Monday, December 22, 2008

Merry Christmas Everyone

This week I received a number of electronic christmas greetings. These are the best:


(Paladin Studios)


(PlexiPixel)

Light Up the Night with "Twilight Pixie Glide"!
The Holidays fill us up with cheer and remind us to thank our clients, family members, friends, and all the general do-gooders and well-wishers in this lovely world of ours. Here's a small token of our boundless appreciation for all you've done for us. Thank you! We hope that our little game warms your heart and makes you smile…


And of course, I do wish you a merry christmas as well and all the best for 2009!

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Friday, December 19, 2008

Weblin clones SL Avatars to the web

Yesterday the German based webservice Weblin announced it has a new service, a 'Weblin Gate' which lets you take your Second Life avatar to the web. I've blogged Weblin last year september, when it was just launched, but haven't used it a lot since. However, that might change.

What Weblin basically does is let you create an avatar which can walk across the bottom of your webbrowser. When you're on a page with other weblin users you can see the other avatars on the webpage and interact with them. Weblin also has an option for its users to create custom avatars, but you have to be an expert in 3D graphics and animation if you want to have that avatar be able to move.

The service Weblin is offering now in Second Life is that they make a photograph of your avatar, then override your animations and 'film' your avatar making the typical Weblin moves so the service recreates your avatar outside Second Life. Dean Takahashi was among the first to blog the new service and he wrote:

What happens in virtual worlds, stays in virtual worlds. That’s the way it’s been when you create an avatar, or virtual character, in places such as Linden Labs’ Second Life.

But now Weblin, a Hamburg, Germany-based startup, has figured out a way for you to teleport your Second Life avatar to any web site. The Weblin Gate being released today lets Second Life Residents (or players) export exact replicas of their avatars and use them on any web site.

As far as writing goes, I like the first sentence of that blogpost, but regarding the facts, it would be too much credit to the folks at Weblin. We're not talking real teleportation here, or interoperability as the in-crowd calls it, it's more like scraping or cloning. As usual the ever present Virtual Worlds News nailed it down quite fast as well, writing:

This isn't true interoperability--the service takes a picture of the avatar in Second Life and maps it on to a Weblin avatar, and users don't carry their assets or identity with them--but it is an interesting form of portability and a step towards larger goals.

That would be correct, also the outlook on this remark. I didn't use Weblin much before, but now it's fun to stroll over the web with my Second Life avatar and meet other Second Life avatars out there on twitter for instance, or, As Grace puts it on her blog 'Gracified':

Early adopter Second Lifers have already adopted weblins as a means by which to chat and socialize outside of the virutal world of Second Life, whether it’s attending Malburns and Tara’s brilliant weekly show, or just catching up while the grid is down.

It works quite easily, though it got screwed with me yesterday, hence my rather late blogpost. Anyway, things start out in visiting the Weblin photobooth in Second Life, on the New Berlin sim.

Once inside you'll meet Paule, an automated avatar who'll give you instructions. You've got to pay at the cash register (1 L$, which will be refunded immediately, but necessary to get your ID) and you can get onto the photoshoot area. Make sure you've got your animations turned off. Last night when I visited the first time, the preview snapshot only showed Paule's bum and not an image of my avatar. Today, it worked out fine though.


As soon as you're up there, almost crucifixed, you'll get a link to a preview. When the preview looks about right, you'll call Paule to continue. The Weblin script overrides your avatar and starts filming the appropriate movements. When that process is finished, you'll get a link to your new avatar. Quite simple. Below a picture of my new weblin avatar walking across this blog.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Experts on The Future of the Internet (1)

Timing is everything, but I see I get fed interesting news at wrong times all the time. Just as I was about to hit the sack early, @malburns put up another interesting link on twitter on a recently published report by the Pew Research Center.

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major technology advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Here are the key findings in a new report based on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020.

The overview and report is filled with captains of industry in the internet market, and I do believe they put up a likely scenario, but it's the wrong scenario. To be blunt, it's crap.

Why is it a likely scenario?

It is a likely scenario as most of the experts questioned are making a ton of money from the way the internet works right now. They have everything to gain in keeping the way things are. Just slight improvements, no big changes.

Why is it a wrong scenario?

Let's have a look at a few remarks from the report. I hope I'll find the time somewhere to get into these in detail later.

"You cannot stop a tide with a spoon. Cracking technology will always be several steps ahead of DRM and content will be redistributed on anonymous networks."

- Giulio Prisco, chief executive of Metafuturing Second Life, formerly of CERN

Cracking technology will always be several steps ahead of DRM as long as record labels sell content at rip off prices. Consumers, music lovers and fans will very likely to be willing to pay reasonable prices for works of art, directly to the artists. As long as record companies take in the motherload and throw a few pennies to the artists, no wonder we'll see piracy till the end of days. Music and other IP-protected material will likely to be distributed at fair prices through social networks in 2020.

"Viciousness will prevail over civility, fraternity, and tolerance as a general rule, despite the build-up of pockets or groups ruled by these virtues. Software will be unable to stop deeper and more hard-hitting intrusions into intimacy and privacy, and these will continue to happen."

- Alejandro Pisanty, ICANN and Internet Society leader and director of computer services at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

This is so true when you make money of the current internet architecture. ICANN stands for The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is the organisation responsible for domain name registrations, a business worth 25 Billion dollars a year. Sure you won't give away your source of income if it would benefit the world and the safety of your children?

The group of experts is sure the internet will not be redesigned, they have a Laissez faire mentality to the architectural faults of the internet when it comes to privacy, protecting our children from evil as it is a multi billion dollar industry that gets into their own pockets. Alternatives are readily available, for instance the Handle architecture, orginally designed by Dr. Robert (Bob) Kahn who invented the TCP protocol and worked out the IP protocol along with Vint Cerf, hence, in creating the TCP/IP protocol laid the foundation for the current internet.

