Today the Avatar Reality Community Director, Glenn Sanders announced the current roadmap for Blue Mars. He said:

Many of our community members have requested new features and improvements to Blue Mars.  We listen closely to your concrete suggestions.  Then we incorporate as many of your ideas as possible and feasible in our roadmap strategy. In addition to suggestions from the community, we are planning a multitude of other enhancements to Blue Mars. Here's a sneak preview of a few of the items we are planning.

• Expanded Preferences for chat,
• Enhanced camera movement and controls
• Improved avatar movement
• Avatar name will be displayed above the avatar head.
• Right-click shows Avatar Name and UserID.
• Move the camera control icon out to the menu tray

• Clickable hyperlinks in the Chat box
• Select and copiable text in the Chat box
• IM - instant messaging

• New, improved avatar meshes
• Avatar Masks (new face shape and face skin for your avatar)
• Avatar Physiques (new body and face shape and skin for your avatar)
• Cloth editor: edit and upload Hair as an item for sale.
• Avatar tongue model/setup
• Mask and Physique editor
• Avatar attachments and animation rigs
• Animation workflow documentation
• More sliders for the Face Customization UI

• Avatar Editor:
• Import custom avatar shapes and skins
• Test the imported mesh with standard animations and clothing
• Create displacement morphs (compared to the original mesh shape)Create normals for your custom mesh
• Export your mesh and skin as an item for upload and for sale.
• Allow JPG to be used for a texture to create items (the editors automatically convert it for you)

• Crash management for the Places Browser
• Download Manager for the Places Browser
• Download Manager with background download, notification, and City version checker
• Improved download and streaming of some items.

• Expanded Real Estate Page
• Expanded dev MyPage with:
• Billing history
• Remember login email
• Commands to manage tenants
• Expanded Real Estate page:
• Check files
• Improved dev SDK installer with AR and NEWCO becoming optional installs
• Upload Block, shop, and items for sale.

• user MyPage with:
• BLU balance display
• Enhanced Friends List
• Messaging

• New City updates with a shops where you can purchase items.
• Residences, and residence management

Rock

Second Life to Close their Forums Today
Linden Labs have announced that their forums are due to be discontinued after the 8th February, despite howls of protest from the forum regulars.



The announcement was as follows:

On Tuesday, February 9th we're transitioning our forums, from the vBulletin software we've been running for years to the integrated Clearspace software which can currently be found at http://blogs.secondlife.com. This transition will mean that new forum channels will be opened on Clearspace and the vBulletin forums will be closed and archived.  We understand that the forum community might feel some angst during this transition, but hope that you will understand the necessity and advantages of such a move

The most active part of the forums, Resident Answers, has been replaced by a section of the Linden Blog, Second Life Answers. However, this is no substitute for Resident Answers as the Linden Blog makes it clear:

Second Life Answers is a basic question and answer style area. If your topic is really a discussion or conversation please feel free to go to the Second Life Forums and start a thread so the community can join in!

So, no discussions or conversation allowed in the replacement. Hmmm, and this after Linden Labs appointed their new Communications Manager, Wallace Linden, on the 14th January (although Wallace admitted my job is actually in the marketing department, not the community department). Of course, pointing people to Resident Answers will need to be amended, as after today there will be no Second Life Forums. Blue Linden made it even clearer:

We realise that some people just want the old forum software back. Unfortunately, that's not an option. We're not looking to replicate the old forum experience; we're looking to make something better, something that suits both existing community members and new ones, and we hope you'll join us in this effort by reporting bugs and making feature suggestions.

So, where will the Resident Answers crowd move to? A recent poll gave these results:


The majority (apart from those who are having pie) appear to be headed to the SLU forum, run by Cristiano, with other sizeable chunks headed for slapt.me and secondcitizen. Although I think they will all eventually migrate to SLU, as slapt.me currently has only 26 topics in their Resident Answers section, and seems to be very lightly used, while secondcitizen has a horrible orange color scheme, which no-one in their right mind (and yes, I know, we are talking about the Resident Answers crowd here) could possibly put up with for more than a day or two.

Following the removal of all adult content to the Adult Continent, Zindra, and now the closure of the Forums, I think we can all see which direction Second Life is being steered in, and unfortunately the destination does not appear to include a large proportion of the current user base.

Rock

One of the new cities added to the Blue Mars portfolio last week was Digital DNA, created by Angela Talamasca. This is the first city in Blue Mars to use the Voxel-created cave system in the terrain, and the first to use rainbows.

Intrigued by both its beauty and its unusual name I managed to catch up with Angela using Avatars United, to find out more about her first offering.

