port7 – co – uk

I wrote this a few weeks ago intending to post it then, but life has moved on and its not really cutting news now. But still it might be of interest to some.

So I have been joining in the excitement of the developments over at Eolous One and the revolutionary work and development that they are doing with SL / RL integration (I even managed to become an extra in a Machinima by Suzi). Anyway myself along with others feel that this is great leap forward, and is the start of some real cool developments in SL and Virtual Worlds in general. Though talking to other people I get the feeling that they don’t truly grasp the significance of the development, and so I have been thinking of some parallels to illustrate the point.

The easiest one for me to grasp is likening it to the Web, back in the early 90′s when the web was in it’s infancy, most websites were html based affairs. A few sites had some cgi-bin scripting (usually in Perl) that allowed people to submit forms, etc. And while it still provided for a leap forward from Gopher and the BBS systems people were used to, looking back on our perspective now with Web 2.0 and everything it was pretty basic and un-exiting. Then a few sites started linking websites to backed databases with scripting languages such as PHP, ASP, Perl etc. This greatly revolutionized the web with sophisticated websites that could change content dynamically based on what the database has on you. They then progressed to becoming front ends for various tools such as E-Mail systems, Network Monitoring, Business Intelligence, and with the advent of Web 2.0 productivity apps like Spreadsheets and Wordprocesors. This was a evolution from the old world where websites were websites, client – server apps were client – server apps, and men were men.

This is what the next generation of SL build will take us, the maturing of the 3d internet. I remember reading William Gibsons cyberpunk books years ago and remember imagining what it would be like. I think SL is the closest thing we have to that vision.

So after reading the Metaversed post, I thought I would have a wander over to the Scout Jamboree SL Island. Being a Scout myself many years ago I had a sort of slight interest.

It seems the island is being funded by the Scouting Association, but most of the build is being done by Ynot Fenua, a Cub Leader from Suffolk. I managed to catch up with him while he was in the middle of building a replica of the RL Jamboree Clock Tower. It seem’s he has done all the building on the island, apart from some boats. I was quite impressed with the build, while not a Rivers Run Red, or Melting Dot’s, I like the layout. As I said to Ynot, it compels you to explore, which is a good thing I guess.

It also has a nifty fairground ride type thing, you know those ones where you sit in them and they just shoot you straight up in the air. What he did say is that there is quite an issue at the moment in Scouts, where they are woefully short of leaders, and this is one of the attempts at getting leaders interested. I would be happy to help out but my hands are full at the moment still getting used to being a father!

Is this a first? A lawsuit in SL?

It seems that PADI (the Scuba Diving certification company) have setup something in SL, from the looks of it, its about e-learning. As someone who is Open Water Certified, I know there is quite a bit of classroom work to be done before you even get in the water, so I can see how SL could help here.

What is strange is that they seem to have setup right next to virtual Manchester of all places!!

Here are some snaps..

So at a ‘geek meet’ in SL tonight and I thought that I would have a look at what sort of network trafic that SL creates. And so here it is….

It show’s me and my SL client, and also a program called ‘EtherApe’ that shows all network connections. So it appears that for SL there is one connection to util.agni.secondlife.com and another connection to .agni.secondlife.com, where is something like sim1234. The port it uses is some UDP port, didn’t get that info at the time.

And trafic increases when ‘rezzing’ is going on.

Interesting….

So it seems that Intel are stepping up their SL activity, no doubt prompted by Lindens revelations (about 1/2 way down the page) that they made extensive use of AMD processors (though now they are moving to intel).

So I went looking last night for Intel’s Devzone, and that took some time, I eventually had to IM Gadget Mandelbrot and get him to teleport me there. When I got there it turned out that I was late for the European launch and too early for the North American one (blame 7 month old Niamh for that).

Still there were a few people there and I got chatting to them. Apparently the idea is to create an environment for people to collaborate on various development projects, both for SL and RL. A bit like Google’s Summer of Code and Sourceforge (but more Fun ). So I will continue to keep an eye open and monitor progress. Apparently a MP3 of the launch will become available at some point, so I will grab that when its released.

I quite liked the architecture of the place, very 70′s and Tracey Island!

So wandering around in-world on Bank Holiday Monday, I pop over to Lindens place in SL where I find a list of educational establishments in SL. One of them caught my eye, it was the SL Ecosystem a collaborative experiment creating Artificial Life (AL), presumably using scripting.

As you can see from the picture the AL’s are quite primitive, but as things get more sophisticated were could it lead? Is SL a natural environment for AL lifeforms, it certainally seems so, but I think the language may be too primitive yet to create anything decent at the moment.

Still it’s a start.

Interesting that Sony BMG are doing a big launch of an artist of theirs in Second Life, its Paula DeAnda. Dunno if she is any good or not though…