Almost every answer given in the Pew Research Report on the Future of the Internet III (and I must admit I skimmed the report due to the late hour) is the obvious answer. Obvious from the line of work the respondents are in, but failing to take a few things into consideration.

The most important oversight is that the outcome of the report is an extrapolation of current trends without paying attention to the equivalently growing deficits. Yes sure, it's easy to predict that the web will get more and more mobile, it is a trend that has already started. However, take into account that more and more we hear about Identity Theft and abuse of personal data. Take into consideration another trend that Governments and Social Networking platforms alike are tying together more and more databases and more of our real and digital identities will be up for grabs. Take into consideration the safety of your children from perverted souls and all screams for a redesign, a place which is focussed and built upon protection of your personal data. This is the plug in the ocean that needs to be pulled.

As said, it's getting late and I hope I'll find time to explore this report some more. Take care andtake heed ;)


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Early Homeys: Red Bull, Diesel

Sony tried to drive home for christmas and released the long awaited PS3 Home last week (blogged here) and it will be interesting to see it develop. Unfortunately I don't have a Playstation 3, so I won't be able to keep you folks up to date on business in Home first hand, but already a number of articles are appearing on brands in Home.

Red Bull

First to boost out of the gates was Red Bull, who had a shortlived experience in Second Life, but probably did find it a waste of energy, or a mismatch with their objectives. To be honest, gutfeeling says they fit better at Home.

Red Bull was inspired by an energy drink from Thailand called Krating Daeng. Red Bull is the literal translation of Krating Daeng in Thai. (Krating = Bull, Dang = Red) The logo of redbull is even the same as logo of Krating Daeng. Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian entrepreneur developed the Red Bull Energy Drink brand. [Wikipedia].

Red Bull is more suited to Home than Second Life as it is a more logical step for gamers, and Red Bull brings its famous Air Race as a playable game to their Home room.


(Red Bull screenshot from Kotaku)

Massively Sponsored.

It was to be expected that Home would be subject to all sorts of sponsoring, but as Luke Plunkett rightly says at Kotaku:

We always knew Home was going to be heavy on advertising and corporate sponsorship. But this heavy this soon? It's a little unexpected.

Even the December 10 press release announcing Home to finally open it's door had its commercial break:

SCEE today also announced the first partnerships with some of the world’s most respected lifestyle brands for the Open Beta. Fashion leader Diesel, contemporary furniture designers Ligne Roset, energy drink Red Bull, film studio Paramount Pictures and video content providers Hexus TV and Eurogamer are the first on board. They will offer resident’s virtual clothing for their avatar, virtual furniture for their PlayStation Home apartments, exclusive video content and a virtual flying challenge: the Red Bull Air Race.

I'll try to do some more blogposts on these shops. Speeding up things would of course be one offering me a sponsored PS3 to explore myself or find another guest blogger.

(Diesel screenshot from Kotaku)

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Virtual Banking (19): BNP Paribas Hipihi

Among the first wave of Metaverse explorers we've seen quite a lot of banks explore Second Life, some of which have vanished without a trace, and some moved on to other worlds. Some stayed and opened up virtual shop in different worlds as well. One of these banks is the French BNP Paribas.

I've blogged the BNP Parisbas presence in Second Life in the blogpost Virtual Banking (8): BNP Parisbas in June 2007 and just ran into a video of the banker in the Chinese world of Hipihi (thanks to Metaverse 3d). Biggest challenge here was to find the < embed > button on the Japanese YouKu.com site to get the video on MindBlizzard, but finally I took a lucky guess, and viola, here it is.

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Dutch Dwarf to take on World of Warcraft

A "Dutch Dwarf to take on World of Warcraft" was the general gest of a newpaper article earlier this month in the Belgian newspaper 'de Standaard ', which applied to the newly released Chronicles of Spellborn, released by Dutch game producer Spellborn N.V.

Such a claim gives rise to big expectations as the market for quality MMORPG's is getting very crowded with excellent games and you need tons of investors to get into serious competition, and Spellborn N.V. isn't a big-buck-backed company. Yes, they have had several investment rounds, but since Spellborn is their only title this is a make or break game.

Spellborn N.V. is a rather small company, based in the Hague, Netherlands and has put together a team of 40 people to work on the Chronicles of Spellborn. The game has been highly anticipated, for instance by Massively who wrote in may this year:

The team at Spellborn NV continues to entice with its latest screenshots from its closed beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn. These depict various cities and other places on the Shards of Parliament and Quarterstone, as well as some of the creatures who will be more than glad to help you test your skill at bleeding. After looking at the new screenshots, forum regulars wondered if the landscapes are too empty and flat when compared to World of Warcraft's lush richness.

Spellborn NV recently showed the game at the RPC Münster role-playing convention, where players reportedly loved the character creation system and combat systems best. Similarly to NCSoft's City of Heroes, the gear and outfits worn by Spellborn characters don't affect the gameplay -- you can look however you wish and still fight at your best. The Spellborn combat system is similar to first person shooters and Age of Conan in that you don't target anything specifically; if something is in range of your attacks, it will be hit. It also is uniquely based on a grid on which you arrange your possible attacks that moves to allow you to use different sets of all your abilities as the fight moves on, adding a "deck building" element to battle.

According to Dutch gamers magazine Inside Gamer, the Chronicles of Spellborn, or TCOS in short is a highly original game with unique graphics. The graphics are drawn in quite a darkish style, but above all it is an MMORPG with a good story.

Here are some screenshots of the The Chronicles Of Spellborn, more can be found on the TCOS site here.






Dutch band Within Temptation, a gothic metalband, has written exclusive tracks for the game. The sounds of which naturally blend in with the mood of the game, although not everyone will be a fan of this type of music. The word goes that most programmers liked to listen to the music of Within Temptation while working on the game. Barry Hoffman, Spellborn's marketing manager said:

"Their music has given a whole new dimension to our fantasy world. When we received the opportunity to work together, we got very excited. Gamers very often listen to music while gaming and it was an easy choice for us to work with a band that can give such a good mood to the game."

