Hope Floating

This is the Virtual Africa raft. You can rez one (slurl) and then just wend you way round the sim, on your own or accompanied by up to four friends. Highly recommended. One nice feature is that it will keep moving forward so the guy doing the hard work can actually chat with avatars that are seated. Unless there is a tricky bend in the river. Or plants in the way -- they aren't phantom and at least one backwater is blocked off as a consequence.

Five minutes later and I was using the raft to give a brief guided tour to a new avatar from Canada (like I've been here one day and now I'm the expert!).

You can buy your own raft for L$750 at the Rangers Station (slurl). It also has the rather fetching safari suit being modelled by yours truly above (but minus the fedora) and there's a little market on the adjacent sim too.

Floating Hope

Out of curiosity I'm renting a small riverside parcel on one of the Virtual Africa sims. I haven't quite decided what, if anything, to do with it in educational terms but it's interesting as there is more traffic than I usually see -- people pass by on balloon and raft trips and there is a hill just behind the parcel with a hang glider rezzer. I'd only been there 10 min and someone popped down for a chat!

It's a homestead sim so it only supports 20 avatars at a time and I only get 100 additional prims although the parcel itself is 1000 sq m and has a well-equipped campsite with meeting places. Any further building has to be sympathetic to the overall sim appearance and not generate significant lag. Thus far, all I've done is rez a bench, a microscope and a small sculpty of the trypanosome Variant Surface Glycoprotein (everyone takes a molecular model with them on safari, yes?). Doing a display or game related to trypanosomiasis is one possibility.

The parcel is quite isolated and I haven't met many of my neighbours yet; indeed, it's quite possible that some rent simply to support one of the few African non-profits operating in SL. However, the sims are located deep in the edu/non-profit archipelago so it's a good opportunity as well to visit (and revisit) nearby islands to see what others are doing. It also means that I can run an activity in which students teleport to another sim to find or collect something.

The name of the parcel, Floating Hope, seems appropriate as we approach the start of a new year and decade. As ever, you can see a little more if you click on the image.

Well, that was 2009

I managed to misname my Highlights post last year so it goes by a different name this time round. There's no shortage of great reflective and prospective posts (collated by Daniel Voyager) but here are my few hacked-together thoughts.

What happened: Although the LL focus was on the first hour experience (establishment of further community gateways, closure of the mentors group, forthcoming improved client), there were some fairly big changes on the grid this year, e.g. adult continent established, Onrez bought and closed, Xstreet bought and freebies removed, temporary Linden homes for new premium avatars tested, proliferation of open source clients.

Sadly no longer with us: Bluewave Ogee/Leslie Jarmon; also: SL Mentors Group, Metaplace, Orange, Telstra, Cancerland

Enough already: any blog, meeting or session title that starts with The Death of ... (be it SL, Twitter, VLE or services that have yet to launch), any conference/meeting based on the premise that SL (or virtual worlds generally) uniquely needs defending in terms of effectiveness, any storm-in-a-teacup that elicits a knee-jerk reaction.

• Highlighted best insight: recent blog post by John Carter McKnight on why neither space exploration nor virtual worlds have gained traction who asserts that, for all our focus on the first-hour experience, "It’s not the technology, stupid". Indeed, it's the lack of a killer application that will appeal to the masses. But is that a problem?
  
• Highlighted best support for newbie avatars: everyone and anyone that ever genuinely tried to help a n00b, including the SL mentors.
  
• Highlighted best educational tool developer: Daniel Livingstone and the SLOODLE team
  
• Highlighted best educational sim: Oxford University War Poets sim (Csteph Mariner and collaborators), even if the audio creaked a little and the footballs were circa 1970.
  
