WorldTV - our MIT Media Lab final project

One of the more interesting class projects I took part in during my last semester at MIT was our MIT Media Lab final project for MAS 571 ("Social TV: Creating New Connected Media Experiences"). The project was called WorldTV, and with my team (Jungmoo Park, MBA '11, and Giacomo Summa, MSMS '11), we created a pretty slick video demonstration of the proposed software UI. The video was shown at the MAS 571 demo day at the Media Lab (you can watch it below) and we wrote an accompanying concept paper that we are in the process of preparing for an IEEE CCNC workshop. In the following post, I'll describe not only what WorldTV is, but its genus and some of the reaction we've received so far.

WorldTV is a television app and accompanying mobile app for browsing user-generated video from one's social circle, as well as event video produced by strangers that tie into one's news and cultural interests. Instead of using traditional browsing methods -- scrolling through channels or searching for videos -- the proposed service uses a 3D globe as a navigational tool. WorldTV is aimed at people with global networks, which might include people with friends, relatives, and colleagues from other countries; people who spend a fair amount of time travelling; or people who are interested in news or culture in other countries.

The concept had great appeal to the entire team, not only because of our backgrounds (Giacomo is from Italy, Jungmoo is from Korea, and I spent most of the 1990s living overseas) but also because all of us have observed the exponential growth of user-generated video and realize its power and appeal to ordinary people. In 2006, I wrote about the potential of geotagged, time-stamped online photos to give insights into local events. I expanded the idea to include tweets and user-generated video in a proposal for my Linked Data Ventures class called PPP (PixPeoplePlaces). When I began the Social TV class, I took the PPP concept even further with user-generated video, emphasizing the social aspect of plotting event video on a local map (this was the basis of my first assignment for Social TV -- you can see the poster here).

Developing WorldTV - our MIT Media Lab final project

I envisioned all of these ideas as Web apps displayed on a computer monitor. For one of the early poster sessions for the Social TV class, Giacomo independently came up with a different approach. He asked, why not use a full-sized television screen to display a map of the entire earth with hot spots that reflected breaking hard news events that might be captured by amateur shooters? (This happened as anti-authoritarian demonstrations were breaking out across the Middle East in early 2011). Instead of being a "Lean Forward" experience (something that requires user input or interaction, such as a video game) this would be a "Lean Back" experience, in which the viewer could sit on the couch and take in the video. Giacomo also considered how video could be differentiated on the global map with different sized or colored markers, and how "likes", social networks, or newspaper articles could determine what appeared on the screen. He called it "WorldTV".

There was clearly some overlap between our ideas, and we decided to team up for the final project. We expanded the concept to include not only video from breaking news in other countries, but also cultural events (festivals, parades) and entertainment (sports, performances, etc.). The social filter would not only display streaming/recent videos from one's social circle, but could also reflect the collective interests of the social circle.

WorldTV business model

An additional requirement for the final project was a business model. I had already been thinking about using phone and laptop cameras as a way for ordinary people to access amateur expertise all over the globe, for a price. Examples of amateur expertise might be a power user demonstrating how to use a new gadget, advice on registering a company in a certain state by an experienced business owner, practicing foreign language conversation with a native speaker, etc. I dubbed the scheme Real Time Requests. (RTR). A live auction and reputation system would determine prices paid by people seeking expertise, and match them up with sellers. We decided to fold it into the proposal. The idea was then debuted at another MAS 571 poster session in April:

Jungmoo, who had a background as a professional television reporter for a Korean broadcaster, was intrigued by our poster session presentation and joined the team. Our next task was to take the concept and make a demo to show at demo day at the MIT Media Lab in the last week of class in May. For the final deliverable, we didn't have the skills to produce a working prototype. However, we did have the skills to produce a software mockup and accompanying video demo.

The team got to work. I created a simple WorldTV television UI using HTML and CSS, built the maps with Google Earth, and mocked up a mobile UX on an iPhone "remote". Giacomo wrote the script and starred in the video. Jungmoo took the raw video and graphics and used his professional editing skills to create a really slick video demo, which is shown below:



We presented the video and an accompanying slideshow on the business model last month at the Media Lab. Our Media Lab instructors, Marie-José Montpetit and Henry Holtzman, invited a group of industry pros from major cable and national broadcasters (including NBC and WGBH) to watch all six student presentations. After seeing our team present, one of the NBC visitors was interested in the idea of "shared experiences." Giacomo explained that user-generated video around sporting events and concerts could populate the global view, depending on how one's filters were set up. This prompted another executive, who I believed was from HBO, to question the legality of using amateur concert video. I responded that copyright law was decades behind the technological and social reality, but she was skeptical. I then said that there would always be artists who want to exercise strong control over this content, but there were also many artists who recognized the value of fan content to generate additional interest or loyalty, and in my opinion, the latter group would have a competitive advantage. But as I thought about it later, it was clear that addressing the entertainment industry's copyright concerns would be a huge issue, regardless of how outdated the laws are.