Interview with Angela Talamasca

Q. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, were you in other virtual worlds before Blue Mars?

I have worked in the technology industry for three decades and have been following the development of virtual worlds for years [Angela's background is in Electrical/Electronic engineering, chip design, and crime scene analysis!]. My passion is artifical intelligence. Some years ago, I wrote a conversational AI that was debuted in dot net, but I was unhappy with the outcome, because it wasn't really intelligent. So, I ended up returning to school to study psychology and how we learn. AI is still definitely my primary focus but I am having fun playing catch up where graphics are concerned.



Q. Do you have any Crysis Sandbox experience, or did you learn the Blue Mars editors from scratch?

I have no experience with cryengine. In fact, the first time I had actually heard of Cryengine was from the Blue Mars announcement, as I am not an FPS gamer. The short answer? Yes, I am definitely learning the Blue Mars editors from scratch.

Q.  Was it all trial and error, or did you get any help from any of the other devs in Blue Mars?

This build was a mix of trial and error, lots of Google searches, watching "how to" Youtube videos, and of course, lots of help from the other Blue Mars developers.


Q. What do you think about the current level of tools and documentation for the Blue Mars editors?

I have mixed feelings about the tools. However it is important to recall, my background is on the hardware / coding side, as opposed to graphics. That being said, the tools are not intuitive for beginners and the lack of documentation is horrendous. The latter would be, by far, my biggest gripe. In that I end up spending a huge amount of time that could be better used for the build.


Q. Where did you get your idea from for Digital DNA? And how did you arrive at the name?

I would love to give you a catchy reason but in honesty, I chose it due to the real life crime scene recreations I was doing in SL, and it sort of stuck. [And the fireflies?] I created the fireflies because I kept getting lost. [What? In your own city?] Sad to say, yes. The fireflies were like a sort of Hansel and Gretel crumb idea so I wouldn't get lost so often. But don't pass on that tip! [Yeah, right :)]


Q. How long did the work take you from starting out with Digital DNA to get it ready for upload?

About a month. I downloaded the tools on the 18th of December and submitted the build on the 18th of January.

Q. Have you been surprised by all the positive feedback you have received?

In a way, yes. Simply because there's not really much to do. Nothing interactive, etcetera. And, in a way, no. While it is far from perfect at this point, I am very pleased with the way it is shaping up.


Q. What are the three most important things you would like to see introduced into the Blue Mars client?

Only three? [chuckle].

Okay, I would say avatar modification would be at the top of the list. Or at the very least, more choices. The very first thing people want to do when they enter a virtual world is to change their appearance.


Second in line would be search. I have friends who are using Blue Mars but unless I am here at the same time they are, there is no way to friend them, or to find them, much less keep in contact with them via this platform.

Which brings up the third thing. Communication. Open, friend, and group chats that extend beyond a single city. As well as logging and instant messaging. Voice would be great too, at some point.

Q. And the three most important things missing from the SDK?

Definitely a TOD trigger for the flowgraph editor, which comes standard with the Crysis cryengine.

There are also a number of items they provide in the basic sandbox that are missing textures. So, I would say they should either get rid of them, or provide the textures.

And finally, but certainly not least, is documentation. In fact, the lack documentation is by far the biggest frustration I have with respect to learning these tools. And while the Crymod portal has a variety of documents, tips, and even tutorial videos, those do not always apply to the Blue Mars implementation of that product.



Q. What are your future plans for Digital DNA?

I am really not sure yet, though it will have something to do with solving puzzles. Currently you really need to be able to fly to take in all of Digital DNA, but I am not just going to give that ability away, it will have to be earned! [can't wait!]

Thanks very much Angela

You're welcome : )

For those of you who have managed to read back to my very first blog post back in April 2008, you will know that the beginning of the end for me (commercially) in SL was when Linden Labs imposed VAT on its European customers, and although this was not the fault of Linden Labs, in the first instance, they did not handle the VAT issue, or their announcements, very well at all.

Background
It all started back in 2002 when the EU issued Council Directive 2002/38/EC, whose summary states:

The objective of this Directive is to create a level playing field for European Union (EU) businesses with regard to the indirect taxation of electronic commerce.

This Directive was later amended by Council Directive 2006/138/EC of the 19th December 2006.

Basically a complaint had made by a European ISP that competing companies from the US, such as AOL, were not charging VAT to European customers for their electronically-supplied services, while European-based companies were having to charge VAT, and they wanted a level-playing field. The response from the EU was, via the above Directives, to require all companies based outside of the EU to gather VAT from their European-based customers, and remit the collected VAT back to Europe.

