Entering a fluid state

Fluid. Liquid. Streaming. It are words often used to describe the new reality the more affluent part of humanity lives in. We are always on now, social, webbed, mobile, connected. As Om Malik says in Will We Define or Limit the Future: Mobile phones of today might have innards of… Continue reading

Eternal shame! World of Warcraft mage beats Second Life geeks!

Oh my! Is our Second Life community, and especially the geeky part of it, losing it’s innovative edge? New World Notes posted a few days ago about how the Kinect is being used to move around and play in World of Warcraft. Watch this video: Interesting to note: in 2008… Continue reading

What will our technology mean for 7 billion people?

End this year there will be 7 billion of us. In 2045… possibly 9 billion. Do we lack space? No, we don’t. What we lack is harmony. In this video National Geographic Magazine incites us to meditate the increase in world population, the increasing number of mega-cities (cities with more… Continue reading

The future is here! And it’s even not that unevenly distributed!

In the previous post I briefly mentioned the Kinect as possibly being a part of the further evolution of virtual worlds. I was very interested finding a presentation by former Linden Lab employee Kyle Machulis about the OpenKinect community. Which is kind of neat, because that community demonstrates that one… Continue reading

Existential questions about virtual worlds

It has been interesting to be away from virtual worlds stuff for a few weeks. I had some catching up to do, but at first sight it seems not much has changed. There is another famous Linden Lab employee leaving the company, Jack Linden. Other virtual worlds are presenting themselves… Continue reading

Finally, traveling in SL via the web

In the meantime I managed to try out Second Life via the Gaikai’s cloud-rendered web access, following a tip on the New World Notes. Even though it’s still an experiment, it was a very smooth experience with pretty fast teleporting. I tried out surfing and it worked just fine. In… Continue reading

Affordable AR glasses plus virtual worlds on any device gives us…

Let’s do something wild and combine two fascinating developments. The first one is about augmented reality. As I said in a previous post, I’m not totally convinced that looking through a smartphone camera is such a compelling experience. What about glasses? The conventional wisdom says that it won’t work: people… Continue reading

Shooting video in virtual worlds and games with a virtual handheld camera

Machinima is a crucial aspect of the use of virtual environments for journalism. It basically involves shooting video inside virtual environments and games, eventually mixing this with video from the physical world. Examples can be found for instance on the YouTube channel of Draxtor Despres. The blog Phasing Grace now… Continue reading