Gamespot – Darwin Interview

Back in March I posted to the PacRimX blog a story about the Darwin Controller. Well, here we are five months later and still not product. When I posted the story about the ASUS controllers I thought back and wondered what ever happened to the Darwin. Well, tonight when I popped over to Gamespot there was a story about the Darwin, an interview with the CEO of Motus, the makers of the Darwin motion controller.

Motus CEO talks Darwin motion-controlled

It’s an interesting interview, and well worth a read. Not a lot of specifics about what kind of support yet, or what platforms it will be available for. But there is a mention of a Spring release and a price point between $79 – $100. I am dying to get my hands on one of these to test with Second Life. As I said in the other post about the ASUS controllers, I am really disappointed with the Space Navigator. It’s a terribly clumsy non-intuitive device for 3D virtual worlds.

Jump to the full article for this interview about a very promising new technology.

ASUS – Wii can control it

ASUS has announced a new motion sensing controller scheme for PC gaming. Anyone who has played on a Nintendo Wii is going to see more than a passing similarity to the Wii controllers. ASUS has recently dominated the sub-notebook category with their $400 Eee PC. It looks like they are about to launch the motion sensing controller market for the PC with these new controllers.

I’ve been using my Space Navigator with Second Life for a month or so now, and I am still not satisfied with the control scheme. My kids have a Wii that is almost always on in my house on the weekends. The freedom of movement and pure intuitiveness of these types of controllers, even with young children and senior citizens is simply amazing.

I am hopeful that we might see these stateside soon, and that Linden Lab sees fit to add support for these controllers in Second Life. This would definitely remove one barrier to entry to the SL platform, that of a cumbersome controller scheme for SL avatars. I’ll post more info as it becomes available. For now, check out a sneak peek at the list of features at the ASUS website.

College Fair on Teen Grid – Eye4You Alliance

The Eye4You Alliance is having their second annual college fair on the Teen Grid of Second Life on October 12^th from 9:00am – 3:00pm SLT. Their first college fair was a huge success, and this one can only get better and reach more students. Follow the link to all of the details for this valuable event:

The Second Annual Second Life Teen Grid College Fair

Wonderland Version 0.4 Released!

It’s out! After a long wait, version 0.4 of Sun’s Wonderland platform has been released. We are in the process of getting a few servers online with the new code and the updated Worldbuilder for our VirtuED partners to start experimenting with. After a conference call with Sun week before last, we are excited about this new release and what it will mean to our projects.

Here’s a summary of new features:

• New multi-user applications: PDF viewer, video player, VNC viewer
• Enhanced audio connectivity with dial-out and dial-in
• Web based administration, including a web-based world builder
• Major stability improvements, especially in larger worlds and with shared applications

We were also told that you can now upload content directly inside of the virtual environment. Once we get the servers online and have had time to play with them, we’ll post our impressions on this new version. Start the clock ticking for the release of v0.5!

eBooks and the Amazon Kindle

UPDATE: Someone sent me the following link after I posted this blog entry:

Extinguish the Rumors: No New Amazon Kindle This Year

This sort of puts to rest the whole rumor of the education Kindle coming out this year (before Christmas).  There is this quote:

“Mr. Berman declined to speculate about the new model or if it will be aimed at a particular audience — though the $5.5 billion textbook market, and all those heavy student backpacks, certainly seems like an appealing target for e-book publishers.”   

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I am stepping slightly out of the virtual education realm for this post. I have to say up front that I am a diehard Amazon Kindle fan, and have been lugging one around with me since last Christmas. I’ve always known that my drab white wedge was version 0.9 of Amazon’s ebook readers, but being an early adopter I dealt with it.

Now, less than a year from the launch of the Kindle we have two new models on the horizon:

Amazon To Offer New Versions of Kindle e-Book Reader

The Kindle is a pretty amazing little device. To me it’s not so much a replacement for books, I still buy plenty of paper books, it’s a consumption choice. I like the fact that I can get the Wall Street Journal delivered each morning wirelessly. I like that I can carry my entire e-library around with me in a 10 oz case. And I really like that I can download samples of books that I’m interested in, and purchase and download books straight off of the Amazon site from virtually anywhere in less than a minute. It’s also very convenient being able to download books (feedbooks, fictonwise, and manybooks to name a few) from the Internet, and also to convert PDF’s, mobi and other formats for use on the Kindle.

