if you have a spare $50,000 to $100,000 you can forget about the mouse and space navigator and actually get some exercise when you are in-world!

the Virtusphere is a nifty hamsterball device that can be used in conjunction with Second Life, OpenSim, Unity, and just about any virtual world that lets you walk around (don’t forget that people have also connected treadmills and Kinect to these virtual worlds – just about any input device can connect – even brain waves like they did at a university in South Korea two years ago)

Ann from Alchemy Sims, a long time virtual world developer, consultant, and innovator has been working with the University of Harrisburg where they have the Virtusphere connected to a virtual world created with Unreal Engine (video below)

i asked Ann if she had hooked sim-on-a-stick to the big ball, but they had not yet. she’s been using sim-on-a-stick for about a year now and does work with the Air Force, universities, and others

thanks for the video Ann, this is pretty cool and i think it would be neat to have this (must really change your perspective on moving around your sims!). i thought the $90 Space Navigator was a stretch but maybe i’ll get to try out that ball one day! =)

                          

i had an email, via LinkedIn, asking how to stream an avatar into an elementary classroom. the teacher has experience in Second Life but knows that his elementary students won’t be able to access it. of course i suggested OpenSim! (Ener “OpenSim” Hax at your service) =p

at first i was thinking of streaming screen capture like WebEx or Adobe Connect and then realised (derr) that all you need is a laptop and a projector. you could add a real mic, like the fantastic and economical Blue Snowball*, so that students could ask questions clearly. the teacher logs in to OpenSim as does the guest lecturer and voila!

incredibly simple and most schools have projectors but what about OpenSim?

sim-on-a-stick won’t work and many schools probably won’t have a server available or resources to set up OpenSim, so what’s a viable option?

Kitely! and it’s a reasonably priced option with a high level of accessibility (make sure the school is not blocking any ports you may need – a common practice for schools and corporations)

the scenario above would require minimal world setup (a podium? a chair? you just need a simple stage setting). you may want to spend some time before doing the lecture to upload any images (like PowerPoint slides) or even setup MoaP (media on a prim). depending on the guest lecturer, you may want to create their avatar and teach them how to use voice (Kitely has Vivox)

a class of 20, plus the teacher and lecturer, for an hour would be less than $5.00! =)

* – subQuark swears by the Snowball and it is the top choice for elearning and podcasting – it’s used in this dated (jan 2008) first and only attempt at machinima by us (the audio is compressed by blip but you get the idea)

                          

in a non-exclusive post, i am pleased to announce that Kitely isn’t free anymore! =)

Kitely has finally rolled out their true commercial OpenSim-on-a-cloud offering. read their blog post with all the details: Billing System Finally In Place

if you can’t tell that i’m excited, i am! =)

their billing system even lets you allow other to visit you on your dime (or penny in this case). so why am i excited that something that had been free now costs money?

Kitely has a phenomenal OpenSim deployment method that can possibly open up OpenSim to much greater use – particularly for business use. but they’ll have to ramp it up in a HUGE way to make new social network noise and to get more mainstream eyes clicking to learn more about why their method rocks

am i heading over there? i dunno, atm i can’t because i am not real and facebook canceled my 4,500 friends page but as soon as they develop a log in method allowing for peeps like me and peeps under 13, you can bet i’ll be trying it out

the price is right, the features are right (latest OpenSim version), and the Kitely crew (yo!) are tight and give back to the community with OpenSim patches

so check out the now official Kitely offering! =)

