So Apple has announced a delicious new iPhone. Something of a feast for the eyes and the geekdom cortex, which has me wondering if I can justify part exchanging my 3GS. That screen and the HD video camera in particular have me drooling — it would certainly be great to film mini-Aaron with as she …
June 7, 2010 – 10:33 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in Thoughts
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Tagged communications, FaceTime, iphone, iPhone 4, phone, technology, video, video call, video calling, video conferencing
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So the next iteration of Second Life viewer has come along, and it’s looking marvelous! I’m actually really impressed. Here’s my quick run down of Linden Lab’s new monster.
What it has…
Aesthetics
The new client looks absolutely marvelous. Yup I know that sounds like a fairly unimportant thing to talk about, but actually it isn’t. How pleasing a GUI …
February 25, 2010 – 1:11 am
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By Aaron
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Posted in Reviews, Thoughts, second life
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Tagged clients, human factors, linden lab, linden labs, ll, psychology, review, second life, second life viewer 2, second life viewer 2.0, sl, sl2, software, usability, users, viewer, virtual worlds
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So I guess almost everyone who’s going to read this post is aware of Linden Labs purchase of Avatars United and the assimilation of it’s creative minds at Enemy Unknown. Speculation is rife as to what motivated this purchase, the grand avatar purge that counts Ener Hax amongst it casualties? Problems with scaling? Chances are …
February 2, 2010 – 2:29 am
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By Aaron
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Posted in Thoughts, second life
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Tagged au, avatars united, cognitive ergonomics, collaboration, enemy unknown, facebook, human factors, interviews, linden lab, linden labs, ll, networking, scaling, second life, sl, social networking, sticking plaster
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As part of my ongoing PhD project, I’m looking to interview around a dozen or so people about how they use Second Life to collaborate with others on projects. I’m using a very loose definition of collaboration here, which could include things like general meetings, working on products, organising events, land administration, presentations, performances, even …
January 19, 2010 – 9:49 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in research, second life
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Tagged collaboration, experiments, human factors, interviewees, interviews, investigation, linden labs, psychology, research, second life, sl, user studies, virtual worlds
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Between 1995 and 2001, Microsoft developed and operated it’s own social virtual world. Named V-Chat, the service allowed users to create their own text-based, 2D, or 3D environments in which they could chat and interact with other users. In it’s six years of active service, V-Chat saw two major iterations, an active end-user community numbering …
January 9, 2010 – 7:20 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in research, second life
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Tagged avatars, customisation, design, gui, guidelines, human factors, linden, Microsoft, real life, research, second life, sl, ui, user interface, virtual world, virtual worlds
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Back in the 1970s, towards the end of the research flurry where communication systems were being heavily studied by both the British Post Office and the US Government, Short and colleagues (1977) made referrence to an idea they termed social presence. Their theory was that all forms of communication varied in the degree to which …
January 8, 2010 – 1:33 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in research, second life
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Tagged co-presence, connected presence, copresence, presence, psychology, research, togetherness, virtual reality, virtual worlds, vr
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Up until now, most of my blog posts have been fairly opinionated errr… reflections on various things, events, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing these things — and I have every intention on carrying on with them — but for a blog that was originally meant to be about research it’s kind of …
A little while ago I stumbled across a very interesting article in a philosophy journal. It spoke about an interesting theory of reality, and the possibility that we are all actually living in a simulated world.
I’ve heard about the simulated reality theory before and never really paid it much attention — the idea that we’re all …
OK, I’ll be honest with you, I’m probably not the best person to make predictions. I say that because I’m not hugely up to speed with industry news. My interest in Second Life current events really only dates back to the last couple of months, whereas I stopped following telepresence news back in the beginning …
January 3, 2010 – 11:46 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in Thoughts
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Tagged 2010, 3d telepresence, blue mars, cisco, lifesize, linden, logitech, predictions, second life, sl, telepresence, translation, virtual worlds, vr, webcams
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