While the design of the Kindle is a little awkward (specifically the long buttons that run down both edges of the device), and there is no really good solution for reading in the dark, for a version 0.9 it was pretty close to the mark. The big things I would like to have added to my Kindle are the ability to have folders for my books so that I can sort them, instead of having to page through them looking for what I want. I would also like a little more functionality in the “experimental” web browser. Java script would go a long ways towards better functionality.

It would appear that two new Kindles are in the offing for the not too distant future:

“A Seattle newspaper confirmed late last week that Amazon.com is in the late stages of rolling out two new versions of Kindle. Reports unconfirmed by Amazon indicate there will be at least two new devices — one with a new user interface but the same dimensions of the original paperback-sized reader, and another the size of an 8-by-11-inch sheet of paper. Other tantalizing details are that the new readers may sport color choices.”

I am really intrigued by the 8-by-11-inch model for education. I really see this as a huge potential market for these types of devices. To cut the cost and to focus the application of these the education Kindles should have standard wireless or SD card support for books. This would make the distribution and updating much more economical than the current wireless of the Kindle. The Kindle still struggles with diagrams, charts and pictures. Far too many Kindle books do nothing to make these easier to read. I have a few that allow you to zoom to full screen on charts and diagrams. Others publishers are too lazy and the charts and diagrams are of no use (look at technical manuals and journals). I also think to have a truly all around text book replacement we need to have color. The only viable proposal I’ve seen for this is the MIT $20 eBook reader (The Lightbook) from the OLPC group. There’s also been a case made for the XO to be an ebook reader (look closely at the comparison of black and white to color graphics in this article).

I watch kids walking to school each day (and I have four of my own) hunched over carrying 50lbs+ of books in their backpacks. Some carry a duffle bag slung over their neck with a backpack on their backs. Why? Textbooks have increasingly become more colorful, more glossy (ie: heavy), and more expensive over the years since I was in school? At what cost? And the content printed in the textbooks is often obsolete in the first year of use. And textbook adoptions are for how many years? A textbook can’t be corrected, updated, or expanded. There’s got to be a way for the textbook publishers to adopt a new standard for using these devices with their publications. Many are starting to experiment with CD’s, too bad those are now outdated technology and not very portable. We’ve almost made the transition to digital files with music, we’re making it with movies, and now our phones are wrapping them all together. Why not textbooks and ebook readers?

Nothing is going to happen until people demand it, people start to come up with alternatives that threaten the monopoly of the textbook companies, or people start taking it into their own hands. What pushed Apple and others to move to online music purchases? Easy, piracy of music CD’s on the Internet using P2P applications. I am surprised with all the laptops that are out on our college campuses that students have not started cutting apart their books and scanning them into PDF’s for their laptops. How difficult would this be? There must be something that can happen to push this adoption along and get the textbook publishers to at least start to look at this distribution model.

I’m the Technology Director for a large K12 school district. If you’re a textbook publisher and have a pilot project with ebook readers and textbooks, drop me a line and I will gladly propose testing it in my district. To me it’s almost shameful that the textbook companies have not promoted this more themselves. In about 10 years we’re probably going to have a whole generation of people with back problems before their time due to all the books they haul around in their backpacks to and from school today. Why?

As this article points out, the early sales of the Kindle roughly parallel those of the first iPods from Apple. We can only hope that they continue to track those numbers to the levels of Apple’ss success with their iPods and iPhones today. I have certainly been converted and would only give up my Kindle for one of the newer models.

2008 Metaverse Tour – The Social Virtual World’s A Stage

Gary Hayes has put together a nice YouTube video that gives a speed tour of a number of virtual world platforms:

There are a few notable absences in this video, and several games are included, but for the most part this will give someone a good overview of what’s out there. Don’t blink, especially towards the end, as they zip by pretty quickly.