                          

yesterday’s post about uncovering the hidden grids of the metaverse received many good suggestions and is clearly something important and frustrating

it’s important because OpenSim grids can be used to do more than you can with Second Life. Second Life has a very specific purpose that revolves around land ownership and rental. OpenSim grids can also have that focus but they also allow for creative expressions not possible in Second Life. you can run a grid on your own machine and build multi-sim creations you simply couldn’t afford to do in Second Life

our Enclave Harbour could never have existed in Second Life as a project under development (a monetary comparison would be 2 full sims and 8 homesteads or $1,590 a month with $5,000 setup vs. $159.95 monthly and no setup). you could be smarter and develop on sim-on-a-stick or your own machine and then roll out onto Kitely (assuming a paid Kitely model) *yikes, sorry about the tangent!* =)

being able to find an OpenSim example of what you would like to do, like corporate meetings, making moon bases, or role playing, can help you fine tune or sell your idea to decision makers or form partnerships. it’s also a great way to find like minded people and create friendships

but . . . because there is no central way (yet) to uncover all of the “hidden” grids of the metaverse, it’s frustrating

the most comprehensive list of grids is maintained and checked monthly by Maria on her Statistics page. each listed grid has a URL where you can learn more about it. if you would like to be included, contact Maria, she is very nice to work with

there is also a new public Google Doc list started by Caroline who invites everyone interested to list their grid and hypergrid info. thank you Caroline =)

                          

“What I want to see is a way to help the hidden Metaverse of sims and grids to find a common gateway right in a popular viewer. Something that is easy for new sign-ups to fathom and of course easy for grid owners to add themselves.”

Gaga Gracious wrote that in a comment to me on her blog. she wrote an interesting piece about where the Kokua Imprudence dev team is heading and she expresses a real concern

the hidden metaverse of sims

that is a powerful image and quickly becoming a reality. Maria at Hypergrid Business tracks 80 commercial OpenSim grids plus a whole lot of little grids like our Enclave Harbour. the 1.3.2 version of Imprudence lists something like 13 grids in its grid manager, so how do you list 100 or 1,000?

grids of all sizes will continue to increase and there will always be a certain churn rate of grids shutting down. on top of that, a grid can change its address (login URI)

so how do you keep track of them and reveal the hidden metaverse?

self-registration doesn’t work very well, there’s a listing at OpenSimulator in wiki form but it’s outdated and unfriendly. well, i see it as unfriendly because i listed Enclave Harbour and thought it was an alphabetical listing. someone yelled at me rather rudely assuming i was gaming the listing. gaming it? our grid isn’t even open to anyone and it has no land to rent – i thought i was being a good citizen by creating a listing, oh well =\

despite that, i do think the best thing would be self-registration in a central database listing if it had a way of flagging inactive grids. i don’t know enough about web technologies but maybe a ping service could show active grids?

i run a free ping service on this blog which sends me a monthly report letting me know the total up time – it just checks to see if this URL is online – could that simple idea be used to check URIs?

i’d love to host something like that if i knew it could be accurate and require minimal maintenance (maybe even a Google Doc could work). the database would be small and a minimal amount of information would be needed:

• grid name
• brief grid description (a character limit? probably)
• self-identified categories
• login URI
• access notes (like hours, etc)
• further info URL
• grid status (online, offline)

of course it could be more robust with account numbers, regions online, active users, and so on. but, in my opinion, it should be very simple and minimal like this followng the guide above:

• Enclave Harbour
• science education grid for middle school students
• education, science, kids, G-rated
• http://iliveisl.enclaveharbour.org:8002
• hypergrid hours – Tuesdays 9 AM – 4 PM EST, Saturday & Sunday all day
• online
• http://enclaveharbour.com

this is just one idea – what would help both new people and seasoned explorers achieve Gaga’s vision above?

what do you think is needed?

                          

OpenSim can be many things from a walled garden to a hypegridded hippie-fest of communal grid hopping and open love. well, maybe that second point is a bit jaded! the options are many (with over 80 commercial grids and a potpourri of thousands of regions on OSGrid, and then grids like Enclave Harbour which one day will be hypergridded)

both a noob and a well-seasoned avatar can be overwhelmed with what they should check out when they go to a new region or grid

for example, i know what i would like people to see when they come to Enclave Harbour but i also know that no one will spend hours just tootling around and running into those things (like a hidden ice cave). in reality, i know that people will need to see something compelling in the first few seconds, just like a website. people make up their minds in something like 20 milliseconds when it comes to deciding if a website is worth looking at. 20 milliseconds?!? i can’t even sneeze that quickly!