The affection was mutual, as Within Temptation's guitarist Robert Westerholt said:

"Actually, almost all Within Temptation members are fanatic gamers. Both at home and when touring we play fantasy oriented games to relax and get new inspiration. when we heard about Spellborn and that it was a Dutch company we were very thrilled to work together to write tracks especially for this game. The partnership will go beyond writing tracks, but we'll let you know about that later."

Spellborn sure is about to stand out in the crowd, it's graphics make it an original as well as the cooperation with Within Temptation, as it is the first time that a game has worked dedicated with a popular rockband to create the tracks for the game. The fact that it is an original may be the key to their success; It's different and cool and it becomes a smash hit, or it's too different from mainstream MMORPG and it will become a proud, but niche player on the market.



Happy Gaming.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

Sony fined 1M for collecting Child Data

Last week I blogged on an article in the Dutch Technology magazine Emerce on a plea to clean personal data from databases in the article "Personal Data Expiry", and today I came across an article with more or less the same implications.

The article reports Sony Music getting fined 1 million dollar for collecting and using personal data of minors without parental permission. As the automated Google translation as usual is kind of crappy, here's my translation of the highlights.

The music company was indicted by the U.S. regulator FTC on tuesday and agreed to a settlement of 1 million dollars on thursday. In this settlement. Sony Music admits that it has violated privacy rules against minors.

Sony Music has collected sensitive personal data without parental consent since 2004. Through 196 websites from artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera the company acquired names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and birth dates from 30.000 children aged under 13. This data was reused at other websites and sometimes even published.

The 1 million dollar fine breaks up into a $33 penalty per child, but it is unclear how much profit Sony makes of minors. The record company now is obliged to have its databases cleared of all unlawfully gained personal data.

In collecting this data Sony has violated the socalled Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law which must protect children under 13 (ed. probably best known from the Coppa declaration you have to fill in with every forum you register with). All bodies that collect personal information and process it must comply to a fixed set of measures. They are, for example, obliged to do 'a reasonable'
attempt to do the age check.

Sticky thing here is, what do you consider to be a reasonable attempt to verify? We do not have a signing authority for surfers, like we have VeriSign for website owners. You don't have to be really really smart to surf around the web pretty anonymously and spoof whatever data is required. Age Verification, Geoblocking and other protective measures we've put on the web are usually nothing more than a farce, an extra feature to make you feel secure.
  • Read the original article in Dutch here
  • Read the Google translation here.

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Brain Stories

The human brain may well be the next frontier. I bookmarked several interesting stories about the brain, so put them down here:)

-GET IMAGES FROM YOUR BRAIN
Recent amazing story is "Japanese scientists develop tech to read images directly from your brain". I hope not to use this kind of technology for army or spy...

-AVATAR CONTROL
I guess many know about this story, but write it here because it's interesting. The Biomedical Engineering Laboratory at Keio University is trying to move an avatar in second life by only thinking which way to go.


-NIA(Neural Impulse Actuator)
NIA is a mouse which is controlled with your brainwaves. Recently I bought it and tryed. But...mmm....it was difficult to use. How can I control my own brainwaves?


-IBM'S COGNITIVE COMPUTING
IBM aims to replicate the brain with cognitive computing project is another-brain-releated-story.
"IBM Research and five universities have teamed up to creative “cognitive computing” systems that can simulate the brain’s ability to sense".
-BRAINWAVES at FLICKR
Finally I made a group called "brainwave" in Flickr. If you have any interesting brainwave-related-photos, please post to the group. I'm interested in how these kind of technology will change our life.

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Canada Post delivers (part 2)

Last night I blogged the first part of this blogpost, Canada Post delivers, in which I described the sim in general, to summarize it, Canada Post has build a retail city in Second Life housing not only their own shop, but also 10 of the most prominent retailers in Canada including Toys R Us, Skymall and Brookstone. As a dozen companies in one blogpost would be a bit too much, I stopped at the general introduction in the previous blogpost and would like to zero in on Canada Post itself in this one.

Canada Post setup shop on the corner of Maple Street and Hudson Avenue on the venture called Maple Grove which can be found on the Solar sim. The modern office houses a postoffice on the ground floor and a lounge on the 2nd floor.

The postoffice has a welcoming desk where you can design your own stamps and the walls are lined with lockers. Point of focus in this shop are four large adscreens on which Canada Posts advertises its services. Being in business of mail delivery, this off course means stamps. In the virtual postoffice you can buy a set of holiday stamps, the 2008 collection or a stamp collecting starter kit and the 2008 Holiday Commemorative Coin Gift Set.

In real life stamps and stamp collecting are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. In the Netherlands stamps aren't what they used to be anymore. Nowadays we just have stickers and ordinary stamps which you have to wet the glue have become a niche thing.

Stamp Collectors are usually regarded as old men who live in the past, generally a type you won't see in Second Life. This image of course isn't true. A wide variety of people collect stamps, including tech savvy metaversians, though they will probably be a minority in Second Life. In the real world, stamp collecting is a big hobby with over 20 million collectors in the United States alone (according to wikipedia).

Especially to small and exotic countries, stamps are an important source of revenues, just like selling their TLD's like .nu and .tk. Often the stamps are colorfull, elaborate designs produced in limited edition for stamp collectors and the production far exceeds the domestic postal needs.

I myself might be one of those very few metaverse explorers who loves stamps as well. Though I'm not a dedicated collector of Canadian stamps I do have a few pages filled with Canadian stamps and wouldn't mind getting my hands on the 2008 set or the holiday set. I do have a few christmas stamp sets from Canada, and they're actually quite lovely. As a collector I focus on Dutch stamps, trying to complete the collection. Keeping up with new productions is quite easy, just subscribe to it, but the sport usually is in collecting the older stamps. Often series of stamps from before 1920 can get very pricey, for example the Dutch series of 1899-1921 featuring Queen Wilhelmina.