Linden Labs and the VAT Fiasco
The main problem with Linden Labs was not so much the Council Directive, which they had no control over, but rather their handling of it.

On the 27th Septemember 2007 Linden Labs informed their European customers by email that VAT would assessed from that date onwards, and would apply to:

• Premium account registration
• Purchases from the Land Store
• Land use fees (tier)
• Private Region fees
• Land auctions
• LindeX transaction fees 

However, in an amazing gaff, a Linden admitted in an interview that up to the point of the VAT announcement by Linden Labs, the Labs had been absorbing the VAT costs, and not passing them on to their European customers, in order to maintain a commercial level-playing field for residents of Second Life. More suspicions were raised when it was revealed that Anshe Chung had started charging in L$ and had cancelled all Paypal subscriptions 6 weeks earlier (did Anshe anticipate this VAT thing, or had she been tipped by the Labs earlier than anyone else that this was coming?).

So basically Linden Labs were aware of these EU regulations, had decided to absorb the VAT cost for their European customers to maintain a level-playing field for all residents engaged in commerce within SL, then one morning decided not to absorb them anymore. Of course, all the European residents who had been purchasing regions prior to this email announcement felt justly aggrieved, and many expressed sentiments in the SL forums that they would not have made these purchases had they known that Linden Labs had been absorbing VAT and might, at any time, rescind that policy and pass the costs onto their European customers.

Linden Labs should have informed their European customers as soon as Linden Labs was aware that VAT charges needed to be applied, and VAT payments from Linden Labs back to Europe needed to be paid, and should have made clear to residents THEN what their policy was going to be.

Aftermath and Sad Stories
Many Europeans pulled out of the Second Life land market. It was just too much to pay 19%  more than a competing US-based land baron and compete on rental prices to prospective tenants.

Others formed partnerships and agreements with US-based friends, and transferred their land holdings to them, as they did not need to levy the VAT. This was good news for Linden Labs, as they received $100 for all transfers of land ownership, and there was less VAT accounting to be done.

However, horror stories began to emerge, and a particular one caught my eye today in the SLU forum.

Basically, Ciprian_Newall claims that he lost US$20,000 by transferring regions to a chap called Darwin Tomsen, (for the purpose of mitigating the VAT exposure) only for Darwin to sell 'Ciprian's' regions and not pay over any of the money! (However, see the Comments for a counter-statement).

The thread makes for quite interesting reading.


So what now for Blue Mars and other US Virtual Worlds?
The question now is what will be the policy of Avatar Reality (Blue Mars) and other Virtual Worlds run by companies outside of the EU regarding VAT charges on their European customers? Should they absorb it as LL did initially, or charge it from the outset and risk losing European customers who just cannot compete commercially within their virtual economies?

Currently, the Blue Mars Terms of Service state, in Section 7.1, Fees:

You agree to pay all fees or charges incurred by your Account, including applicable taxes, in accordance with these Terms of Service and the billing terms that are in effect at the time that the fee or charge becomes payable.

'applicable taxes' = VAT?

I hope Avatar Reality handles this issue in a more open and pragmatic way than Linden Labs, and see if they are able to absorb the VAT charges, when setting the post-pioneer prices, and enable all Blue Mars residents to compete equally within the virtual economy.

Rock

I have been reading a recent article from Deva Canto, an Opensim dev, on her blog in which she makes a plea to developers who build on top of the Opensim platform not to patent their code or it will hinder the continued development of Opensim. She gives a warning too to those who take the open source code which a dedicated core of developers have been working on for a long time and use it for their own business ends and, while contributing nothing back, actually threaten the prospect of a free Metaverse.

She goes on to say,

one of two things will happen: either (1) what you patent is so important that it will be critically missing from the common infrastructure because of your patent, therefore the infrastructure will never happen; or (2) what you patent can be done in a different way, in which case that other way will make it to the common infrastructure, and your patent-based business will miss the point.

We are seeing a growing number of grids based on Opensim who's developers take full advantage of the freely available source code. The core developers of Opensim have from the beginning had the goal of building the infrastructure of a free Metaverse for the benefit of private, educational and business interests alike. Everyone owns it. It is the virtual air we breath and just like polluters, there are people that would strangle the baby at birth for the sake of personal gain.

The dream is very clear; a Metaverse of immersive interconnected virtual worlds. Not walled-up monopolies like Second Life or the twenty or so other contenders for the virtual market. The aim is to have lots of small and large grids sharing a common resource on which to build a rich and diverse virtual super grid. Users will be able to grid-hop as easy as teleporting from one sim to another. The hope is for Common standards and methods to arise for names registering, search, money and copyright protection. The users will be able to hold their own property and wear it and use it where ever they go. All this is threatened by those who are effectively stealing and damaging what belongs to everyone.

