O, to be in Hamburg...

...now that Google Earth is there.

Even though I've been writing about the coming convergence of online games, virtual worlds, and 3D systems like Google Earth, for a while, I'm still amazed at how quickly it's happening. Here's the latest milestone:

Hamburg wird als erste Stadt weltweit als 3D-Modell in das Programm integriert - inklusive der Häuserfassaden.

(Hamburg has become the first city in the world to be integrated into the 3D-program [Google Earth] - complete with building facades.)

...

Franz Steidler, Chef der Cybercity AG, die von Paris und Florenz bereits auf eigene Kosten 3D-Modelle erstellt hat, träumt bereits von ganz anderen Anwendungen: Man solle auch in Häuser hineingehen können, etwa in Geschäfte, um virtuell einzukaufen. "Da ist vieles denkbar."

(Franz Steidler, the head of Cybercity AG, which has already made 3D models of Paris and Florence at its own expense, already dreams of other applications. People will be able to go into buildings, for example shops, in order to make virtual purchases. "All kinds of things are imaginable there.")

Buying virtual goods in virtual shops: now where have I heard that before? (Via Ogle Earth.)

I Urge You to Urge EU Urgency on OA

Open access is important, but for most of us, it's hard to do much about it. So I urge you to vote for the following EU petition, whether you're in the EU or not:

I urge decision-makers at all levels in Europe to endorse the recommendations made in the Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe in full, in particular to adopt the first recommendation A1 as a matter of urgency.

(Via Open Access News.)

Becta: Must Try Harder

Despite Becta's fine words, that guardian of the free software spirit, Mark Taylor, wants more action:

"This is the perfect opportunity for Becta to reject accusations that it is in bed with big suppliers by offering serious support to Linux and open source software as valid alternatives.

"Becta's own evidence says it will save schools money, so let's see them provide at least equal opportunities for schools to buy open source software through their e-Learning Credits and the new Learning Platform Framework Agreements."

Go for 'em, Mark.

Gene Geni

This is quite clever - although it's a pity it uses Flash. You start to build your family tree on-screen, adding emails to the names where available. These are then sent info about the site, and obviously encouraged to add their own local knowledge of the tree. So the system is viral, and is based on two networks: that of family connections, and that of the Internet.

It's easy to foresee the day when we know all our public genealogical connections in this way - a stage before our genomes are used to show all the private ones, too.... (Via TechCrunch.)

Open Aladdin4D

I've written before about the example of Blender, and how it was freed from its proprietary shackles. Now it seems that another modelling program, Aladdin 4D, may also receive its manumission:

What is Aladdin 4D? It's a powerful, but extremely easy-to-use, 3D modeling, rendering and animation package that includes the 3D tools that you'd expect as well as many unique features like relative time-based animation, an amazingly powerful particle system, and one of the fastest rendering systems on the desktop.

Nova originally purchased Aladdin 4D in the mid-1990s from Adspec, Inc. and then heavily upgraded and modernized to make it even more powerful and easy to use. Aladdin 4D has many advanced tools for professional 3D animation, yet its interface was designed to be easy for anyone to use. The source code for Aladdin 4D was designed to be as portable as possible. Adspec, under contract, once ported Aladdin 4D to the Transputer board and also did a special Intel processor rendering engine. Aladdin 4D has already had it's rendering engine test-compiled (a quick hack job) under Linux, MacOS X and other platforms in the past. The source code is highly standard C source code.

This would be great news. Great, because it reinforces this as a model for expanding open source; great because competition is good; and great because with the rise of virtual worlds (especially open ones), 3D modelling packages are going to become as common as HTML editors.

Blog Perdurability and the Information Commons

Simon Phipps raises an important point: what should be done about corporate blog pages when their owner has, er, passed on (as in to another company)? Sun's solution:

When we started blogs.sun.com, we had a long discussion about what we should do when employees left. The conclusion we all reached, supported strongly by Jonathan Schwartz who attended the meeting, was that they should simply be left in place, merely closed for further changes. Our view was that, if the blog text had been acceptable when it was published, there was no reason a change of employment status should vary that. Not to mention the desire by Tim to preserve URIs. Interestingly, one of Jonathan's motivations for this was also so that people could pick up where they left off when they rejoined Sun!