An overview of the history of Canadian stamps can be found in the Canadian Postal Archives and starts with the collection of the Province of Canada, 1851-1867.

In short, since I like stamps, I like the shop Canadian Post has set up, but doubt it will become a top attraction in Second Life. Perhaps more can be expected of this presence in combination with the other shops featured on this retail sim, but I'll get to that in a later post.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Canada Post delivers (part 1)

Just like airliners in Second Life (see Brussels Airlines and Air France - KLM) a mail company in Second Life could be seen as a 2008 Metaverse Oddity, for surely, you don't need a mailman in a virtual world like this. If you buy virtual goods, they don't need to be delivered as they appear in your inventory immediately and can be rezzed anywhere you like. You don't need a mailman either to deliver your postcards to the ones you love, as Second Life has a built-in service which delivers your snapshots through email. Yet Canada Post isn't the odd one out in Second Life.

Canada Post Corporation (French: Société canadienne des postes) is the Canadian postal operator operated as a crown corporation. The Post Office Department of the Government of Canada was founded in 1867 and was rebranded Canada Post in the late 1960s though it officially remained the Post Office Department until October 16, 1981 when the Canada Post Corporation Act came into force. The Act set a new direction for the postal service, creating more reliable service and ensuring the postal service's financial security and independence. [Wikipedia]

Or maybe it is, in a positive way. The Canada Post presence in Second Life is one of the second wave corporations to explore the metaverse, and like the German Volksbank, they have a different approach to things than most of the first wave explorers had. Like the Volksbank they don't have a dedicated sim which is destined to lay bare once the 'grand opening festivities' are over, they bring a variety of shops on their sim.

The Canadian Post venture is called "Maple Grove" but won't be found on the island called maplegrove but on one called Solar. The sim is a heavily built urban sim which makes it rather slow to render, especially if you use 'ultra detail' settings like me to take some nice pictures for you folks. Once immersed at the center of the sim you'll find yourself amidst a variety of builds, one of which, obviously is the Canadian Post postoffice.



Aside from the Canadian Post shop you'll find a variety of retailers which are Canadian Post's 2008 retail partners, i.e. they ship their real life products with Canadian Post. The notecard you can pick up in front of the postoffice gives a good overview on what you can find on the sim:

Welcome to Canada Post's Maple Grove!

Canada Post is proud to showcase its 2008 partner retailers. Explore Maple Grove and discover the largest collection of real-life retailers sharing one sim in Second Life.

In the city centre, you can visit Toys R Us, Sky Mall, The Shopping Channel and Canada Post. New this year, we are introducing the Bright Spark Lab. The Lab is a virtual marketing agency designed to assist Second Life entrepreneurs. You will find free tools to make you Second Life business more successful. You will also find valuable information for creating a direct mail campaign in real life!

On Maple Street, we have a busy schedule of live music events at the Telus Theater. Be sure to check out Brookstone and Red Canoe. Don't forget to stop in the Green Cafe which has information about keeping your mail "green". Blackberry Lane is home to Sears and the Canada Post garage where you can get your own free mail truck.

On Hudson Avenue, you will find the Everything Olive store next to the Tower.

Thank you for visiting Maple Grove and be sure to leave us some feedback at the Canada Post office in the city centre.

I won't go into a detailed description of these companies in this post, that will have to wait untill later, but here's a few piccies to get an idea of the entire build




Most shops present on the sim put on a showcase of a number of items you can buy in their webshops and have the items delivered to you by Canada Post at home in the real world. I think this type of presence will work better than a sim dedicated to one brand only, as it kind of works like the old fashioned way: You go downtown to visit one store, you walk past another one and walk in on impulse.

I can understand Canadian Post offering this selection of shops, as they are real world partners in shipping, but I wonder how many virtual shoppers this particular combination will draw. Perhaps it would have been better to mix the real life companies with popular inworld shops.

There is a downside to this type of presence though, as it is quite a heavy urban build, it is very slow to render if you use a higher graphics setting. I don't think you can blame Canadian Post for this, but rather an unavoidable feat if you're working in Second Life. If corporations slowly start to work out their act in the Metaverse and start doing sensible business, companies and customers alike would like (and rightly so) a better performance from MSP's (Metaverse Service Providers) like Second Life. If performance can't be boosted to have a decent shopping experience, then maybe Second Life isn't the place to be for shops.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Solar/120/134/81

Resources:

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Friday, December 12, 2008

A Cool Virtual Yule

It's that time of year again, not only in this world, but the entire metaverse is gearing up for christmas. Time to put up the Christmas Tree and turn on the snow on Sogeti island in Second Life.
Here are some images from other virtual worlds getting ready for christmas:


Christmas in Runescape

Christmas in Club Pinguin

The worlds largest 3D chat, IMVU, is known for heavily advertising its service throughout the web, so small wonder they've put up special christmas ads.
Christmas in World of Warcraft


Through email I received a christmas teaser from Twinity

Also in the World of Entropia things are getting dressed up for christmas. In the Entropia Forum (clothing section) I found a number of christmas pants, jackets and hats.

No doubt christmas will be celebrated in more worlds. Please send your images to veejay [at] mindblizzard [dot] com to have your christmas posted here and a link to your site.

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Personal Data Expiry

Today the Dutch technology Magazine Emerce published an interesting article on privacy and expiration date of personal data:

It's time for marketeers, banks and other institutions to consider the disposal of personal data says Tom Kok of the DDMA. According to Tom not all collected data is always needed to serve customers.

"There must be a principal discussion about the clearance and clean up of databases. Actually I prefer talking about a clean up duty. That discussion is not limited to one single sector, such as Direct Marketing but across multiple sectors."

This is said by a former CEO of a Dutch insurance company, FBTO and former D66 Party Chairman Tom Kok in an interview with Emerce. Currently he is the chairman of the DM-DDMA organisation.

Read the Google translation of the full article here, or the original Dutch version here.

