Lev Kamenev Second Life

Again, on population density

2007-09-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

Recent Valleyvag post on Second Life made me revisit my thoughts on Second Life Population Density. If you wander around Second Life you could not help to notice that most of the land looks abandoned compared to real life urban areas. My previous calculations of population density did not take into account urban vs. rural land sizes in real life. Since most of Second Life land is striving to be "urban", it is more accurate to compare it in size with only urban areas in real life. That would make Second Life look really sparsely populated compared to the least populated countries.

Linden Lab business model involves mostly selling and running land regions, plus acting as central bank for L$. So, naturally their goal is to sell more land. This model makes them victim of their own success. With affordable land, population density stays low, which precludes social interaction, which is the main attraction of the game for most of users. They end up with ghost towns with few avatars lonely wandering around.

Teleportation is another contributing factor to the problem of poor social interaction. People are not really need to walk around. You can own a land and never walk to see your neighborhood 30 seconds walk. In real live, historically, people tend to cluster around some areas, forming cities, villages, etc. That helps to form densely populated centers where culture, commerce (as well as crime and diseases) strives. In second life, it is not likely to happen. Even if you buy a land within 2-minute walk from very popular space, does not mean people will just wander around to your parcel. That makes Second Life population density rather evenly distributed over all landmass (I wish I have some statistical data to prove this hypothesis).

How the situation could be fixed? The obvious way is just making land less affordable to control population density. That may or may not work, depending how big part of the game appeal to users in land ownership.

Another approach would be to encourage clustering. That could be done by either disabling teleportaiton in some regions or charging a fee for a transportation depending on distance. That would naturally make people prefer to cluster, since access to nearby destinations is cheaper. Island owners may subside cost on transportation to their islands, providing free visits to draw more people. If people are to use transportation less they will have to walk or drive more. That would require extension of federal roads and maybe passing some "free passage" laws to make all land accessible by foot.

GridMarker vs. Sloog

2007-05-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

Being Sloog user for some time recently I decided to try another, analogous service: GridMarker. An overall model is pretty similar to Sloog: HUD attachment which allows you to tag second life locations and to view/manage bookmarks on web page.

There are several key differences between GridMarker and Sloog:

GridMarker is more precise: it tags specific coordinates, while sloog tags a current parcel. For bigger parcels it is certainly an advantage, since it allows you to tag different parts of the parcel with different tags. You can read more about this feature in GridMarker blog. On the other hand, you can end up with several distinct bookmarks for the same SIM which are basically tagging a same place, for example, different parts of the same island. GridMarker has a neat feature which allows you to set up tagging precision "threshold" in meters, but I think it is mostly for expert users.

The gridmarker web site has a notion of "Resolution" which allows you to see other gridmarks in the vicinity of the one you are currently looking at. In my opinion, this feature overestimates the importance of spatial proximity in the Second Life. Most people are moving around the wold via teleports, and the fact that two bookmarks are located not far from each other in SecondLife coordinate system usually does not mean much.

My favorite feature of GridMarker is support for geotagging in RSS feeds. That alone is enough to make me switch to it from Sloog.

Another extremely useful feature of GridMarker is ability to accept drag-and-drop of landmarks objects. Select all your landmarks, drag and drop them to GridMarker HUD and they would be automatically imported into your GridMarker account!

The biggest shortcoming of GridMarker (compared to Sloog) is that you could not search your bookmarks from within the world. In Sloog you can use "search:" command, while GridMarker required you to launch your browser.

Sloog certainly looks better. Both Sloog HUD and web site show more love from good designers. GridMarker looks like best effort of graphics design done by programmers. You can't blame them for that - they did their best, but my advice is to seek help of professional designer to give it more polished look and feel.

I found GridMarker HUD buttons confusing at first. However the are OK, once you figure out how they work.

GridMarker is using by default same channel (#7) as Sloog. I wanted to test both HUDs simultaneously. Luckily GridMarker allows to change channel number, which is very useful feature.

Compared to Sloog, GridMarker certainly has more features, but I doubt that majority of the users would appreciate them. For example, I doubt that many users would really use "Title" command to give custom titles to their bookmarks. Comments feature could be useful, but it would not necessary find widespread use from within the game.

I think GridMarker shows great potential and certainly could evolve into very nice service. If they keep their architectures open (which they are trying to do with open APIs and open source HUD code) and put some work into design and usability it could become very popular. I am not familiar with their motivation or business model, but I would love to see this project going open source (say on SourceForge or Google Code). I am sure many users would be glad to contribute to the code and the web site design to make better service.

Morocco

2007-03-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful build I have visited recently is Morocco. At the arrival area they give you an "info-fez", nice red fez which gives you all kind of information as you move around. The King Hassan II Mosque is dominating the area. It is beautifully built. While wondering around I smoke some hookah, tried myself in belly dancing and even did little shopping at the real bazaar.

Beautiful church

2007-03-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

Today I have discovered a beautiful Orthodox church:

Icons are of amazing quality. Woth checking, even if you are an atheist.