luckily, experienced avatars know that stuff has to load and that their draw distance affects how much they see. but how does a n00b know that? they are operating from the website paradigm, they don’t know about moving their camera around or maybe not even turning around to look at what is in their immediate surroundings

that’s one thing i liked about Second Life when i first started – Orientation Island. it forced me to learn certain things before i could explore anything else. i know that was also an impediment for n00bs, but i was better off for having learned those things. it actually took me a few days to get off Orientation Island because i would not run over the rats with the Segway, i thought you were supposed to avoid them! =D

having been a Second Life Mentor, i have seen all types of n00bs. you might be surprised at how many people had a hard time figuring out how to walk and move their camera around! and finding places to go can be hard for both n00bs and pros!

so how do you reduce the confusion?

look at the original Second Life model! there were clear tasks to accomplish and a very set path to do so. you did have a choice of which tasks to do first but they all radiated out from one central rezz zone

you could do the same, have a spot that people arrive at and very clear objectives for them. Maria at Hypergrid Business has a great post on making a Welcome Region. my perspective is more narrow than what she presents and that’s probably because i am thinking in terms that apply to our niche use of OpenSim

your audience helps determine what you should have. if you are catering only to people with virtual world experience, then you don’t need a formal welcome area. if you are dealing with total n00bs that have your grid (or region) as a destination, then you can benefit from a website and a formal welcome area in-world

on a website, you could have very high-level information to help noobs be aware that there are things like draw distances, time for things to rezz, and moving your camera around – the things that normal web surfing doesn’t have. as with most things online, brevity is key. you don’t want to overload anyone but you need to make them aware of x number of items

once in-world, you can reinforce those basics with simple and concise exercises. there’s no need to jump into how to edit your hair if someone can’t cam around, chat and IM, or move down a path. if someone has the interest to edit themselves and create an outfit, then they are already hooked and you can present that as secondary information

i see two types of welcoming “paths” – one for total n00bs arriving at your grid (or region) and one for experienced avatars coming to explore or experience something specific

the first is something like “first time in-world? here are a few things to know” and the second is more like an information kiosk at a mall or one of those cartoony tourist maps with the “big” sites marked out

the possibilities are endless but can be very helpful

                          

Sharespost evaluates various companies and places a value on their private shares. companies like Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, LinkedIn, and even Linden Lab are monitored and their share values are updated

private shares, similar to public shares, see their values go up and down for many reasons. at the end of the day it’s all about perception of worth and news events can, and do, impact share prices greatly

i’ve been posting on the value of Linden Lab shares since the summer of 2010. there was a certain level of volatility until last april and now the value is holding fairly steadily

the total value of Linden Lab at $311 million is about right since annual revenues are around $70 million (standard MBA formulas take annual revenue times 4 or 5 to estimate the value of a company – what that means in very general terms is that someone could offer to buy Linden Lab for $311 million - but why buy when sim-on-a-stick is free?)  =)

holding steady is better than dropping; ideally investors want to see steady growth on the order of 20% or more annually

                          

as much as i blab about OpenSim and considering it’s been almost two years that i’ve been out of Second Life, you’d think that my SL-centric perspective would have been reshaped by now

today i had to admit that either i have a seating fetish or that i still think in terms of 55 avatars per sim and that Enclave Harbour is a community like the iliveisl SL estate was

it’s fun building social places and even Enclave Harbour has a need for them, but i don’t need those to be on the scale of what i had in Second Life. i felt it was important to have community areas – things like a playground, the Eville Atomic Lounge, an art gallery, mini-parks and an entire openspace park, benches all over the place, and several little coffee type hang out spots – i had at least one such place in each of the SL estate’s sims. it was nice to have neutral ground for people to meet and visit. during subQuark’s heyday of speaking about Second Life at eLearning conferences, those public spaces saw a lot of use (bunch of free loading corporate types!) =D

