Bright Canopy, the company working towards offering a new streaming access service for Second Life and OpenSim has announced its first in-world meeting and Q&A session.
The event will take place on Saturday, April 25th, starting at 11:00 SLT, and will take place in Thorncliff, Second Life. The meeting announcement reads in part:
Please join us for our first in-world Q&A at our shiny new, Bright Canopy Meeting Hall.
How This Works: To make sure everyone gets a turn to ask their question, please take a seat when you arrive. When we get everyone settled, we will begin taking question. If you have a question, please stand and I will call on you. Please ask questions in text chat so that we can keep a transcript.
Please be aware that we will be keeping a log of the chat and will be posting it to the website. We respect your privacy, but want to share the discussion with people who can’t make it
Seating may well be limited, depending on the numbers attending, and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. All things being equal, I’ll be attending myself and will be producing a full transcript of the meeting, which will appear both in the Bright Canopy blog and here.
On Tuesday, April 21st, the Lab announced that the new Viewer-Managed Marketplace (VMM) capabilities are now officially in beta testing on the main Second Life grid.
I’ve been reporting on (VMM) for the last several months, and provided an overview of the functionality while it was undergoing initial beta testing on the Beta (Aditi) grid. with the launch of the open beta on the main grid, which is scheduled to run for approximately one month, VMM will undergo more widespread testing ahead of its formal introduction.
VMM is designed to enable merchants to manage the creation and management of Marketplace product listings through the viewer, bypassing the need to use the Merchant Outbox (and have copies of items stored on the Marketplace inventory servers) or using Magic Boxes (as VMM fully supports the sale on No Copy objects).
This means that once VVM has been fully introduced to SL, both the Merchant Outbox in the viewer and Magic Boxes will be retired from use.
The Marketplace listing panel is the viewer-side hub of the new VMM functionality
VMM works via a new panel in the viewer, called the Marketplace Listings panel (shown right – note that you must be running the Viewer-Managed Marketplace project viewer in order to see this panel, as the code has not been released in the officially viewer, although some TPVs may have incorporated the code ahead of it being released to RC status).
Through this panel, which is associated with your inventory, new listings can initially be created using the viewer and set to be listed in your Marketplace store (or unlisted from your store).
Note that it will still be necessary to edit listings, should this be required, by going to the Marketplace website.
As there are certain hierarchies and new folder types involved with VVM, the Lab has produced both a Knowledge Base article and a wiki FAQ to help those who have so far not had the opportunity to try VMM to get started. To mark the launch of the open beta, an initial TuTORial video has also been produced to help people orient themselves with the new functionality, and more will follow.
As noted above and in the official blog post from the Lab, VMM is likely to remain in open beta for about a month. Once the beta has concluded, the next steps in the process will be:
A release VMM to all merchants.
A period of a month to allow those merchants who wish to manually migrate their listing to VMM to do so, which will be followed by an automated migration of Direct Delivery listings (Magic Box listings will need to be manually migrated)
Once the migration process is deemed complete, Xstreet and Magic Boxes will be shut down.
VMM includes capabilities to help merchants migrate their existing listings without necessarily have to re-create them. This is touched upon in my overview, linked-to above (do note that the latter is now five months old, and some elements of VMM functionality may have changed slightly in the interim).
The Lab’s blog post notes that feedback on VMM is welcome through the Merchants’ Forum post, while bugs and issues should be filed via the VMM JIRA project.
Bright Canopy’s new blog has launched, and with it a competition as well.
The blog, which will be used to keep people up-to-date with developments in the project and news on things like the upcoming pre-launch beta testing, is still a work-in-progress, and the introductory note indicates there may be a few changes as things settle down.
As well as the introductory note, the blog also carries a brief update, which includes some news on the forthcoming pre-launch beta programme, and also information on the aforementioned competition.
This is a photo contest, and on offer is a free month’s subscription to Bright Canopy once it officially launches.
Those interested in participating are invited to submit a snapshot, taken in-world, which can be used as the background image for the Bright Canopy desktop – the screen users will see when they log-in to the service, and which allows them to launch the viewer to access Second Life or OpenSim.
Snapshots must be at least 2000×1378 pixels, and must be PG in nature – so no nudity! The guidelines for the competition note that Bright Canopy are looking for images that will make a good desktop background; things like in-world landscape pictures. They note that avatars can be included, but shouldn’t be the primary focus.
Submission can be made via one of the following methods:
All entries should feature the hashtag #SLFreedom, and those entering via Twitter or Google+ message should also follow Bright Canopy, while those entering via Facebook are asked to Like the Bright Canopy page. In addition, all entries must be submitted through the chose channel no later than 23:59 pm PDT on Friday, May 24th, 2015. Please make sure you ready the competition notes and guidelines in the Bright Canopy blog prior to entering.
There’s currently no date for the official launch of the service, so the winner may have a short wait before the closing date and getting access to Bright Canopy.
Veronica Sidwell in Second Life (image: Veronica Sidwell, as used by VICE)
On Wednesday, April 15th, Xiola Linden Tweeted about an article that appeared in the Motherboard section of the VICE web magazine which makes for an interesting read.