Deva warns,

you won't gain any friends among some of us core developers (me, at least). You're putting the whole effort in jeopardy. I can guarantee you that if something you patent is critical, I won't stop until I find another way of doing it that doesn't step over your patent.

Not withstanding all this however, Opensim enjoys substantial, and growing support, and there are many new grids emerging built by people that heard the message given long ago by Linden Labs; A virtual world built by the residents and for the residents. OpenSim is not a walled garden. It is open and free and it will cost the individual a lot less to build and express their creativity. Those wannabe Grid Barons will only ever make it more restrictive and expensive for everyone and that's the author's opinion.

Gaga Gracious

Software Development Kit
The Blue Mars SDK has been updated,

Developer Blue Mars Client

• Places Browser features have been brought up to date to synchronize with the current release of the non-developer Blue Mars client.
• Several changes and additions to the UI, avatar name display, and preferences are in place. These changes may be integrated into the non-developer Blue Mars client in a future update.
• Stability fixes.

All Editors

• Bottom toolbar layout has been fixed for 32bit version of Windows 7. Other versions of Windows (including the 64bit version of Windows 7) were unaffected by this bug so you would not notice any changes.
• "Check Item/Cloth/City/etc in Blue Mars" menu item will now launch Blue Mars in a private mode. You will not be able to see other people logged into Blue Mars, nor will others be able to see you.
• ItemData.zip now use an improved compression method for reduced file size, to deal with the new 512KB upload size limit.
• Fixed a lighting bug which caused indoor light (Alt + 4) to survive the "File -> New" command
• Various bug and stability fixes

Furniture Editor

• Removed the geom path string from ARChair entity, in order to allow uploading of furniture items

Cloth Editor

• Now allows you to fill in the "input.dae" field on loading of existing cloth, even if the
  input.dae file does not exist. This makes it easier to load, test and modify existing
  cloth items. Also, set the "Step-by-step" flag to true, for the same purpose - less
  clicks to attach and test existing cloth.
• Cloth Editor can now correctly recognize pre-made non-cloth items, such as shoes.

City Editor

• When creating a new city, you now have the option of creating a city from a template, as opposed to creating one completely from scratch. Please see the Wiki for details about this feature.
• Lua scripts now run inside a sandbox environment for security. This may have an effect on your current scripts. The complete description of the new restrictions in place can be found in the Wiki. Please contact us if you were relying on any of the removed functionality, so that we can come up with a way to make the feature available to you in a safe manner.

City Developer Sample Data

• The number of errors and warning messages in the sample data has been reduced. Our plan is to bring the startup errors/warnings to zero, and keep it that way in the future.

The levels included in the Sample Data are:

• Beach City
• Small Islands
• Taki (waterfall island)
• Golf Course 1
• Golf
• Preview (the old welcome area)
• Welcome Area (the new welcome area)
• Face Customisation
• Viewer (not sure about this, looks more like an item editor)

Blue Mars Client Update (0.0.6999)
A new update has been released for the Blue Mars Client, giving access to two new cities:

and the following bug fixes:

• 'NoTexture' in the edge of the Welcome Area is fixed.
• City installer recovers better from crashes and other unexpected terminations.
• Blank screen when trying to log back in after a crash has been fixed.
• Build information in the window title bar now says "client build" instead of "player build"
• Various stability fixes, particularly with the Flash UI overlay

More updates to the SDK and the Client software are forthcoming, so keep your eyes peeled for further announcements.


Rock

Blue Mars Introduces the Script Center
On the 29th January Blue Mars introduced the Script Center.

The Center includes (so far):

• Introductory Concepts: such as basic script example, Flash Huds, and Action Maps
• Complete Scripts: A Free camera example is provided
• Code Snippets: Lots of useful snippets here to solve common problems

Developers and staff can now start adding their script solutions and build this into a really great resource.

Just Ignore and Let This one Die
Last week the the most incredible thread in the history of forum threads passed an unbelievable milestone. The eponymous and self-defeating thread, entitled 'Just Ignore and Let This one Die', passed the 100,000 posts mark in the Second Life Resident Answers forum. This thread covered every known aspect of Second Life, Real Life, Nostalgic Life, and every other type of Life imaginable.

The honour of the 100,000th post went to Gabriele Graves, with the inspiring "Lol, almost!" contribution. Our hearts should really go out to Maureen Boccaccio who thought she had it, and posted a nice graphic proclaiming the same, but was 1 early at the 99,999th position.