Gartner Study – Virtual World Outlook

There’s a flurry of blog posts over a recent Gartner Study. They are all based on Gartner’s ranking of 27 emerging technologies on the hype cycle curve that they made popular.

Here’s a link to the 27 technologies on the curve according to this Gartner study:

Figure 1: Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. 2008 (Gartner Study)

By my measure “Public Virtual Worlds” are still on the downward slope of the hype curve, just a bit behind Web 2.0. Other blogging sites are more optimistic. Here are links to a few of them:

Gartner Locates Virtual Worlds in Trough of Disillusionment; Mainstream within 5 Years

Metanomics: Slowly Crawling Out Of The Trough Of Disillusionment

Assuming that this technology can ride out the next few years, it would appear that things are going to be looking up after that. I do find it interesting that Gartner tagged this technology as “Public Virtual Worlds”. Where do private virtual worlds land in this? Will they emerge in parallel with the public virtual worlds, behind, or out in front?

 

Kids and MMO’s

There’s a new post up at The Daedalus Project on kids and their use of MMO’s, and what their parents think are the risks and benefits:

Kids and MMO’s

The survey had 314 participants, parents who were gamers who had at least one child under the age of 18 playing online games.

The perceived risks were as you would expect; exposure to inappropriate language and themes (42%), online predators (32%) and spending too much time playing (25%) were the top three. The article lists out a large number of these risks from the survey. These numbers still support the use of private virtual worlds in formal school settings, as the top perceived risk factors can be mitigated and managed in a private setting (virtually eliminating predators and griefing).

The benefits listed were also interesting; working in a diverse group (53%), problem solving (25%), reading/writing/typing (23%), and social/communication skills (20%) were the top listed. These benefits are exactly what the current cultural virtual world projects seek to provide their students. PacRimX has always tried to foster communication, collaboration and cultural exchange with our participating students from America and Japan. We will continue to strive for this goal with our soon to be announced partnership.

The article closes out with some advice for parents that are letting their students play MMO’s. The best is to not only know what your kids are doing, but to get involved in what they are doing. Don’t just dip in and take a look at what they are doing, but have an ongoing involvement in what they are doing, and research all of the fan sites and outside resources they may be tapping into while playing the game.

The article goes into great depth on the results of the survey. Jump to the full article for a series of graphs summarizing the survey results, and interpretations of the survey results. This should be required reading for any parent thinking about letting their pre-teen or teen play MMO’s of any type, especially those that are free and open to the public (with no verification system).

Students vs Second Life

The Metaverse Journal has a post up about the differences between the Generation X’ers and Millennial’s in virtual worlds:

Students vs Second Life

This article delves into a subject that I’ve been talking about since starting the PacRimX project. The students of today do not like free form environments like Second Life unless they are given very specific tasks to perform. If you take a group in and ask them to build a building you will likely come back in an hour with them standing around chatting with no construction having taken place. Occasionally you will get a student that grabs on and masters building and this is the student that will end up helping with the project. Left to their own devices, these students will scratch their heads and wonder what they are doing there. The teachers can’t figure it out, because to them Second Life is a blank canvas full of potential for creating and learning. How could two groups so close in age be so different?

This article delves into this and lays out the differences between these two groups and what educators need to do if they are going to teach in this environment:

“The educator who uses Second Life as a learning tool will be teaching an additional subject – how to play in a freeform way. The concept and practice of freeform or open-ended play was easier for Generation X, in a way – we were rebelling against another world entirely. Difference and imagination was embraced. It was like a little Renaissance. Even though our schooling focused somewhat on directed study, by university age we had hopefully been weaned off it – by the system. The Millennial Generation, however, needs now to be taught to play this way. They need to be drawn out of their risk-averse shells gently – they need to be led, not pushed. They are not bold.”

Jump to the full article for all the details.

Is She Real Or Memorex?

Times Online has a video and technical article about a new animation technique that results in lifelike animations:

Lifelife animation heralds new era for computer games

This story speaks for itself. Click the video or the link above to view the video and read the in-depth article on this new technology.