Enclave Harbour is a totally different endeavor – there won’t be 55 people per region (dang, that would be 880 folks!). no one lives in Enclave Harbour and i don’t expect we would ever have more than 20 visitors at a time. subQuark’s workbook will first be targetted to home school kids and to regular school kids as extracurricular science activities. if his concept takes off, then maybe an entire classroom or home school group would log in, but i expect it will be mainly one or two at a time - but that’s just my guess for the time being

with all of that in mind, i realised that i have way too many seating areas sprinkled about! now having seats in a club is part of the build as are cafe tables in a hotel’s outside space but do i really need a two dozen formal seating/lecture areas?  (if we get 24 parents/teachers with their groups of kids in there at the same time on a daily basis, i’ll be having my butler do this blogging from my new home on a real island in the South Pacific!) w00t! =)

while it’s easy for me to think: “but what if kids want to hang out, Habbo Hotel style, and chat?” that’s not Enclave Harbour’s focus and i really doubt that kids will think it is so cool as to want to hang out. there are two clubs specific for that and that’s probably plenty good to start (lol, who says “plenty good”?) =D

seriously, four sitting spots for 6 or more people at the art gallery? there’s a stage out front, a “poetry reading” type lecture spot on the roof, a coffee spot, and a floating dock! not to mention that there are eight double benches in the gallery itself! o_O

time to streamline and not because of prims but for clutter and purpose! some habits are hard to change and some of us are more stubborn than we ought to be! =)

i’ll keep places like the atomic classroom, forest campfire, and steampunk gazebo. but do i really need two ferries with seating for 20 each or a hidden swimming pool inside the water tower with chaise lounges and pool floaties? okay, well maybe the hidden pool stays!

*dang, having so many spots to sit is like having a moon base in a decade – pure crazies!* =p

                          

last October i wrote about a creative use of sim-on-a-stick as an art catalogue. Beacara, the creator of the concept, was overwhelmed by requests and not only ran out of the OpenSim loaded USB sticks but the town hosting the art event did too!

Beacara now has a video of her art catalogue on a stick (below) and the art is great but i think her different builds to display the art are very nicely done and also easy for a total noob to understand and move through. very well done Beacara! =)

she sent me some notes regarding the video:

Do you recognize the Palm house created by Vanish from OpenSim Creations? It is a good example how helpful it is not to have to build EVERYTHING yourself. I just changed some parts inside.

The person at the end after the end :-) is not me but one of my students who assisted during the presentation.

The building with the exhibition of Liselotte Krieg is one of the Gropius-Masterhouses. It was a project I started with my students (and finished alone, just to have a kind of showcase – the video). When I find the time to rebuild the Bauhaus exhibition, I’ll make an .OAR for free download, might be nice for education.

excellent work and innovative use of modern media to create what is traditionally a very expensive paper catalogue (and you are being green too). the Bauhaus build would be an excellent addition as an OAR download, it is a lovely build (btw, i don’t often use capital letters because i follow early bauhaus philosophy regarding typography)

thanks Beacara and your machinima is also very nice! =)

                          

Enclave Harbour’s website will serve up additional content for its workbook such as videos to act as alternatives/supplements to going in-world and current event links for each activity. the site is now set up as a “networked” multisite WordPress blog. up until a few month’s ago, those were called multi-user blogs. sites like the Huffington Post are WordPress multisites that allow dozens, even hundreds, of blogs to exist under one domain name

the idea for us is that each science field trip activity will be its own blog so that it can have multiple pages. it’s more of a website using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) than a blog because i don’t think subQuark will enable comments. each “activity blog” has its own URL like this: http://enclaveharbour.com/desalinationplant (it’s a live link but only has default content atm)

the theme we use randomly selects header images for the main site - pics below (the twenty eleven WP theme)

so now you know about multisite blogs! w00t! it took subQuark a night to get it set up, seems it’s a bit harder than a default setup, but pretty straightforward with a little Googling

this idea could work well for teachers or an OpenSim grid. teachers can allow students to make their own blogs (not a novel idea, teachers have embraced blogs as effective teaching tools for years) and you can set it up so that users create their own blogs – imagine something like InWorldz or 3rd Rock Grid with a Huffington Post type blog! the main blog can be configured to be an aggregator of all the networked blogs and make for a pretty fresh site!

