Sunverse.net

Geography in SL

Geography in Second Life

Geography in Second Life: Neogeography from digitalurban on Vimeo.

The movie above is a 3 minute clip of a work to date in Second Life to explore how 'classic geography and cities' can be imported into Second Life. A high definition version can be viewed via Vimeo by clicking on the HD link in the movie player.

Music is by the Tartan Rascals

See Nature.com for more information on our work and other 'scientists' working in Second Life.

Where 2.0: Augmented Reality, Community Function in Mirror Worlds, and More

This is a very interesting track back from virtualworldsnews.com about the the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference this week, where plenty of people were talking about the tie-ins that make sense for mirror worlds, virtual worlds, and augmented reality. All the video is at Blip TV as well.

Where 2.0: Augmented Reality, Community Function in Mirror Worlds, and More

I didn't make it out to the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference this week, but I'm wishing I had now. Fortunately, they've posted some of the video online as a resource (and more from last year) in addition to other bloggers covering the output. There's a large focus on maps and geotools, obviously, but there's plenty of people already talking about the tie-ins that make sense for mirror worlds, virtual worlds, and augmented reality. All the video is at Blip TV, but I'll round up some of the ones I've found interesting and embed them with summaries below as well.

Tom Churchill, "Augmented Reality Lets the DPD Know Where You Are"

Churchill is the Founder and CEO of Earthscape, which has a beta version of a mirror world layered with a lot of social information and an API that opens it up for even more potential applications. His introduction to this presentation proclaims that "Today's geobrowsers are really at about the same point as IE 1.0." The mash-ups are only getting better, though. One innovation Earthscape developed is an augmented reality system for law enforcement professionals on mobile devices.

Gyro-stabilized infrared cameras are mounted on the bottom of helicopters that feed into a monitor inside. The interface used to be interact with a clunky map system that didn't feed back information on the helicopter's orientation and, generally, made it hard to keep track of a fleeing suspect.  That's problematic to say the least.

"If you are fortunate enough to pick up someone on your camera, you don't want to lose him," said Churchill. "No cop wants to be responsible for some mass murderer getting away because you were trying to figure out where he was at so you could radio the guys on the ground."

A combination of hardware and software let Earthscape convert that information to a computer-generated map, adding extra information, like  street names. That can then be laid on top of the original video street map, making the interface even more effective, displaying any information on file with the municipality in real time.

"The first night, we were able to give the officers on the ground the precise address of a home we saw a suspect hiding in," said Churchill.

As an extra tidbit: Some of the programmers had to hack code while pulling 2 Gs during a fly-along with the Denver Police Department.

Denis Browne, "The Business Case for Simulation, Gaming, and Virtual Worlds"

Well, there's an obvious tie-in here. Denis Browne joined SAP in 2006 to establish the Imagineering team within the Emerging Solutions product group. One of the projects Browne's team has been working on is  "how can we use virtual worlds, simulation, gaming engines in a business context and help our customers deliver new services to their clientele and also at the same time drive down cost of their businesses."

One project has been with Implenia, which has had a couple projects in virtual environments already. Browne showed off one: Implenia's doll house tied to a virtual model for remote control. It's very neat to actually see.

"The point here is that Implenia doesn't manage just one house," said Browne. "They want to be able to efficiently manage those properties remotely instead of sending humans over to interact with the environment."

Every building Implenia  builds today has sensors built in that can interact with SAP's systems. For Browne, the future is here, and the sensor network is only getting bigger: "It's the infrastructure that's going to help us run the world."

John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps: "State of the Geoweb"

Hanke is the Director of Google Earth & Maps, and he teamed up with Jack Dangemond of ESRI for a look at the overall state of the geoweb. Siginificantly, Google's own geospatial data grew by 300% over just the last year. That's only increasing as it makes it easier and easier to add geotags to videos, photos, and information from major media companies. A partnership with ESRI will build that information out even more quickly, adding thousands of live datafeeds that third-party users can use with KML.

