Tailorable blog

Limited options for applications in Second Life

For our new project on Future Workspaces, I have been looking into the possibilies of integrating applications in the Second Life environment. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed by the options and the limitations of the Second Life script language (LSL). First of all, in-world applications have to be constructed out of the basic building blocks of Second Life (prims). You can define limited functionality inside such a prim using the LSL language or let it communicate with the outside world using e-mail, URL requests or XML-RPC. So far, so good…

However, the LSL scripts have some serious limitations (as I discovered when I tried to program an SL poker table in my free time). First of all, a single script can only use 16K memory (welcome to the 21st century!) and there are all kind of unpracticalities, such as no nested lists and no library functions, so code reuse is done by copy-pasting code. Moreover, there are serious memory leaks and build-in delays, for instance when sending an e-mail. Of course it is possible to overcome these barriers, but this complicates any programming effort so much, that it quickly takes the fun away.

Because of these limitations, some operations that seem pretty standard become extremely complex, as illustrated by the story of displaying an external image by Dav Yaginuma, who even went as far as to create a series of cubes to represent individual pixels.

A few days ago, I saw an integration of Basecamp in Second Life and I was very curious how they did that. It turned out that it was a static screenshot, placed as a texture on a prim, with a link embedded to a Basecamp webpage. Clicking on the object just opened your browser to a fixed webpage. That is not quite the integration I had in mind.

Part of my trouble is of course that I don’t now yet what I would like to make to support knowledge workers in Second Life, but I figured that it makes sense anyway to explore the options. Anyway, if you know of any cool examples, I would be happy to hear from you.

One man, one avatar

Recently, I had two experiences with avatars and the identity of the person controlling them that made me wonder. Here is what happened:

When visiting the ABN AMRO island in Second Life, I had a talk with their virtual hostess, Amber Jung. We talked about some part of their presence in Second Life that I was interested in, after which I flew away (as these things go in SL) and explored the place. Coming back to her, 15 minutes later, I just told her my impressions of what I’ve seen. After a few sentences, I noticed that her replies were a bit odd. She told me that she just took over the shift to control the avatar, so she did not know about our previous conversation. The difficulty for me was that I had no way of knowing this, since her name and appearance did not change in the meantime.

The second situation happened when Hans, a colleague of mine quit his job. Since he used to be in charge of our test area in Second Life, he owned our virtual land and the objects there. As it is not always possible to transfer ownership of objects to another avatar in Second Life (this is a property the creator of an object can set), we decided that the easiest option would be to transfer his avatar to me. The funny thing was that for the outside world this transition was totally invisible. He kept the same name and the same appearance (only in a cheaper outfit, as Hans kept his virtual classy business suit). So people who knew the avatar before, would engage in a conversation with me and I would have to tell them that I was actually somebody else, although I looked the same and had the same name. These things do not happen that often in the real world.

I wonder if we can design virtual worlds in such a way that users controlling the avatar have the option NOT to be anonymous. Of course you can indicate in SL the “first life” information deep in your profile. However, that information is so hidden that no normal person will regularly look at it, especially if you already know the person. One more consideration when thinking about the business uses of virtual environments.

Typing to an empty room

Last week I finally gave my first presentation for a Second Life audience - and it was a bit weird. I have attended quite a few business meetings in Second Life, but now was the first time I was on stage, presenting slides and “talking” to the audience about business models for a presence in virtual worlds. 

The preparation took a bit more time than usual: instead of just preparing my slides, I also had to export them as separate images and place them in a virtual screen. Fortunately, I carry around a presentation screen from the EduNation shop in Second Life. So, I arrived with my own virtual presentation screen and laptop in the virtual conference room a few hours before, to test things. Fortunately, it was easy to contact the owners of the virtual room to get rights to place my virtual objects there: I was simply added to the group of owners.

More annoying was the fact that voice communication is still not supported in Second Life. There are some ways of using external software to create an audio stream and then make that stream audible in Second Life. However, we did not have time to set all this up, so I ended up preparing the key sentences to type with each slide in a separate document, to make sure I could give the presentation at a speed that kept the audience happy.

The presentation itself went okay, but it was strange: it was a bit like talking to an empty room - except for the fact that I was typing. Normally, you use the non-verbal cues from your audience to see if they understand you, to decide on the pace of your presentation or when it is time to add something funny to wake them up. These non-verbal cues are missing in Second Life and my audience (of about 10 local organizations active in Second Life) was a bit hesitant to interrupt me with questions. Usually, feeling the energy from the audience and providing them energy is important, and all that was missing here. So, it was good to have this experience, but I certainly prefer to give face-to-face presentations, even if the content is about virtual worlds.

By the way, the material about business strategies in virtual worlds, on which my presentation was based, is online: Does Your Company Need a Second Life?

Lucky timing and surfing the hypecycle…

Funny to see that my story about the virtual Nabaztag was picked up in the press. I guess the Easter bunny and the interest of the press in Second Life helped me. My employer, the Telematica Instituut, made a short press release about how this virtual Easter bunny acts as a watchdog for your Second Life store. Also my main point, using the plastic rabbit as an ambient display for information you like to be aware about in the background, was fortunately picked up. I had a nice interview with the local newspaper, the Tubantia, and the story was published in Hotspot, Computable, Winmag, and ComputerIdee.

As some people asked about it -
Hereby a bit more technical info about how to configure the SecondNabaz (currently version 1.4). The configuration is done via the notecard that is included. Once you rez the SecondNabaz in Second Life and you press “Edit”, the contents should include a notecard you can modify. This notecard has an entry for a serial number (sn=0000000000). Replace the zeros with the MAC address of your bunny (without spaces), as indicated on the sticker on the bottom of your Nabaztag.

The second number in the natecard (token=000000000000000) represents the token you receive when you go to www.nabaztag.com -> my nabaztag -> tools -> api. This number is needed to avoid bunny spam.

The third number on the notecard is the radius (in metres) at which the virtual bunny should detect visitors (min 0 - max 96 meter). Set this number for instance to 25 to make sure your bunny actually detects people, without them having to bump into it.

Just in case you did not know: Violet, the French company that created Nabaztag, is in no way affiliated with this SecondNabaz.

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.