of course there is administrative overhead and this is probably not what most OpenSim grids wants to focus on

apart from the Huffington Post example, CUNY uses one for its graduate programs and that site serves up the grad school website PLUS all of the professors’ courses as individual blogs! =)

                          

over sixty (60) different Google policies are being rolled into one encompassing privacy policy

seeing as many of us in virtual worlds treasure our pseudonymity, this type of change may be significant and you can read about it here on Google and here on VentureBeat

you can get an idea of how it all rolls together by logging into your Google dashboard: https://www.google.com/dashboard/

so what does it all mean?

well, Google needs to make your data more valuable so that it can thrive as a company. creating a more complete picture of you makes your data more valuable to advertisers

do you wear large underwear? well your Hanes’ ads can be more tailored to you starting March 1st (pun intended)

what pseudonymity and anonymity?

                          

last night in Mr Obama’s State of the Union address (PDF transcript) he mentioned something that has bothered me about secondary education – the No Child Left Behind Act. one of the issues that many feel is negative about that programme was directly mentioned:

To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test . . .

that has huge ramifications. teaching to the test sucks because many teachers are evaluated on how well their classes do on standardized tests and those outcomes can affect employment! testing certainly has its place, but in the US it is often seen as “the” measure. this testing-centric measure of success extends beyond secondary school into the university setting and i think it is one reason that a study found that 36% of US students have no improvement in critical thinking skills after four years of college!

creativity and passion are what inspire learning – not what the answer to question 23 is!

if what the US president said becomes valued by the educational community, then we may see a greater use of resources like OpenSim. OpenSim can be a great creative channel for both the teacher and student, and it’s a resource that is fairly accessible (more so than many hi-tech and high-priced current classroom trends)

now that US teachers may be more free to get back to teaching as a passion and not a test score, i hope to see continued exploration of OpenSim as a useful tool

one of the stumbling blocks for OpenSim adoption has to do with content. Second Life rules regarding content but Second Life is not appropriate for secondary education

having a starting point, such as OAR files with terraforming, landscaping, buildings, and tools, helps make adoption of OpenSim more successful. coincidentally, Graham Mills has just started a fantastic resource list of educational OAR files! it’s a Google Doc and a clever way to gather this information in one place

http://bit.ly/edu_oars (permalinked on the side “go to” links –>)

thanks Graham! =)

K-12 Ed tech director Erik N. uses OpenSim & sim-on-a-stick for his students and has contributed an OAR that you can find in Graham's listing

                          

machinima – that word intimidates me a little and it shouldn’t – it’s just a word. when i think of machinima, i tend to think of a video that is really nicely polished, has great post-production effects, epic soundtrack, clever acting, and a production crew of several people

machinima can be a little more technical than making things in-world – what with terms like CODECS, 1080i vs. 1080p, chroma keys, kbps, 16 bit vs. 24 bit, variable sampling, hdmi, and a host of acronyms that can make you turn an run (you down with OPP ? yeah you know me <- omg, that was 21 years ago!) o_O

all those acronyms do mean relevant things to making machinima, but they shouldn’t stop you from trying it out. a few basic principles can get you started – like viewer size, a way to record it (like Fraps), and a way to do simple editing (like iMovie or Windows Moviemaker). later on you can get all crazy but those few things are enough to make a video that you can upload to YouTube (two past video posts: 1 | 2)

the best way to get started is to simply give it a try and see what happens. don’t expect to be all Spielberg on your first try and the bottom line is in the content that your are delivering. if you want to make a tutorial on how to build something, then the way you explain and show it are far more important than your production prowess

