Just caught a piece on C|Net (Link) about Microsoft’s new Zune device. I’ve not paid much attention to this thing, so I don’t know if this is something that was previously released, but I found the whole point system interesting. What a great way to mask the cost of a piece of media. Everytime the newsmedia reports on the cost, what are they going to do – provide a monetary conversion? It’s easy to report the cost of media on iTunes or Google Video, but MS is effectively creating its own currency. Even more interesting is how it’ll dovetail with XBox Live Marketplace which already uses points. Continue reading →

Here’s an interesting heads up from New Scientist (Link): the Aerospace Controls Lab at MIT (Link) is working on autonomous, cooperative aerial vehicles; i.e. robot aircraft that work together. From the MIT Project page:

We are investigating techniques that will enable the execution of continuous (24-7) mission operations using multiple autonomous vehicles (i.e., vehicle SWARMS) in a dynamic environment. We believe that a massively-distributed, intelligent airborne capability with little human supervision has the potential to provide many performance benefits in long-term mission operations.

The video where a pair of these things track a moving ground target, a remote-controlled car, is pretty wild. They each have a quadrant and as the car drives in and out of their zone the robots hand off tracking to each other. I’d call it recommended viewing. And the video showing it landing on a moving target (aircraft carrier) just makes me want to see what the latest designs are for the Littoral Combat Ship I mentioned a while back (reLink). This is some worryingly wicked stuff.

After you check the videos out, stop by to see just how easy it is to get one of the helicopters (Link). They didn’t have those when I was a kid.

I’ve been looking for some time to read the discussion with Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money, over on The WELL (Link), and finally found it. Fortunately it hasn’t progressed as fast as I figured it would, so it didn’t take too long to catch up. At this point they’re on the usual topic of “why do people pay real money for stuff that isn’t real”, about which I’ve posted my own thoughts both here and elsewhere. They haven’t really discussed some of the more interesting social side effects of virtual world technology; just some hints here and there. I’d like to see them address some of the issues I raised in my post on the SL Future Salon blog (Link). Perhaps they’ll be covering those issues soon. Worth keeping an eye on.

via Open the Future

This morning I happened across an interesting though not unexpected bit of advertising (Link): a poster showing a Second Life avatar decked out in virtual clothing (the boots being the advertised item) but formatted as a comic book page.

What’s interesting to me isn’t this particular mash up; there are more interesting things to come which I believe will really catch everyone’s attention. It wasn’t the use of videogame characters in comics; videogame screencaps converted to comic book pages has been around for a while. It didn’t even strike me as new that a real person could – as suggested by these images – create a “fictional” avatar/character, use that character in a different media format, fund that effort through embedded advertising (of virtual goods, no less) and eventually ship tangible goods. It doesn’t stop there. Continue reading →

Rather than repeat previous observations (like this one – reLink), I’ll let this forum posting over on Map-Center (Link) – a once-thriving level development forum – speak for me:

I was looking at the list of maps on lvlworld waiting to be reviewed I couldnt help wondering what on earth is happening to the mapping scene. The maps there are in the main so poor that I couldnt be bothered to write reviews. Newbs need a chance to learn….no problem with that, I can remember being there. Obvious mistakes, mising textures etc. The difference these days is that there seems to be no experienced mapper producing anything.

What on earth is going on!
Continue reading →