tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35140238064943798512011-07-30T19:49:01.432-07:00Josh Knauernoreply@blogger.comBlogger21100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3514023806494379851.post-6770234252829322702007-03-26T17:21:00.000-07:002007-03-26T18:54:14.230-07:00<a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/435747718_5f14d2b898.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/435747718_5f14d2b898.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">Today we launched the </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Commonwealth%20Island/193/83/315">GeoGlobe</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, a tool meant to bring </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> into </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (SL). The GeoGlobe takes feeds (currently KML, GeoRSS and RSS) as input and displays them as properly geolocated prims onto the GeoGlobe. We undertook this project to experiment with how "real world" data can be visualized effectively within the immersive environment that is SL. Far too often, designers/builders in SL rely on old user interaction paradigms for displaying information. We wanted to push the boundaries a bit for how users can interact with feeds of data available on the web by bringing them into SL in the context of a Google Earth-like experience.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hayduke Ebisu, Stephane Zugzwang and Corro Moseley all had a hand in bringing this to reality. The feeds we are currently working with are from the USGS (seismic data in kml format) and CNN, BBC and India Times news feeds in RSS flavors. For the news articles, we are doing a bit of geocoding based on extracted country/city names in the feeds. The geocoding is not exactly perfect, but close enough for this prototype.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The link for it is <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Commonwealth%20Island/193/83/315">here</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" >Instructions for use:<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Once you teleport to the location linked from above, you should be able to use your camera controls to look around the globe. You can zoom into the prim "dots" sprinkled around the globe to see the headline for that instance. Click on the dots to go to the webpage associated with that feed item. To refresh the feeds, click the shiny ball floating above the sign that describes the feeds used (please try not to do this too much, as it taxes the Commonwealth sim's http request allocations).</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;" ><br /></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3514023806494379851-677023425282932270?l=envirolink.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Josh Knauernoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3514023806494379851.post-71757739399900189992007-03-26T11:49:00.000-07:002007-03-26T12:33:57.155-07:00The <a href="http://www.envirolink.org">EnviroLink Network</a> has been active in <a href="http://secondlife.com">Second Life</a> since August 2006. Through its presence in world on <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Commonwealth%20Island/129/85/22">Commonwealth Island</a>. The purpose of our work in Second Life is to provide a free space for progressive non-profit organizations to experiment with this emerging medium. This blog will chronicle some of our adventures and experiments in meeting this goal. My Second Life name is Hayduke Ebisu, please feel free to IM me in world and say hi.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3514023806494379851-7175773939990018999?l=envirolink.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Josh Knauernoreply@blogger.com0