Future Virtual Worlds

The concepts for the building tools in the virtual world featured in this film short are quite ingenious.

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

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Searching the Internet of Things: Overlay Concept

Designer Mac Funamizu has come up with an elegant conceptual solution for searching the environment that surrounds us. Beyond searching by text as we have become accustomed to with services like Google, the device searches by scanning an object from the environment itself. Imagine being able to search for things you have no reference for, […]

Singulary Summit 2007 Speakers

The Singularity Summit was held last week and for those of us who were not able to attend there are podcasts available on the summit’s website. There is also a transcript of a particularly interesting talk presented by Jamais Cascio titled Openness and the Metaverse Singularity. Some great thoughts by one of the contributors to […]

Configuring the 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator for Second Life

Finally, the SpaceNavigator works in Second Life with the SL Viewer Joystick Flycam function. Huh? What does this mean? Well, it’s possible to use the SpaceNavigator for more smooth camera control than using a mouse while filming machinima. Note that the SpaceNavigator doesn’t give you as much control as a mouse does, but the camera […]

TeacherShare.org

TeacherShare is a proof-of-concept site where educators can share links and learning resources, similar to how social bookmarking services like del.icio.us function. While the learning repository concept isn’t new, this implementation as a collection of shared links has some interesting social features like ranks, comments, and recommendations. It also makes use of a tag cloud […]

Exploring the World of Kaneva

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

Touring Kaneva

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.
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…

Today OpenID, Tomorrow …?

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 […]

New Rig

New! With more productivity packed in every byte. The new laptop is making the once painful tasks of building/texturing much easier. I’ll post more about the specs later, but right now am just amazed at all the things I wasn’t able to see before - like my face. Who knew!

More to Touch Means More to Love

Jeff Han and the Multi-Touch display get a lot of coverage and for good reason. The technology is a revolutionary way to interface with computers and strikes a particular chord with visually-oriented folks. The latest video is of a larger version of the screen and features more of a glimpse into accessing the context menu […]