The DDMA is a Dutch Direct Mail branche organisation which also launched a new privacy code recently, effective January 2009. I think this is a very important issue. We leave tons of personal data all over the web, often without thinking, or without remembering. These bits and pieces can be pried together quite easily and lead to identity theft.

Just recently I was confronted with this issue when I received an update from Fortune City, where I registered an account in the early 90's. I haven't used that account since 2001, but they still have my data and just recently send me a mail to keep their records up to date.

Same goes for domain registration. I received an email earlier this month by a US Based registration company with the offer to renew a domain registration. The specific domain name was registered by me in 1997 when I was thinking of setting up a business directory on the internet and ended the registration in 2000. I registered with a completely different company, here in the Netherlands, but the email I received this month contained my full address and all sorts of personal detail. Okay, they didn't know I had moved, and I sure as hell didn't tell them, but it's been over 8 years, and still my personal data lurks in dark database corners across the ocean.

It doesn't take an expert in computer forensics or information security to piece things together and sell your identity for a couple of bucks on a Russian site. So first and foremost, think about where you leave your private data in signing up, secondly, the industrie needs to take a first step to clean up obsolete data a lot sooner than 8 years but eventually a whole new concept of identity management needs to be applied to the internet and online identities.

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Real Life Cities (12): Rio de Janeiro

Recently I added a blog to my bloglist which I can't read. It's "O Guia do Mochileiro da Second Life", which brings us tales from Second Life from Brasil. This particular blog brings me back to the series on virtual representations of Real Life Cities in Second Life.

I first noticed some Brasilian presence in Second Life in about april 2007 when I first blogged the Fiat Brasil presence. Later on we saw Citroën Brasil enter as well. Meanwhile we had seen a huge boost in Brasilian users in Second Life and had seen a lot of fuzz about the Kaizen Games rip-off. Brasilians seemed to love Second Life, but didn't really speak English so Kaizen Games and Brasil Telecoms prepped up a Portugese Language Pack for Second Life and a registration portal, Second Life Brasil (so far so good) and became Linden Lab's first licenced Global Partner, but were rumoured to take off a large percentage on the transactions. I haven't seen any Brasilian companies enter Second Life over the past years aside from these two automotives, but because my Portugese isn't very good (or almost non existent), I may have overlooked. However, the Brasilian community has grown steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with in Second Life, although they keep to themselves a bit (again, language barrier), but it's time to head to Rio, home of one of the best known landmarks in the world:

Rio de Janeiro ("River of January", is the second largest city of Brazil, behind São Paulo, and the third largest city in the continent, behind São Paulo and Buenos Aires. The city is capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It was the capital of Brazil for almost two centuries, from 1763 to 1822 while it was a Portuguese colony and from 1822 to 1960 as an independent nation. It was the capital of the Portuguese Empire from 1808 to 1821. Commonly known as just Rio, the city is also nicknamed A Cidade Maravilhosa, or "The Marvelous City".

Rio de Janeiro is famous for its natural settings, its Carnival celebrations, samba and other music, and hotel-lined tourist beaches, such as Copacabana and Ipanema, paved with decorated black and cream swirl pattern mosaics known locally as "pedra portuguesa". Some of the most famous local landmarks in addition to the beaches include the giant statue of Jesus, known as Christ the Redeemer ('Cristo Redentor') atop Corcovado mountain, which has recently been named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World; Sugarloaf mountain (Pão de Açúcar) with its cable car; the Sambódromo, a giant permanent parade stand used during Carnival; the famous Brazilian copperfish and Maracanã stadium, one of the world's largest football stadiums.[wikipedia]

There are multiple Rio de Janeiro sims, amongst which a triple sim build called Brasil Rio, but the one that has most resemblance to its real life counterpart is RJ City and obviously, the Cristo Redentor is very prominent in this build as well. As for recreating a virtual replica, this build is not as accurate as say Augsburg or Munich, but rather a loose collection of the local sights set in an athmosphere that breathes the spirit of Rio.





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PS Home goes Open Beta

After lots of rumours and delays, Sony finally pushes PlayStation Home to open Beta today. BBC News reports:

Sony's long awaited next-gen social networking site for PlayStation users goes into open beta today.

PlayStation Home will let gamers create their own avatar -a virtual representation of themselves - and then interact with other users in a 3D environment. Players can chat to other users, invite them into their own "home", and will soon be able to stream music and video.

PS Home will be available free to all registered PlayStation Network users.

Read the full article here.

It's hard to keep in the loop about this virtual world, as it is intended for Playstation users, which excludes me. However, the screenshots available on the web look excellent. Below is a collection of screenshots from the PlayStation 3 Home Forum.



I must admit, the graphics look very good, of a higher quality than that of Second Life. For instance you will find the avatars far more realistic than those in SL, as well as the lighting.

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Virtual Banking (18): Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank

Among the first countries to ditch Second Life last summer were Germany and Austria, where public opinion rapidly went from ecstatic to outright negative and focus was laid on the dark side of Second Life. But they're back. Slowly (very slowly), companies are coming back to Second Life. This time it's the German based Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank which opened up their virtual shop earlier this week, making it real world bank number 18 to immerse itself in Second Life.

Initially I thought this build was from the Austrian based Volksbank AG, or Volksbank Group, but that's a mixup. This presence is the German Volksbank, a cooperation of different local banks.

Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken with over 15,7 million members and 30 million customers, is a pillar of the German banking industry and a major force in the German economy. As the central organization of the cooperative banking group, the BVR (Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken), functions as a promoter of, representative for, and a strategic partner of its members. [bvr]

Aside from an apparent turn in public opinion, this new endeavor supprisingly comes at a time in which most financial institutions keep a lid on their expenditure and innovation budget due to the Credit Crunch.

The Volksbank comes in a double sim presence, first of which is the Orientantion Island and the second one is the main sim. The main sim holds the VR Marktplatz (market) and VR Finanzlounge (finance lounge), which is built like a typical smalltown city center.


