SOMEWHAT FRANK

Sloog.org Offers Social Bookmarking Mashup For Second Life Virtual World

Mapping mashups have become extremely common in the web 2.0 as developers have leverages web services to combine data with maps of Earth. I recently had a close encounter with a mapping mashup of a new kind called Sloog.org.

Sloog.org is a bookmarking service for Second Life residents and offers a unique mashup experience because rather than plotting items to a map of Earth, it plots location in the virtual world, Second Life. That's right, Sloog.org leverages a tagging infrastructure to offers users a way to search Second Life. Sloog.org is free and enables users to tag and search both places and avatars. Users (with Second Life access) can also teleport directly to visit locations bookmarked with the service. Sloog.org showcases some of the most recently visited and most popular places like Mercedez Benz Island, Virtual Morocco and Mosi-Mosi Headquarters. I did a search and found AOL Pointe, the AOL virtual real estate, and displayed the results below.

Sloog.org is a product of the Barcelona-based multimedia studio Mosi-Mosi. They are determined to make Second Life and a better place. To stay up to speed with the latest Sloog.org happenings check out the official Sloog.org blog.

Bottom-line: Sloog.org is a social bookmarking services for Second Life that offers users a great way to search and discover new parts of the virtual world.

Gizmoz For Customized Talking Heads

Gizmoz, an Israel-based company, offers a suite of tools for generating animated avatars and buddy icons thus enabling users to create messages to share over email, the web or even instant messenger. You can create an custom animated message by selecting an avatar to deliver the message and then either recording a 20 second message, typing a message to be converted into an audio voice or by selecting a pre-recorded message. Upon selecting an avatar and message option you can preview the animated video before sharing it with others. However, all messages that are created on the site are placed into a public gallery of Gagz for others to watch, rate and share. I created an animated avatar and have embedded it for viewing above or by visiting this link.

Aside from animated gag creation, Gizmoz offers a free plug-in to bring talking heads to just about every instant messaging client available (i.e. AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Google Talk). The software enables users to share gags and exchange instant messages via a Gizmoz talking head. Find out more here.

In addition, Gizmoz is working a product called Headz Maker that allows anyone to create a custom talking head from a facial photo. TechCrunch previously reported more details on the head maker. It sort of reminds me of Max Headroom, are we catching up with the technology forecasts of 1985?

Betocracy: Create Prediction Markets

Betocracy is a new site offering easy to use tools for the creation of prediction markets on websites. Though in Beta, Betocracy has markets covering the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008 as well as a Stock Market for the popular Second-Life multi-player role-playing universe. Betocracy was created by freelance web developer Yaron Koren.

Prediction Markets are best understood like a combination of a stock market and the bookie at a horse race, where users bet for or against events occurring.  The event can be anything: will the horse win the race, will the stock price go up, or, who will win the election?  The Washington Stock Exchange is a similar product dedicated to the political arena.  The website uses points instead of money, so there is no real risk of great loss (other than the time spent on the websites using predictive markets).

However, Betocracy is quick to point out that even the points reflect real value in the terms of predictive data. According to Yaron: 

"...the administrators of a site can always choose to reward those who have done well on their markets, where laws permit."

It will be interesting to see if Betocracy can truly play fortune teller.

Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with the information in this article.

Second Life Breach Leaks Real Life Data

Second Life, the online virtual world, recently encountered a privacy breach. According to a bulletin posted by Linden Labs, the San Francisco-based parent company, decided to take a proactive approach to reponding since they admittedly did not know what information of its over 660,000 users was accessible by hackers.  Cory Ondrejka, CTO of Linden Lab had this to say:

"We're taking a very conservative approach and assuming passwords were compromised and therefore we're requiring users to change their Second Life passwords immediately. While we realize this is an inconvenience for residents, we believe it's the safest course of action. We place the highest priority on protecting customer data and will continue to take aggressive measures to protect the privacy and security of the community. "

This incident reminded me that your online life which could include blogging, your online photos, email, calendar, search queries, phone conversations via VoIP or in this case your Second Life information is not totally separate from your first life, your real life. Therefore, privacy and safety should still be something that is taken into account while performing actions online.

Presidential Candidate Campaigns (Virtually) On Second Life

Mark Warner, high-tech entrepreneur and former Virginia Governor,  visited the online virtual gaming world, Second Life, yesterday (August 31, 2006). Mark Warner appeared as the Mark Warner avatar as shown to the right to speak to a number of other avatars that were attending the virtual world event. A full transcript of the event can be found here. It is the first known use of an online virtual world gaming by a political figure.

It appears Mark Warner is planning to make additional Second Life appearances like a town hall style meeting as he is currently a potential Democratic Presidential candidate in the 2008 election. Look out Hillary!

It is great to see a politician using cutting edge technology to communicate. He appears to be getting some wonderful guidance. I expect to see others following Mark Warner's lead but kudos to Mark for being the first - maybe it will win him a Democratic nomination?