If you aren't familiar with Snapzilla, by SLUniverse, I recommend checking it out before you read further. It's a brilliant idea - it uses SL's built-in "e-mail snapshot" feature to post pictures to the web in a real-time, shared environment. There's search tools, comments, ratings, and more, and it's a real fine job by SL resident Cristiano Midnight & Co. I was impressed the first time that I perused the site, and recently I realized the real potential of the site: Instant Photojournalism.
Evolution of Snapzilla
Originally the site was more like a camera phone picture website. Snapzilla was pictures of friends, neat builds, dances, and overall common pictures from all over SL. Lately on the forums there has been talk about avatar keys and privacy; many residents are concerned about 3rd party sites getting hold of lists of keys, which are static and unique to each SL user. In general terms, LL has made it clear that they will not stand for abuse of keys. Many players are still concerned, but from a scripting perspective, it is really, really, really easy to obtain a resident key. It's sort of like a static IP - the bottom line is that there needs to be a unique ID for each resident in order to route all the data to the end-user's computer.
My neighbor, Tcoz Bach, expressed his opinion about player keys by putting up two large signs over his land. I'm not sure if he was being serious, or playing a reverse psychology tactic - I'll let you be the judge. What is clear is that Tcoz clearly wanted these signs to be noticed. I saw them, and immediately thought it would be a worthy picture to post in Snapzilla. I was delighted that, within minutes, my pictures was up there for the world to see.
Instant Photojournalism
I came, I saw, I immortalized in picture online. Instant photojournalism! I love it! While 'blogging is rewarding in a similar way, my experience in my college newspaper tought me that pictures were so much more meaningful and attention-getting. Hamlet knows this fact well, and includes lots of pictures in his 'blog. The difference is Hamlet is a Linden sponsored writer who releases articles on a schedule, while Snapzilla is a way for any resident to near-instantly report on the news!
Think of the possibilities! I've already seen parties in progress, sure, but what about news events in progress? Uses I foresee: A gathering of veteran residents is captured. A neighborly dispute is illustrated. Content loss is shown as a warning to other residents. A firebomber is caught red-handed at a club. A crumbling bridge is documented for maintenance request to the Lindens.
And the risks...
Certainly, a free-for-all on snapshots is going to lead to problems. There's been some discussion in the forums already. What pictures outright can't be posted? I remember a thread describing overtly racist imagery. That, or other clearer-cut issues will get your avatar banned by Snapzilla management. But what about adult content? Or singling out players in a negative light? Or advertising spam? Or pictures that are a waste of space, like a picture of a white wall, with no details?
Ironically, between the time I posted that picture of Tcoz's sign and now, LL patched SL and the SL home page map was updated. Before the patch, the home page had some random pictures from within SL, and 3 live pictures. Now the map, instead of clicking and having random images, will show points on the SL map that correspond to actual in-world locations of pictures being uploaded to Snapzilla. (Blatant self-tooting-own-horn for suggesting the change.) My picture that kicked off my SL photojournalism was now linked off the SL home page! (And still is, as I post this! Just click the Varney sim!)
Conflict of Interest -or- In Linden Lab's Interests?
So now the picture I took of a sign that expresses concerns about Second Life ... is now directly linked from the Second Life home page. How ironic! There is already discussion ongoing in the forum as to the risks Linden Lab takes in putting these pictures up dynamically, and I am very interested to see what Linden Lab will censor. From a discussion with Robin Linden about the Teen Grid, (coming next edition of this 'blog!) LL already has a tool / tools to filter images.
Will this be incorporated to the home page pictures?
Will LL nix the whole idea?
How far will residents push the envelope of exploiting this system?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
5/26/2005
Snapzilla: Instant Photojournalism
5/20/2005
What, Why, How the Metaverse?
I suppose the first thing I ought to discuss is "The Metaverse". (And I'll try and be concise.)
What?
The Metaverse was coined by post-cyberpunk writer Neal Stephenson, in one of my favorite books, Snow Crash. It was written fifteen years ago before the Internet, or even computers, were mainstream, before Times Square had 50 foot high LCD screens, (Hello, Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner?) before everyone had a cellular phone, and certainly before computer graphics had expanded beyond Super Mario World. The Metaverse is a networked, immersive virtual world in which a great deal of the book takes place. Of course, the base concepts were there, (most notably: William Gibson's Neuromancer) but what greatly sets Stepheson apart from previous authors is that his prediction of the near-future is plausable. And so thousands of geeks set out to create a metaverse.
