don’t get all excited and keep planting your farmville seeds =) logging into OpenSim with Facebook is not new – the Reaction Grid team had a working facebook login last year and it’s just logging in with your facebook or LikendIn credentials – it’s not actually through facebook. but that is a HUGE win because you don’t need to create some obscure account. that plays well for corporate use because someone only needs a LinkedIn account to get in-world (you still need a virtual world viewer unless it’s Unity 3D)
Kitely is an on-demand OpenSim-based virtual world host that uses facebook as a login tool. i learned of it via a virtual world group in LinkedIn when a conversation took a sales turn. i suggested sim-on-a-stick because i am all about “the free” and group love (well, maybe not so much the latter). people should have some way to explore virtual worlds before plunking down $1000 for a setup fee and $295 a month! fortunately, most worlds have nice sandboxes and that is a great way to check them out
i have not used Kitely but i do like its approach because it sounds like cloud hosting and for discrete events, that makes a lot of sense. on the Kitely site, it looks like i could host a 100 person event for about $20 per hour. while that comes out to a massive monthly number, this is an economical way to go for events. i have not spoken with Ilan Tochner, the founder of Kitely, so i don’t have more details than i see on his site
if you are somewhat virtual world savvy (of course you are, you read this blog – no dopes are allowed here) this type of thing – facebook log in and cloud hosting could be a big win. say you had some need for 1000 people to get in-world for a grand opening, some conference, or some other big event, then you could build your venue (like we have Enclave Harbour) and upload copies of it to as many instances of it you needed
four years ago when CSI did the season finale in Second Life, there were 87 sets of Manhattan sims brought online for the the show!
for you and me, that would be $87,000 in setup fees for Second Life! but with an on-demand service, like Kitely, that would be far less plus you would have higher attendance with a facebook login
whether Kitely is the solution or not depends on details but on-demand cloud hosting is already here (some others offer it too) and the prospect of using facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter as a log in mechanism certainly lessens one of the hurdles to virtual world access
Ener –
$0.20 per hour is only for when you have users actually in the world.
If you set up a world just for yourself to build on, and you spend, say, ten hours a week building, that’s $2 a week — or $8 a month.
Even if you have some friends come over once in a while, still not too bad. The question is: how easy are the OAR and IAR exports? Is this hypergrid-enabled? Are there default starting avatars? Can you connect your regions to existing grids? And can you use their viewer to visit non-Kitely regions?
Maria Korolov
27 Mar 11 at 11:19 am
Hi Maria,
We have a simple wizard for creating a world which enables you to upload an OAR.
We still aren’t hypergrid-enabled, that is one of the features in our long todo list.
There are default starting avatars: 1 for men, 2 for women that are automatically assigned based on the user’s Facebook profile when they first log in to Kitely.
The Kitely universe is still disconnected from the rest of the hypergrid, we hope that letting users log in with their Facebook accounts will reduce the negative effect this may have on early adoption.
The Kitely plugin works with any viewer that is Second Life compatible. The viewer we provide to users who don’t yet have one installed is currently a standard build of the latest stable version of Imprudence. So, to answer your question, yes you can use “our” viewer to visit non-Kitely regions.
I look forward to answering any additional questions you may have.
Ilan Tochner
27 Mar 11 at 11:50 am
excellent Ilan! thank you for addressing Maria’s questions – she is the guru of all things OpenSim and has a knack for getting to the key issues quickly =)
i don’t see hypergridding as a big issue for corporate and event use. i do see it as an issue for events that perhaps i would like to attend as my avatar self. for anything “real” business, i would use my real (and uber secret) real LinkedIn account
i like that you have it already set so that i can upload my own regions – this makes my head spin with ideas for Enclave Harbour =)
and kudos on using Imprudence – my viewer of choice as well
Ener Hax
27 Mar 11 at 12:59 pm
Thank you Ener, Maria is a person we have great respect for :-)
We are here to please and wish to keep our communication channels open to the community. If there is some way you think we can improve our offering then please let us know.
It make take us some time to address everyone’s requests (especially with our current limited resources) but you can rest assured that we will work hard and do our very best to keep you happy.
Ilan Tochner
27 Mar 11 at 1:15 pm
Here’s my article with Ilan’s full interview.
Top things: OAR exports, IAR imports/exports to come. Voice and hypergrid to come. Will have economy. All Kitely avatars shared across all Kitely sims (basically, they’re all part of one giant grid), so can make friends, send messages, etc…
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/03/kitely-brings-facebook-instant-regions-to-opensim/
Ener — Thanks for letting everyone know about this! This is such a great tool. I’m thinking of putting up all my OARs up on Kitely as a cheap way of backing them up, and visiting them anytime I want.
Maria Korolov
28 Mar 11 at 8:42 pm
Kitely certainly looks interesting. Currently you can’t cross sim borders though so opening other sims wont make much of an estate and the costs could add up a lot if the Facebook minions start dropping into to explore, especially for early adopters. I would hate to go for it and suddenly be faced with a big bill when I am not even there!
On the plus side Kitely could offer a massive outlet for content sellers in time but, since it’s based on Opensim which is still alpha software, content permissions, security and physics still present serious challenges that impose limitations. Then there is Linden Lab’s SecondLife courting the Facebook multitudes too. Could all get very competitive.
It will be interesting to see how it develops.
Gaga
2 Apr 11 at 3:46 am
hello Maria, a currency eh? that is one thing i do not want to have and this makes Kitely feel more like a grid than an option on how to host my own grid. the entire money exchange thing is something i am much more uncomfortable with than who Ener Hax really is. i like my paper to be real i guess =)
gee, you can’t cross sim borders? that sucks eh?
excellent point on uncontrolled numbers of people. if i was on Kitely and was public, people could just log on and stay parked! never thought of that even though i know it is a common practice inSL!
so a new type of griefing – never logging out and racking up 20 cents an hour until manually booted out (if that is possible and this is now a question on my list)
Ener Hax
2 Apr 11 at 11:04 am