Our team also heard from Henry, who thought the Real Time Requests business model was really a separate concept that did not match WorldTV. We agreed. Jungmoo and Giacomo had actually raised the same concern in our planning discussions, but I felt we needed a business model that did not involve standard subscriptions. Henry noted that a subscription might actually work for some people.

So what's next for WorldTV? All members of the team have graduated, and none of the industry visitors seemed interested in taking it further. We hope, however, that if our paper is accepted to the IEEE CCNC '12 conference, it might get some traction. In the draft that we are now preparing, I outlined the "Future Work" required to make WorldTV a reality:

The next steps for WorldTV would be to create a working prototype using Google Earth, YouTube and Facebook APIs, the Android or iPhone SDKs, and other existing software and hardware components. Besides using the prototype to evaluate functionality and performance, ordinary users in the target audience (people having global networks) could also test the system with an eye toward determining which features and use cases hold the most promise. When the product is ready for wider distribution, identifying suitable “TV App” platforms and partnerships could take place. In the long run, creating a scalable architecture with its own API and opening up WorldTV to outside developers (much like Facebook and Twitter have done) would help unleash the greatest potential of the platform. This would require significant investments, but in the long run would help realize innovations for the next age of television.

If the paper is published, I will share a link on this space. In addition, if anyone is interested in learning more or helping to develop the idea, my contact information can be found here.

A curriculum for learning computer programming in WoW

(Updated: See note at bottom of post) What can you learn from the MMORPG World of Warcraft? A lot, it turns out. This is one of my conclusions from taking CMS.863J -- Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education, taught by Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas. It's one of the classes offered this semester by MIT's Comparative Media Studies department, and is also cross-listed under Course 11 (MIT's Urban Studies department). Aside from myself and one other graduate student, all of the other people taking the class undergraduates, many in Course 6.

As indicated by the name of the class, the curriculum centers around computer games and educational theory relating to games and learning. However, like every other media and entrepreneurship-focused class I have taken at MIT, there is also a heavy focus on creating and building (Mens Et Manus is the institute's motto). In February, after getting up to level 13 in World of Warcraft and conducting quests with classmates in-world, we split into teams with the mission of building a sample curriculum around a specific topic area, using WoW as the learning environment.

You may find it strange that a game like WoW can be used to study real-world topics, but there is actually a fairly long history of players using the virtual worlds to study or understand various phenomena. Edward Castronova's oft-cited 2001 paper on virtual world economies opened up a floodgate of research and academic discussion relating to massively multiplayer online games. Specific to World of Warcraft, the game has been used to study epidemiology, as well as topics related to learning. In 2008, a paper by Constance Steinkuehler and Sean Duncan in the Journal of Science Education and Technology studied scientific reasoning in thousands of WoW forum posts. They found that 86% of the posts contained "social knowledge construction," or "the collective development of understanding, often through joint problems solving and argumentation."

As expected, many of these posts consisted of discussions around certain classes of characters, spells, weapons, etc. However, 10% of the total posts studied used model-based reasoning, including mathematical models to explain some phenomenon. An example cited in the paper showed one player who apparently reverse-engineered damage algorithms in WoW to compare the abilities of priests vs. mages:

By intuition, you should notice a problem... but I’ll give you the numbers anyways 

For Mindflay, SW:P, and presumpably VT [3 priest spells]: Damage = (base_spell_damage + modifier * damage_ gear) * darkness * weaving * shadowform * misery 

For Frostbolt [mage spell] Average Damage = (base_spell_damage + (modifier + empowered frost) * damage_gear) * (1 * (1 - critrate - winter's chill - empowered frost) + (1.5 + ice shards) * (critrate + winter’s chill + empowered frost)) * piercing ice mindflay = (426 + 0.45 * dam) * 1.1 * 1.15 * 1.15 * 1.05

650.7 + 0.687 * dam 

frostbolt = (530 + (0.814 + 0.10)*dam) * ((1 - crit - 0.10 - 0.05) + (1.5 + 0.5) * (crit + 0.10 + 0.05)) * 1.06 

(530 + 0.914 * dam) * ((0.85 - crit) + 2 * (crit + 0.15)) * 1.06

0.968 * (dam + 579.7) * (crit + 1.15) 
Please notice the 0.687 versus the 0.968. That's the scaling factor. 

After students in our class had gotten the hang of WoW, there were discussions around how the game could be used to study trigonometry and group psychology. Our team, consisting of Andrew Hsiao and Michele Pratusevich (both course sixers) and myself, opted to use WoW as a platform for high school students to learn basic computer programming concepts, using a simple scripting language called Lua that can be run from within the WoW chatbox. Here's the curriculum that we developed:

Teaching Computer Science Through WoW Scripts

Michele and Andrew were the true domain experts here, and designed all four of the CS class exercises and most of the assessment. I concentrated on the introduction, theory section, and managed to create one of the assessment scripts (the simple currency exchange/variables exercise).

