sam Kinison and cut through with some personal insight ala the “Back To School” lecture).

No such luck.

Earlier today someone posted this on the Core77 forum (Link):

Will the availability of inexpensive and talented designers in Asia lead to the end of design work here in the US? I have nothing against Asia or asians, but I am scared. I don’t want to lose my job or ability to make a living. What is the best way to deal with it, and how should designers in the US be reacting?

And my response:

Answer is simple afaic: be worth the money you charge in excess of what your competition charges.

In other words, get out of that particular category. Provide some additional service or product or insight that puts you in a specialized niche which justifies the cost of hiring you instead of hiring the designer in Asia working at a fraction of your rate.

Okay. So maybe a few people need to be reminded. Then again, I’d venture … hope … that the people reading his blog don’t need this sort of handholding.

But that’s not really the thing here. After reading Godin’s post I decided to go and have a look at Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog. In particular, I recalled an earlier entry that discussed “the short head” and simply wanted to find it. Now while poking around I found basically the same thing that Godin is talking about posted there as well; an entry in the left panel that links back to Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox post, “Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites” (Link).

So if this category speech is a no-brainer and if it’s nothing new for those of us who read these blogs, then why bother?

Then it occurred to me: if you’re enjoying the advantages spelled out by a Zipf distribution, what better way to harness it than post fluffy entries like stuff about nice chocolate packaging and then follow that up with a longish post that includes in the middle “The reason you should care about all this:” in bold letters … and then use the last 1/4 of the post for what amounts to an ad for your own service.

Nothing wrong with that.

There’s an article on Wired that I want to point out. It’s called “DIY Tunes Turn It Up” (Link) which I think is a shame because there’s something fairly important happening at the core of this. Author Clive Thompson definitely touches upon it and I’ve discussed it previously. “It” is the increasingly blurring boundary between Work and Play. It’s a big part of the reason I find the virtual simulation Second Life so interesting; the tools are simple enough that it allows people with no experience to create 3D objects quickly and easily. And if people can get that data out (Link) and inexpensively fabricated (Link), we’ll start to see people empowered in ways they’ve not been since before the Industrial Revolution. Whether it’s blue collar laborers who have spent their entire lives working inside a corporate machine or workers in lesser-developed countries, when the barriers to creation drop, opportunities rise.

This is what will continue the evolution of the ecoToroid (Link). The real question in my mind is: How fluid will the transition be?

{Image Copyright © Toshio Iwai/Nintendo}