The Volksbank has a different approach to their presence than most other real life companies have, which is good. Most corporate sims are empty spaces, with only their own private little corporate build. Alongside the marketplace however, we find various shops, inworld, Second Life based boutiques. Also the Volksbank has set up a Real Estate agent at the corner of the marketplace, which offers building tips for building in Second Life. I think this is a very good crossover, as real estate products and real estate financing are closely tied in with the core products of a bank.




While exploring the sim I ran into two Volksbank teammembers, Alexander Auerbach and teamleader Pedro Barbosa, who kindly gave me some background information. The Volksbank presense is mainly a research project which is not directly focussed on doing actual banking business in Second Life, but in getting in touch with their clients. They want to collect experience which can help them improve their services and consultancy. They do want to find out though how far one can go in 'vermittlung', consultancy in an environment like this.

Their Second Life presence will a place to meet new customers, but since finance is a very private business, follow ups will have to be done the old fashioned way, with visits to your local bank. The lack of privacy was also one of the reasons ABN Amro moved over to Active Worlds.

They were quick to point out that the presence isn't finished yet, and were still working on filling in some details. The concept for the sim was made by people from GAD, a calculating center for banks and a member of the Volksbank cooperation. Also cooperative banks like the geno-verband Stuttgart and Rheinisch-Westfälischer Genossenschaftsverband participate in this build, which are both part of the Volksbank coop as well. The concept developed by GAD was checked with a Second Life agency though to see if it would hold up, but the build was entirely done with own employees.

Here's two promo videos about the Volksbank presense in Second Life:







SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/VR%20Land/114/19/24

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Hails from the Arena (1)

Rather than trying to find a new company in Second Life I've spent my past time in playing Gladiatus the past few weeks, which is rather easy to do as it doesn't take much time. Time to do a little update on the game.

Gladiatus, the Town of Rome

The game of Gladiatus has 3 areas; the town, the province and the dungeons. In this blogpost I'd like to focus on the town as this is where the game begins. First there are the stable and the jewellers shop (image 1 and image 2). Working in the stables will get you money you'll need to buy armor and other items. At the Jeweller's you can buy (obviously) Jewels, which can be purchased with real money through paypal and other payment methods. These Jewels can be used (for instance) to hurry expeditions in the province.

A small outing to the province brings you to the hermit (image 3) where you'll be able to change your name (at a price) if you've made too many enemies, or simply if you think you need a more heroic name. With the money you have earned you can visit various shops in town. There's the armory and the weaponsmith (image 4 and image 5) where you can buy armor and weapons. A third shop houses the Alchemist (image 6) where you can buy potions and rings to strengthen your items or yourself.


A fourth shop is the Merchant's (image 7) where you can buy food, gloves and shoes. Buying items at the armory and weaponsmith comes at a price. Often these items are quite expensive and the best items always need Jewels (hence real money) to purchase. Best option to acquire good items is the Auction (image 8). At the auction, which runs in cycles of approximately 4-5 hours a new set of items is available. You can bid on these items, but plan well ahead. When you are overbid, you lose the money you've invested in the auction as well. However, there's the option to use Jewels here as well. Let's say items come at a base price of 2500 gold coins and 10 Jewels, you can start bidding at 2501 gold coins. If it is a hot item, the price may well rise to 12000 gold items. If you really want the item, you can still nick it away in a direct sale for 2500 gold coins and 10 Jewels. A second alternative to get items without buying Jewels is at the marketplace (image 9). This is where gamer to gamer sales take place.

When you're dressed for success, you'll need every bit of money you can find to visit the trainer (image 10) to work on your stats (strength, charisma, intelligence, speed etc.) and prepare yourself for the live of a Gladiator.


Living the live of the Gladiator starts in the arena (image 11). Here you can fight against fellow gamers. The arena is level based. For every 10 levels there is a seperate pool, so you'll stand a fair chance. On the particular server I played, the arena for level 1-9 was about 750 players, and the same went for the arena on level 10-19.

Final place to stop in the town is the inn, where the innkeeper (image 12) is the one who deals out quests. These quests will get you a nice reward, in money and sometimes in fine items. Items you receive in quests, but don't want to use can be sold at the appropriate shop or at the market. The innkeeper will provide you with simple quests like talking to various shopkeepers or exploring certain areas in the province, or harder ones to find artefacts in the province or win a fight in the arena.



As I said, the arena works in level based pools. The image above shows a bit more detail on the arena. It has two columns of Gladiators, first of which is the top 5 Gladiators in this level pool. Every hour you're on spot 1 there's money added to the jackpot. Beating the number 1 gladiator gets you the jackpot. The second column is a list of the 4 Gladiators ahead of you in the competition, these are the Gladiators you can fight to rise in rank. As you can see, my charachter, Verritus has risen to rank 10 in this group. I actually made it to rank 6 in this pool before I levelled to level 20 and had to start all over again.


Finally, there's the guardsman (image 10 as well) which is accessible after level 10 who can give you Dungeon related quests. Also, after level 10 your merchant has an extra tab available to purchase mercenaries, which I'll go into in a later blogpost.

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Augmented Reality: What is it, and what can we do with it?

In the past two years we've seen an enormous boost in Virtual Worlds, using 3D visuals. They are not really 3D though, we've put the idea of a 3D environment into a flatscreen. Real 3D stuff is when you suddenly have holographic choppers flying around your head if you open up a lego box.

Below is a video of the BBC experimenting with Augmented Reality (and yes, it includes a chopper).

But what is Augmented Reality?

According to Wikipedia, Augmented Reality is...

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and "augmented" by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking data, fiducial markers recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.