WoW computer programming curriculum review

I personally believe the curriculum we designed is a very effective and engaging method for introducing basic computer science concepts to high school students. Once they've established a WoW player account and learned some of the basic game functionality, it's so easy to experiment with the code, and try new functions from the WoW API. Our instructor said the curricula that the student group developed will be passed to testers at NYU, but I don't know if we'll get any feedback on how our CS curriculum fared. If you are a teacher and try it, or are a solo learner who wants to study basic computer science concepts while playing WoW, please feel free to give it a spin and let me know how it works.

My next assignment for CMS.863J, with a different group: Creating a board game to teach fundamental electrical engineering concepts. You can see our test board here, and I'll try to post more information about the project as development progresses in April.

Update: An NYU class has reviewed our curriculum. Their comments can be seen on the post, "A curriculum for programming, reviewed"

The Tiger Woods accident simulated in 3D shows the future of newscasts

Spotted on Fake Steve Jobs: A video from a Taiwanese news program that depicts Tiger Woods' car crash using 3D animation (starts at 15 seconds in):
Some people may find the use of an anguished avatar (Woods' wife) in a machinima clip to be funny. Indeed, I suspect that this unusual format for reporting the news is the reason it was included in a well-known parody blog. But for years we've seen similar techniques used to simulate airplane crashes or the microscopic interactions between drugs and the human body -- why shouldn't computer-generated environments be used to depict a car crash or other commonplace events?

3D news applications are often experimental (see my 2006 post on NewsAtSeven) and when you do see simulations of events on U.S. news stations, they tend to be limited to the national networks that have the required staff and computing resources. But once machinima tools get easier/cheaper to use, and/or incorporate public mapping data and even models of building interiors, I expect that the use of news simulations will rise dramatically. They will will get more sophisticated, too, thanks to the geodata as well as near-photorealistic computer graphics.

There is also the possibility of bringing 3D anchors into the scene, and incorporating other types of metadata, as I described in a 2007 paper:

In the future, similar news applications could allow 3D avatars to be customized to mimic real news anchors (Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric, Jack Williams), other real people (someone's father, a favorite teacher, a politician), characters based on a set of self-selected attributes, or one's own avatar. The avatars might be seated in a simulated newsroom, or could be moved to a computer-generated environment that mirrors the real-life location where the news that he or she is describing took place. The environment might be based upon geotags and other metadata that were generated by the original reports and video footage. The news itself can also be fine-tuned, based on specific categories, locations, times, and keywords chosen by the viewer. I may choose to have the first half of my newscast consist of developments relating to the New York Stock Exchange in the previous 24 hours. For the second half, I may restrict my anchor to reading reports that mention "China" or "Beijing" in the lede and have accompanying video footage sourced from any clip taken in Beijing or Shanghai within the past six hours. Detailed metadata would be crucial to creating such a report.

So, don't assume that the 20th century model used by newscasts today to report recent events -- handsome people in suits  reading from teleprompters and rolling clips of prerecorded video -- will hold true in the years to come. We'll be seeing more 3D simulations, animations, and avatars, as well as an increased use of Internet-based data sources to get an understanding of the news.

Jay Leno demonstrates 3D "fabbing" for antique cars

This is very cool. Jay Leno, the comedian and car collector, has written an article for Popular Mechanics about the practical use of 3D scanning and printing.

I wrote about 3D rapid prototyping back in 2007, but the interesting thing about Leno's article -- and the accompanying video -- is he shows an actual use-case scenario that could potentially help out the many thousands of classic car owners who can't run their vehicles because they're missing a part that's no longer manufactured:

"It's a classic example of high tech melding with old tech. There are cars sitting in garages around the country, and they haven’t moved in years for lack of some unobtainable part. Now they can hit the road once more, thanks to this technology."

Leno brings up the case of a deteriorating part for a 100-year old car. While it would be possible to get a machinist to attempt to replace the part, it would be expensive and could potentially take lots of trial and error, if the replacement part is too thick or doesn't quite fit. With 3D "fabbing" technologies, you can not only create a very precise model of the part (according to Leno, "50,000 points per second at a density of 160,000 dots per inch"), you can "print" it plastic. If the part needs to be made into metal, like Jay's old car parts, the plastic models can either be turned into a mold or the 3D data file can be used with a special type of machine that makes metal parts based on 3D models.

Check out the video below, which shows Leno explaining the technology. One of the neatest things about this technology which I wasn't aware of previously is it can actually be used to make working plastic models that have moving parts -- no assembly required! Leno demonstrates a wrench and some sort of steam-engine component made with the 3D printer, and both actually work:

As for cost, Leno admits the 3D scanner and printer are expensive (he says the NextEngine scanner costs about $3000 and the Dimension uPrint Personal 3D printer is under $15,000, which is actually a sharp drop from just two years ago, when printers cost $40,000 and up). That's too expensive for mass production of parts, but most car collectors or owners of old machinery just need single parts or pieces. There's probably potential for an online marketplace to spring up, that lets people trade 3D modeling data files and order parts from 3D print shops onine.