To make it easier to sort through all of that, Google announced the launch of a GeoSearch API letting developers tap into all that data and find new ways to use it.

Virtual Earth news without video: It looks like  Director of Microsoft's Live and Local Search and Virtual Earth Vincent Tao's presentation isn't online as video, but other bloggers have picked up the gist of the presentation.

There's some cool updates on the way that should make Virtual Earth both more social and more useful. Microsft is integrating Virtual Earth with Messenger. It's not enabled in the U.S., but it's coming soon. Similar functions will tie in to Outlook as well, letting users schedule meetings--and factor traffic conditions into the alert reminders--using both products. 

Users will also be able to add their own photos, enabling a crowd-sourced creation process for Virtual Earth. I'm not clear on how it works, but it sounds like Microsoft is automating the process of placing the photo in a specific place, making it easy to build out cities quickly.

Bonus videos that I think are really neat, but possibly less relevant: ASU's Paul Torrens talks about research in modeling crowds; Steven Johnson, Co-founder, Outside.in, and author of The Ghost Map, looks at community mapping and the local geospatial Web (from last year); Michael Jones, CTO, Google Earth, talks about tricorders (from last year).

I didn't make it out to the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference this week, but I'm wishing I had now. Fortunately, they've posted some of the video online as a resource (and more from last year) in addition to other bloggers covering the output. There's a large focus on maps and geotools, obviously, but there's plenty of people already talking about the tie-ins that make sense for mirror worlds, virtual worlds, and augmented reality. All the video is at Blip TV, but I'll round up some of the ones I've found interesting and embed them with summaries below as well.

Tom Churchill, "Augmented Reality Lets the DPD Know Where You Are"

Churchill is the Founder and CEO of Earthscape, which has a beta version of a mirror world layered with a lot of social information and an API that opens it up for even more potential applications. His introduction to this presentation proclaims that "Today's geobrowsers are really at about the same point as IE 1.0." The mash-ups are only getting better, though. One innovation Earthscape developed is an augmented reality system for law enforcement professionals on mobile devices.

Gyro-stabilized infrared cameras are mounted on the bottom of helicopters that feed into a monitor inside. The interface used to be interact with a clunky map system that didn't feed back information on the helicopter's orientation and, generally, made it hard to keep track of a fleeing suspect.  That's problematic to say the least.

"If you are fortunate enough to pick up someone on your camera, you don't want to lose him," said Churchill. "No cop wants to be responsible for some mass murderer getting away because you were trying to figure out where he was at so you could radio the guys on the ground."

A combination of hardware and software let Earthscape convert that information to a computer-generated map, adding extra information, like  street names. That can then be laid on top of the original video street map, making the interface even more effective, displaying any information on file with the municipality in real time.

"The first night, we were able to give the officers on the ground the precise address of a home we saw a suspect hiding in," said Churchill.

As an extra tidbit: Some of the programmers had to hack code while pulling 2 Gs during a fly-along with the Denver Police Department.

Denis Browne, "The Business Case for Simulation, Gaming, and Virtual Worlds"

Well, there's an obvious tie-in here. Denis Browne joined SAP in 2006 to establish the Imagineering team within the Emerging Solutions product group. One of the projects Browne's team has been working on is  "how can we use virtual worlds, simulation, gaming engines in a business context and help our customers deliver new services to their clientele and also at the same time drive down cost of their businesses."

One project has been with Implenia, which has had a couple projects in virtual environments already. Browne showed off one: Implenia's doll house tied to a virtual model for remote control. It's very neat to actually see.

"The point here is that Implenia doesn't manage just one house," said Browne. "They want to be able to efficiently manage those properties remotely instead of sending humans over to interact with the environment."

Every building Implenia  builds today has sensors built in that can interact with SAP's systems. For Browne, the future is here, and the sensor network is only getting bigger: "It's the infrastructure that's going to help us run the world."

