Tipodean Second Life & Open Simulator webviewer goes Beta as BuiltBuy.Me
Browser based virtual worlds are key to mainstream acceptance of the medium. Therefor I am happy to see the Tipodean viewer go one step along the road and open up shop as BuiltBuy.Me. The service allows anyone with an OpenSimulator installation or Second Life account to connect to their world and view it in the browser.
Alot of features have been added since the last demo I saw over christmas 2010. To test it I logged into Second Life (Instructions in ‘read more’ section) and managed to have instant messaging chats with friends. A number of interface icons dont seem to work, like friending nearby avs and muting, so keep in mind its a beta. Though its missing alot of the goodies we take for granted in an average Second Life or Open Simulator viewer, it has all the ingredients needed to become a great service for casual interaction with the online world.
I visited two sims, that are both pretty busy. One being a hub, the other sim with a dance venue with quite alot of avatars. Prims and basic colors rez pretty quickly, but dont count on avatar shapes, meshes or detailed clothing for the appearance in the webviewer. The experience of walking around is pretty good, even at these otherwise heavy locations. I found myself stuck in the water at some point, flying up got me out of that.
Besides offering the viewer they have also tagged on a service to setup a large area of sims in one go if you have your own open simulator server running. I have not tested it, though it seems like an application that should be a part of a management suite for a grid.
For the future I hope the interface gets a good upgrade, on the webpage and in the viewer window. As the viewer is rooted in Unity, it would be a nice step to see this service become available as a iPad app for couch surfing the metaverse.
Kitely as a collaboration tool with openVCE
Kitely is the recently launched service to host your sim-in-the-cloud for a penny fee per hour. At the setup of your Second Life like world, it gives you three options; Start off with an empty sim, upload a OpenSimulator file or install an openVCE on your sim. I decided to have a look at the openVCE offering (open virtual collaboration environment).
After starting my world and logging in to my sim at Kitely, (which was very very easy), I ended up in the basic openVCE offering as a collaboration environment. The next movie is from 2009, but it explains pretty precisely what you can get out of open VCE. (The setup in Kitely looks like this too in the layout of the buildings).
Tho openVCE seems like an interesting offering and Kitely offers openVCE’s basic buildings, I am still missing the components in Kitely that make a collaboration environment interesting. At the landingpoint I have the choice out of 8 boxes ranging from textures to housing, but I would be better off in this situation with a powerpoint presenter and inworld note making tools. Also the absense of voice is paining, as collaboration and brainstorming runs alot smoother when spoken instead of typed on a keyboard.
I hope Kitely gets round soon to supplying users of any premade environments with the right content and tools to actually use it succesfully. If handled properly, they have a good case, expanding the premade options with other systems like RiversRunsRed’s collaborative environment or moodle for e-learning.
ipad shifts online life into offline
(Back! 
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With 70% of iPad2 buyers being new to the iPad, and sales going through the roof, we are going to see an increasing shift from deskchair to sofa for our daily online content consumption. The iPad encrouches heavily on television time as it is now possible to be online, but not unsociably stuck up in the office room of the house. Pocket Metaverse has been around for a year or so and is downloadable from the iTunes store. It has a free and a premium version, the premium version ($4,99) allows you to connect to any open simulator grid, including your own.
we have had mobile apps before for virtual worlds, but being able to take and share a mobile virtual world into the social area of the real world home will continue blurring the lines between the on- and offline communities more.