Sloog

2007-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

My hat off to Sloog guys. Simple and elegant taging solution in Web 2.o style for Second Life. The only thing I am missing is RSS/ATOM feeds for user pages.

(P.S. My sloog page is here)

Second Life Population Density

2006-12-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

Official Linden Blog reports that current Second Life land area is approximately 229,376,000 square meters (about 88 square miles or 229 square kilometers). Their front page currently reports 1,950,245 registered residents.

That gives us population density of 8,502 persons per square km. Which puts Second life in top five most populated countries in the world (just above Singapore) and more densely populated when any US state (but still much less dense when city of New York or Manhattan island).

However these figures are misleading. The main difference with Earth population, is that humans stay on earth until we die. On the contrary, the Second Life population stays off grid most of the time. At average, 14,000 to 20,000 residents are usually logged on simultaneously. Taking 20,000 residents as "real" population size, gives us population density of 87 persons per square kilometer. This number is comparable to population density of state of Illinois, and is losing to ten other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. On the world map, Spain has similar population density.

Tags: secondlife, population, statistics.

Coworking in Second Life

2006-11-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

Coworking is an excellent idea. If you are an independent developer, designer, or writer, and need space to work and meet like-minded people, may look at some of existing coworking facilities in your city. What if there are none nearby? Second Life should be a perfect place to build such kind of place, where you can log in from anywhere in the word and hang out while working.

To try it out I've built first (to my knowledge) completely virtual coworking facility in Second Life:

Please drop by and try it out. Click on image to teleport there.

Tags: coworking, secondlife,
slgeotagged:[Dacham,182,142,47]

SL digg?

2006-09-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Second Life is full of exiting stuff. People are doing astounding things there. My problem is that it is just sometimes hard to find really interesting within the game. Search function is close to useless since the results are full of ads for people selling something and various gambling venues. It is actually reminding me of my "Junk Mail" folder.

So while browsing through my daily portion of news from 'digg.com' I though - would not it be cool to have something like Digg.com for Second Life? Imagine some small gizmo you attach to your body. Then, whenever you are in a place you like, you just type '/1 digg'. Then, there is a web site where you can see a list, and a map of most digged places within, say, last 30 days (or any other peroiod). The place being a spot in the game, with say, 30 meters radius.

BlogHud does something close to this, but they do not have the rating function and rating charts on the web site. I guess they can easily add that. And of course all submitted data about new diggs should be openly available as RSS feed with geotags for 3rd party apps who wish to use it.

(I am not going to implement this on my own, but if somebody would decide to try to implement this, I can provide some guidance. Technically it is fairly simple thing to do. Contact me if you are interested)

Visualizing Second Life GeoTags

2006-08-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier I've proposed simple geo-tagging approach for Second Life-related objects on the web (images, videos, blog posts, etc.).

In order to demonstrat how this data could be used I have put together small demo which finds all geo-tagged objects in some blog (these could be either blog posts or Flickr or Imageshack images) and shows them on the map. To try it, just go to:

http://www.codeminders.com/~sl/geotagging/findtags.html

You can try to enter there URL of my blog to see locations I was writing about:

http://lev-kamenev.blogspot.com/

To see all SL-geotagged images on Flickr (from all users) you can try:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/slgeotagged/

If you are interested only in geo-tagged Flickr images from particular user (for example Mark Wallace), URL will be:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20198157@N00/tags/slgeotagged/

It works with Imageshack as well! Try my to enter my profile URL:

http://profile.imageshack.us/user/lev_kamenev

You can also try to enter any blog URL or Flickr page which have RSS feed.

The application is quick-and-dirty demo, I will polish it later as time permits.

I think it is pretty darn cool. If we can somehow can promote the idea and make more pople tag their SL-related content, in the future many interesting applications could be built on top of that data. To generete your own SL geotags, use this helper application.

Mitch Kapor on the Power of Second Life

2006-08-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

"You are the pioneers and the founders of this new world, and you have unbelievably great opportunities to put your stamp, to leave a legacy, to create things which will endure and have value. The opportunity to participate in the creation of a new world is really a rare one and so I hope you cherish it."

Mitch Kapor (trascribed by Mark Wallace)

SecondLife Geotagging

2006-08-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

There is lot of noise today in blogs about Yahoo adding geotagging support to Flickr. If you are not familiar with the concept - it is just a way to add geographic coordinates where photo was taken.

I think we should all come up with a common way to geo-tag places in second life. This information could be used to tag screenshots or videos from SL uploaded to the web, blog posts discussing (or posted from) certain SL location, etc.

Quick google search have not revealed any earlier proposals for second life geotagging, so I am going to go ahead and propose one here:

Following four tags could be attached to the object to describe it location in the Second Life.
One of two coodinate system could be used: Following name of relevant API classes from Second Life WebMap API we will call them XYPoint and SLPoint.