Ronald Azuma's definition of AR is one of the more focused descriptions. It covers a subset of AR's original goal, but it has come to be understood as representing the whole domain of AR: Augmented reality is an environment that includes both virtual reality and real-world elements. For instance, an AR user might wear translucent goggles; through these, he could see the real world, as well as computer-generated images projected on top of that world. Azuma defines an augmented reality system as one that

  1. combines real and virtual,
  2. is interactive in real-time,
  3. is registered in three dimensions.
This definition is now often used in some parts of the research literature (Azuma, 1997).

But what is it to you? What do you see as augmented reality, and what use does it have? Does it have any use, or is it just a plaything? What do you think? What would be usefull deployment in your line of work?

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Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Muxlim Pal: Gone before the wind?

Social Virtual worlds like Second Life often resemble Sodom and Gomorra. I remember the days that most headlines made by Second Life were about the slease and dirt and sex empires. No wonder Muslims were out to seek a world of their own in which the name of the prophet would not be slandered, and every one walks the walk and talk the walk of the Koran.

Being a christian, I haven't felt the need to deeply explore this world and haven't blogged it before since I didn't want to fall into cynical "72 vestal virgin heaven" kind of jokes, but Muxlim Pal, as this world is called saw the curtain fall before it ever saw the light of day.

Muxlim Pal is a 2.5D virtual world, launched earlier this month by the Muxlim community site and, as they themselves describe it:

Muxlim Pal is the first Muslim virtual world providing a new kind of family friendly social online environment for your entertainment. In this Beta phase we are giving you a taste of what we plan to be a continually growing online and getting your feedback on how we can make your experience here fun and even more enjoyable.

However, I noticed a tweet flying past by Rikomatic who found out the world had already shut down due to griefer attacks. As Rikomatic wites on "The Click Heard Round the World"

Unfortunately, it looks like they have had to restrict access to Muxlim Pal because of griefers. Here's the message on the site:

Welcome to Muxlim Pal. As you know, muxlim.com are committed to providing all our users with a respectful, open-minded and family-friendly environment, in which to learn, exchange information, play and work. Unfortunately, we have had a short down time, as a small number of destructive elements were sabotaging the site for everyone else. [my emphasis] The site is now up again and users are enjoying it. With these attacks going on we have had to make the difficult decision to temporarily restrict access for new members. All new members are welcome complete this form (below) to trial the site or wait the standard activity and waiting period used for messaging features on the rest of the site. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

The Muxlim Team

I can't imagine the difficulty of moderating a virtual world populated by Muslims. It must be a magnet for every anti-Muslim bigot with broadband on the planet.

Well, for what it's worth, a few screenshots:
Down below is a map of the Muxlim Pal world, with a Beach Cafe, which will probably only serve non-alcoholic beverages, even if virtual.


Dressing up is an important part of the Muxlim Pal world as well, however I haven't seen Taliban approved Burkas yet.

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Terminator Salvation

Nothing to do with the metaverse or the forseeable future, but still one I'm looking forward too.

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Saturday, December 06, 2008

BidSL is now on e-Bay

BidSL is an auction service in Second Life(tech crunch covered it before).



Now BidSL is on e-bay. Current bid is US $360.00. I tryed to get more information about it and found a post on XStreetSL("Looking for someone to take over BidSL"). It said below.

Unfortunately, current first life job and family commitments have made it very difficult for my wife and I to get inworld as much as we need to for the running of the BidSL auction service.
Auction's end time is Dec-07-08 14:49:32 PST. I'm interested in how much does bid go.

By the way, auction called "3D auction" was held in Second Life for Japanese. Unlike BidSL, it offered real-time auctions. To my joy, I was there as bidder and got i-Shade, 3D software package, by auction(with auction HUD). It was an exciting experience as if i was in kinda Sotheby's auctionhouse.



Unfortunately, 3D auction has never been held since spring 2008. I don't know why but I think real time auction in virtual world is one of killer contents. Cause everyone can gather, bid and have exciting time.

Updated:
Bidding has ended for BidSL. Winning Bid was US $416.00.

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Friday, December 05, 2008

Saint not affected by Recession

Today is an early day home and time to spend with the family as in Holland we celebrate the birthday of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas as we call him.

Saint Nicholas (270 - December 6, 346) is the common name for Nicholas of Myra, a Lycian saint and Bishop of Myra in Lycia of Anatolia (modern-day Antalya province, Turkey, though at the time it was a Greek-speaking Roman Province). Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercessions, he is also known as Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and is now commonly identified with Santa Claus. Nicholas was never officially canonised; his reputation simply evolved among the faithful, as was the custom in his time. In 1087, his relics were furtively translated to Bari in southern Italy. For this reason, he is also known as Saint Nicholas of Bari. [wikipedia]

Santa Claus is primarily an American commercial concoction, which has nothing to do with Christmas and in the Netherlands we still prefer Sinterklaas as gift-machine over Santa Claus, which is quite fortunate as we have a half month headstart to predict how hard the credit crunch and recession really kicks in.

Well, rest assured ye merry gentlemen, nothing is wrong with the world. Sinterklaas sales have reached a record high again this year and prospects for Christmas sales are good too. Well, not entirely true, but the Saint doesn't seem touched by the turmoil of the credit crunch and recession.

For a little more background on Saint Nicholas, and how he became Santa and got screwed by Coca-Cola, check out the St. Nicholas Center website.

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Air France-KLM on a Cloud

You don't see too many new companies taking a dive into virtual worlds these days, so I was really excited to see Air France - KLM immerse last month.

Air France-KLM, is a European airline holding company incorporated under French law with its headquarters at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris, France. It is the largest airline company in the world in terms of total operating revenues, and the third largest in the world in terms of passenger-kilometres and passenger fleet size. Air France-KLM is member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. They offer a frequent flyer program called Flying Blue. The company's namesake airlines rely on two major hubs: Roissy-Charles de Gaulle International Airport, near Paris, and Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam. [wikipedia]

The airliner has asked iMarginal to build a virtual presence where the company would be able to interact with their shareholders, or as introduced on the AFKLM Second Life website:

The Air France-KLM island in the Second Life universe aims to offer Air France-KLM shareholders a space with the Group’s financial news. For shareholders and visitors, this space is structured in order to help them learn more about the Group’s activity and to participate in financial events. On the island they can find an auditorium, a lounge, the share price in 3D, a Sustainable Development space and the Air France Museum.

