Still Alive

Yes, this blog is still alive. I single handedly support both this blog and the VirtuED blog. Over the past two months we’ve had a HUGE number of things going on that have drained my time away from these two blogs.

With the school year coming to a close, I will actually get some time to catch up and bring these blogs up to current. I have a ton of updates and pictures from our Kyoto Spring Break Exchange to post to the VirtuED blog. We’ve had to completely reschedule our summer school for February due to travel restrictions for students in Japan travelling to the US due to the swine flu pandemic.

Too many things to list here have fully occupied my time of late. But never fear, over the next few weeks these pages will be updated and back on track. Lots of exciting things are planned for this next school year, with the possibility of some cool things this summer now that the Kyoto summer school is off. So check back soon and you’ll see a whole bunch of updates, and a return to a regular posting of info to these sites.

New Albums Posted to Flickr

I have been so busy with both work and family that I’ve lagged in getting two of the most recent photo albums online.  Tonight everyone went to bed early here at the Trevena household, so I have a few hours to do some catching up.  I always load the full resolution photos to Flickr, so it’s a time consuming thing to ge them organized, uploaded, tagged and descriptions written.  Both of these photo albums are related to NASA: 

The NASA workshop was so much fun.  I have a ton of pictures, but I opted to only post a few of my favorites.  Far too many have pictures of individuals that were in attendance at the event, and I am not sure that they would want their pictures posted here.  And I did not get permission to post their pictures.

This workshop was a unique opportunity for me and my students.  And as you can see from the pictures, NASA allowed me to bring one of my sons, Corey, for the weekend workshop.  I hope that we have other opportunities with PacRimX to participate in similar workshops. 

Congressional Hearing on Virtual Worlds

I just stumbled on news of a hearing that started today (April 1^st) in Washington:

Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium

Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Tuesday, April 1, 2008, 9:30 a.m.
2123 Rayburn House Office Building

There is a page set up at the Energy and Commerce website to track this hearing. On that page is a link to a webcast of the hearing that can be streamed or downloaded.

All of the listed witnesses from day one at the page are Second Life centric (click on each name for their prepared statements):

Mr. Philip Rosedale
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Linden Lab
945 Battery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

Ms. Susan Tenby
Senior Manager
Community Development
TechSoup
435 Brannan Street, Suite 100
San Francisco, CA 94107

Larry Johnson, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
The New Media Consortium
Building One, Suite 100
6101 West Courtyard Drive
Austin, TX 78730

Colin J. Parris, Ph.D.
Vice President
Digital Convergence
IBM Research
IBM Corporation
Somers, NY 10589

I’ve not had an opportunity yet to listen to these proceedings, so I will have to post my impressions in a few days. It should make for some interesting listening.

Update: There are some unedited notes over on Fleep’s Deep Thoughts blog.

Immersive Controller for Virtual Worlds?

Motus Games has a controller that they are developing for gaming (consoles and PC’s). While it may look like the offspring of a Wii controller and a lighsaber, the company actually predates the Nintendo Wii by a number of years, being founded in 2001.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you know that this is where I think virtual world controllers need to go BEFORE these platforms will go mainstream. I’ve posted many stories about hacks to the Wii controller for the PC that held some promise for experimenting with this technology, and also articles on controllers like the Space Navigator (that STILL does not have a programmable driver for Second Life) for controlling your avatar. But the Darwin controller looks to be the first that may actually fill the need. I first posted on this back in the beginning of February, but there’s a lot more info out now.

Currently this controller is not available in retail outlets. There is a page at the Motus website that has an email address for requesting test units, and for getting on a priority list. I’ve already tossed PacRimX’s name into the list with an email to the company. I’m also going to pass this along to my friends as Sun who are developing the Darkstar/Wonderland environment, so they may consider adapting this to that platform.

The next evolution of the Internet cannot be dependent on keyboards and mice for its interface. My kids have had a Nintendo Wii from day one. I’ve had people as old as 67 pick up a Wii controller and play a round of bowling with little to no instruction. Try to do that with a PC, it’s not going to happen. Mitch Kapor’s comments in yesterday’s Metanomics interview focused on the difficulty of the Second Life environments, and the low user retention rates. Natural gesture based controls will go a lot further than any modifications to the interface in broadening the appeal and usefulness of these virtual environments. Add to this that students outside of the United States (like our Kyoto students) have difficulty adapting to the keyboard mouse combination, as they’ve always played games on consoles.