Weather maps for Boston

On my browser toolbar I have bookmarks for about 10 really important sites that I visit multiple times throughout the day: Yahoo mail, Twitter, Techmeme, Y Combinator/Hacker News, the Industry Standard, etc.

But there's only one map-related site, and it's not Google Maps. It's the National Weather Service radar map for Boston, which includes all of southern New England (see screenshot, above). It lets me know in near real-time where the clouds and thunder cells are, and plan outings accordingly.

On my iPod Touch, I also use the free Weather.com app. It has a Google maps mashup which shows a cloud overlay over the user-chosen locations, but the graphics aren't as good and there is a lag on some of the data -- and I suspect some innaccuracies about the location of storms, based on visually comparing the NWS map and the mobile mashup from Weather.com.

Nevertheless, the data available to ordinary users via Web and mobile apps is amazing. TV weathermen used to be the gatekeepers for such data, but no longer. That doesn't mean TV weathermen will be disappearing -- they are still valuable for giving context and forecasting -- but for here-and-now reports they have been made obsolete by technology.

More lego models ...

A few weeks back, I wrote about my son and I modeling objects using legos. Now the girl is getting into it, too. A few of our latest creations:

Lego people -- totally my daughter's idea:



My son made a stairway/table for his mini plastic racoon:



A ship, which I made using longer lego crossbeams and plastic planking:



A mutant dinosaur that I created (I didn't like it, but my son did):



I'm pretty encouraged by how well both kids are taking to coming up with ideas and modeling them in plastic. The girl is already an experienced Webkinz user; maybe it's time for her to start modeling using 3D graphics tools? What should I start her on -- Sketchup, or something else?

Microsoft's 'Spatial Web'

At EmTech '08 yesterday, I heard Microsoft's research and strategy chief talk about the company's cutting-edge technologies. Craig Mundie spent a fair amount of time discussing cloud computing and advances in programming, but I was particularly interested in his discussions of 3D-related technologies. For years, I have been writing about virtual worlds and 3D tools, and observing how companies both big and small have been developing products and trying different business models. Google, Intel, Sony, Linden Lab, and Sun Microsystems have been very visible in this sector, but Microsoft has been a bit of an enigma ... until yesterday.

Mundie basically said that the user-generated virtual worlds which are popular now -- Second Life and the like -- are not scalable in the sense that lots of people will be interested in creating avatars and virtual objects. Rather, he thinks killer apps will be centered around the "Spatial Web," a virtual representation of the real world that uses the Internet, cloud computing, and new interfaces. Key to the creation of the Spatial Web will be Photosynth, a really neat modeling tool that I have covered here on my blog. Photosynth figured heavily in Mundie's demonstration at MIT yesterday. Here's what he showed in his demo:

In one brief demo he showed how a small, camera-equipped robot could be used to model a large room. In another, he showed a 3D model of a commercial district in Seattle that had been created with Photosynth, and demonstrated how a virtual visitor could come to the district using the Internet, enter an art shop in the area, and examine and buy a virtual sculpture that had also been "photosynthed" by the shop clerks or the artist.

You can read the rest of my Industry Standard article here, and I have a brief video from Mundie's demo below, showing how his staff created a 3D model of a real place (a room at MIT) using a camera-equipped robot.



A few other quotes from Mundie's presentation, which I did not include in the TIS article:

How does Microsoft view the future?

"What is the killer application and what is the user engagement model that drives adoption?"

On cloud computing:

"More and more, computing will be model based, rather than discrete applications."

On user interfaces:

Microsoft is looking for the "NUI to replace the GUI"

3D modelling for the masses: Spore Creature Creator

In the process of writing up "Spore growing by 1 million+ creations per day" for The Industry Standard, I stumbled across this video for the Spore Creature Creator. Even though the person using it is a pro, the UI and functionality seems pretty neat:

A final farewell to Randy Pausch

I first wrote about Randy Pausch's "last lecture" in September of last year, just days after he spoke at Carnegie-Mellon. I had heard about the lecture through a Slashdot thread. After watching it, I knew right away that this was something special, and not just because of the virtual reality/3D connection (Randy is responsible for the Alice programming environment). Despite his terminal disease, he had an amazing take on life, family, work, and technology. It was touching, and fascinating, and viewers couldn't help but to examine their own lives after seeing it. The online video quickly went viral, and millions all over the world eventually saw it on the Web. I later ordered a DVD through the Carnegie-Mellon webpage, because this was something I wanted to share with my wife, and she is not the type to watch long videos online. She, too, was very impressed.

As you probably know, Randy passed away this week. Even though I never knew the man, I felt inspired to write a brief memorial in The Industry Standard, "Randy Pausch dies, and the world loses a true hero." At the end, I noted:

The heroes of the tech world are usually coders and entrepreneurs, who are judged by the products that they design and the businesses that they start. Randy made some major contributions to his field (such as overseeing the development of the 3D programming environment, Alice) but it is his accomplishments as a human being that make him a true hero.