Avatar IRL is a piece by Cecilia D’Anastasio focusing on the question of avatar identity, and how it can work both ways – not only does it allow us to create and project an identity into virtual mediums, be they immersive worlds like Second Life, MMORPGs or through “traditional” text-only chat forums, it can sometimes be that the impact of engaging in such environments can often have an impact back on our real-world selves; shaping and influencing who we are in the physical world in what is broadly termed “identity tourism”.
Cecilia D’Anastasio: writing on identity in the digital age (image via Twitter)
The term has it roots in the 1980s, when it was used to “examine the ways in which tourism intersects with the (re-)formation and revision of various forms of identity, particularly ethnic and cultural identities”.
In the 1990s, Lisa Nakamura, who gets a fair mention in the article, broadened the term to encompass the way in which on-line activities – notably MMORGs – were encouraging more and more people to experiment with matters of identity and self-definition. It is her work which appears to have given D’Anastasio the idea for Avatar IRL.
The article is a part of a wider series within Motherboard entitled Goodbye Meatbags, which focuses on “the waning relevance of the human physical form”.
In order to frame the piece, D’Anastasio placed a request in the SL forums asking if people would be willing to share their own stories on the issue of identity tourism. At the time, the request provoked a mix response (indeed the article itself has provoked much the same). From the responses she received, D’Anastasio selected the story of Veronica Sidwell, a male-to-female transsexual, to serve as the introduction and initial examination of self-identity and the deep sense of identification many have with their avatar – and how that identification can loop back into their physical lives; in this case, allowing Veronica to seek to transition her physical self, adopting the name of her avatar in the process, in recognition of the role she feels it played in allowing her to do so.
Veronica’s story is related with respect, and serves to springboard the article into its wider discussion which, as mentioned above, reviews Lisa Nakamura’s initial studies into matters of identity (which also delved into aspects of stereotyping and negative reinforcement which did – and still can – occur), before moving on to look at the work of Nick Yee and Tom Boellstorff, and their ongoing studies into the myriad questions of identity and self-definition which arise from our increasing ability to interact through a wide range of digital mediums and the levels of anonymity that often afford when doing so.
Nick Yee (l) and Tom Boellstorff
Both of these names will hopefully be familiar to regular readers of these pages. I covered Nick Yee’s work back in January 2014, and his book The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us– and How They Don’t, is a recommended read for anyone interested in the increasingly complex matters of identity and our relationships with our digital selves and how we relate to the digital identities of those around us. For those not enticed by his book directly, I’d recommend at least reading Virtual worlds Are Real, a piece he wrote for Slate magazine from January 2014, and which served as the springboard for my article on his work.
I’ve similarly made mention of Tom Boellstorff in the past. His research has covered many aspects of identity and the question of self in the digital arena, and he has written two books on the subject directly focused on Second Life, Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human,(Princeton University Press, 2008), and Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (Princeton University Press, 2012, co-authored with Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce & T. L. Taylor), and he is also known for his involvement in the story of Fran Seranade / Fran Swenson. Tom also featured in a Drax Files Radio Hourinterview which, if you haven’t heard it before, I do recommend.
D’Anastasio covers both Yee’s and Boellstorff’s work as a means of illustrating the osmotic process which can work both ways: that as much as we seek to build and define our digital identity, so the experiences we gain, the interactions we have through those digital projections can also seep back into the flesh and bone, influencing us and further shaping our self-identity.
Avatar IRL has been critiqued for focusing on matters of “sexuality” rather than “identity” – D’Anastasio also relates the experience of Dale, a male-to-female transsexual engaged in World of Warcraft. I’m less than convinced such critiques are valid given the overall context of the article. More to the point, what is a person’s quest to explore, understand and ultimately to be their desired gender, if not a matter of identity?
While there are no ground-breaking revelations in the article – at least for those of us already engaged in environments like Second Life and World of Warcraft, etc. But the piece does provide a good opening for those who might be curious about identity in the digital age, and who might want to delve a little deeper into the subject.
It slipped out under the radar for most of us interested in such things, possibly because it occurred on the same day as the sad news came of Sir Terry Pratchett’s passing; but for those wondering how things are fairing for Blocksworld, the one remaining product in the Lab’s portfolio outside of its virtual world endeavours, the answer would appear to be, “Well enough to get an extension of LL’s relationship with Hasbro.”
Through the relationship with Hasbro, six fun new G.I. JOE games will be available for all Blocksworld players. The games present an exciting new storyline in the conflict between G.I. JOE and COBRA that ends in a cliffhanger, and Blocksworld players will be challenged to create and share their own interactive endings to the narrative.
As well as the games themselves, the launch included a set of G.I. Joe building sets, available as in-app purchases, allowing players to extend the G.I. Joe related adventures by using them to create additional characters, vehicles and weaponry.
