The lead designer for our Second Life island, Metrotopia: City of Superheroes, has crafted a machinima to showcase the city. You can view it here on YouTube. Our thanks for Dr. Asp for all his hard work!
Posted in Machinima.
By CarrieLynn
– 2010/12/07
Katalabs, a Silicon Valley based company founded by former Stanford University researchers, has released their Sirikata-based in-browser virtual world platform called “KataSpace”. KataSpace uses the very promising WebGL technology to provide its users the ability to navigate, communicate and create content in 3D virtual spaces with a browser such as Firefox 4 beta that has WebGL support (without the need for an extra plug-in).
With the development of their open-source virtual world platform, the Sirikata team has already been giving signals about potential breakthroughs in virtual worlds and Web integration; and with the release of KataSpace, Katalabs showed us that hundreds of avatars can be hosted at the same time in a browser-based world.
Not surprisingly, in their blog, Katalabs says:
“We believe the web can be made better through real-time, synchronized collaboration and communication environments built at the intersection of 2D and 3D. These will be delivered through the browser you already use and loaded by simply clicking a link.”
KataSpace has already begun to attract attention from other important media channels, too. (Here are CNET’s and ArsTechnica’s articles on KataSpace).
KataSpace sample environment can be visited at: http://kataspace.sirikata.com/
Posted in Blog, Reviews.
Tagged with 3D Web, innovation, KataSpace, open source, sirikata, Virtual Worlds.
By ates
– 2010/12/04
Want to promote ProViWo project, which has some overlaps with our Danish project. I know that there is very interesting work in progress.
ProViWo is a collaborative research project with Aalto University School of Science and Technology, BIT Research Centre (Finland), Stanford University (USA), Free University of Amsterdam, Novay (The Netherlands) and University of St.Gallen (Switzerland).
Their website describes the research project as studies on how virtual worlds can be used in professional, work related collaboration and to enhance productivity in globally distributed teams. Here, virtual worlds refer to 3D environments, where users can flexibly change their avatars. The studies explore both the strategical and managerial point of views to virtual worlds at work and different kinds of professional collaboration possibilities and productivity potentials of virtual worlds in-depth.
Funded by Tekes
Posted in Blog, Reviews.
Tagged with flexible 3D environments, Pro ViWo, Professional Collaboration and Productivity.
By lisbethf
– 2010/11/30
Wagner James Au, of New World Notes, has a story today on a new program that will be beta testing next month to allow people to access Second Life and OpenSim via their browsers. “Canvas” was made by Chris Collins, formerly of Linden Labs, to be a web-based viewer to facilitate people’s accessing Open Sim and Second Life. This news follows on the news from two weeks back on the acquisition of another Linden Labs alumni, Cory Ondrejka, and his start-up by Facebook.
These two events may be unconnected, but consider the possibilities of being able to integrate the most user-generated friendly virtual worlds with the world’s largest social network. Facebook, which started out connecting classmates, could become a center for virtual classes to be held. And that is just one possibility.
Posted in Blog, Reviews.
Tagged with Canvas, integration of virtual worlds and social networks, OpenSim, Second Life.
By CarrieLynn
– 2010/11/29
The Volume 1, Issue 1 of Metaverse Creativity Journal has just been published by Intellect. This new Journal is edited by Elif Ayiter (Sabanci University) and Yacov Sharir (University of Texas, at Austin).
The articles you can read in this first free issue of Metaverse Creativity are:
Cyber-archaeology and metaverse collaborative systems, by Maurizio Forte and Gregorij Kurillo
For a critical perspective of the value of web art, by Claudia Sandoval
Using 2D photography as a 3D constructional tool within the metaverse, by Murat Germen
Epoch of plasticity: The metaverse as a vehicle for cognitive enhancement, by Natasha Vita-More
LPDT2, by Roy Ascott, Elif Ayiter, Max Moswitzer and Selavy Oh
Surpassing human nature: Reinventions of and for the body as a consequence of astronomical experiments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by Luca Ayala
Virtual puppet, my love impossible, by Semi Ryu
Enjoy 
Posted in Blog, Publications.
Tagged with creativity, inn, Journal, Metaverse Creativity.
By dixi
– 2010/11/29
Posted in Conferences, Video and Sound.
Tagged with architects, communication, design, ECREA, embassies, innovation, Machinima, metaphors, nations, Second Life, sense-making.
By CarrieLynn
– 2010/11/23
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