But I'd go further. I think that companies have a responsibility to maintain the availability of any materials that they make public. This is because of the changed nature of information these days: it's inherently interconnected, and snipping out a weft here and a warp there isn't good for the rest of the data tapestry.

Publicly-available information forms a commons; removing it constitutes a destruction of part of that commons. Ultimately there should be laws against it, just as there are against chopping down historic trees that form part of the landscape commons.

Microsoft Enterprise Open Source

Well, that's what it says here, although what this really means is something like this:

Aras Innovator enterprise software solutions take advantage of the Microsoft enterprise service-oriented architecture [SOA] technologies to deliver applications that are scalable, manageable and secure.

Aras Innovator solutions are Microsoft enterprise open source combining the flexibility and control of open source with the affordable Microsoft infrastructure. Together Aras and Microsoft deliver a Total Cost of Ownership dramatically lower than conventional enterprise systems.

Not quite so dramatic, but nonetheless an interesting move from a company that seems hugely proud of its mongrel heritage:

Aras Corporation is the Microsoft enterprise open source software solution provider for companies that want the control and flexibility of open source and have Microsoft skill sets and infrastructure.

(Via TheOpenForce.com.)

Just Say Something

If I had to name the biggest problem with Second Life, it would not be lag or all the other usual stuff (or even unusual stuff like flying penises), but the lack of voice communication. Currently, Second Life is a mute world, which makes it rather eerie (at least for those of us fortunate enough to be able to hear).

So news that Centric are adding a voice chat system in a rather clever way caught my attention:

Centric today announced Second Talk, an easy-to-use voice communication system for Second Life. Second Talk "headsets" automatically scan for other Second Talk users nearby, and offer instant voice chat for groups of up to 10 users through Skype, a popular Voice over IP communication platform.

..

Second Talk offers significant benefits in terms of convenience and cost. Since voice chat is facilitated by Skype, use of the system is free and virtually unlimited. In addition, Second Talk does not require the installation of proprietary software or SIP server setup. Finally, Second Talk does not require a base station to designate a chat area or manage chats - the headset is wearable and fully portable.

Hm: if this works, I might even sign up for Skype....

Gating Technology: The E-Factor

I'm starting to write more posts about energy efficiency, since it obviously feeds into issues surrounding various environmental commons. But it's increasingly clear to me that its impact is going to be much more direct on the technologies I consider on a regular basis.

Take this, for example:

In a piece of research that could have implications for the future of mobile broadband, a US analyst firm has claimed that new mobile applications will make pure cellular technology too energy-inefficient to be practical in the future.

This is going to happen again and again, changing the course of technology development just when everyone thought they knew where it was going....

Becta Late Than Never

I've been a bit remiss in not posting this earlier, but it's still worth underlining the major shift that's going on here, at all sorts of levels.

A while back, I was moaning about Becta not giving free software a chance in UK schools. Well, they've obviously been on holiday to Damascus, because in the recently-published interim report on Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, Becta seems to have seen the light:

The report found that whilst the new features of Vista add value, there are no “must have” features in the product that would justify early deployment in schools and colleges. The technical, financial and organisational challenges associated with early deployment currently make this a high risk strategy. Early deployment is therefore strongly recommended against.

...

As the costs of deployment of Office 2007 would be significant, Becta has not identified any convincing justification for the early adoption of Office 2007. Recognising that many schools and colleges already have perfectly adequate office productivity solutions there would need to be a strong case to justify the necessary investment.

...

The report compared Office 2007 with a range of competitor products and found that many of them delivered about 50% of the Office 2007 functionality, enough it is believed to meet or exceed basic office productivity requirements of many schools.

Becta therefore calls on the ICT industry to ensure that computers for the education marketplace are delivered with a choice of Office productivity suites available, which ideally should include an open-source offering.

The ability for schools to exercise choice is further restricted by interoperability difficulties and Becta is calling on Microsoft to improve its support for the ODF interoperability standard.

There is also concern that the current lack of support for Microsoft’s new file formats in competitor products (particularly “free to education” products) may exacerbate “digital divide” issues. Becta therefore advises that schools and colleges should only deploy Office 2007 when its interoperability with alternative products is satisfactory.

Definitely better late than never.

