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 [...]

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 [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

SOPA is legislation in the US that could have profound impacts on the internet and even on us in virtual worlds US legislation will impact the world and understanding SOPA is worth the 2 minutes of the video in the article below Explainer: Understanding SOPA

arrr matey! no, not that type of fun-loving, whiskey-drinking, parrot-toting, treasure-pillaging buccaneer pirate piracy becomes more meaningful to people when they have actually put time and effort into making things – whether that be a song or a pair of virtual shoes. piracy is rampant in the digital world because it is pretty easy to [...]