Tag Archives: #virtualworlds

Planar Reporting In A 3D World

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Cyspace isometric view

BusinessWeek has a largish section devoted to the “New Web” – the one controlled by users and not media gatekeepers. Sounds interesting, but a quick read of the articles is disappointing. Many of us already know what’s happening (I even discussed the whole social influencing thang back in March, and I was way late). If I didn’t realize that BusinessWeek is targetted to a specific kind of reader, I’d really take them to the mat for not banging this drum more loudly months ago. Then again, maybe there are additional reasons for the somewhat late reporting: notice under “Graphic: Play” BW lists Cyworld along with games “World of Warcraft” and “Everquest“. Huh? How is Cyworld a game? I’m not sure they get it even though they’re reporting on this stuff.

Btw, you can read more about Cyworld in this article over on Wired. In the meantime, what I’m really wondering is how long will it be before BW reports on truly 3D spaces instead of isometric views pretending to be 3D. Now that Wells Fargo has poked it’s gold toe into the virtual waters, I give them six months. I’m also going to guess the next comparison will have Second Life listed along with “Halo 3” and “Grand Theft Auto“. Right.

{Image Copyright © Emil Goh}

Second Life + Wells Fargo

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Wells Fargo Island

I’d read about this previously on the Second Life forums – Wells Fargo has set up a virtual training ground to teach young adults about money and finance and such. From an announcement made by Second Life CEO/Founder Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden):

Today (Wednesday, September 14), Wells Fargo is announcing the launch of Stagecoach Island – an immersive experience set in Second Life that teaches young adults how to handle their finances in an entertaining way.
…
The islands are private islands and new users log directly into those islands – a feature that other island owners in SL have been using as well.

Through the grapevine I’ve also heard of some companies looking to make the move onto the “main grid”. I’ll admit I was hoping to give some smallish manufacturer a chance to get some invaluable PR, but I’m guessing some big player is going to now take the spotlight. A shame.

{Image source: Eggy Lippmann}

Future Blog

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I’ve been asked to give some indication of what’s in store for this blog and whether it will be continued. The short answer is “Yes”. However, the next incarnation will be at a different URL… though still within the rebang.com domain.

Further, because blogspam is such a bandwidth ripper and because I’d rather leave this ad-free, comments and trackbacks will likely not be permitted. I’m instead looking at other options for discussion and hope to have some way to facilitate it. Trackbacks will likely not be opened as it’s simply too ripe for abuse. Perhaps if I wanted to dedicate more time to deleting the spam and/or keeping up with extensions to control it, but I don’t; it might be of interest to those of you who visit this site that after all this time I still have zombie PC’s pinging to try to post their worthless messages on outdated entries. That’s the net.

Also, while I’d like to have my new website up and running by 1 Oct, the truth is that what I’m doing goes well beyond just a blog. This incarnation of the weblog was really an overly-successful test… never intended to be permanent. If you recall my focus, then you might get some hint of where I’ll be taking this website. Unfortunately that means stretching out into a lot of seemingly unrelated areas. I hope that when I’m done you’ll appreciate what can only be a modest effort.

WorldChanging 3000

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In the event you’re visiting this site and not regularly stopping over on the WorldChanging.com site (a highly recommended visit), the good folks at WC asked me to contribute an entry. I did and you can read it here. Obviously, as soon as I set up the dropbox, I’ll be taking donations to send me to writing class. Hopefully the message gets out in spite of my limitations.

[Edit from the future: As the WorldChanging site is now long gone and I have no idea what I wrote for them, here’s a link to something I suspect is related: “Making the Virtual Real”]

Our Twenty Year Mood Swing

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Interesting entry over on O’Reilly Radar concerning the Supernova 2005 presentation given by Linda Stone. If you’re in the Industrial Design field or familiar with Ms Stone’s background at Microsoft’s Virtual Worlds/Social Computing Group, this may be of interest to you.

The only thing I wonder is if the cycle she describes moves like a wave – with “early adopters” at the leading edge, aso. This might explain what I perceived as a subtle but significant ripple in the social fabric caused by the cinematic release of “Fight Club” in 1999. Seems to me that the movie – and the book on which it was based – might have qualified as early indicators. Guess I have some reading and research to do especially since I see a potential tie-in to some thoughts I’ve had in another area.