Anyone who’s had an eye on my del.icio.us of late may have noticed more items tagged “secondlife” than usual. I’ve been doing research for a number of reasons, not the least of which was Warren Ellis’ recent comment that Second Life “could be the germ of the next major operating system… it could conceivably be the backbone of what comes after the web.“
I’ve learned to look where that man tells me to. At least this time it meshes nicely with what I do for a living; not the usual eschatological insanity he likes to call our attention to.
So I started to do some reading. Warren’s comment had me looking immediately for the seams of the Second Life environment, the places where it stops being all about the in-world experience and starts interfacing with everything else.
Just a little bit of investigation lead me to Mashable’s post on SL and “Web 2.0″ services. Neat quote: “Clearly, SL is becoming a web service. This will inevitably blur the lines between the virtual world and the web, creating endless possibilities – events mashups, online calendar integration, even commercial mashups with Lindens as a payment option. This is the tip of a very big iceberg.“
Also of note at the seams is a handy Amazon search HUD from the folks at Second411. “Instead of teleporting you (like normal, in world item searches do), the returned links will launch the corresponding webpage for each item that’s returned.” This sounds like an interesting enhancement of the in-world search, with appropriate emphasis on remaining non-disruptive to the experience.
Warren’s had a bit to say about it on his blog, posting his thoughts as “Second Life Sketches”. He’s currently got them tagged under his general issue “brainjuice” tag, so you’re kinda forced to hunt for them. I’ve cherry-picked a few, with the money quotes excerpted here:
On No-Entry fields in Second Life: “I may not have the inalienable right to come in and use your toilet, but if I don’t have the right to cross the fucking road or fly over your house while a few hundred meters in the air, you have some serious issues, and so does the system.“
There’ll be more as I find it.
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Pingback on Sep 11th, 2006 at 2:19 am
[...] secondlife links « Second Verse lots of second life goodness… probably a bit advance for someone who is still struggling to walk straight… (nah, these are interesting even if you haven’t explored Second Life at at all) (tags: secondlife) Give it a digg or share with del.icio.usThese icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
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About
My name's Ryan Freitas. More about me and this blog can be found here.
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My UX Week 2006 talk on Collaboration at ITC Conversations
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September 8, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Hey Ryan, I’m the creator of Second411, and it actually blurs the line even more than what you described:
- From the Second411 website you can search for objects in SL (and then leap from the web -> in-world)
- In addition to Amazon (which you mentioned), you can also search Yahoo!, which opens up the possibilities of searching other sources of SL news, events, whatever.
You might also be interested in my new project: Fabjectory.
Right now it’s at the “not so useful” (as Warren described it) stage of outputting decent sized full color avatars.
However, we are very open to doing other projects and extending the creativity of SL into the real world.
Thanks, Hal9k
September 9, 2006 at 11:00 am
Hal9k, thank you for the response, and the link to Fabjectory. I’ve got a tremendous interest in projects that are increasing the integration of Second Life and the capabilities of the Web and meat-space. It’s great to see these seams getting exposed and capitalized upon.