This thread has been viewed 911,239 times up to today, so there is another milestone coming with the 1,000,000th view. There should be a prize for that!

Correction
It has been pointed out by Maureen Boccaccio in the Comments to this Diary entry, that due to some posts in the thread being deleted the person that is currently at the 100,000th position was NOT the first to get there. That honour goes to Brann Georgia, and here is a screenshot capturing the event.

Avatars Disunited
Following the news earlier last week that Linden Labs had acquired the Facebook for Avatars, Avatars United, we were saddened to learn that within 24 hours of the announcement of the acquisition the new service began to break, with lost accounts, and people receiving emails intended for someone else. Didn't take The Lab long to break it, did it? :)

Sun withdraws Support from Project Wonderland
On January 27, 2010, Oracle announced that it had finalized its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Two days later the first casualty of this acquisition was revealed with news emerging that development resources are no longer being applied to Project Wonderland.  A core group of the Wonderland team have vowed to keep the project going, but I am getting my black suit pressed, just in case.

Rock

After meeting Rock in Blue Mars he invited me to write something for his blog so I chose something that has been capturing my interest of late. Radegast.

Radegast is a light weight text client that can connect to Second Life and Opensim grids. I have tried out a number of these clients but this one grabbed my attention because it is rock solid stable, packed with features quite apart from chat handling, and something extra which has proved to be a very useful tool. It has a plugin for the A.L.I.C.E. bot.

I was able to turn an avatar into an AI bot very easily which I thought might be useful on my Second Life sim as a greeter. More especially I wanted to program my bot to help and inform new arrivals. To this end I have to find the AIML files in the Radegast directory on my hard drive and edit them with what I want my bot to say. AIML script is actually a derivative of XML and is not hard to learn. Basically, I need to edit the definitions in the file's paterns (what the user might say) and templates (how the bot might respond). For example:

{category}
{pattern}TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF{/pattern}
{template}{/template}
{/category}

I have read elsewhere that people have actually used the bot for other purposes and scripted LSL attachments to control the avatar which will be my next task. I would say the bot could do a lot more and certainly I would use it in my Opensim grid when I eventually set one up (maybe). In practice I found the bot can only respond to a visitor if they use the bot's name but if they IM the bot then it will engage in conversation without the name.

Given that Radegast is a light weight with no view of the 3D world, it certainly has more features than any others of this type I have seen. Here is a list:

• Chat (local, IM, group, friends conference and voice in version 1.12)
• Inventory (allows manipulation, deletion of the items, moving them around, sending to other people by dropping item on their profile)
• Ability to wear/take off clothes and attachments from the inventory
• Backup of all scripts and notecards from the inventory
• World map (very fast implementation using Google maps)
• Object finder - list objects nearby, sort them by distance, name, see details
• List of all avatars in a region (radar), and those within 300m in nearby regions
• Movement controls via arrow keys
• Support for activating gestures from the inventory
• Avatar appearance - others using 3D client will see you appear correctly, and will not be able to tell that you're using a text client
• Streaming music

The fact it has a plugins button opens it up to more tools and features. One I suggested on the forums could be an AIML editor so the bot definitions could be worked on directly in the client and tested but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I did actually speak to Grant, the creator of MakeAiml, via his forum and he said he was interested in making a plugin and will look into it. MakeAiml can be downloaded from http://makeaiml.aihub.org/tutorials.php.  Radegast can also run the Looking Glass viewer from the tools menu if you download it. The client actually provides the chat and all the other features while Looking Glass renders the 3D world using Orge (see review of Orge elsewhere in this blog). Looking Glass is in alpha state and personally I see no use for it. For me Radegast's strong point is the bot which really doesn't need a full view of the world but it is interesting and yet another example of open source creativity in the free Metaverse community.

Gaga Gracious

After visiting InWorldz and Meta7 I though I might make a habit of calling in on a new grid once a week from now on, and reporting on what I find.

This week, the wanderer arrived at the New World Grid (NWG).

The first thing that struck me when I visited their website was that the site is bilingual, English and French.

NWG is owned by the non-profit organisation, Virtus Association, and the general theme of the grid is artistic and educational. The Virtual University of Edinburgh , VUE, has a region here.

 During registration you can choose your avatar's first and last names, and select from one of five pre-made male avatars, or one of six pre-made female avatars. The Hippo viewer is the recommended download, but as I have Hippo already I checked its Grid list and the New World Grid was there.



NWG has no in-world economy, but has terrific freebies available. All the signs and notecards in the Welcome area were bilingual, and had lots of help available. On the day of my visit, 30th January 2010, NWG had 349 regions, 5409 registered accounts, and 630 unique logins over the last 30 days (as reported on the Hippo screen).