John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps: "State of the Geoweb"

Hanke is the Director of Google Earth & Maps, and he teamed up with Jack Dangemond of ESRI for a look at the overall state of the geoweb. Siginificantly, Google's own geospatial data grew by 300% over just the last year. That's only increasing as it makes it easier and easier to add geotags to videos, photos, and information from major media companies. A partnership with ESRI will build that information out even more quickly, adding thousands of live datafeeds that third-party users can use with KML.

To make it easier to sort through all of that, Google announced the launch of a GeoSearch API letting developers tap into all that data and find new ways to use it.

Virtual Earth news without video: It looks like  Director of Microsoft's Live and Local Search and Virtual Earth Vincent Tao's presentation isn't online as video, but other bloggers have picked up the gist of the presentation.

There's some cool updates on the way that should make Virtual Earth both more social and more useful. Microsft is integrating Virtual Earth with Messenger. It's not enabled in the U.S., but it's coming soon. Similar functions will tie in to Outlook as well, letting users schedule meetings--and factor traffic conditions into the alert reminders--using both products. 

Users will also be able to add their own photos, enabling a crowd-sourced creation process for Virtual Earth. I'm not clear on how it works, but it sounds like Microsoft is automating the process of placing the photo in a specific place, making it easy to build out cities quickly.

Bonus videos that I think are really neat, but possibly less relevant: ASU's Paul Torrens talks about research in modeling crowds; Steven Johnson, Co-founder, Outside.in, and author of The Ghost Map, looks at community mapping and the local geospatial Web (from last year); Michael Jones, CTO, Google Earth, talks about tricorders (from last year).

Street View in UK ?

Google’s occasionally controversial Street View product is heading outside of the United States.

Google Street View cars have been spotted in the United Kingdom in September and in Canada, where the privacy aspects of Google capturing street images resulted in a lot of talk as to whether it was legal or not to walk down the a street in Toronto, take a picture and post it on the internet.

Australia looks likely to be the 4th Google territory with a Google Street View car spotted in Sydney, according to the SMH. Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin confirmed the sighting, saying that the images taken will be added to Google Maps some time next year.

The Street View program has not been without its critics in the United States as well, particularly when Google has shown pictures of people entering adult book stores and doing other things they’d rather not have on the internet.

Google Maps Street View competes with Microsoft’s Streetside and startup Everyscape, the latter also taking pictures inside of buildings as well as from the outside.

Get Real ! ( With Entropia )

I have just realized how important this PR if for the future of Entropia and possibly the tourism industry in Virtual World. I am a firm believer of reality in virtuality and this move is very clever indeed.

Just have a look at the pictures below...

Marketwire - July 25, 2007) - Entropia Universe, the safest virtual world utilizing a real cash economy, has signed a license agreement to use the stunning high-tech game engine CryENGINE 2®, from German developer Crytek, creators of "Far Cry®" and upcoming "Crysis®." This will make Entropia Universe the closest-to-reality looking massively multiplayer online game ever seen. The transition to an Entropia Universe platform built around this new technology is expected to be finished by mid-2008, and will be available to all Entropia Universe partners.

Creator MindArk PE AB's CEO Jan Welter Timkrans explains, "The upgrade of Entropia Universe will be built around the spectacular features supplied by CryENGINE 2®, offering a complete and immersive experience to Entropia participants. It will create synergies between the proven and safe Real Cash Economy backbone, the Entropia storyline with colonists fighting to establish a new world, and the very life-like visuals supplied from CryENGINE 2®." He continues, "When we saw what the engine was capable of, we immediately understood that it would be perfect for Entropia, as both MindArk and Crytek are pioneers in their respective fields."

Virtual Tourism Takes off ..

From http://newnimproved.blogspot.com/2007/08/virtual-tourism-takes-off.html

I know that we are already  aware of this, but this is always good to hear..!