The post prompted many tributes from readers, such as these:

Patty Kay Herndon:

He truly was an amazing person- his thoughts about acheiving childhood dreams has prompted me to realize that I have met some of mine and to be more grateful for the life I have had. Also to be grateful for good health and not to take it for granted. He was truly an inspiration - I am so sorry for his family's loss- he will be missed by many!

Lynn:

I feel as if I have lost a friend. Thank you Randy for your gift of wisdom of living life to the fullest. Thank-you Randy for being an inspiration to me in my current cancer treatment.

Kathie:

My deepest sympathy to his family. I hope they will remember that his story touched many as I know it touched me. I felt hope and encouragement as I read his book and heard his lecture. Not very many people get to make such an impact. You are in our prayers as is he.

Pauline Callahan:

I am an RN who in the end of my career am working with Hospice and I so much enjoyed the lectures and messages that Randy posted on his Web Site. I have taken care of many, many people with cancer and they are all truly remarkable people but once in a lifetime comes a person such as Randy who can put into words so many feelings that most people have who are facing the end of their life.

Trish:

Randy Pausch touched a nerve with society- and that is what people are looking for and what is lacking now- truth and depth of purpose. He not only lived his life well but had the wisdom of a sage and the wonder of a little child, and was able to communicate it so well that he lived his calling. He lived in the moment with clear purpose and his words have deep meaning to those that heard him speak and teach becasue he was so grounded in truth. We need more Randy's to encourage others to think out of the box and not be condoned for progressive thinking. He was a dichotomy of both scientific genius and artistic imagination, a rare combination. He inspired all who knew him and kept it simple so that understanding something was the key to not only enjoying learning but a ways to a mean to learn.

If you haven't seen the video yet, please press the play button below and take some time to hear what he has to say. The YouTube video is more than an hour long, but even if you only have time to watch ten or 15 minutes, it's worth it.

Grand Theft Auto IV machinima may cause Take Two's hype machine to stumble

I've been writing and speaking about Machinima for several years, and over on TheStandard.com I've just written a short piece ("Sex machinima adds to GTA IV hype and controversy") about how a simple machinima using the GTA IV engine may derail the Take Two hype machine. Here's the problem: The machinima depicts raunchy strip-club sex and drive-by shootings of innocent people. The machinima in question was not created by Take Two, but no matter: It's been noticed by a well-known anti-gaming activist who is now using it as part of a two-pronged legal and press offensive. Read my Standard analysis to get my take on the situation and see the link to the video.

Bubble 2.0: Startups that will probably fail, and those that are positioned for success ...

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a big special feature for The Industry Standard, entitled 10 'Net services that will succeed, and 10 that will probably fail. There are about 50 pieces of content in all, including slides, profiles, and predictions from the Standard's prediction market, and it required a tremendous amount of work to put together, including the writers and some behind-the-scenes folks who handled the design and programming preparations.

But writing the introduction to this special feature gave me a chance to reflect on what lessons we've learned from the last 'Net bubble, back in the late 1990s:

Twitter, Joost, and some of the other names on the list of probable failures will no doubt come as a surprise to many readers. But if we learned anything in the last 'Net bubble, it is this: Positive buzz, gold-star VC backing, breathless acquisition chatter and a solid base of registered members are not guarantees of success. Press hype and 'Net buzz have a way of turning nasty. Investors can cut off funding, or steer entrepreneurs down the wrong path. Acquisitions can be mismanaged, or left to wither and die. Revenue might fail to reach a critical mass. The public decides to switch its attention to the Next Cool Thing.

Most of the profiles were written by two contributors, Bill Snyder and Kristen Nicole, but I co-wrote the Second Life profile, which was grouped with the other "fails" (see Second Life: Interface, infrastructure and growth woes continue). Long-term readers of this blog and The Digital Media Machine will be recognize many of the complaints that were raised in The Standard -- bad UI, infrastructure problems, marketing hype, etc. In the positive camp, I was able to learn about some very impressive technologies in the 3D arena that I hadn't seen before -- check out the profiles for Modiface and SceneCaster.

Excel as a 3D tool

From Gamasutra comes the news that Excel can be apparently be used as a 3D graphics engine. And all this time, I thought the most interesting use for Excel was tracking, comparing, and charting thousands of data points for a LexisNexis- and Yoshikoder-driven computer content analysis ...

Boston Digital Media Summit, day 2

I am at the second day of the Boston Digital Media Summit at Boston College, and have seen a lot of great demos as well as interesting discussions about virtual worlds, games, and potential educational applications in 3D, computer-generated environments (the theme of this year's summit is Immersive Education).

One of the most amazing things to observe is how far the graphics have come in just a few years. Less than two years ago, I presented at the "SIGGRAPH summit," which was the first installment of the Boston Digital Media Summit, held at Boston City Hall. The most impressive graphics on display were the demos by Jeff Kleiser, a professional visual effects artist who has worked on Tron, the X-Men movies, theme park installations, and television commercials. The games-based demos, including mine (I showed a machinima called The French Democracy), were far more limited -- textures were rough, character movements could be jerky, lighting was simplistic.