The News of the Day was an announcement that they were working on introducing Voice, Hypergrid, and Groups functionality.

When it comes to land in NWG you basically have three choices:

• You can join your own OpenSim regions or grid to the NWG, free of charge.
• You can buy or rent land on the Mainland or centrally hosted Islands, for a fee and tier, but at around 25% of SL prices.
• As much land as you need, centrally hosted, free, if the project fits within the charitable aims of Virtus, i.e. artistic or educational.

While roaming around NWG I came across Christi Maeterlinck, a retired psychologist, working on a major retirement project, a full reconstruction of the Mount Grace priory in North Yorkshire, covering 4 regions.

The default avatar size, which most people have never calibrated against the grid, makes them used to having an oversized shape, and that, coupled with the camera distance behind the avatars head, means that its actually very difficult to walk round a realistically reproduced dwelling.

Today (29th January, 2010) M. Linden announced that Linden Labs had acquired Avatars United (AU) from Enemy Unknown AB of Stockholm, Sweden. And who is Avatars United, you might ask?

Think Facebook for inhabitants of 3D games and virtual worlds.

AU was the brainchild of three Swedish friends back in 2007, with Thor Olof Philogene as its CEO. It opened in Beta in early 2008, and two years on it is still in Beta.

Although primarily focussed on gamers AU caught the attention of Linden Labs who see synergy with their virtual world, Second Life.

M. Linden explained Linden labs wish to give Residents new and better ways to connect and share, through features like the following:

• Searchable profiles
• Friend and activity feeds
• Widgets and viral content
• Optional registration and sign-in using credentials from other properties (Facebook, Yahoo!, etc.)
• APIs that enable developers to create widgets, tools, and sites pulling from selected SL data feeds

he went on:

Avatars United lets you make some of those connections that I'm talking about above.  It's a great site.  Check it out and add me, T Linden, and others to your friend list. As you do, you'll start to build an activity feed (similar to Facebook or Twitter) that keeps you in closer touch with the people you're connected to in Second Life. This is one of the most exciting things about the acquisition, this ability to reach my friends more easily, with more interesting information (and photos!), and in a more meaningful way. As we go, we'll be adding to these capabilities -- and because Avatars United provides developer APIs, anyone else can add to these capabilites as well.

What is not clear from this acquisition is what is going to happen to the existing members of AU that come from other games, such as World of Warcraft, and other virtual worlds, such as the Opensim-based grids, and Blue Mars.

Stay tuned...

Rock

The incredible new touchscreen device was unveiled at an event in San Francisco.

The new device will cost between $499 and $829 in the US, and fills the gap between smartphones and laptops.

The iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds for the Wi-Fi model, and 1.6 pounds for the Wi-Fi + 3G model.  The size is 242.8mm x 189.7mm and is only 13.4mm thick.

The display is an impressive 1024 x 768 pixels, full touchscreen, and under the hood is a 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip. Memory comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flash drives. The battery life is estimated at 10 hours while surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music.

To get an idea of what the iPad's all about, take a look at this video on the Apple Web site, introduced by product designer Jony Ive.

Rock

Back in December I looked at opensource/free or nearly free virtual world platforms and software. Since then I have been looking at commercial virtual world software to see what they offer, and how much they cost.

After much experimentation with demo versions I finally came up with my Top 5. I was hard pressed to pick a clear winner, as the feature sets varied somewhat, so I will just list the Top 5, in no particular order.

3DVIA Virtools 5

3DVIA Virtools 5  includes five key components: the Graphical User Interface to develop sophisticated applications by visually assembling objects and behaviors; the Behavior Engine to run interactive applications; the Render Engine to render graphics in real-time; the Virtools Scripting Language to create low-level specific functions without any C++ line; and the SDK to create custom behaviors.

The open-ended architecture of 3DVIA Virtools 5 supports a wide variety of 3D formats. 3D Content Capture plugins support most commonly used DCC software formats (3ds Max®, Maya®, XSI®, Lightwave®, Collada®) for importing/exporting 3D XML files, making real-time 3D technology easily available.

3DVIA Virtools 5 allows users to imagine, share and experience highly interactive 3D content. 3DVIA Virtools 5 Platform enables easy development of virtual experiences such as driving, shopping, product use, maintenance and marketing tests.