SLPoint coordinate system uses (Region, X,Y,Z) 4-tuple, where Region is Second Life Region name (case insensitive, lower case us recommended), and x,y,z is coordinates within this region. This coordinate system is also used by SLurls.

slgeo:region - Name of Second Life region. Case insensitive, lower case us recommended
slgeo:x - x coordinate within the region
slgeo:y - y coordinate within the region
slgeo:z - z coordinate within the region

Alternatively, XYPoint coordinate system is using global two-dimensional coordinates to specify location with second life. Use this application to find XYPoint coordinates of any location within the game.

slxygeo:x - x coordinate within the game
slxygeo:y - y coordinate within the game

Either system could be used, but SLPoint is recommended, since it could be easier converted to SLURL and these coordinates are easily obtainable from within the game. It also specify more precise location, including 'z' coordinate.

Additionally regardless of the coordinate system used, special tag 'slgeotagged' should be included to distinguish objects geotagged in Second Life.

SLPoint example:

slgeo:region=Dacham
slgeo:x=185
slgeo:y=138
slgeo:z=47
slgeotagged

XYPoint example:

slxygeo:997
slxygeo:1002
slgeotagged

You can attach these tags to images at Flickr, Imageshack, or videos at YouTube.

You can also specify these tags for you blog posts at blogger or other blogging systems. Here is simple tool which will help you to generate geo tagging fragment for your blog posts. To display locations mentioned in some blog use this tool.

Related tags: secondlife, geotagging, taggging slgeotagged:[Dacham,185,138,47]

Naked Pictures

2006-08-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

In order to support Adam Curry in the controversy (Eastern-European pronunciation please) over a naked pictures (listen DSC 449 for details) I decided to post naked pictures of myself.

P.S. I know, I am not exactly Karmyn Tyler :)

slgeotagged:[Dacham,185,138,47]

Blogger.com posting from Second Life

2006-08-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

Lev Kamenev does not exist in real life. Lev Kamenev is a Second Life character. But until recently he had to ask somebody outside of SL to update his blog. Not anymore! I have developed a small tool which allows you to post to your blogger.com blog from inside the game. Grab your copy of "blogger" object at Exile, install on your land, and enjoy! As extra bonus, it will also promote your blog, by offering to open it in web browser to people who touch it.

slgeotagged:[Dacham,185,138,47]

Avatars. Meet Lev.

2006-08-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Being able to select every aspect of your physical appearance in the Second Life is very cool. But, eventually, you start to notice that 95% of population appear to be under 30 years of age and in very good shape. While it is certainly pleasing to an eye, it robs us of some aspect of diversity of the real life.

When I joined the game, I decided not to follow the crowd on this, and decided to do something different with my appearance, while staying human (no fur for me, thanks). Here is how Lev Kamenev looks:

I bet you can easily recognize me in a crowd. This avatar may or may not bear resemblance to my first live appearance, but most likely you will never find out. ;)

slgeotagged:[Dacham,185,138,47]

A-Life Experiment

2006-08-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

One of very interesting places in the Second Life is an A-Life Experiment.

Besides being a place of exceptional beauty, it demonstrates something very interesting. Creators of the experiment are trying to build an artificial, self-regulating eco-system in the game. Participants are: sun, bees, birds, tress, flowers. All of them are scripted to do their part in the system. For example, bees are polluting flowers with "pollen" which contain "genes".

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Secrets Of Second Life podcast

2006-08-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Secrets of Second Life is very nice video podcast dedicated to Second Life. All footage is shot in Second Life and it explains some basics and spotlights some places and events in the game.

Video files are iPod compatible. Episodes are quite short (under 10 min) so it is perfect for casual viewing. You do not need to be hard-core SL user to enjoy it.

PodShow needs money?

2006-08-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

Second Life and podcasting are couple of recent online phenomenon which I find very interesting and follow closely. Imagine my excitement when podcasting pioneer Adam Curry (affectionately called “podfather” by his listeners and other podcasters) joined Second Life (as Adam Newmann).

Just thinking about what kind of new and interesting things merging new media with new reality could bring us was making me feel dizzy. The news of coming opening PodShow island - gathering place for podcasters in the Second Life sponsored by PodShow (Adam’s Curry company) filled me with anticipation.

Fast forward to the present. The PodShow Island is now open. Not only PodShow paid for an island (an independent game unit which allows better performance and fewer restrictions than regular land), but they hired professionals to design and run the place. It looks majestic at the first glance and was quickly filled with podcasting enthusiasts.

The sad thing is that Pod Show could not come up with anything new or exiting. They filled their property with various gambling devices and sex and podcasting-related advertisements. Since they indiscriminately rented space to anybody who is willing to pay for it, it inevitably attracted several online shops selling various typical SL goods. In other words it started to look as big, boring and empty shopping mall.

Few podcasters who decided to rent some land on the island could not do the thing which is interests them the most and the reason they are on the island - to promote their podcasts by playing it on their property. This is so because the land is not sub-parceled which prevents them from setting their own sound track at their parcel. My understanding this is done to have bigger traffic numbers in statistics for an island as a whole since land parcel owners are paid based on visitors traffic. With 8 million dollars (US, not Linden!) in funding they received less than year ago, do they really need to sacrifice community-building features over few hundred bucks? They do not even pass on such cheap second life tricks as paying people to hang on their property to increase visitors stats and make the place look more popular.

slgeotagged:[Podshow Island,127,120,23]