I was one of those geeks. I read Snow Crash halfway through college, and decided that I would have to be involved in creating the Metaverse. My projections, at the time, were that projects could perhaps start around 2005. I was halfway through a spiral notebook full of notes on how I was going to make a 3-D Internet, when I learned of Second Life. God, I only wish sooner. After spending a few weeks in Second Life, I realized Linden Lab was likely to pull it off.
Later, in Fall of 2004, I managed to borrow some time from Linden Lab's creator and CEO, Philip Linden for a conversation. This guy's the real deal. I finished that conversation 100% convinced that Linden Lab was going to make the Metaverse real. A few weeks later, in a Town Hall meeting in SL, Philip declared Second Life to be the Metaverse in early stages, and that it would take over the world.
Now, disclaimer: It's fairly widely agreed that The Metaverse won't be a duplicate of Stephenson's vision. When I refer to "The Metaverse", I mean a new Internet - a virtual world for the World.
Why?
What perhaps struck me the most about that conversation, was the answer when I asked Philip what he found rewarding in SL. He noted something I'd observed as well, that people from all around the world were sharing ideas, interacting. "So Second Life will bring world peace?" Something like that. *grin*
Why SL / Metaverse is great:
- Developers have a place to create art, games, 3-D environmental design, and then have their work published immediately to a fast-growing community, without having the overhead of high-cost development tools, architecture development, or publishing costs.
- SL gives opportunities for complete amateurs to learn skills they may have never had a chance to be exposed to: Photoshop, Poser, 3-D building, DJing, the list goes on ...
- People all over the world are coming and exchanging ideas in a much more meaningful setting than plain text. I truly believe this is a new Renaissance we are entering!
- The metaverse is a chance to develop e a whole new method of organizing data.
- SL attracts geeks, which contributes to its success.
The Metaverse is simply the natural evolution of the Internet, for two main reasons.
Firstly, the Internet today is mainly text interaction. Text interaction is very simply insufficient. Even voice chat, while providing the nuance of tonality and inflection, lacks the sublime beauty in body-language.
Secondly, the Internet is, and has been, essentially a flat bunch of magazines for you to browse. Sure, there's vector graphics, (Flash, Shockwave, et al) but the Internet is behind on today's hardware capabilities. Video games are now 3-D with slicker and cooler effects coming out all the time. Clearly it's the preferred method of using a computer ... soooo, why not the Internet browser, too?
How?
Gwenyth has a solid grasp on some ideas for how SL should head to become The Metaverse. She points out the main roadblock: points of SL that remain centralized. Quite simply, if The Metavere is going to be scalable, there can't be any one central device. Period. The concept is completely backward to that of how the Internet was designed; that is, namely, that if part of a system is hosed, the rest of the system should work independently. (Thanks, Cold War fears of nuclear attack for ARPANet's distributed model!)
But I see another key missing feature: Reverse Compatibility.
My original design for my 3-D Internet was to basically make custom HTML tags that would be ignored by standard browsers. These tags would become a layer on top of existing HTML standards. The tags could represent object primitives, behaviors, data, etc, and a custom browser would read them and create the 3-D sites. Conventional sites could then still be displayed as flat windows, and the difficulty of moving people over to the new system would be minor. (Sidenote: Gee, I'm glad Internet copyright laws protect this idea now that I'm finally publishing it!)
Second Life is decidedly another method entirely. I have been badgering Linden Lab with feature suggestions since I have come to SL, as have others, and more and more I see SL growing to a reverse compatible system. Let's run-down the features SL needs to be fully reverse compatible:
- Connectivity in/out of the Internet
- Full HTML support
- Vector graphics (Flash, Shockwave)
- Use of any programming language
- Plugin compatibility (video, audio, etc)
- API
Connectivity in/out of the Internet
Linden Lab has taken several steps in this direction:
- We have weblinks from SL to the 'Net, and we have links from the 'Net that will open a landmark in SL.
- XML-RPC is partially integrated, but remains 1-way due to security / spam concerns.
