Tailorable blog

My Nabaztag’s Second Life

Last weekend I decided to create a Second Life version of the Nabaztag, the WiFi bunny developed by Violet. My wife gave me a Nabaztag for my birthday last year, and even though I had some cool plans for programming it, all it did so far was it’s Tai Chi and telling us the weather forecast twice a day. That, and amaze our visitors of course

Anyway, the Second Life version I made detects if avatars are around. If so, it makes my real Nabaztag wiggle its ears and tell me their names. Also, if people talk to the virtual bunny, the real one pronounces the chat to me. The Second Life version of the Nabaztag includes a script using the Linden Script Language to send commands to the Nabaztag using the API published by Violet.

The resulting mash-up is an example of how virtual worlds and the real world can be interconnected. Anyway, I like the idea of using the Nabaztag as an ambient display for information that you do not need on your screen, but still like to be aware of. Just having the bunny wiggle its ears when you have visitors in your Second Life store, for instance, can keep you aware without requiring you to be logged in to Second Life all the time. Of course, if you have any other ideas about cool or even practical uses, please feel free to use the comments.

If you own a Nabaztag, and would like to give it a Second Life as well, pick up your free copy of my SecondNabaz at SL Exchange and let me know what you think.

The joy of doing “embedded research”

Recently I have been doing “embedded research” in Second Life. It started with me exploring this 3D social environment in the evenings, trying out how to construct things there and how to earn virtual money without getting tired. Pretty soon, I was also interested in the real value of such virtual social environments for organizations. This could well be a hype, but I believe that the underlying idea of a 3D environment where people can interact, explore and perform activities together is likely to stay - even if a Second Life turns out to be finite too. As such, I was very excited when the Telematica Instituut started a project into the business options of Second Life and I happily volunteered to be the leader of the pack.

For the project we chose an “embedded research” aproach: we created avatars for all project members, explored the environment, did interviews with organizations in Second Life and attended virtual meetings there. Basically, the stuff I was doing anyway in the evenings, but now a bit more structured, and using my serious avatar: RJ DeSantis.

I strongly believe that great things can happen when personal passions and professional activities are aligned, and this was certainly the case in this project. It was a lot of fun - the only sad thing now is that it is coming to an end. For those of you interested in the results: they will soon be made public, in real life as well as in Second Life.

Getting back…

Finally, I have decided to re-activate my blog! I never was a serious blogger, but when my old blog became cluttered with spam and the underlying engine turned out to be a pain, I just gave up.

Recently, I have been involved in some cool projects around Second Life and new collaboration environments and I would like to use this blog to share some of the insights and discussions with you.

Finally, the thing that actually pushed me today to start this blog was that my hosting provider, hostmysite.com, added a one-click install of WordPress to my existing account! So, no more trouble of setting up databases, ftp-ing and figuring out settings. Great!