Once logged in, I noticed a new navigation help UI (Update 8/5/08 7:18am PST: after publishing I’ve been told by others in the comments that this navigation isn’t “new” at all, it’s been around awhile) above my avatar:

And one below too:

Here’s how it looks fit together (I cropped out the right side of the screen):

As you might expect, you can adjust the camera position using these navigation helpers. I x’d out of them. I can see them being a little helpful to new folks but man is the SL UI getting cluttered. There does come a point when too much information is no longer helpful. With the client being open source anybody is welcome to create an SL-lite UI, which maybe somebody already has.

Do you find the new navigation helpers useful or did you X out of them right away too?

Ever wonder what the backend of creating video games, and video game programming looks like? Enter Alice.

It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

Alice is free and open source. It is a stand alone application, and is available on many platforms. It uses much of the technology that was used in the making of The Sims2.

It’s used at many schools and colleges as a teaching tool. Instructions are similar to that of C++ and C# But includes a neat drag and drop interface for the actions, methods and properties. I made a short sequence myself in about 10 minutes.

Exporting to the web is a bit difficult because it requires the end user to have a lot of Java framework installed on their unit. Exporting as video isn’t functioning yet as the video’s are just too big.  You can view a bunch of Alice works on YouTube.

Here’s some more info direct from Carnegie Mellon:

Clicking the yellow prompt leads to the white popup which encourages users to check the knowledge base. Why when clicking the orange doesn’t the second window provide the knowledge base information? Have you ever visited the Second Life Knowledge Base and tried to use it to find something? I tried various different search queries to locate more details about why I was seeing this message yesterday and couldn’t find an answer.

Today the message isn’t appearing, so whatever it was, it’s been fixed. Any ideas what this message is about? Yes, I understand it’s partly self-explanatory: different versions of SL software are running, but what does that mean to me the user? How does this impact or change my experience? Am I open to beta-like problems under server version x vs. y?

Bloginati [blŏg-i-nah-tee]: Bloggers who possess, or claim to possess, superior enlightenment on a particular subject (plural noun). Bloginato [blŏg-i-nah-toh] (singular)

Ryan offers sorting the feeds by time in a river of news style approach or feeds by site. I didn’t see an OPML feed which would make it easier to follow them — but that would somewhat negate the use of Ryan’s site. Not saying this is the case here, but one shouldn’t be fearful of those kinds of details as anybody can compile the list of feeds and make an OPML file on their own (and share it with others). One other nitpicky item about Ryan’s site: those blasted hover over Snap images everywhere. Please get rid of them. I realize there’s code to disable those with a click of a button, but, well, they suck.

As for the developer bloggers? Checking over the various blog designs doesn’t excite. Few bothered to create logos. Several were using default design blogs. Yikes, do a little searching around for templates, they don’t take that long to create. Help defeat the stereotype that programmers create boring looking designs. Some might argue compellingly that you can just subscribe by RSS so how does a blog design matter any more? Sure, but wouldn’t it be a lot cooler if they could take some early concept art of the games they were working on and use that as backdrop for their blogs? With permission of course.

Bottom line: I didn’t see any developer blogs that jumped out at me to subscribe. If you’re in Ryan’s list, why should any of the VTOR authors subscribe and cover your blog? Or would you rather we didn’t?

Yesterday was the day new avatars came to Kaneva!

They can actually be made to look somewhat better than these examples, by working with a few clickable arrows and a slider or two, but much diversity is still allowing user created content.

I logged into the Kaneva’s world upon completion of the download and nearly had a heart attack when I reached my apartment and found every texture I had placed had been replaced with the texture of a new Kaneva T-shirt. Thank goodness I lost server connection and had to log back in again…. and my L.S.U. Textures were back in place.

I decided to go to the mall and spend some of my reward credits on all the new men’s clothes, as I do not particularly enjoying wearing the same thing everybody around me is wearing. I teleported to the mall, which only had 58 people in it when I arrived, only to move about three steps then freeze up and after a few moments lost access to the server again.

At this point I figured I may as well check on the Kaneva web page to see if they were mentioning anything going on with the servers. Couldn’t find out anything about the wold servers, but found this shopping catalog page, where there were listed samples of the new women’s clothing.

They also have pictured in the shopping catalog pictures of the empty apartments so you might get a very limited idea on what you are wanting to buy for an apartment…. hardly anyone would want the closet they start you off in.

I wanted to go back to the mall and buy some clothes, and I tried again.  I was heading for a clothing store when I noticed there was a Kaneva Bank over in one of the corners of the center of the mall.  I went to see how much Kaneva Credits were going to cost, but found it was a depository for items you didn’t want to carry around with you, rather than a place to exchange dollars for credits and visa-versa.

I turned and headed for the clothing store  and again loss the server.  When I tried to get back into Kaneva I received an error message…. basically showing me the servers were down.

I can only assume that the good folks at Kaneva are pulling their hair out about now… trying to work out their “bugs”.  I will make an attempt here in a little while to go back into Kaneva and see what has changed, and try to buy some clothes with these worthless reward credits I have.

Linden Lab is working on a certification program for builders and scripters that will launch later this year. 57 Miles at Metaversed writes:

The move toward certification, which they say will launch late this year cannot help but to create a divide between those that have and those that have not been certified. Only time will tell for sure, but my gut feeling is that this is a bad move for Linden and Second Life that will leave a sour taste in the mouths of many skilled inworld creators.