Dream holidays are now within the reach of millions more people – at least in the virtual online world of Second Life, where a burgeoning tourism sector has sprung up. (via Perth Now)

Second Life is one of the most famous virtual worlds on offer. It has attracted 9 million members since first developed by San Francisco-based developers Linden Lab in 2003. A cross between a computer game and a chat room, these digital worlds let visitors explore 3D virtual environments and interact with one another in cyberspace.

Linden Lab take a very hands-off approach in Second Life so what you see there is created by and for its ‘residents’, and it is a very entrepreneurial world.

So, imagine a holiday where you begin the day with a cruise around crystal clear

Caribbean

waters before heading to the mountains for a spot of skiing.

Later you'll watch a gig and enjoy a couple of cocktails before trying out some new dance moves at an outdoor club. Along the way you will have squeezed in some shopping, visited the Star Trek museum and paid your respects at church; the Church of Elvis that is.

Best thing about this holiday? You've only been gone three hours, didn't need a passport and the flights were free.

But the trouble with Second Life is that it's very easy to get lost. The virtual landscape is divided into more than 1,000 regions and there is no search engine. So unless you know exactly where you want to go, navigating Second Life is a bit like trying to find your way around

Tokyo

with a blindfold on.

But this all looks set to change. Residents of Second Life are setting up tours, opening virtual travel agencies and even publishing guidebooks to help new visitors to the virtual world.

Since October 2006 Synthravels, the world's first virtual tour operator, has guided over 1,000 tours in 27 different online worlds and offers 'virtual holidays' to Second Life.

Real life travel companies are also beginning to recognize the possible benefits of cyberspace to their industry. STA Travel, the world's largest student travel organization, just recently opened its virtual doors in Second Life. Visitors can pick up electronic travel

br

ochures from the virtual STA office staffed by avatar travel advisors as well as book real-life trips.

Social Media Marketing and the Hotel Industry

Written by Alan E. Young on August 24, 2007

With Social Media communities such as Facebook rapidly consuming the online environment, hoteliers should take notice of this trend and engage with their customers to help encourage communication about their brand.

There is a progressive wave in the travel industry taking hold of people’s imaginations. The wave is one of change that may be scary to the hotel/travel industry however, the wave must be ridden. Internet Social Media is becoming like the .dot com boom of the 21st century. According to a recent iProspect study, “social networking sites are visited at least on a monthly basis by about 25% of the U.S. adult online population.” Whether these sites are considered only as one way communication, or as truly a collaborative effort to search out individuals that have the same interests as you do, the travel industry must take hold of this widespread initiative and embrace it.

There has been a great deal of conversations regarding the differences and implications of social media within the online space. Whether it is user generated content, social media or now the true Internet community, one must understand the evolution of these phenomena in order to use the new wave to its advantage.

The Web 2.0 space encompasses three distinct areas. These areas include user generated content sites, social media applications and true online communities. These areas are well defined by Wikipedia.

User-generated content (UGC), also known as Consumer Generated Media [citation needed] or User-created Content (UCC) [1], refers to various kinds of media content that are produced by end-users, (as opposed to traditional media producers such as professional writers, publishers, journalists, licensed broadcasters and production companies).

The term entered mainstream usage during 2005 after arising in web publishing and new media content production circles. It reflects the expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public. These include digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. In addition to these technologies, user-generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further diminish the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The social media sites typically use tools like message boards, forums, podcasts, bookmarks, communities, wikis, weblogs etc. A few prominent examples of social media applications are Wikipedia, Flicker, Second Life and Twitter.

A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via some form of mechanism such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. A computer-mediated community (CMC) uses social software to regulate the activities of participants. Significant socio-technical change has resulted from the proliferation of Internet-based social networks.

So why do the hotel and travel industries need to get involved in the process?

It is apparent that the wave of Internet social media sites is very well suited to the hospitality and travel industries as the travel community is focused around the experience and word of mouth testimonials of those experiences. Social media sites are just that – a continued conversation and connections based around experiences.