• Highlighted best developer educational build: SLENZ midwifery build
• Highlighted best student builds: Zuzsa Thomsen's occupational therapy class, University of Calgary SynBio sim
  
• Highlighted most unflinchingly moral stance that puts the rest of us to shame: Organisers of Helen Keller Day; Ledoof Constantineau (again)
  
• Highlighted best use of two cans and a piece of string, i.e. the communications award: Bevan Whitfield
  
• Highlighted best RL talk on SL: I didn't attend any offsite conferences other than virtually this year (badge of honour for me?)
  
• Highlighted best blog: Dusan Writer (general), Iggy Onomatopoeia (education), Dedric Mauriac (microblog)
• Highlighted best conference: VWBPE09
  
• Grids to watch in 2010: Reaction Grid, Heritage Key
  

Seasonal best wishes

I guess this is best described as Almost Funny redux.

Have a good one!

So long, and thanks for all the fish

The end of the year seems to be increasingly the time when companies hit a wall or have a significant rethink. It happened to the Electric Sheep Company not so long ago and this year:

• Metaplace is closing existing accounts and moving away from user-generated content;
• Forterra is either having problems or needs to move swiftly to counter rumours to that effect;
• Nature Publishing Group is scaling down its activities in SL on financial grounds but also because they feel that web-based conferencing is simpler (though not necessarily better).

While each of the above is doubtless a very serious matter for those concerned, it is only the latter that causes me personal regret. I taught myself to build on Second Nature and will always be grateful to Jo for that opportunity. Latterly SN became far more of a prestige build for NPG but ultimately the numbers did not add up and the technical issues with using SL for conferencing outweighed the benefits for them. To be fair, NPG are not quitting SL but are making over the islands to educators and scientists interested in exploring the potential of virtual worlds, just as I did back in the day.

Predictably, some with negligible firsthand experience are already using this as an excuse to bash SL. Others, far more knowledgeable and just as SL-sceptical, concede that it remains the educational platform of choice for the moment. The experiences of NPG and education do not necessarily equate and Jo says as much.

Me? I'm growing increasingly tired of the nay-sayers who are becoming a valueless time-sink when I'd rather be engaged constructively. I'm all for remaining balanced on such matters but the nay-sayers work in what they see as incontrovertible sound-bites. Counter-arguments are inevitably more detailed but fall on deaf ears and thus are pointless.

In 2010 I'm not going to waste time rising to the wearisome bait any more; rather, I'm going to focus on making a success of the final few months of our pilot and hopefully do a little more to round off the TB build.

To all those suffering loss and uncertainty at this time, I can only wish you a more positive future in the coming year.

Review of last year's predictions

While this is a mug's game, it is an opportunity for reflection and the score, since you ask, is 16.5/42 = 39% compared with 47% last year:

1. Despite the economic downturn, Second Life will ultimately see slow growth in terms of regular users (current 60 day maximum of 1.4 M rising to 2 M by year end) rather than the contraction or virtual world "winter" some forecast. No obvious contraction yet though number of new signups seems to have reached a plateau so anything might happen: 1
   
2. Maximum concurrency will be 100-110,000 by year end. Not sure what the maximum is, nor whether it has been affected by the partial cull of bots though my guess is that it has never exceeded 95K and has declined latterly: 0
   
3. There will be consolidation in the industry though Linden Lab will not be acquired as such but rather will merge in some fashion with another complementary VW company. Half right as there was no acquisition: 1.5
   
4. Sony Home will be perceived as a success and raise the bar for SL graphics such that some popular SL regions will come as locally stored downloads. Well, Home is still with us but LL has focused on "the first hour experience": 1
   
5. These regions will have higher avatar maxima (150+). No: 0
   
6. Many of these regions will be commercial (selling RL as well as virtual goods) but others will have an educational/edutainment aspect and be accessible to residents on the Teen Grid (though communication with non-approved adults will be limited). No: 0
   
7. I would love this one to be wrong but I suspect the vast majority of residents will still be mouse-and-keyboard users. Yes: 3
   
8. HTML-on-a-prim version 2 will arrive in April but will still be a source of discontent in some quarters. The media plugin arrived in the Snowglobe open source client sometime after April though to no great effect thus far: 1.5
   