3DVIA Virtools 5 also extends the range of target environments for deploying 3D experiences: MicrosoftTM Windows® and AppleTM MacOS® computers, Wii and Xbox 360 game consoles, Intranets via Office and XE Players, Internet via the 3DVIA player, as well as immersive environments via the VR Library.
This broad scope highlights the diversity of potential deployment options and provides a large range of communities with a powerful solution to create andexperience life content.

Pricing is not generally published, and is only available on request, however I read in a forum that the cost was somewhere around $9000 plus over $3000 per year for subscription, but a free trial was available.

Download the 3DVIA Virtools 5 datasheet here.

Vizard

DX Studio comes with a Freeware Version (installer is the same for all the different licenses), a Standard Version, and a Pro Version, and with non-commercial and commercial licenses. Prices range from $0 for the Freeware Version, up to $800+ for the Pro Version with a commercial license. Here are just some of the features.

Visual3D
Visual3D is a complete simulation and game development platform that integrates all of the necessary tools and technologies needed to build 3D applications into a single software product.

Visual3D's All-in-One Game Development Toolset enables rapid development of 3D interactive simulations, virtual worlds, and next generation games using C#, .NET and XNA.

With a powerful development API and comprehensive set of visual design tools that automate core design tasks, teams can complete their applications rapidly and cost effectively. With this power in hand, a growing list of leading professional game and simulation developers are using Visual3D.NET to get their applications done.

Visual3D has a Free Trial, available from here,  while prices ranges from $175 per developer for the Indie Edition, to $495 per developer for the Pro Edition. Source code is also available, but are expensive.

More information on Visual3D's features are available here.


Real-time Scene Editing (Scene Design, Part 1) - Visual3D Game Engine from Visual3D Game Engine on Vimeo.

Quest3D

Like many others I was intrigued when the first reports of a new virtual world, called United Nations Citizen (UNC), first appeared in mid January, especially when it appears to be built on the CryEngine2. Like many others I was dismayed to find it was more of a marketing tool than a virtual world after watching the promotional videos on their website.

However, the more I looked into UNC the more confused I became, then the more suspicious. Was this an elaborate hoax, or a scam, or was it for real?

The only official press release I could find was this, from Christy Wilson at the HeadsAndTails website. The release states that:

Cisco Systems and Equifax have partnered with Heads & Tails TV, Faithful Friends TV & Montage Systems, to create United Nations Citizens, a virtual living environment for consumers and businesses, unveiled today at the 99th Annual National Retailers Federation Expo in New York.

The webpage then gives three Links, to www.cisco.com, www.headsandtails.tv, and www.avatar2154.com (curiously, there was no link to the main UNC website). The above press release also gives the name of the new virtual world as United Nations Citizens (plural), while the official website of UNC gives their name as United Nations Citizen (singular).

On visiting the Cisco.com website I could find no mention of this collaboration with Equifax et al, nor any mention of United Nations Citizen. To be on the safe side, in case I missed something, I did a Google search on their entire website and this too failed to find any references whatsoever.

I then visited Avatar2154.com and found this to be a free parked webpage on GoDaddy.com. The whois for this site does not give a name for the registrant, but the address is stated to be Bonsall, California (UNC also state on their website that they are located in Bonsall).

Undeterred, I then visited the website of Equifax, the credit rating agency. Again, I could find no mention of this partnership with Cisco, and a Google search of their website confirmed what I had found, nothing. The UNC website gives this for the role of Equifax:

EquiFax provides the backend geo-targeting real-time data mining to ensure that content distributed matches the consumer demographics, psychographics and profiling opportunities only available in-world.

Data mining? Profiling opportunities?

I got the same result with Montage Systems, but I did have some luck with Faithful Friends TV. Their website did have a link back to the main United Nations Citizen website. However, the contact us link on their website brought up my Outlook Express with the To: field made out to christy@headsandtails.tv , yes, the same Christy Wilson at the source of the original press release at Heads and Tails TV. Full circle.

I then turned my attention to the  99th Annual National Retailers Federation Expo, after all, this is where UNC was unveiled. The Exhibitor list for this Expo does not list United Nations Citizen at all, nor does it list Faithful Friends, Heads and Tails TV, Montage Systems, nor Avatar2154. Cisco did have 5 booths at the Expo, but the notes did not mention United Nations Citizen, nor anything remotely connected with virtual worlds either.

UNC may be for real, but until I see an official press release from Cisco, I will continue to have my doubts.

Rock

Continuing my tour of Virtual Worlds based on the OpenSim platform and derivatives, and that have an in-world currency and an economic system in place, I had the pleasure to meet up with an old acquaintance from my early OpenSim days, Sacha Magne, who (unknown to me) had started his own grid and who is known there as Laurent Meta, when on duty.

