voyeurism

Temasek - take the tour!

felixx and i literally spent the whole day (and night) setting up, and extensively troubleshooting the automated guided tour system at Temasek.

it's FINALLY done!

:-)

the tour engine is Blaise Timtam's rather excellent Guided Tour System, and the tour cab itself is a modified version of Felixx's two-seat 'Jules Verne' submarine, which comes as part of his Underwater Freebies pack :-)

i'm in somewhat of a retrospective mood today, as it is the fifth anniversary of this blog :-)

here's one i did earlier :-)

Felixx and i enjoying the fruits of a day's hard labour, over the Marina at Temasek

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Singapore, Temasek

homage to a phoenix

nothing will prepare you for this :-)

(brought to you by my friend and creative genius Felixx Shepherd :-) )

Technorati Tags: education, learning, Second Life

Temasek - introducing our sixth architect

the one hundred and forty-ninth episode of ventriloquy brings you news of a busy weekend of building at Temasek.

Temasek is the region in Second Life that will showcase the culture, history and ecology of Singapore. it is being designed and built by the team of architects i have commissioned, namely Limkopi Davis, Derekcsy Cortes, Lim Pikajuna, Lonewolf Switchblade and Sanspareil London.

needless to say, i have been helped along the way by so many more people than just the preceding five. i have, and will continue to blog and podcast about the support and encouragement that i have received. today, in this 3.9 MB episode, special mention goes to Felixx Shepherd, for so skilfully and generously helping me with the intertidal mudflats :-)

thank you, Felixx :-)

[update: as of 30 May, i have decided to acknowledge Felixx's untiring initiative, by recognising him as Temasek's sixth architect :-) ]

a cold and wet morning at Temasek, watching the waves refract around one of the bays.

Technorati Tags: education, geography, learning, podcast, Second Life, Singapore, Temasek, TLLM

Temasek - you are here

here's a sneak preview of something that my friend Aares Torok has been working on :-)

Technorati Tags: geography, maps, Second Life, Singapore, Temasek

what would you say to a Linden?

today was one of the happiest, most exciting, and most memorable days of my life :-)

thanks to the generous and thoughtful facilitation of my bosses, i was able to spend the morning meeting a Linden face-to-face in RL and having a good exchange of thoughts and ideas :-)

we talked about the Singaporean community in Second Life, why it mattered, and i shared a little about what i've done in-world over the past year. i also had a first-hand look at viewing SL on a Nokia N95, courtesy of the good folks at Vollee :-)

here's a pic of the evening's festivities :-) thank you very much for the lime juice and chocolate mud pie!

:-)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Singapore, Starling Project

Temasek - introducing our fifth architect :-)

i am very happy to introduce Temasek's fifth architect to you.

Sanspareil London joins Limkopi Davis, Derekcsy Cortes, Lim Pikajuna and Lonewolf Switchblade. Sanspareil is an old and trusted friend. Hailing from the United Kingdom, he is Temasek's first non-Asian architect.

Sanspareil actually joined the team about a week ago - i wanted to give him some time to settle in before thrusting him into the limelight :-) his first build is what i'm tentatively calling the Oceanview Deck.

welcome to the team, Sanspareil, and thank you :-)

The Oceanview Deck, as seen from the Mall

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Singapore, Temasek

book the blog

the one hundred and forty-eighth episode of ventriloquy celebrates my first anniversary in Second Life as Veritas Raymaker :-)

i took a great deal of care considering the various ways i could commemorate this milestone, and in the end, i decided to share the joy, and honour the people and memories, by publishing all the entries in voyeurism, related to Second Life, as a book.

please do join me in this 3.2 MB download, as i introduce a year in-world: chronicling the first year of Veritas Raymaker in Second Life®.

Technorati Tags: podcast, Second Life, Singapore

active avatars in Second Life, ranked as a proportion of countries' respective population sizes (April 2008)

following up on last month's post, here is the breakdown of figures for active avatars per country for April 2008, normalised against the respective population sizes (again, population totals were obtained from the CIA's World Factbook).

for those of you who are new to this, i'll give you a concrete example (if you've read my post from September 2007 on the same topic, you can just skip ahead to the next paragraph). the United States had 189629 active avatars during April. the population size of the USA in July 2008 is projected to be 303824646. this means that 0.06 percent of the US population had avatars active in Second Life during April.

i took the top 40 countries by active avatars (ranked by absolute numbers), and processed them by 'active avatars as proportion of country population'. just like for the March figures, Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela have been excluded, because the proportions are really tiny.

here's what the numbers for April look like :-)

1. the Netherlands 0.10 % (unchanged)

2. United Kingdom 0.07 % (unchanged)

3. USA 0.06 % (unchanged)

4. Australia 0.06 % (unchanged)

5. Denmark 0.06 % (unchanged)

6. Belgium 0.05 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.06 %; rank is stable)

7. Canada 0.05 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.06 %; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia and Switzerland)

8. Germany 0.05 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia and Switzerland)

9. Switzerland 0.05 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.06 %; displaced in rank by Canada and Germany)

10. Slovenia 0.05 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.06 %; displaced in rank by Canada and Germany)

11. Portugal 0.05 % (unchanged)

12. Ireland 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Sweden and Spain)

13. Spain 0.04 % (unchanged)

14. France 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Sweden)

15. Italy 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Sweden)

16. New Zealand 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Sweden)

17. Sweden 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Ireland, Spain, France, Italy and New Zealand)

18. Singapore 0.03 % (unchanged)

19. Austria 0.03 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Norway)

20. Norway 0.03 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Austria)

21. Finland 0.02 % (unchanged)

22. Greece 0.02 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Japan)

23. Japan 0.02 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Greece)

24. Israel 0.01 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing the Czech Republic)

25. the Czech Republic 0.01 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.02 %; displaced in rank by Israel)

26. Poland 0.01 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Brazil)

27. Brazil 0.01 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Poland)

28. Romania 0.01 % (unchanged)

29. Hungary 0.01 % (new entry)

analysed this way, Singapore is still the Asian country with the highest proportion of active avatars in Second Life.

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Second Life, Singapore

trivial pursuit

have a look at this :-P

mindless, i know... entertainment for five minutes, nevertheless :-)

71

Technorati Tags: geography

a tale of two (and a half) conferences

the one hundred and forty-seventh episode of ventriloquy presents my main takeaways from two conferences i attend over the past few days - both were loosely on the theme of virtual worlds.

the earlier was the vBusiness Expo organised by Clever Zebra, and took place entirely in-world.

the second was the International Workshop on Interactive & Digital Media (IDM) research, organised by the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). the event was held on campus in Singapore.

please do join me in this 4.1 MB download, as i ponder - inter alia - the relationship between culture and the design of learning environments in Second Life.

Show notes:
- the NTU Institute for Media Innovation
- the iDM Jump-start and Mentor (iJAM) initiative from the IDM Programme Office, hosted by the Media Development Authority of Singapore
- Computer Games, Multimedia and Allied Technology (CGAT '08) international conference and industry symposium on computer games, animation, multimedia, IPTV & edutainment
- the IDM Programme Office's Co-Space environment

Technorati Tags: education, learning, podcast, Second Life, Singapore