Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Electric Sheep to be first investors in open-source SL client?

Here's the press-release regarding Electric Sheep Company acquiring a $7 million cash injection.

Sort of old-news now, but the snippet at the bottom is what really caught my eye:

... Electric Sheep plans to use the financing to create software to make virtual worlds ready for mainstream consumption...


Could that mean what I think it means? Is Electric Sheep planning to develop their own SL client?

Thursday, February 22, 2007

A Stranger in Second Life

This has to be the best first-impression review of Second Life that I have ever read. Not knocking SL or anything, but it's just so true. And honest. Read it here.

Just goes to show that maybe some of those really offensive "n00bz" out there aren't entirely clueless lusers... just normal people who're just looking for a good time and get caught in the vapid stupidity that abounds in SL. I tend to stick to the bright side of things lately, and this my friends is good for a chuckle. It's honest and that's what counts.

I hope someone at LL reads this and actually finds something worthwhile in it.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Twitter Update

Well, the alpha version of the client was just completed last night. A few lucky people are helping me to test it. I'd like to get a few more to help out with it. At this stage, if you get in early your opinions will really help me shape the final product.

Twitter got started on the idea that many people were starting to communicate to their network of friends via status messages. Ever guilty of changing your IM screen-name or away message to let people know what you're up to? That's sort of the idea behind it and maybe you'll feel right at home using twitter. It lets you keep your network of people updated on what you're doing.

Twitter is many things to many people. For me, I don't post very often in a blog because I feel obligated to say something. If I don't have anything interesting to write, I feel like I'm just dumping blogarrhea all over the net. It makes me feel like a gimp to just post a "Going out for a hair cut after work and will probably watch the new episode of House tonight" kind of post. Twitter changes that -- it maxes at 140 chars and is meant for those little updates. I can keep people in the loop and not futz up my blog content.

Twitter is being used for a lot of things. Like flash-mob style coverage of events. I made an SL client because I thought it might be a cool way for people to keep their avatar friends up to speed on what they're doing. I'm sure there are many other applications like perhaps a SL-Maps mashup in the future (like this one which appears to be missing at the moment).

Other cool uses of twitter here and here.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Creating a new IM for SL

I began working on a new IM client for SL earlier this week. It uses the amazing Twitter API. With it I hope to enrich communication in Secondlife. The first version will likely allow simply to send updates however, an HUD attachment will likely be on the way.

Development of this project is not without difficulty -- Secondlife's support of HTTP is rather limited and doesn't allow for HTTP_AUTHORIZATION requests. To skirt the issue, I'm writing a simple proxy script to add the appropriate headers and forward the request. I have a server to host this proxy on temporarily, however it's likely that if this IM client becomes popular I could see my bandwidth usage go up. I'd say it's more of a temporary home. If anyone can give it a permanent one, it would really help.

For anyone who's interested in hopping on the bandwagon early, go get yourself a twitter account for your avatar and add me as a friend or just follow my updates if you're so inclined.

Parties interested in committing resources, you can reach me in world, via twitter, or mail me by putting together my name with a period in between at gmail dot com.

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