Not anymore. One of the BC students showed a demo of Crysis, an FPS that depicts a series of commando attacks in the year 2020. The graphics were stunning, albeit processor-intensive (it was set up on a custom PC running some major graphics hardware). Plants have always been tough to model in 3D, which I suppose is one of the reasons why even professional 3D CGI animation seems to prefer to environments that don't have plants -- witness Cars, Ice Age, and Pororo: The Little Penguin. Not with Crysis. A large part of it is set in a jungle, and the movements of the plants was very realistic -- the leaves were individually rendered, the physics of characters or other objects brushing against them was convincing, and even the little breezes that moved the leaves on individual branches of a bush looked like the real thing. It would be a stretch to call it photorealistic -- the mouths of the players still need work -- but photorealism is definitely on the horizon. I would embed a trailer in this blog, but the ones that are available are violent. You can see some Crysis trailers here; note that all are rated M.

I am joining one panel in the mid afternoon, and giving a presentation at the end of the day. The title of the presentation is "Grokking Generation G: Digital Media and the Video Game Generation," and gets into the demographic and technology trends that will impact the development and consumption of 3D media in the coming years. It's the third presentation I've given this week (I gave two earlier this week on online communities and video production at work) and the panel will be the second one I've participated in, after the discussions at the Social Media Club Boston event at Bentley College on Thursday night. After this is over, I can take a little breather -- I don't have any public speaking engagements scheduled for the next few months.

Keeping up with new technologies

I've been reading Mitchell Stephens' Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) for my last class at the Harvard Extension School, and came upon this quote on page 169:

Writing about the digital world today is as perilous as writing about the cinematic world must have seemed a century ago. It is difficult to keep up. New terms, techniques and devices seem to take possession of the cognoscenti every couple of years.

Every couple of years? How about every couple of days! Some of the sites and tools that I reference on this website and my computerworld.com blog didn't even exist a year or two ago, and I am constantly asked about new, previously unheard-of services that have some special feature or niche audience. It's impossible to keep up with all of them, let alone to keep track of the ones that I already know about. For instance, I found out this morning that News At Seven -- an automated news-gathering application that I first checked out last year -- dropped the Half Life game engine and went into public beta nearly two months ago. There is no way of knowing about these developments unless I use the applications on a regular basis, or hear about them from some other source, like a blog or a MSM outlet.

To be fair, Stephens wrote this 10 years ago, when the creative tools behind consumer technology and media was mostly controlled by deep-pocketed companies and skilled programmers. So much has changed since then. The cost of building applications and websites has dropped a great deal, there are hundreds of millions of new users with broadband connections, and there are lots of inexpensive or free tools that audience members can use on their own to create content or build their own sites and services.

And while Stephens did not anticipate tools and technologies such as Blogger, virtual worlds, machinima, Facebook, or the rise of open-source software, he did foresee user-generated video:

Producing video is no longer going to be a skill mastered only on the job. It should become an art form kids learn at about the age they learn how to draw a face, play the guitar or navigate the Internet. Video should no longer be the private tool of professionals in the employ of advertising agencies and media conglomerates or of well funded artists. Teenagers should be playing with it; friends should be staying in touch on it; radicals may challenge the status quo through it; academics should eventually be warned to produce it or perish. Video will be shot by amateurs and freelancers; it will be edited in basements, in garrets.

Tomorrow is Immersive Education Day @ Harvard

I wanted to remind Boston-area readers that tomorrow is Immersive Education Day @ Harvard University. This is a public event, discussing emerging educational technologies and practices based on virtual reality. There will be a series of presentations by experts and practitioners, and a Q&A session as well.

The event takes place from 2 pm to 5 pm at Askwith Lecture Hall in Longfellow Hall, very close to Harvard Square. It's at 13 Appian Way, which is off of Brattle St. I've included a map of the location below:


View Larger Map

Google positions itself for the 3D Web with SketchUp

I spotted this today, thanks to Nathan Weinberg and Tech Dispenser: Google has developed (or bought?) a 3D modeling language called SketchUp, which it is offering to users for free. Here's a summary of what the product does:

SketchUp is easy to learn and use, and is designed primarily for the conceptual phase of design.

People use SketchUp to create architectural, mechanical, landscape, and woodworking models, as well as to design the levels in games, and the sets and storyboards for movies and television shows.

SketchUp can export models to a variety of 3D* and 2D formats. Many of the standard CAD programs can import and work with files that have been exported from SketchUp.

Why would Google want to offer such a product that doesn't have any obvious connection with search? I think it's about positioning. Partially because of the success of several existing products, such as Google Earth and Google Maps, and the growing importance of VR and 3D gaming as entertainment and social media, Google has realized that the 3D Internet will be a big deal. They want to have services and software in place to offer developers and consumers when the 3D Web really takes hold.