This is the third partnering between Linden Lab and game / toy maker Hasbro, with My Little Pony having been added to the Blocksworld stable in 2014 alongside of – in what must have seemed an obvious choice for the game – Transformers, coinciding with that particular franchise returning to the silver screen. Another foray for Blocksworld into the world of films during 2014 came with the release of the Legends of Oz sets of Dorothy’s Return (tying in with the animated feature of the same name), and Heroes of Oz.
Approaching eighteen months on the market, Blocksworld is proving to be something of a durable title in the cut-throat world of apps, where titles can rise and fall almost overnight at times. According to App Annie, it continues to enjoy relatively high rankings in countries like the USA, UK, Canada, and Japan. In the USA, it has consistently been in the top 10 in terms of revenue for “educational” games, and in the top 500 for games in general.
While “educational” might seem a tad bit odd as a category for the game to be listed under, Michelle Vuckovich, the Director of Product for Blocksworld, points to the game’s educational value in the G.I. Joe press release. “Kids love playing and creating in Blocksworld,” she is quoted as saying. “While having fun creating anything they can imagine, they’re also learning to think like programmers, game designers, and engineers – something parents and teachers can appreciate.”
The Blocksworld Premium banner
As well as the G.I Joe release in March, Blocksworld also saw a change in January 2015, with the introduction of something which might have a familiar ring to it for SL users: Blocksworld Premium.
This appears to be an in-app (presumably purchasable) upgrade which offers those joining the opportunity to “build epic creations with infinite blocks, actions, textures, and more!”. In addition, Premium users get Standard Blocks as soon as they are released, with (dare I say it?) a “stipend” of Action Blocks added to their inventory every week.
It’s still not clear if Blocksworld will move into the world of Android devices; but it certainly seems to be quite comfortable in the iPad world, and quite likely doing very nicely for the Lab while there, as noted.
News is spreading on the efforts, spearheaded by Bill Glover, to bring a new cloud-based means of access to Second Life (and other grids).
Bright Canopy is the name of the project, and Bill was stirred into action following ruminations on this blog relating to Amazon AppStream, and more particularly as a result of Nikola Bozinovic’s invitation that people take a look Frame, the company he has established to provision Windows applications and web applications to a range of clients across the web, something I did couple of days ago when looking at one of the two options for Frame: that of a do-it-yourself option.
As mentioned in that article, while the DIY approach works, it is not ideal in some respects. Far better to have a fully managed service along the lines of SL Go available to users. As noted in my article, and in posts like Ciaran’s, linked-to above and in the SL subreddits, this is exactly what Bill is working towards.
Since word of Bright Canopy initially broke, the response has been overwhelming. So much so that the beta invitation has now been closed, as it was getting to the point where too many people were wanting to try things out. Those signing-up now will instead receive news on developments.
So, in the meantime, what has been going on? Well, in brief.
The project is on a solid footing, with a core group of beta testers; a Github environment has been set-up for issue reporting and tracking, managing code, and running the project’s internal wiki, and channels of communication established. In addition, the LL viewer has now been added to the project alongside Firestorm.
Testing has already raised a range of issues, and these are in the process of being addressed, with the Frame team are working closely with Bill to overcome some of the stickier issues around provisioning the viewer in this way.
Bright Canopy now runs both Firestorm and LL’s viewer
One such issue is getting viewer settings to persist across multiple sessions, another is upping the overall performance, and there are more. All are being looked at, but it is going to take time to solve things, so it might be a little while longer before things can be opened-up some more and invite more people to try it.
In terms of performance, various options are being looked at, and one thing that may help is that Nikola informs me that Frame are working on a new set of native terminals covering OS X, Windows and iOS, which should be in their own beta soon.
Because there is a lot to be achieved, a work list is being drawn-up, and some key decisions for the short-term have been taken with regards to focusing efforts.
Bright Canopy now has LL’s viewer enabled, and things like performance are very much being looked at (the 30 fps seen here is fairly typical of the upper end of the performance scale at present
This means, for example, that the current work is focused on getting a non-mobile solution working.This makes sense because the majority of people using the SL Go service did so from low specification computers rather than mobile devices, so ensuring there is a service which can fill the void for them is key.
A mobile solution also requires much more in the way of specialist work – such as providing an overlay to allow users to control things like avatar and camera movement via a touch screen (just as was the case with SL Go), and a means of interfacing with touch keyboards. While this work will be tackled, it is not on the immediate priority to get sorted. Having a service that works and provides the level of performance users will be happy with is currently key.
Also in the running is a new Bright Canopy blog, which we intend to use to help keep folks up-to-date on progress, offer screenshots of work (and maybe even a video or two), and more as time goes on. This will hopefully be up and running in the near future, and you’ll likely see me writing there 😉 .
There’s obviously a lot else to be sorted as well – including pricing. Right now, however, the effort is in exploring exactly what can be achieved and how. However, this will hopefully give a flavour for what has been achieved in just a few days of effort. There will be more to come as more progress is made, and I’ll have a link to the Bright Canopy blog once it is up and running.
Bright Canopy, the company working towards offering a new streaming access service for Second Life and OpenSim has announced its first in-world meeting and Q&A session.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 