Time to revive this blog... Has anyone else noticed the amount of mainstream press the virtual world Second Life has been getting? I want to learn a bit more about what's under the hood. This comment from Slashshot suggests that all is not well technically. It'd be a shame if SL goes the same way as AlphaWorld because the technology ultimately doesn't support the hype.
The National Library of Australia is inviting Flickr members to add their Australia Day images to a new group as part of the PictureAustralia collaborative image service it manages. The library has aranged to download metadata and thumbnails from the social media goliath on a weekly basis to enrich its collection.
The year according to Google rates 2005 as the year of the Wiki, Myspace as the "Top Gainer" and reveals even more of Janet Jackson. The singer storms to the top of the Google News - Top Searches chart with more hits than Hurricane Katrina.
Multiverse aims to provide a MMOG platform for developers and for inter-operability between what it calls 'gated communities' (and what we know as the hit MMORPGs like World of Warcraft). No cost until you make money. We like that one but let's see how that business works in practice...
Channel4's four docs is first out the door in the UK with a comprehensive user-generated content site targeted at documentary film-makers. Submissions have to be four minutes long and factual.
I haven't been able to actually download any content as yet, nothing like peer-to-peer in evidence, but the site looks well thought out and informative. No information on how many docs have been submitted as yet.
The Creative Archive project is offering two placements to artists to make use of material from the BBC Archive and Creative Archive collections respectively. Creative Archive Licence Group
The guy behind Mosaic, you know the one, is behind Ning - "playground for building and using social applications". Here's a question - does the explosion in social applications make people any more social? I think the jury is out on that one. What's certain though is that generations of folk who never quite learnt how to program are now getting the chance to clone the apps they like. Creativity of sorts in a cute wrapper.
Useful aid for web API developers, the Programmable Web folks have put up a tool for tracking what APIs are being used in tandem across the Web. I still can't bring myself to say "web 2.0", one buzzword too many (and wasn't 1.0 the Web pre-Mosaic?), but that's the label they're using.
Business Week reports on the emerging trend of video blogging which will accelerate the demand for video on-demand services and effective video searching techniques.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2004/nf20041229_0845_db016.htm
Frogjam is a MIDI client/server suite for online jams. Good to see that online MIDI jamming hasn't died along with Rocket Network. It is still ahead of its time.
Tim Berners-Lee has spoken out about the dangers of software patents stifling the development of the World Wide Web. TimBL, who se pioneering work at CERN in 1999 led to the introduction of the World Wide Web, is concerned that the potential of the Internet is under threat. He also drew attention to the fact that 3D graphics are yet to be really exploited online, despite the availability of open standards.
CRN | Breaking News | World Wide Web Inventor Warns Of Patent Licensing Royalty Threat
Thanks to Andy for a pointer to the 1st ranked "Wild" demo on Poeut.
Amondo, the third release by Hungarian demo group Aenima, is a CG animation using off-the-shelf mocap data and some nice atmospheric lighting.
The Register looks at Weblogging as a cultural force and argues that more bloggers need to become proper journalists, or at least contribute a decent precis of what is being signposted. The article makes plain the potential of Weblog conventions to evolve mainstream media, suggesting the benefits of making syndicatable meta-data available on each and every article published.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/18/blogging_future/page2.html
The same principle could be applied to other media types such as still imagery, sound and video. In the industries where this is already being done (e.g. film and television) there is an opportunity to demonstrate immediate benefits with areas like research, royalty tracking, advertising and marketing, production management, and film/game integration all trying to do greater things on tighter budgets. Generating a rough cut from RSS feeds may be a little way off for Hollywood but independants have no reason to hesitate.