The evolution of hotel marketing has encompassed a number of offerings that become commoditized very quickly. Hotels have tried to entice their guests to return by offering better sleeping nights, better T.V’s, better Internet access, and oh yes, better lobbies. Unfortunately, all of these initiatives wane over time as the guests begin to expect them. Thus the differentiating factor is lost.

Personal experiences are the true way of differentiating one’s product over a competitor’s product. Engaging in the online community space ensures that, if a hotel companies truly exceeds the guest’s expectation on all levels, the guests experience may end up in an online community. It truly appears as if the most powerful form of advertising, “word of mouth” has a new influential tool using the online space as its engine. These new tools allow for a wider reach and easier access to information that uses every day language in order to convey ones experience and message.

It is through this simple form of communication, that social media is influencing people to buy!

If you believe that you must enter into this space, we suggest that you start simply and let the world grow from there. Begin with your own blog in order to convey interesting stories, messages and insight into what differentiates your hotel or Hotel Company. Make sure it focuses on those experiences and stories rather than the hard assets that overtime may lose their luster. Be sure to allow your guests to comment and interact so the online community can engage in your vision.

This effort takes time but it will be well worth the investment in a project that enables you and your company to engage a vast number of people on many levels. Start the conversation – your customers will handle the rest!

Google is coming for you

See original note on : http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136334-c,google/article.html

Google is coming for you. In fact, Google's minions are driving Chevy Cobalts with roof-mounted 360-degree digital cameras, and they want to take your picture. Smile! You're on Googlecam.

In an unprecedented campaign, Google Inc. is enhancing its Google Maps service with a new Street View feature that allows you to view crisp, navigable photos of roads in nine major cities across the U.S., including San Francisco, New York, San Diego and Denver. (To see the full list, go to maps.google.com and click the Street View link on the upper-right corner.)

Once you zoom in close enough, you can click the Street View link and look around the location, or click an arrow to see the next Street View photo.

To snap the pictures, Google mounted digital cameras on the roof of passenger cars -- reportedly Chevy Cobalts, according to the tech blog Gizmodo -- and drove around San Francisco and San Diego.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company partnered with Immersive Media Co. for the underlying photo technology and has worked with third-party firms for street-level photography for the additional cities outside of California. Only San Francisco and San Diego use high-resolution street-level images, however. Other cities use lower-res captures.

Street View could be a boon for "landmark drivers" who prefer driving instructions such as "Turn left at the large brick church, and drive until you get to the pizza place on the corner" as opposed to "Meet me at Second Street and Fourth Avenue." It certainly reveals how far Google will go to prove its mapping prowess -- and, incidentally, attract users to more localized advertising.

According to Greg Sterling at Sterling Market Intelligence in Oakland, Calif., Google has a Business Referral Representative program that sets a precedent for localized involvement. That program involves Google representatives providing local business information and photos to Google for a fee. Sterling said that precedent for collecting local information and photos is being continued with the Street View program. Street View is "about creating more utility for consumers, which in turn will lead indirectly to ad revenue over the longer term. Google has long focused on small businesses and local users, so this is just trying to take those efforts to the next level," Sterling said.

Still, regardless of whether Street View is purely a mapping enhancement or a new play for ad revenue, there is tough competition from Microsoft Corp. and others. There are also some nagging privacy issues to deal with, plus the sheer magnitude of the project.

The story so far ...

Of course, Street View is not a new idea. Amazon.com Inc. tried a 360-degree street-view mapping feature in its A9 service that it subsequently abandoned. Microsoft has provided a Bird's Eye View feature in Live Virtual Earth that allows you to zoom in on a location, albeit not quite to the street level. (There is a preview of Microsoft's "street side" technology that does allow you to see street-level views, but only for portions of Seattle and through a rather clunky interface.)

Another competitor, EveryScape.com in Waltham, Mass., has mapped out the Union Square section of San Francisco with 360-degree street-level views and plans to "virtualize" four more cities this year. Users can sign up to become "scape" artists who drive city streets with roof-mounted cameras. There's a strong user-participation angle, but EveryScape doesn't have Google's funding or advertising incentive.

