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!