Weblog of Friday 18 July 2008

Some thoughts on virtual world experiences and open source software

Electric Sheep launches Webflock, an application for private-label virtual experiences, for Online Marketing and Web Publishers:
http://www.electricsheepcompany.com/webflock

Next question: where is the open-source browser-based virtual world application? Prokofy would ask, why do entitlement-happy opensourceniks want everything to be free? Answer: because we feel that no one should be prevented from making and using an open-source tool if they want to.

The open-source tools are admittedly often difficult to use, with inadequate user support systems, or incompletely developped. Maybe that's the price to pay for their being free. Thus there is a time and place for both free open-source software and purchased propriety software.

Back to the daily weblog:

laughingsquid tweets a hosted help desk service:
http://www.zendesk.com/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zendesk_saas_help_desk.php

Ugo Trade tweets the next Metaverse Meetup (in meatspace, NY) about SL-OS interoperability:
http://gamedev.meetup.com/153/calendar/8359764/

Ebon Fisher comments: "and I thought the universal portal between all worlds was love." See Ebon's Nervepool:
http://nervepool.net/

and especially these pages:
http://nervepool.net/hyperhive/HIVE_home.html
http://nervepool.net/go.html

Summize has become "search.twitter":
http://search.twitter.com/

Poinky tweets an IEEE article about Machinima:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6383

where I learn it is formed of "machine" + "cinema" - thus it should be "Machinema".

Mitch Wagner writes about the Free Software Foundation criticism of the iPhone:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/opensource_advo.html?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_ALL

Dusan's SL interface contest finalists:
http://dusanwriter.com/?p=662

Poinky posts about chat-room type virtual worlds:
http://really.blogs.xerox.com/2008/07/18/im-in-ur-browser-chatting-in-3d/