I'm happy to see they've done a great job at the build; it's of exquisite quality and they've actually managed to skip a few of the traditional, gravity bound builds we often see in virtual environments. The island is called 'ile dans le ciel', or in plain English 'island in the sky', which suits the company as their core business mainly is up in the clouds.




As for moving around the sim you will need a jetpack to move from room to room, or use the teleport hub above.

There are four primary areas to explore: First there is the Home sphere: where you can view movies about the Air France-KLM group and download PDF's containing the latest financial reports. The second shpere is the 'mandatory' auditorium. A third sphere houses the Air France museum with and exhibition of early Air France and KLM posters, bringing pack memories of the past when flying still was romantic and adventurous. The museum also contains a number of fine scale models of Air France and KLM airplanes. Finally, the fourth sphere offers room to a lounge.

Late last summer I have had some contact with KLM exmployees who were looking into the possibility of building a Second Life presence and were looking for some sort of justification for an airliner to get into a virtual world, in which people don't need transportation as they can fly, or even better, teleport themselves from point to point. I pondered that question when I blogged the presence of the Brussels Airlines in Second Life in March, as I wrote:

... and what do you do when you're an airliner and get down to the Metaverse? Exactly, an airline's core business is to bring people from place to place. In the virtual world however, you don't need transportation. You can just teleport. Airliners have become obsolete. Yet Brussels Airlines knows that bringing people from place to place is just a means to a goal. It is actually about people going to destinations. So if you can't do the transportation part, focus on the destinations. That's exactly what the B-Places directory does.

There's a slight French domination at the build, so I'm trying to find out more with the Dutch wing..

Here's a slideshow from the build's Flickr pool:









More info can be found on the Air France-KLM website where you can watch a neat video about the Second Life presence and an introduction by group CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/SecondLife/Air%20France%20KLM/128/34/232

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Is it Web 3.0 time?

Aside from Pownce shutting down , today looks a pretty fine day as both FaceBook Connect and Google Friend Connect emerge from closed beta into the wide public. Both these projects will undoubtedly boost social networking immensely. John McCrea of Plaxo posted quite a nice blog today on "the birth of the Social Web" as he called it:

December 4, 2008. Today may be remembered as the birth of the Social Web, as two major projects aimed at turning the Web social emerged from their restricted beta periods for general availability, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. Together, these two major events sound the death knell for the walled garden phase of social networking. Early reactions to the news are quick to frame this as a head-to-head battle between Google and Facebook, but the truth requires a look at the details…

read full article here.

But, does today live up to its outlook? One the one hand I welcome these projects as they may bring some sync into the countless social networking accounts I have, but on the other hand I fear the widespread grip Google is starting to gain on our digital identities (see this blogpost for instance).


The image above is from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and depicts Gulliver being tied up by the people of Lilliput. As their ropes are mere strands of hair to him, he would have no trouble whatsoever in tearing these ropes apart.... at least, one or a bunch at a time, but the vast amounts of ropes will hold him tied down, captive.

This analogy was used by professor Vincent Icke in the Dutch talkshow "De Wereld Draait Door" yesterday on how the government is getting a grip on our online identity with all sorts of new files and registrations, but I think this is even more true for Google. It is time for a new web, and yes it is time for the Social Web, but that would require a thorough redesign, a proper 'new web' with a different architecture supporting it; An architecture which can provide privacy and security when it comes to Identity Management

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Thursday, December 04, 2008

Pownce goes Bownce

I gues it's been a little more than a year now since I happily blogged the arrival of Pownce, a flashy new microblogging tool that would heat up competition for Twitter and Jaiku (before it got assimilated by Google).

I was quite excited when I got my invitation to the alpha version on the 1st of July last year and reviewed:

In my twittergroup it kinda hyped and everyone was screaming for invites. Why?
I think two reasons:

  1. One of the makers of Pownce is KevinRose (from Digg) and
  2. Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) is on it as well.

The early signs were promising, but over the weekend Pownce saw an onrush of new users resulting in scalability and stability problems. The slick looking Adobe AIR driven client crashed several times.

We're a year and a half onward now, and the curtain falls for Pownce. From December 15 on you'll get bounced on Pownce according to the short email notification I received:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or newpro accounts.

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you cansave your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more:http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

I still think it wins 99 out of a 100 times over Twitter when it comes to presentation and when it comes to functionality, I guess it may still beat the crap out of Twitter.

So when it tops Twitter, why did Six Apart tear it apart? Why did the curtain fall? Did the Credit Crunch, or Techcrunch, or whatever you want to call it dry up the wells of green and caused the bailout? Perhaps that may have been the final pushover, but let's face it. It lost competition to an inferior platform, just like Philips' Video 2000 and Sony's Betamax lost to the lousy VHS back in the 80's in a fierce format war.

Pownce wasn't stable yet, as the initial review showed. It crashed. But that isn't uncommon. I regularly get the message that the "Technorati monster escaped" or twitter hiccups. Seems like it comes as a standard feature of services like these. That didn't kill Pownce. It's the buzz that did, rather the lack off. I liked it better than Twitter, but rarely used Pownce simply because all my friends were on Twitter.

Twitter aleady had the crowd, and though better, it wasn't good enough to start another tiresome tribal migration from one community to the other and rebuild your contact list. Twitter is sustainable by sheer numbers only. Pownce would have needed an ecosystem to support it, a tie in with social networking sites in which is messaging capacities could be leveraged. It could have been done, as Six Apart is one of the prime ecosystem contributors for LinkedIn for example.

I guess that's settled than, one less account to worry about, one place that holds yet another part of my digital identity, my humoungous digital footprint down. Just hope they'll do erase their databases thoroughly and not use it for a new startup.

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