It’s ironic as I’m writing this the grid is down the day after the scheduled maintenance upgrade to fix some issues. Somebody please tell me why any scripter why/how certification from Linden Lab — a company that routinely has scaling/code-related problems — would be a good thing? I don’t see it. I’m not against this or any other certification program on principal but I’m going to hang cautiously on the sidelines for this one until it’s actually done before signing up, if I sign up at all.

I’ve never gotten certified for anything in our online business including the extension into Second Life but have been certified for our offline business. In fact my professional license requires a certain amount of continuing education hours to maintain the license which I think is a positive thing.

The basic idea of certification for builders and scripts is worthwhile although I think Linden Lab based on their results in software design, server architecture, scaling and deployment should stay out of the process and let any certification program develop organically through the community.

That might be what is intended here, but from what I read in the Wiki it smells like Linden Lab is offering a stamp of approval over the whole thing which frankly leaves me unimpressed:

We believe this will benefit Residents, Developers, and anyone who wishes to use Second Life by clearly identifying both key skills and the holders of those skills. This will also enable the creation of training to build the skills required for certification. It is Linden Lab’s intent to work with an external certification provider to offer certification testing and maintain a list of those Residents who have been certified.

Linden Lab can’t even figure out how — or flat out doesn’t want — to make PayPal cashouts happen instantly. Funny how they can take your money right away, but don’t want to give it back to you as quickly (Linden Lab is far and away not the only company guilty of this). After over 15 months as a resident, I tried my very first PayPal cashout on Tuesday April 24 and here it is two days later and it still says “processing” “In Progress.” The PayPal APIs allow immediate money transactions. Fine, if they want to manually approve each cashout (mine is under $100, for those curious), but even that shouldn’t take days to do.

Yeah, I really want Linden Lab to certify me. Not.

If a certification process is meant to be than the community will be able to put it together a la Wikipedia, there doesn’t need to be a quasi-Government stamp of approval to validate the program in resident’s eyes. Just like not every business chooses to join the BBB or local Chamber of Commerce, it doesn’t mean those businesses are any less skilled or able. With that said, again, when the certification program is complete I might sign up and find it beneficial. I don’t like nor am that good at tests but I think education is always good. I’m simply skeptical about the governing board in this case doing the certification.

What do you think? I’m particularly curious what other builders and scripters and of course fellow VTOR authors think.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Carera. Well Carera 5 is a software package that sports a simple easy to use interface to multiple 3D modelers,, an advanced texturing system, a terrain module, a full animation toolset, and a remarkably fast rendering engine. This means that Carera can handle all of your needs – everything from creating and texturing models, developing animation sequences, and then render your designs into a video.

Now if you couple Carera 5 with DAZ Studio and some of the figures & models, which DAZ provides for free (see the post: 3D Creation Tools), you have everything that you would need to create your own animated shorts. The only thing missing would be an idea or script. That is unless you want to to create a voice-track that has been lip synced to the figures. For this you would require an additional tool like Mimic.

So whether you are interested in creating 3D content or are already involved in 3D, head on over to DAZ3D (affiliate) and catch the Carera wave now!

I have begun testing a builder’s tool called “skidz prim”, and like anything new that I get it seems to take a little getting used to.  “Skidz prim”, is a tool that once you get used to it saves a huge amount of time building things in Secondlife; gives you perfect seams when aligning prims. “Skidz Prim will even allow you to fill those awful gaps we sometimes end up with when dealing with angles.

“Skidz prim” comes with a tool belt you must wear in world and a hud device which is attached on your screen from which to choose your prim to create and also the modes available. The prim you create with “skidz prim” has several scripts which combined with the proper mode will copy attributes from one prim to the prim you just created, enable you to align edges perfectly, resize to fill gaps between prims, and snap corners together flawlessly.

All in all, “skidz prim” is an amazing tool.  It just takes a bit of time getting used to, but  well worth the effort and the $1450 lindens it costs.  Skidz prim can be bought from the creator at his location in Snow Crash, and there is almost always someone there to help you get the hang of using it.

“Join Jai, IBM’s avatar, on a virtual tour of some very real advances in gaming and technology. Visit the greatest hits of video game history, look at the three new leading game consoles and discover how gaming and its technology are affecting major areas of our lives. Flash required to view“

The web site offers a multimedia presentation on the world of gaming. This presentation covers a brief history of gaming, game technology, and as the name implies, the future of gaming. IBM shares a little information on how they use Second Life in their real-world daily business colaberations. They also provide links to other items that may be of interest to the gaming world. Though I felt that Jai was a bit cheesy, I thought that the information presented was worthwhile and enjoyable. Why not cruise over there and check out Game Tomorrow, then let me know what you think about Jai.

You may view a non-flash version here.

First up is metaverse.net where as a developer you can sign up and build your own MMORPG. You pay nothing if you charge others nothing. Maybe our VTOR group should build our own MMORPG? Joss Whedon’s Firefly is being built on the metaverse platform.

Now for the non-MMO which is here perhaps only because of how it is described via weblo (emphasis mine):

Anybody tried either of these sites out yet? I’m signed up for them both and checking them out.