- E-mail in/out of SL is limited
Full HTML support / Vector graphics
HTML and vector graphics (not vektor graphic!) has been confirmed as a planned feature, according to Cory Linden in a recent Town Hall Meeting. HTML is to be the priority, vector graphics afterward. Makes sense.
Use of any programming language
LL is planning on converting the bytecode of its scripting language to "mono" - a standard which other languages use. This doesn't mean we get to use C++ yet, but it does mean, according to Cory, that Linden Scripting Language (LSL) will be "100 times faster".
Plugin compatibility (video, audio, etc)
Streaming music was inserted to SL months ago, and works fairly easily and reliably.
SL version 1.6 brought streaming video, and despite it's problems, it's smooth as anything! Considering Philip was a former Real Networks exec, I don't think it's any surprise that this implementation looks so good.
The nice thing is that they just hook up your computer with the stream provider, so it's a distributed model that's not adding load to SL's servers.
API
Ah, the API. When will we have an interface that lets us host our own servers, and truly make SL a distributed model? - I suppose that's the $2^16 question, ain't it? What will be Linden Lab's business plan past renting servers? Will Linden Lab get more big money grants? Will Linden Lab be bought out by Google? We may have to just wait on this one to know.
...
Conclusion
I'd say Philip was right. SL is indeed The Metaverse in early stages. I may add there are some other milestones that I expect to see needed to truly have an immersive 3-D metaverse: Reasonably priced 3-D goggles, bio-feedback input and output, fiber-optic wire to every doorstep as the standard for bandwidth, and a whole bunch of standards that are Internationally approved.
But those are other topics for another time. *grin*
5/19/2005
SL Forums + What I Will & Won't Say
Okay, so more about why I'm 'blogging and not just forum...ing.
The Second Life forums, both official and unaffiliated, have become quagmires. It's not even so much the trolling - of which there is excessive - but I find I'm having difficult discussing interesting topics as I used to be able.
The Lindens do a decent job patrolling it, and lately people have been better at keeping civil. No, the problem is mainly just volume; more and more are posting on the forum, and it's mostly just an announcement forum now. If there's a public issue that needs attention, then sure, the forum is the place to go. If it's ideas needing discussion, well, prepare to watch your thread be buried by a swarm of posts. And I absolutely can't stand postings in the wrong forum for no other reason than lack of looking at the "subjects" of the different areas, but I suppose that's an age-old forum gripe wherever you blog.
Let's face it: 'Blogging is where it's at. It's mini-media, highly-accessable, and somewhat magical in its illusion of authority on all subjects. 'Blogs are the Internet news what Jon Stewart is to cable news: witty, off-the-cuff, and decidedly less biased from a lack of vested interests. 'Blogs give the author much more flexibility with the content and format, and blah blah blah yadda yadda (insert more raving about 'blogs here).
Hamlet Linden is the most noticeable Second Life 'blogger, perhaps because Linden Lab pays him to be an embedded journalist, or perhaps because he writes decent articles. From the link I just provided, you can find links to a lot of other Second Life 'bloggers.
What I will not write about here will be drama about people.
What I will write about here will be Second Life issues: The evolution of Second Life into the Metaverse, my projects, other residents' projects, and perhaps some controvertial issues in Second Life.
Bonus: I highly recommend Ben Folds' new album Songs For Silverman. The album is poignant, beautifully written, and is musically fantastic.
Enter: The Pendragon
Hi.
My name is Hiro Pendragon.
Okay, my psuedoname is Hiro Pendragon, but we'll be sticking to that until I get famous, k?
I am a resident of Second Life, which I can describe a few ways:
(a) The next-generation browser to the Internet.
(b) A fully 3-D, immersive virtual world with tools for full user content creation.
(c) The Metaverse.
(d) A place for your imagination to go nuts.
All pretty much mean the same thing. :)
Reasons I'm starting this 'blog:
(1) I haven't 'blogged in a while, and I kind of miss it.
(2) The Second Life forums have become more of just a public notice forum, and less of a place where people are able to discuss issues. Spam and trolling are rampant, and good threads with interesting discussions get buried and forgotten.
(3) I have a bunch of ideas and perceptions about Second Life, virtual worlds, the Metaverse, online gaming, geekdom, yadda yadda, that I want to share in one area.
Welcome to all my friends, both SL and RL!
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