Understanding Virtual Worlds » community

Webcasts from the MIT Media Lab

admin — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:10:33 +0000

There are links on Bob Sutor’s blog to the webcasts from the Virtual Worlds: Where Business, Society, Technology & Policy Converge Conference, presented by IBM and the MIT Media Lab in June of this year. There are some interesting thoughts on how virtual worlds will change how we think of identity in the future.

While digging around on the Media Lab site I also discovered webcasts from the h2.0: new minds, new bodies, new identities symposium held on 09 May. There hasn’t been time yet to listen to them but I’m very intrigued by the description:

“A one-day symposium exploring the innovative research focused on human 2.0—the new science of human adaptability, hosted by John Hockenberry.”

community, education, identity, learning, muve, secondlife, virtual, webcast, world

FlickrSLiDR for Your Site

admin — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:12:51 +0000

FlickrSLiDR, a little app by Paul Stamatiou, enables you to create sets of Flickr photos to place on your web site - like this:

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.

Don’t forget to check the Creative Commons license before you use images from other users before you do.

community, flickr, photos

SL Framework for Drupal

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:22:17 +0000

Looks like a Drupal Second Life Framework will be released in the near future. The release is dependent on the release of the web site (and web app) of the company which sponsored the development. Framework by 2bits.

community, drupal, mashup, secondlife

Exploring the World of Kaneva

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:27:04 +0000

Thursday I met up with Rich Weil, Director of Community Relations for the World of Kaneva, for a guided tour. He was a wonderful guide and showed me around while he talked a little about what is happening in Kaneva now, as well as what is ahead.

What - Kaneva is an online virtual world (currently in live beta) where participants can create a free account and download client software to log into the world. It is not a game, it is a virtual, social world - like Second Life, Active Worlds or There.com. When you create an account a space on Kaneva’s community web site is also created for you that operates similarly to MySpace. Think of the whole thing as a mashup between a social network and a virtual world.

Where - My initial foray into Kaneva was unaccompanied and I missed a lot of what was happening - having no idea where to go. Upon logging in I found myself at the mall, the default location for everyone’s first visit to the world. In the mall you can buy clothes, shoes, and a few other things to further customize your avatar. Things that you purchase are stored in your inventory until you are ready to use them. Although there are plenty of people who are happy to chat with you in the mall there are other places to visit too - this was the piece I was missing.

Rich showed me how to search for hangouts and people and use the Travel button to get to places I find (like teleporting in SL). Now Kaneva was beginning to feel much larger.

There are two types of spaces in this world - personal and community. Each person is given an apartment to decorate and invite friends to when they create their account - these are the personal spaces. Additionally, every group that is created on the Kaneva community web site is given a community space in world that is also customizable.

Who - The first thing that struck me about the Kaneva community is just HOW social they are. I had been getting lots of raves and friend requests as I wandered around - not even realizing it until I happened across the Personal Messages window, only to find three whole pages of requests. The same thing happens on the community web site.
Something else that surprised me was that the community allows teens, and spaces containing adult content are marked as “restricted,” which essentially denies access to those who are underage.

Kaneva is ALL about being social and that is how they are differentiating themselves from other virtual worlds. They try to make it as easy as possible to stream in and share media from other social web sites within apartments and the community spaces.

How - So what is the business model here and how do they plan on making money? Credits. Right now everyone is spawned into Kaneva with credits that they can spend on clothing and furniture. In the future, credits will be available for purchase to allow residents to build and customize their spaces out further.

What sets Kaneva apart from other MMOs is the Kaneva Game Platform (KGP). The KGP is open source and available for download to enable anyone to develop their own virtual world. While the KGP is not directly tied to the live Kaneva world, those who are interested can host their own servers for custom development (more here). There are licensing options outlined on their website. Kaneva also supports a developer community.

Kaneva looks very interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing more examples of how people are sharing media in world.

Unfortunately, the platform is only available for Windows at the moment, so Mac and Linux users will have to wait a little before they are able to connect.

Kaneva Inc is based in Atlanta, GA.

community, kaneva, muve, technology, virtual, world

Ogoglio

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 06:07:59 +0000

Came across this project on 3pedia (another interesting resource). The premise of Ogoglio is this, “Many people now start their careers with a deep understanding of cooperative 3D communities like World of Warcraft, but when they enter the workplace they are handed email and a shared calendar and are expected to teach themselves how to be productive. Instead of forcing people to limit their communication to these thin channels, the Ogoglio project will provide community workspaces with the planning and coordination tools which have proven to be effective in multiplayer online games.”

community, ogoglio, virtual, world

Video Tutorials

admin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:01:52 +0000

Claudia Linden has pointed out that there are a number of video tutorials available on the SL wiki. I had forgotten about the wiki and am glad to see it is getting some attention. If you have one of your own, why not add it?

community, education, tutorials

Today OpenID, Tomorrow …?

admin — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:56:07 +0000

I have an OpenID and use it wherever possible - though it isn’t always
that much. In fact, I’m surprised that the boom of Web2.0 applications
has not seen wider adoption of identity management mechanisms.

Today CommonCraft posted some concise thoughts on OpenID and what wide adoption would mean for online communities. Two projections for the future really stand out to me:

“More Lurker Conversion? On a lot of community sites,
registration is a barrier to participation. Lurkers are often
unregistered. There will always be a high proportion of lurkers, but
OpenID could lower the registration barrier enough to bring new people
into the fray”.

“More Incentives for Good Behavior? Reputation is a big deal
online, either implicit (name recognition) or explicit (ebay rating).
If OpenID increases the portability of reputation, people may be
motivated (and rewarded) to build a positive reputation across sites”.

More conversation sounds fantastic to me, and I wholeheartedly agree with this projection simply because I hate registering to comment on a blog, and love when I can use my TypeKey ID or Google ID (in the case of Blogger). Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use my OpenID?

Evaluating online reputation will become more of a necessity the more connected we all become, along with the increasing frequency in which we participate in computer-mediated interactions. It is a vital skill that we all need to learn if we haven’t already, and that our children need to learn as well. I’m all for tools that help usget to that end. It would be interesting to see it tied to more services like Opinity - though I admittedly do not spend too much time actively developing my reputation on that service, and wish it was possible to hook more services into it. It is a step in the right direction though.

community, identity, technology