SL digg?

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

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

"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

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

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

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.

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]