YouTube is the number one eLearning source in the world and it’s not because everything looks like a million dollar movie. the Khan Academy got over $10 million from Google in 2010 to make more educational videos and a quick click over to their site shows you that it’s not sophisticated, but it teaches extremely well

if you have been looking for some motivation to make the big plunge, then maybe the call for machinima for the 5th annual Virtual Worlds – Best Practices in Education conference will entice you. and you don’t have to be a teacher to enter. here are their categories copied right from their website:

Be Epic! (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Be creative, bold and inspiring! Shorts in this category are based on the conference theme – “Be Epic.”

Virtual World Outreach (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Show us why you are here, your virtual community and place in the Metaverse. Are you in multiple virtual worlds? Show us that too!

How-to/Instructional (3 min target – 4 min max)
The perfect three minute machinima. Can you teach something well in three minutes? Show us how you do this.

Educational (5 min target – 7 min max)
Show us an educational machinima that is currently being used for the F2F, blended or virtual classroom.

Teen (2-5 min target – 6 min max)
Show us your best! Open to more than Second Life – give us OpenSim, Halo, WoW, Minecraft! We’re ready for it.

Digital Storytelling (2- 5 min target – 6 min max)
Do you have a story? We have an audience.

Brave Beginner (1 min target – 2 min max)
For first time producers who have never made or uploaded a machinima to YouTube before. So be honest (first-timers only) and be brave!

Other (1-5 min target – 6 min max)

don’t be put off by thinking your idea isn’t good enough or that your technique is too beginner. some of the most effective videos are done in very simple ways (like CommonCraft – their work rocks and is pretty funny to watch – like their surviving zombies video)

the due date for submission is february 15th and it’s not limited to OpenSim; Second Life, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, and even Minecraft are okay too! =)

uber big thanks to GridJumper for bringing this to my attention, i may team up with subQuark to make an educational entry  =)

schmancy pants camera eh? =D

                          

yesterday i mentioned making videos for media-rich eLearning. in this case, OpenSim acts as a 3D animation application to create video for illustrating middle school science activities

planned and written sripting would help make a better video than below to make sure key elements are in frame long enough to be meaningful (adding narration and closed captioning would be ideal)

for educators on a budget, making video like this is within reach. Fraps ($37 for the full version), Windows Moviemaker (free), and sim-on-a-stick (uber free! w00t!) make for a very inexpensive 3D video studio. add to that the relative ease with learning how to build in OpenSim (especially compared to Blender) and any educator with passion and enthusiasm could make their own videos for use in the classroom =)

compared to the outrageous prices for 3D projectors (and their bulbs!) and being constrained to material created by textbook publishers, creating video like this is a real bargain and a great way to express your creativity in a highly customised way and tailor video exactly for your students and to your specific curriculum (and you can add it to your resume to boot!) =)

                          

as you know, what i have been doing for nearly two years in OpenSim is make stuff for Enclave Harbour which will be used as supplemental science activity stuff for middle school kids. for myself and subQuark, OpenSim is a great illustrative tool for science concepts. so rather than a nice drawing of something like cargo blimp, we use OpenSim to make a 3D one. it’s nothing earth shattering or even innovative. it’s an easy way and somewhat accessible way to make 3D graphics. if i were to try to make a cargo blimp in Blender – holy crap, it would take me months. i bet i could spend 2 months easy on that. subQuark is more skilled than me in Blender but i bet it would take him at least 2 weeks to do it. and when done, all you could do is either export some nicely detailed images or maybe a short video of it, doing it in OpenSim allows the possibility of having a student walk around it and get a sense of scale and be more engaged (immersed) with it and with the science principles it is illustrating

teachers and professors do all sorts of neat things in OpenSim from modelling plant cells to molecules to that Fern Seed project i always mention (the million dollar NSF grant project)

