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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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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Given that we’ve just passed into a new year, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some Second Life stats. The only stuff I’ve analysed so far is the log-in data. For each day (in theory anyway), Linden records how many users logged during the 7, 14, 30, and 60 days, …
I don’t know how many times I wrote this post. Maybe three, four, five times? I’m really not sure. The problem is, there’s not a good way of writing it. Too many potential readers could take it to heart and be hugely offended. So instead I leave you with just the haiku that inspired it …
I’ve been reading quite a lot of blog posts on the topic of copybotting recently. For those who don’t know, copybotting is the blanket term used to cover Second Life piracy. Its name comes from the process where an automated avatar (bot) systematically inspects and then replicates an in-world item — although it now tends …
December 15, 2009 – 2:00 pm
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By Aaron
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Posted in Thoughts
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Tagged cognitive ergonomics, copy, copybotting, copying, design, human error, human factors, human factors psychology, linden, linden labs, piracy, second life, sl, virtual worlds
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