Tateru's Monday Reality Mix

Tateru Nino's weekly take on mixed reality...

Up until recently, Telstra was the sole Australian telephone company. It's got some healthy competition these days, but Telstra's one of the big Australian companies, and they don't even know how to do something small. Their foray into Second Life is no exception.

Also this week, a tangible poetry book, founded in Second Life experiences, illustrated in oil paintings made from digital images in Second Life; a novel being progressively written and published in Second Life; a modern dance group (can you get more modern than a performance that can be interacted with in both worlds?); technology to immerse us yet further. All of this two conferences streamed inworld, and a dash of metrics, after the fold.

Mixed Reality err 'Pond'

Telstra resisted the Internet as both a platform and a phenomenon for quite a long while, finally giving in when Bill Gates couldn't fix their printer during one of his Australian visits. Since then, they've plunged into Internet portals, the service provision industry, the whole nine yards, essentially as a division called “BigPond” (no, we Australians have never figured that out either, though we do make rather a lot of jokes about it.)

Telstra has picked up 11 sims, supporting their whole "Pond" theme. Indeed, it resembles a large lake, full of islands and activities. It's all slick. Very slick. Telstra have dumpsters full of cash out the back that they can apply to a project when they feel it is warranted.

BigPond has set up their own registration interface for registering Second Life accounts for their customers, as well as client software downloads from their own site (Windows and Mac only). Australians have metered bandwidth (as do most countries in the world). The BigPond operation does not count bandwidth coming from BigPond sims to BigPond customers. If you happen to be a BigPond customer, you can lounge around in the BigPond systems without any of that bandwidth counting against your quotas.

Telstra have their own Terms of Service for Second Life, and make no mention of Linden Lab's Terms of Service (in fact, they get Linden Lab's name wrong throughout the document). When Linden Lab's Terms of Service finally show up during their first login, it's pretty unlikely that new users will read them, assuming them to be the same terms and conditions that they read on the BigPond site when signing up.

Overall, Telstra BigPond have set out an engaging, attractive and interactive build, highlighting assorted Australian landmarks and other distinctive facilities. Well worth the visit, if you can manage the crowd of Australian new folk who can't figure out how to stop dancing.

Mixed Reality Painting and Poetry

Shoshana Epsilon stands with an image that will become part of an oil painting

Dharma Austin had her heart broken in Second Life. It's an occurrence no more nor less uncommon than in the physical world, and certainly doesn't hurt any less. Sometimes, however, pain, or striving against circumstances, gives us the impetus to create. To express ourselves in one form or another, creatively.

Austin has collected the poetry inspired by these unfortunate events, and will be publishing a physical book of them. Her work is deep, and rich in visual imagery, and that's where Second Life photographer Shoshana Epsilon comes in.

Austin has commissioned Epsilon to produce six images from the poetry that will be converted to oil paintings by Second Life Art, and reproduced in the final book. Second Life Art produces physical oil paintings (the sort you can hang on the wall) from digital images made by Second Life residents.

The final work, entitled “The Perfect Flower”, will feature six oil paintings from Epsilon's work, each representing imagery from three of the poetic works, eighteen poems in all, and the book is expected to be ready for publishing around the end of March.

Mixed Reality Traffic

New addition, Big Pond's "The Pond" promises a lot.

Each week we build an aggregate mixed-reality metric from the traffic figures of several notable sites, and match it to figures for a selection of "native" content (NCI, The Shelter, YadNI's Junkyard, the Ivory Tower of Primitives). See last week's column for the methodology we're using to produce these numbers. They are broadly representative of the sustained retention of a site, per square metre, or efficiency of interest.

Let's take a look at how our target locations are faring compared to last week:

• The L word: 88.71 (up 61.32)
• AOL Pointe:73.37 (down 12.54)
• Circuit City: 25.11 (down 2.19)
• Sears: 11.19 (down 6.51)
• Nissan: 9.15 (down 0.31)
• Sony BMG: 6.24 (up 4.66)
• Thomson training: 4.43 (down 2.22)
• Magnatune: 3.40 (no change)
• Pontiac: 3.26 (up 1.35)
• IBM: 2.88 (no change)
• Usability Island: 1.91 (down 2.11)
• (new) The Pond: 1.74
• Cisco: 0.56 (down 0.27)
• Adidas: 0.20 (down 1.91)
• Reebok: Closed to the public

Tateru's Overall Mixed Reality Index: 17.72 (up 3.02)

• The Shelter: 734.75 (up 9.44)
• NCI: 434.58 (up 22.93)
• YadNI's Junkyard: 406.08 (up 31.13)
• Ivory Tower of Primitives: 52.44 (up 3.26)

Tateru's Native Reality Index: 406.96 (up 16.69)

An overall small gain for both aggregate metrics this week. A little shuffling of the rankings, but everything looks healthy, and positive. Some small losses but more than offset by a few large gains, and the losses are mostly within acceptable variation. The most notable factor was the huge gain in the L-Word, climbing about 300% to put them back in the top spot this week as a direct result of their education program.

Mixed Reality Shorts

The Second Life Modern Dance Theatre perform on-stage.

• On Friday, the Second Life Modern Dance Theatre in collaboration with The Stockholm Modern Dance Theatre presented a mixed-reality dance event. Avatars in Second Life presented a dance performance where elements of stage-configuration and effects were able to be altered by the Second Life audience. Simultaneously, this was projected onto screens in the physical world in Stockholm, where a live audience could move about the stage among the screens, and the whole lot streamed back onto screens surrounding the dancers on the stage. While not without some technical difficulties, it was apparently something of a treat for those who were able to receive the video-cast in Second Life.
• Second Life publisher and book aficionado Madddyyy Schnook is publishing a free horror novel, that is being progressively written, part of a joint project with the author. While not yet complete, the novel is attracting positive reviews and you can get in on the reading now.
• Last year at GDC, the international Games Developers' Conference, Philips announced it's immersion enhancement technology, amBX - essentially, lights, fans, and a rumble-mat for your tushie. This year at the conference they announced future integration for amBX into Second Life, though not through Linden Lab, but through third-party branding agency Rivers Run Red. Do I really need more cable clutter and my tushie rumbled? Only time will tell.
• SXSW Interactive ran through the weekend. Hamlet was there, doubtless having a whole lot more fun and alcohol than me. Portions of it were streamed inworld by the Electric Sheep Company.
• The TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference was also streamed inworld with the help of Clear Ink. It is not clear how much relative fun and alcohol were had. My money's on Hamlet.

Got a mixed reality tip for Tateru?  E-mail her at [email protected].

Comments

[Pierre]

The book that is being published by Madddyyy Schnook has been up for several months now - not exactly news. And it's not exactly a good book!