I’ll keep an eye on Motus Gaming and post additional information as it become available. Be sure to look at the bottom of the pages at the Motus site for a scrolling ticker of reviews of this controller from a variety of publications. I found this in MIT’s Technology Review Magazine this month.

Fluid Entertainment to develop a children’s MMO

IGN has an article up about a $3.2 million investment to develop an environmental MMO for children:

Fluid Entertainment Gets $3.2 Million for New MMO

Fluid Entertainment is well known for their children’s software titles. The development of an MMO is something new for the company. Here’s a description of the game from the press release:

“Fluid Entertainment will use the financing to complete development of an engaging, interactive, and environmentally themed “green” game for kids. Slated for launch later this year, the game will feature unprecedented levels of engaging gameplay for children’s MMOs, while infusing the compelling narrative with a meaningful purpose.”

Anyone who reads this blog is aware of my disappointment in many of the children’s MMO’s that are released that are nothing more than mindless button mashers with no real purpose or educational value. It will be interested to see which side of the spectrum this MMO lands on.

MacArthur Series: Do Avatars Dream of Civil Rights?

From the release:

The USC Institute for Network Culture and Global Kids present a discussion on Virtual Liberties: Do Avatars Dream of Civil Rights?

12:00p.m. PST on Monday, January 28, 2008

Please join the USC Institute for Network Culture and Global Kids for the first event in an upcoming series on philanthropy and virtual worlds.

The event, “Virtual Liberties: Do Avatars Dream of Civil Rights?” will be held on the USC Annenberg Island [ http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ilha%20de%20Intercambio/9/22/29 ] or on the Global Kids estate [ www.tinyurl.com/2m4dnpSecond ] on Second Life at 12:00p.m. PST on Monday, January 28, 2008.

Jonathan F. Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation, will chair a discussion about the avatar civil liberties. Joining him will be Robin Harper, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development from Linden Lab, and Jack Balkin, professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

Prior to their remarks, Douglas Thomas, Professor at USC and Director of the Institute for Network Culture, and Barry Joseph, Director of Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program, will give updates on and announce a dramatic series of programs as part of MacArthur’s year exploring philanthropy in virtual worlds. Thomas and Joseph are MacArthur grantees.

A Horrible Week on PacRimX

Little did I know how prophetic my blog post this past Friday was going to be about the stability of the infrastructure of Second Life. Over the weekend we lost one of our three islands, this was then followed on Monday by another island disappearing into the sea (I was actually watching one of my sons online when it blinked out).

Bridges to Nowhere

We are now down to just the Modesto Island being online and usable on the grid. The few bridges that still exist from our summer activity with Kyoto now go into empty ocean instead of the Kyoto Island. Yesterday our one island that was online was completely unstable and slower than I’ve ever seen it. Trying (and that is the operative word here) to fly from one side of the island to the other felt as if I were dragging the entire island behind me.

My calls to the Concierge at Linden Lab have netted very little information or help. Yesterday I had the person on the other end of the phone tell me that they were on the Kyoto Island, they could see me floating above the Modesto Island, and that all was fine from their perspective. I asked them to fly towards me, as I could not see them. I then heard “Oh, there seems to be a problem, we’ll get it fixed and you’ll be up within the hour.” The hour came and went and the island never rose from the depths again. That was yesterday.

I looked at the blog this morning upon arriving at work and there was good news, the nagging grid problems have all been resolved. I logged into Second Life to find that our islands were still offline. I picked up the phone and called the Concierge again. They told me that they knew what the problem is, and that they will move us to new servers and have us back up within the hour. That was about 45 minutes ago. We’ll see if they actually get them online today (I’ll update this post later today).

And therein lies the problem, the stability of the platform is such that it is very difficult to schedule lab time or class assignments without having these types of issues popping up and preventing the students from completing their projects. We have a scheduled event between Kyoto Gakuen and Modesto City Schools next Tuesday (November 27^th). The Kyoto students are putting on a virtual version of the annual Kyoto celebration of the Festival of Ages. The Kyoto students were making period outfits and displays (along with floats) for this event. It was going to be tight for them to get it all done by Tuesday. We started experiencing login problems last Wednesday, and have not been able to use the islands since then. The students have lost five days in the lab now with their projects. Now, here in the US, we have the long Thanksgiving weekend ahead (less lab time).