There's a pattern here. Google has developed some vital services for the 2D Web and text-based Internet that have become indispensable for hundreds of millions of people around the globe. SketchUp, and earlier purchases such as Keyhole fit this M.O. -- the company wants these services to become part of the suite of software tools that hundreds of millions of people use for the 3D Web.

3DTotal criticizes Linden Lab's slow response to Second Life piracy

A few weeks ago on Computerworld, I interviewed two 3D artists who work for 3DTotal. One of the artists, Tom Greenway, is actually the founder of the 3DTotal website, which has since branched out into print publishing and software products, such as 3D tutorials and textures.

The interview mostly discussed issues relating to 3D art and artists, but for the last question I asked Greenway what he thought about Second Life. I had supposed that a virtual world with extensive creative opportunities seemed like a natural fit for 3D artists.

But my thinking was wrong. Not only did Greenway note the relatively poor 3D graphics tools that are available to Second Life residents, but also he slammed Second Life's parent company for not having a rapid response workflow to take down pirated 3DTotal software products:

The reason for my dislike is that it serves as a place where people illegally sell [3DTotal's] texture products. Sure, this happens on eBay and lots of other places on the 'Net, but the [merchants] in Second Life seemed particularly hard to get taken down, wasting even more of my staff's time getting through red tape. I really think companies like [Second Life's parent company Linden Lab] that make so much money should set up fast and efficient systems to help people like us when we are being ripped off through their systems.

Sounds kind of like the takedown flak Google received after they first bought YouTube -- entertainment companies all over the world wanted copyrighted content taken down when it was posted, instead of drumming their fingers while lawyers drew up threatening takedown notices.

Second Life gets a new resident: My mom

I first experienced the Second Life registration process and user interface last year. I was not impressed. Writing in I, Lamont, I described an irritating, non-intuitive, and sometimes broken user experience. Nevertheless, I did see potential in the virtual world, and recommended that Linden Lab (the privately held company that operates SL) institute several UI and registration changes to help new residents:

There are a couple things that Linden Research could do to make it easier for new users, such as eliminating excess or redundant options, getting rid of the credit card requirement, and having users create their default appearance at the time of registration, instead of on their first visit to Second Life.

I am happy to note that Linden Lab has actually tackled two of these three UI/registration issues. In the process of introducing my mom to Second Life today (!), I saw that the credit card requirement has been dropped for ordinary accounts. Additionally, new residents can choose from a bunch of default avatars while still in the registration screens in the browser, instead of being forced to fiddle around with clothes and body types for the first time on Beginners' Island. My mom at first chose the "Girl Next Door" skin, but then opted for some sort of Japanese gangster chick persona which we proceeded to modify.

Unfortunately, there are still other problems with the UI that have not changed since last year. My mom was daunted by the array of buttons and options that clutter the SL client window and menus, and some processes are very difficult to figure out. For instance, once she entered SL for the first time, she couldn't completely remove the Japanese gangster chick skin and choose another default avatar, or switch to the baseline female avatar. We tried a workaround. I told her to bring up the Inventory menu, but we couldn't simply drag the avatar properties to the trash icon. We had to right click to see the "remove" options, and even then it didn't work for all of the avatar's qualities that are listed in the inventory, such as hair.

Despite these obstacles, my mom spent the better part of the afternoon in Second Life. She is an artist (she describes herself as a colorist) and the idea of exercising her creative and artistic skills in a digital environment appeals to her. Sure, I had to warn her about some of the odd distractions (tame and otherwise), but she still seems interested in the possibilities of this virtual world.

Interview: Harvard's Rebecca Nesson discusses teaching in Second Life

Last Friday, as part of my guest author activities for Terra Nova, I interviewed Harvard Extension School instructor Rebecca Nesson. Last year, Nesson was one of the instructors for CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion, a joint Harvard Law School/Harvard Extension School course that was mostly held (for Extension School students, at least) in an Internet-connected 3D world called Second Life. This Fall, she will be leading a new Extension School course, Virtual Worlds. In the interview, she talked about her experiences using Second Life as a platform for distance education, and also described how students used the virtual world to interact with the CyberOne instructors and each other.

Following is the complete, unedited transcript of the May 11, 2007 telephone interview with Nesson (excerpts will be published on Terra Nova). The full transcript is quite long -- more than 3,500 words -- but it will hopefully provide some useful insights to educators and students who are considering classwork in virtual reality environments. Such activities should not be seen as fringe educational experiments -- other users on Terra Nova (a blog network devoted to the discussion of virtual worlds) have pointed me to a long list of colleges and universities that use Second Life for instruction. As we shall see in the transcript, there are some advantages to using virtual worlds as educational platforms, and virtual world-based instruction may soon begin to outpace traditional distance education offerings using Internet video streams, static websites, and text-based discussion forums.

Without further ado, here is the full transcript of the interview with Nesson.