Street View is an audacious project that, according Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch in Darien, Conn., will likely expand to every major American city and even to higher-population rural areas. "Google is adding cool and interesting features to their mapping service as a way to enhance their core services and generate new revenue," he said.

While Google has no set plans to update street-level photos on a regular basis, according to Google Maps product manager Stephen Chau, it does have policies for updating aerial shots on a regular basis that could set a precedent for Street View updates.

Google fandom reaches new heights

Google is immensely popular, of course, but Street View seems to have attracted an unprecedented level of interest, some of it perhaps even slightly obsessive.

One Wired blog allowed users to submit odd Street View sightings, including a man being arrested and another urinating at a roadside. Other sites, such as Street View Gallery and Street View Spy, also allow users to post strange Street View sightings. There's even a Cafe Press T-shirt for those who don't want to be photographed.

Google's Chau said the company encourages user participation, but only through the My Maps feature. "We get offers from people to drive the [camera] cars almost every day," he said. For users who want to participate through the My Maps feature, they can geo-tag their photos (adding location data) and post them in public forums. For example, after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, users posted photos of the fallen bridge and aftermath.

Why the fandom? For photographer Charles Bandes in Boston, it's the community aspect -- the fact that a large company might be visiting. "I am fascinated by the idea that Google is taking snapshots of my community, and the idea that they might actually take a photo of me if they make a map of my neighborhood is even better."

For Bandes and others, it's an opportunity to meet Google face-to-face. Meanwhile, from Google's standpoint, camaraderie with users could help them capture out-of-the-way locations.

"I think user participation would be a great idea as Google simply can't do the level of coverage required alone," adds Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose.

Right-to-privacy controversy

Yet, the idea of photographing the entire U.S. one street at a time is a monumental undertaking, even for Google. It's also controversial, especially for privacy-rights advocates.

For example, BoingBoing users argue that it's wrong to take photos in public places and use them for commercial gain, that it's "creepy" for cars to be prowling city streets, and that -- if the government were monitoring the public with photographs on public streets, there would be more of an outcry.

Tom Austin, a Gartner Inc. analyst covering Google, said that anyone can take photos in public places, but the privacy issue could become a problem when Google expands to foreign countries where photographing people on public streets requires a signed waiver.

Google's Chau did say that the company filters out some photographs that might be perceived as inappropriate and that individuals can request that the company remove specific photographs.

That kind of user-specific filtering could be a death blow to Street View, however, once it expands to hundreds of U.S. cities, because monitoring such a vast library would be nearly impossible.

Whether the local advertising monetization works or the privacy issues persist, or whether many more metropolitan areas become "Google-ized" this year are all interesting questions waiting to be answered.

PhotoSynth

 

When you think about alternative to reproduce a real place on the web, second life comes to mind but you could also think about 360 degree panorama as well as X3D technology. We will elaborate on all of these themes in later notes. Today, I have just discovered PhotoSynth  from the MS lab, and this is truly amazing.

PhotoSynth, if you haven’t checked it out yet, is worth a look, even as a prototype. Remember those HP “Pictures of You” TV ads a few years back? It’s like that, but interactive. A 3D environment for photographs. Microsoft has just released a new demo using thousands of photos from NASA.

The way I see it, technology like this, plus Google Earth, plus a way to automatically clean humans out of photographs, plus a physics engine, plus a free-for-all Wikipedia-style upload/editing interface, will quickly produce an immersive photorealistic massively multiuser 3D online replica of pretty much all of Earth’s landmass. All the interesting bits, anyway.

You’ll be able to log into any location on this planet and use an avatar to explore or play. Forget Second Life. Virtual Earth is where it’s going. Add sensors on the real locations and then you have the ability to show your real presence to people on the internet !

There could be multiple iterations of this virtual planet, each devoted to a different application.

Virtual tourism, search, gaming,  research.

This is describe in the metaverse roadmap that I encourage you to read .