The frustration level among our teachers trying to use Second Life in their classes, and the uncertainty of our own staff in trying to determine if the problems were in-house or at Linden Lab has been very high this past week. The few messages posted to the Second Life blog have been light on details and not very helpful, espeically in estimating when the problems might be resolved. Linden Lab really needs to work on their communication channels with their customers (especially the paying customers calling into the Concierge). We are paying close to $1,500/month for our three islands, and are about to add another to the project. I expect a higher level of support, and a whole lot more information when calling into the Concierge with downed islands.

And to restate my point from last week, Second Life is definitely not ready for “prime time“. At best, the platform is in a semi-stable late BETA phase after five years of commercial availability. These kinds of issues would not be tolerated in other commercial virtual platforms and MMO’s. It’s lucky for Linden Lab that most of the residents, especially the educators, still consider Second Life as a work in progress. I have to wonder when we will hit a tipping point and start to have people demanding the same stability out of Second Life as they expect in their other platforms?

Communications Breakdown or Rapid Growth Syndrome?

I posted a blog entry the other day about the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference. That blog post changed from my original intent of covering the conference to a discussion about Second Life being ready for “prime time”, and the lack of communications coming out of Linden Lab on measures being take to address grid concurrency issues and server issues. This change was the result of a week of discussions on the SLED listserv on Second Life infrastructure, and how ready Second Life is to go “mainstream”.

So imagine my surprise today when scanning the past week’s posts on other blogs to find one at New World Notes dealing with the communications breakdown at Linden Lab. Here are two links (each with a lot of commenets):

• Communication Breakdown: 83% surveyed Residents report Poor/Mixed Linden-to-Resident communications
  
• Communication Breakdown, Addressed: Robin Linden responds

Blending Virtual Worlds and the Real World

Terra Nova has a post up about using virtual worlds for testing systems and recognizing patterns in systems:

Blending Virtual Worlds and the real world

Bob McGinley ponders how we might make people productive while they are virtual.

“Lets say we want to study a pandemic emergency, and try to contain the breakout of a new virulent virus strain. These types of simulations already exist to show containment speeds and mortality rates, what they lack is insight into the effectiveness of containment steps and quarantine. Introduce the simulation into the virtual world and allow communities to apply variances to the model, and patterns begin to develop. As the masses collectively think through a problem, knowledge is gained.”

This reminds me of a story back in October of 2005. A bug caused a virtual blood virus to spread from an isolated instance in World of Warcraft out into the general population infecting players and non-player characters alike. It was a very interesting and enlightening outbreak to say the least, as many of the players did not know what was happening. People are attached to their virtual selves, and many panicked as people around them started to die, fearing for their own virtual lives. Others teleported into capital cities to try to spread the disease to others.

NPR radio did a segment on this (audio clip embedded):

‘Virtual’ Virus Sheds Light on Real-World Behavior

Congress set to issue virtual taxation report in August

CNET has an article up about taxation of virtual property/assets:

Congress set to issue virtual taxation report in August

A Congressional Committee will issue their report on taxation of virtual assets in August. I find it highly unlikely that they will move on this anytime soon. There have been fears of Internet taxation for many years now, and it’s always shot down for fear of impeding the growth of the Internet. Even today when the Internet is mainstream and in many homes in America, we still have not seen a move to tax sales on the Internet. Why would Congress decide all of a sudden that virtual property needs to be taxed?

Many virtual worlds are still in their infancy, including Second Life. The subscriber bases are still far too small to base any national tax policy on, yes even with Second Life. The big money is changing hands in illicit trade in virtual goods and gold in MMO’s. Most of this is done off-shore, so any legislation here in the US will be unenforceable overseas. Would Blizzard all of a sudden have to start tracking prices in the black market for virtual goods in order to file W-3D’s every year on the potential income if you were to sell that purple epic drop on the open black market in violation of your terms of service agreement?

This is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve seen in a long time. I would lose all faith in our lawmakers if they move forward with this. At some point years down the line it may be necessary to tax virtual assets, but now is definitely not the time.