Unlike some OpenSim-based Virtual Worlds that come and go, Meta7 has a real company behind it, Magne Metaverse Research, LLC (MMR) which was founded in 2008 by Laurent (Meta).

Meta7, formerly known as K-Grid (see this blog article for the story on the change of name), has a professional-looking website, at http://www.meta7.com/. From the site you can Register a new account and set up your avatar name. There is no restriction on the lastname, as in Second Life, where you can only select from a list of available lastnames. In Meta7 you can have what you like.

Meta7 uses its own viewer, a customised version of the popular Emerald Viewer, which allows it to implement some very cool new features, such as LightShare (more on this later).

The website also has a forum, a wiki, and a link to the Meta7 IRC channel, which is also available inworld, and automatically connected when arriving at Help Island, allowing staff to greet newcomers and assist them.

There is a Support Center to help with any bugs a resident may encounter, and there will soon be a Support Chat facility available for premium members.

Meta7 is not officially open for business yet, they wish to get the platform fully stable and feature rich before throwing their doors open, however they are open right now for preview, so I took the opportunity of going inworld and speaking to two of the proprietors, Laurent Meta and  George Meta.
Q. What are your goals and aims for Meta7?
George Meta: We utilize our team in a way that is most effective to maintain stability for our residents. Voice is not currently enabled here but we will look at implementing that feature when the timing is right for us.


Laurent Meta: We don't follow SL, we innovate. This region is using our latest inovation, LightShare, as an example. This feature has been requested in SL for years, but we accomplished it.  Unlike 99% of the independent grids, we are really doing things. The first physical vehicle in opensim was coded by us. Our team has got some physics specialists, some well-known developers too, all of that make us unique.


George Meta: We are a legal LLC in the USA with our own legal team who are constantly assisting us in clarifying DMCA laws within virtual worlds. Because of our ongoing communication with our attorneys and residents we are able to protect designers and our residents equally and fairly.

George Meta: Our viewer is based on the Emerald viewer, but with modifications and special improvements made by our development team.

George Meta: Our own currency system here was beta tested for a long time to ensure there would be no failures.
George Meta: Legally speaking , there are two names on the corporation paperwork, however our entire team are our proprietors, with Trademarks and a legal team. We are fully identifiable and stand behind our project. Our selves and our corporation are fully accountable

Q. How many staff does Meta7 have, apart from the Proprietors? What are the hours of operation?
George Meta: We have a staff of 6 people who work full time on the project as well as some outside developers. We can be reached nearly 24 hours a day for live help thru our IRC help portal and ticketing system.
Laurent Meta: and most of our residents are in the help channel too.
George Meta: We will be rolling out live phone support in the future as well , as soon as the details are finalized.



George Meta: We aren't officially open yet, but we will allow the grid to grow at its own pace. We are fully confident our method of execution will allow the grid to achieve full fiscal balancing with land and tier.
Laurent Meta: Keeping our innovative spririt, LightShare, near full vehicle implementations, efficient physics engine, and our little bomb ;)


George Meta: There are alot of opensim-based grids, each one with a different way of handling themselves. We continue to innovate and listen to our residents and offer them outstanding customer service and options as we continue to grow. I think one of our biggest features is stability and long term goals that do not rely on income alone to produce. We follow legal and corporate guidelines to boost consumer confidence.
Rock Vacirca: and IRC?
Laurent Meta: We are having a big live concert on the 30th January.

George Meta: Help Island Public will be welcoming some excellent live music performers starting at 8pm UTC and continuing until 1am UTC. These are well known Second Life performers who see the value in expanding their fanbase into a new virtual world.

Blue Mars Extends the MyPage Functionality
Both the developer and user MyPages have been recently updated.

The Developer MyPage now has the following additional features:

• Properties > City > Leased Cities > [Add Block] command: Instead of manually entering Block Name, uses the Current attribute in level_editor.xml as Block name to be added to database.
  
• Properties > City > Blocks > [Re-Upload .BLD file] command added: Allows re-uploading of .BLD file for selected Block, as long as it is NOT leased out or being used by yourself.
  
• If you don't have any leased Blocks, the Properties > Block tab will not be active.
  
• Home > Account Info now shows "Company Code" under "Name". If you bought a City, it will show your company code (up to 6 letters). 
• Administer > Company Members > [Add New Member]: Address, Phone, OS, Graphic Card, and CG Tool fields have been deleted from the [Add New Member] dialogue.
  
• Administer > Company Members > [Add New Member]: Displays an error message if you try to register an email address that is already registered as a Blue Mars Developer.
  
• Administer > Billing History: Displays various financial activity information.