the other day i freaked out about the iBook2 authoring tool and the strong desire to see OpenSim on an iPad. ever the voice of reason (maybe it’s the martini talking), subQuark pointed out that it is not unusual for a student to be using something like an iPad in conjunction with something else when doing an activity. for example, it’s not weird for second grade kids to be doing colouring of say a butterfly on a piece of paper and to be using an iPad as a reference tool to see what colours the parts should be (must be wealthy school districts!). he went further by floating out the idea that maybe Enclave Harbour won’t be an actual printed book but be dished up as iPad compatible eLearning. with that in mind, i could see a situation where a student could be accessing the eLearning part of Enclave Harbour and also be going in-world to get the info needed for the eLearning content (it’s just like the original workbook he has been working on, only made into an online format)

i get really stuck in my ways and sometimes it takes a smack upside my head to break out of my rut. after a day of thinking about this, i really warmed up to the idea. if Enclave Harbour’s “workbook exercises” were presented online, it could include much richer material than a printed book. it could offer some of the visual assets like the iBook does – mainly more images (and no need to convert them into 300 dpi files) and videos. while the virtual world component is important in my thinking, videos of specific things with more in-depth examples, would add a lot of value. the virtual world stuff i make is still central to it all and acts as two things in that scenario – the immersive virtual world and a 3D studio to make videos with. suddenly it dawned on me (i told you i was slow) that the virtual world builds now cab serve double-duty and have twice the usability (hey does that make me twice as important or twice as awesome? maybe i can get twice as many burritos as pay!) =D

all of this makes OpenSim that much more valuable to me and i can see that even sim-on-a-stick would be incredibly useful if it was only used as a way to make educational videos (like a tour of a giant plant or animal cell or even of a DNA strand!) =)

it still would be nice to have a tablet viewer and that would increase the possibilities for OpenSim, but until then i’ll enjoy a martini and keep tinkering in-world and enjoying its creative outlet =)

                          

Daniel Voyager wrote a short but poignant post today about the one year anniversary of the Teen Grid in Second Life closing. i think he may be the only one to bring that up, i had forgotten about the date

the teen grid was always small but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important to students and teachers. when Linden Lab removed (merged) the teen grid they changed the TOS to allow 16 and 17 year olds to access the regular grid and they also added language to the TOS allowing 13 to 15 year olds to “access Second Life through an affiliated organization and will be restricted to the private estate of that organization.”

i don’t know if any such organisations ever came into existence and suspect that the abandonment of the ed/non-profit pricing sent a clear message that Linden Lab was no longer interested in helping any such groups

i’d like to think that kids who enjoyed using Second Life may have set up their own private OpenSim network and kept doing their thing. kids are definitely adept enough to be able to setup OpenSim on their own

the only image i could find online for the Teen Grid - from an aug 14th, 2010 post i did

                          

both subQuark and i have written about the need for OpenSim (and Second Life) to run on an iPad. that in itself is a no-brainer – the iPad is becoming ubiquitous in general and especially in education

there are many K-12 schools and universities who use iPads and even some that distribute them as a needed piece of hardware. even though, according to W3Schools, only 0.4% of all internet traffic is via the iPad it shapes the entire education industry

yesterday at the Guggenheim, Apple announced its iBooks textbook platform with the intent to dominate educational publishing (video below)

e-books have been around for a while now and are typically seen as one of many channels of book distribution. Apple will change that and it will become the predominant channel to get books into students hands. there are lots of advantages – one device holds many pounds of books, books can be interactive and have 3D models in them as well as video and audio, and it is easier for authors and publishers to create new editions each year (or each semester! thus forcing students to buy new, rather than used, books)

the inevitable ubiquity of the iPad in the classroom underscores the need (desire) for an iPad accessible OpenSim model

if you are an educator, you may watch to watch the iBooks Author video – it’s pretty compelling

                          