Shining Mirrored Pages: A Visual Commons

This is art, right?

Thus, by making a public display that is attentive to its community of users, a Visual Commons, it becomes possible for the community to escape the present hegemony of one-way communication, or "broadcast," of generic information (such as the time, or stock prices) or the barrage of mass-media advertising (such as occurs in New York City's Times Square). In effect, dynamic processing of community feedback regarding the contents of the display enables it to become more than just a billboard.

What would Tulse Luper say? (Via OnTheCommons.org.)

We Are All Modular Now

One of the central theses of this blog is that for things like software, modularity produces more and better code, because it allows a kind of Darwinian selection to kick in on an atomistic basis.

But wait: isn't another of my theses that openness is appropriate across a whole range of activities - notably content production? And so...that would suggest that content should become more modular too, allowing a similar kind of winnowing process to take place.

Eek!

Horde Groupware (Also for Humans)

This sounds rather good:

Horde Groupware is a free, enterprise ready, browser based collaboration suite. Users can manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes with the standards compliant components from the Horde Project. Horde Groupware bundles the separately available applications Kronolith, Turba, Nag and Mnemo.

And I can't help feeling that the timing is perfect....

Of WikiSeek and Digital Tyrants

WikiSeek sounds a good idea in principle:

The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages and only those sites which are referenced within Wikipedia, making it an authoritative source of information less subject to spam and SEO schemes.

Wikiseek utilizes Searchme's category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, making results more relevant than conventional search engines.

It does, of course, replace one digital tyrant (Google) with another (Wikipedia).

Real Knowledge of Virtual Worlds

If anyone has the right to pontificate about virtual worlds, it's Howard Rheingold. Fifteen years ago, Rheingold wrote Virtual Reality: The Revolutionary Technology of Computer-Generated Artificial Worlds - and How It Promises to Transform Society. We're still waiting, of course, but that only makes his historical perpective on things even more valuable:

Some things about online social behavior seems to be eternal and universal--trolls and griefers and the eternal meta-debate about what to do about them, for example. There's a widespread amnesia, as if these kinds of cybersocializing were new. Not many people online have much sense of history. That's probably true of just about everything. What I really like is that it's so easy to roll your own these days. It used to be a big deal to set up your own chat or BBS or listserv. Now it's part of the tool set for millions of people, and it's mostly free.

The Open Laboratory

In a sense, turning blog posts into a book - a blook - misses the point, which is that blogs are living, interactive things. Equally, if blog postings can thrive in that form, who am I to gainsay the move?

Certainly, I wish the splendidly-named The Open Laboratory (available from Lulu.com) every success. It's " a collection of 50 selected blog posts showcasing the quality and diversity of writing on science blogs".

Science blogs are, indeed, some of the most readable around, probably because their subject-matter tends to be more substantial than the usual fluff you find in the medium (and I speak as someone who has produced a fair amount of fluff in his time.) It's also probably significant that the ScienceBlogs site is one of the more successful attempts to unify and consolidate related blogs.

Of course, you can still read the posts online (or the longer list of suggestions for inclusion), which makes the collection thoroughly OA. (Via Open Reading Frame.)

Death of Venice

Joost? Joost??

The Tragedy of the Enclosed Lands

How could I resist a blog entitled "From Sink Estates to SQL", with the subtitle "Thoughts on Housing, IT, FOSS and Politics" - to say nothing of posts called "The Tragedy of the Enclosed Lands" with long, sad tales like this:

Last year I attended a demonstration by some companies looking to supply us with a GIS solution. I did not get to hear any costs at this point, but what maddened me somewhat was the level of restrictions the data suppliers wanted to put on any information they gave us.

These included :

- Insisting that if we put map data on our intranet we'd have to buy a licence for every potential user, i.e. every person who has access to our intranet. Considering this is over a thousand people now (and growing) this is fairly ridiculous.

- Advising us that we would only be able to print out maps (to include in publications to customers) if we got additional licences for this.

- If we decided not to renew our licence for the data, we'd have to destroy all maps produced/printed as well as the more obvious step of deleting all data we'd produced and uninstalling the software.