9. There will be a return of RL businesses to SL encouraged in many countries by their respective governments as part of economic stimulus packages. Not really: 0
   
10. Activity in the educational community will stagnate with departures balanced by arrivals, albeit that the latter will have a much clearer business plan than their predecessors. My guess is Yes: 2.5
    
11. We will see UK learned societies conducting small-scale conferences exclusively in SL. No. Pity: 0
    
12. The educational community will not depart en masse for alternatives such as OpenSim, Wonderland or Qwaq though some of the other SL communities may. Yes (despite significant exploration on Reaction Grid) and not sure: 2
    
13. There will be at least 10 papers on SL at ALT-C in Manchester. Yes: 3
    
14. Stephen Downes will grudgingly admit that some applications of SL have educational merit but resolutely continue to champion open source alternatives. Well, he sort-of admits that games, if not SL, have some value: 1
    

My guess is that 2010 will be at least as "interesting" as 2009.

Goodbye to Etherpad

Etherpad, a rather nice realtime shared editor, has just been acquired by Google as part of an acquisition of the parent company AppJet. Consequently no new free pads can be created and existing ones will only stay open until the end of March 2010.

[update 05/12/09: new free pad creation re-enabled and site will remain online until app is open-sourced. Given my initial shrug-of-the-shoulders response, this merits a "wow"!]

This is a little sad but at the same time at least the demise of the product is total. When Google bought out JotSpot, it took an age to bring out the equivalent Google-badged wiki product, Sites, which was capable in a mass-market sense but a pale imitation of JotSpot. This time there is no waiting.

Etherpad was initially useful in SL as it would run on a web prim, editing being done in the web browser in the client. Subsequently this option to run two sessions was removed (one or the other would close as you swapped) though I think an external web browser, i.e. separate program, was possibly OK.

What's left for SL? Well, I haven't tried Google Wave yet though I assume we would have heard already if it was useful on a prim. Others have previously used the automatic updating feature in Google Docs and there is also the open source MobWrite (a side project of a Google employee). Let's hope, however, that the new media plugin architecture recently debuted in the Snowglobe client will lead to some innovation in this space.

More hours in the day, pls

The Synthetic Biology Interactive sim is part of the entry by students from the University of Calgary in this year's iGEM competition. I haven't had a chance to explore in depth but it looks impressive both in terms of its overall vision and its realization, given the relatively short time they had to get up to speed inworld. There is a description and videos on their website.

The sim is based on LINDSAY Virtual Medicine island (slurl) and you must join their group UofC iGEM Island Testers if you want the full experience. This involves a trip undersea (foreground in picture) to see the context and possible applications of synbio and then a HUD-based interactive introduction to the technology by proceeding up a series of platforms. There are also two labs that I didn't get a chance to see and a display of posters from many of the teams in addition to Calgary.

I look forward to returning anon.

Eventful?

Just posted this to the JISCmail VW list in response to someone seeking help for their new island, copied to SLED and thought I would share here too. Suggestions welcome. I’d like to factor in some opportunities for roundtable swapping of ideas, good practice, etc as well.

Hi Christa

Make no claims to being an expert (all learners here, methinks) but am interested in putting together a virtual event that might relate, viz something along the lines of "When Worlds Collide..." looking at intersection of web and virtual worlds in science education (HEA Bio/PhysSci areas). Jean-Claude Bradley from Drexel has expressed interest (his recent paper: http://www.journal.chemistrycentral.com/content/3/1/14 ), maybe myself, some SLOODLE, PIVOTE activity? Could go beyond science, I guess, and deal more generally with convergence too. Not necessarily limited to SL either.

Would need to be at US-friendly hour, ie 20:00-ish. Short talks, posters, demos.

Too vague? OK, I'm just thinking out loud. Any interest? Anyone?

Best wishes

Peter