CARI.net and Limestone Networks are data centres with top servers, great customer service, and they host lots of OpenSim deployments. either one is a good choice and i am biased because we have been on Limestone for 17 months without a hiccup

every now and then i go on their sites and build my fantasy server (something with 8 cores and 48 gigs of RAM for $599 a month! that should run 8 sims with 45,000 prims each!)  ≧^◡^≦

typically i’m not able to configure identical machines to make exact comparisons but i was able to the other night with the following specs:

• Xeon E3 1230 (4 cores)
• 8 GB DDR3
• 500GB SATA2 hard drive
• Windows 2008 Standard (64-bit)
• Unmetered Bandwidth (10 Mbps Uplink)

monthly costs: CARI $270 | Limestone Networks $249.99

both are free setup and both are current specials.  these specs would run a great 4 to 8 sim grid and even do 16 sims (same specs we run – see image below). i may be conservative but i like following the 1:1:1 rule of one CPU core plus one gig RAM equals one SL-like sim. the “extra” 4 gigs helps carry the weight of the servers that in Second Life that do messaging, friends, groups, maps, inventory, media, voice, etc

the difference in price is close at about 8% and i’d do a bit of review research to see which fits your needs better (caveat emptor) =)

from my niche experience, i never get close to maxing out the CPU except when terraforming (that seems to spike to 70% for me). typically our CPU runs under 10%

with that in mind,  you can configure a great server close to the above specs for $151 a month at Limestone Networks

• Core2Quad Q9300 (4 cores)
• 8 GB DDR2 (vs. ddr3 above)
• 500GB SATA2 hard drive
• Windows 2008 Standard (64-bit)
• Unmetered Bandwidth (10 Mbps Uplink)

is running your own server worth it?

that depends on your needs and tech comfort level. you can go the route of a leased server and have about the most freedom possible. you could install OpenSim yourself (a large number of OpenSim people seem to have this skill which alludes me) or hire someone to install it for you (expect to pay between $350 to 500 for that)

OpenSim hosting companies might be a close match (or less) and include expertise and support for piece of mind (SimHost ran a special on a similar setup for $160 a month last summer). for us, SimHost is a real value

one of the pluses of OpenSim is that there are many flavours from the low-hassle and totally free sim-on-a-stick to the infinitely scalable cloud hosting from Kitely to a deluxe personal server like the above

                          

SOPA and PIPA (all poo poo if you ask me) have been slowed down and 8 US Congressmen withdrew their support of it due to your voice!

but . . . it’s not over yet

the people wanting this abusive power, the Motion Picture Association of America, are now ramping up the money and advertising campaign to push this forward. it’s no secret that money dictates US politics and the Motion Picture Association has lots of money. the MPAA also described yesterday’s protests by you, me, Wikipedia, and Google as “irresponsible publicity stunts” and as an “abuse of power”

wow! the nerve eh? i didn’t realise that Wikipedia and Google answered to the MPAA! just in case any power hungry and greedy MPAA people read this, Google and Wikipedia can do whatever they like!

if blacking out the google logo earns the MPAA’s criticism then imagine what will happen if SOPA eventually passes!

here are two examples, as i understand it, of how something like SOPA or PIPA can impact us:

1) i write a tutorial about Sony Vegas as a nice video editing tool for machinima (as i have in the past). someone at Sony thinks that associating this blog with their product harms their brand or infringes on their copyright – they can have my site legally removed from search engines and taken down. now i could launch a lawsuit against them to prove i am innocent but what are the odds that i come up with money to do that or am able to beat Sony’s hundreds of lawyers?

2) you build a Stargate looking teleport dealio in Second Life and instead of the BSG fiasco of last year where a few sims were affected (Tateru’s post on that), MGM Studios can have Second Life completely shut down! =(

millions of people from all around the world spoke up yesterday and were heard. and we all need to continue to be vigilant to keep the internet free and open

the internet should not be a corporate dictated censorship tool – it’s a tool to make the world a better place and share information freely despite what Mr Murdoch thinks (owner of News Corp (the world’s second-largest media conglomerate)