Reasons why proprietary approaches are doomed, No. 4,597. But do read the rest of the post, it's very thoughtful, and concludes stirringly:

I actually believe that mapping data will be de-facto public domain within the next decade. Until then though, we have alternatives. Of the data we collect, I intend to submit it all to the Open Street Map project (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page) which is an excellent attempt to bypass some of the legal faggotry in the copyright datasets. Collectively, we can tear down the enclosures. We can rebuild a commons which can help organisations of all sizes innovate with GIS technologies (surely something which can only increase with better mobile devices?)

Prague: The MMORPG

If online games and virtual worlds are becoming realistic to the point of blurring the boundary with the real world, it is perhaps inevitable that the real world itself should turn into an MMORPG:

This is the Prague Files, the first "live game" from Live Games Network, and I spent two weeks in December playing through the title with other players from across the US. It's a new kind of web-based game that enlists players as secret agents, but it's not all virtual—when several players from New York head down to the accident site, they actually find a crashed car and an unsavory thug keeping an eye on it.

Red Hat's Balkan Mystery

This sounds wonderfully cloak-and-daggerish:

Serbian minister of science Aleksandar Popović and Red Hat Corporation vice-president Werner Knoblich will sign a letter of intent on January 15, the government said in a statement.

Aha! But intent to do what....?

Is the Great God Google Too Good?

A few weeks back I wrote about how that nice Mr. Google was sending me around 50% of my traffic to these 'umble pages. I have a confession to make: I was wrong, it's not 50%. It's more like 60%, going on 70% some days. In fact, if the graph of visitors sent to me by Google continues to climb at its current rate, I shall probably soon have the entire planet visiting every day.

And it seems I'm not the only one impressed by Google's ability to deliver what we used to called "eyeballs" in those good old Web 1.0 days. Here's what The Daily Telegraph's "digital editor" (impressive, I'm still analogue myself) says:

“The most important driver of all readers [to our site] is Google, except for people who know us and come directly. It plays a critical part of exporting our brand, particularly to the U.S.”

At least I don't seem to have sunk quite so low as The Times, which

“is training journalists to write in a way that makes their articles more likely to appear among Google’s unpaid search results.”

Maybe Google is becoming a little too efficient at this game - to the extent that it's warping the world it's supposed to be serving.

This is the House the Fabbers Built

More signs that the fabbers are marching towards us from the future - this time, building houses as they go:

It involves computer-controlled robotic nozzles which pipe quick-drying liquid gypsum and concrete to form walls, floors and roofs.

Inspired by the inkjet printer, the technology goes far beyond the techniques already used for prefabricated homes. “This will remove all the limitations of traditional building,” said Hugh Whitehead of the architecture firm Foster & Partners, which designed the “Gherkin” skyscraper in London and is producing designs for the Loughborough team. “Anything you can dream you can build.”

The robots are rigged to a metal frame, enabling them to shuttle in three dimensions and assemble the structure of the house layer by layer.

(Via Slashdot.)

Sock Bots

After sock mobs, Jamais Cascio warns us about sock bots:

as politics and political figures move into the virtual worlds such as Second Life, we should also expect to see a parallel phenomenon there, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of the space.

Let's call the fake personae that are likely to show up in a virtual world trying to appear as a political mass Sock Bots.

Opening Up

Barely a week after Linden Lab freed the code of the Second Life viewer, we have a fork: Open SL. Not much there, yet, but this is going to be fun.

Snap Decision

As you have probably noticed, there are no images on this page. This is largely to speed the loading: with pix, it would take much longer, and generally slow down the experience of reading the blog.

Clearly, though, much of the Web is graphical in nature, and many Web pages are visually attractive. So it's a pity not to be able to show this as an enticement to explore the links in these posts further.

But I think I've found the solution. I've decided to install Snap Preview Anywhere on these pages. When you move the mouse pointer over an external link, you should see a small floating image of the page linked to (you need Javascript enabled for this to work). To follow the link, either click on it as usual, or click on the image of the page it leads to. More details here.

I hope you find this useful - I know I do on other sites that have installed it. If you don't, you can turn it off by clicking on Options in the floating window, and disabling it.

Update: Following suggestions in a comment (for which thanks), I've now activated Snap Preview for internal links. And you'll notice a small search box in the pop-up window: this leads to Snap's search engine, which also uses its preview technology to good effect. Feedback on these moves is always welcome.