Ian Lamont: At the beginning of the [CyberOne] class, there were 40 people registered. Does that include everybody, including [students from] the Harvard Law School, or just the Harvard Extension School students who were taking it online?

Rebecca Nesson: That's just the Extension School students. We had a little bit of attrition, mostly right at the beginning — for people who didn't really realize how demanding the program was going to be on their computers, so we probably ended up with about 30 people.

Lamont: When you say the program was demanding on their computers, were they using systems that weren't up for it in terms of processing power, or were there network constraints?

Nesson: I don't know. For some of them, there may have been firewalls and they were trying to do it from work, or Internet connection issues. It was a little unclear what was the problem people were having. It was not very widespread, actually. As is sort of typical wit h the Extension School classes, there were a few people who signed up, but weren't able to make the time commitment that the course [required] so for them I wasn't sure whether it was a technical issue or not.

Lamont: Aside from these issues, what was the feedback [you heard] from people about the Second Life interface?

Nesson: Overall it was very positive. I would say that there was a definite arc to it. At the beginning, there was a certain amount of Second Life culture shock, where people try to get acclimated about how to use the interface. The first impression that a lot of people had about it was that it was a very chaotic environment in which to have a class discussion because everyone talks at once and there's no threading in the discussions. When you read the transcripts of the discussions, they can seem fairly disjointed and that felt a little disorienting to people right at the beginning.

We all got used to it over the course of the semester, and also got much better at it. One of the things that we brought to the class with us are years of built-up experience of how one is supposed to act in a class as a student and an instructor. And a lot of those norms — like, raising your hand and waiting for someone to stop speaking before you begin speaking — they just dont make sense in the Second Life environment because it would just take way too long to have a discussion.

And as a result we were basically faced with the challenge of having to develop a whole new set of classroom norms that worked in this environment. Once we got that going, everyone got much more comfortable with the environment. By the end of the semester, people were really enjoying it.

There were some people who had a much easier time expressing themselves in the Second Life environment, than in the more formal writing [assignments] and turning it in on our courseware website. So for those people, it really opened up the distance education experience to have this other method of being able to express themselves and interact with the instructor and other students.

And there were some students on the other side of things who were very comfortable writing traditional response papers and had a harder time in the spontaneous, more interactive discussions that we were having in the classroom environment in Second Life. So all in all, that's a major improvement. I would prefer for my classes to be available to a wider range of learning and styles of expression.

Lamont: You just said that some people found it easier to interact in Second Life. Why do you suppose that is? Does it relate to their personalities, or the fact that they're used to typing IMs?

Nesson: Let me be clear. I don't necessarily mean it would be easier for them than acting in real life. This is just opposed to them acting in their normal way in a distance education class, interacting mainly through a website and through email with their instructors.

I think that the Second Life had quite a lot of advantages for people. One of the main things is that Second Life really allowed us to create a sense of class community — something that develops fairly naturally in a face-to-face class. So students appeared at class and had that chance to meet each other, something that rarely, if ever, happens in distance education classes [using] previous technologies. And that helped keep students engaged in the class.

And having a physical representation of their "selves" through their avatars, whether it looked like them or looked like something completely different, was quite important in having them establish relationships with each other. Because it gave people a way to express something of their personality that wasn't necessarily directly related to what we were doing in the class. And it just was the icebreaker for people beginning to relate to each other and make comments about somebody's cool dress or something like that and get a little conversation going.

So having the class have a sense of a community, and being a little bit social for most students really adds to the experience. It certainly added to the experience for me. I think that probably helped to draw in some students.

Also, we tend to think of Second Life as a less expressive environment than face-to-face environments because at the moment we don't have the ability to easily do gestures and facial expressions or even to really direct our gaze really well.

It does in other senses offer people a wider range of ways that they can express themselves, and that was something I was excited about. Early on, when I was writing on the blog, just finding that some students just really seemed to take to the creative aspects of the environment and really try to use the unrestrained environment and really try to violate the laws of physics as part of their way of existing in the world, and it just gave them a range of expression that doesn't really exist when you are typing out a response paper and turning it in.

Lamont: What surprised you in terms of the creative aspects and the things that they did in the classroom sessions?

Nesson: I guess what surprised me was that I had sort of a typical narrow view of what Second Life was going to be like. I was thinking of it as a big improvement over a chatroom but I hadn't really considered as something that had potentials that really went beyond what I had experienced with other technologies. I think that it's not until you spend some time in there that you start to get a sense of the way in which it's different, because it's kind of hard to pinpoint, to put into words, what exactly is making the difference.

So I would say the biggest surprise for me wasn't the way that some people were expressing themselves, but the experience of all of us running our classes in a text-based environment. I expected that to be only a hindrance, and at the beginning it did seem like a hindrance, it seemed a little chaotic, and it was something that we had to get used to. But as we progressed in the class, it became clear that running the class in a text-based environment has a whole lot of advantages over the face-to-face environment that I just hadn't anticipated.

The first one that was really striking, was that in all my years of teaching classes, there are always some students in the class who are very hard to get to speak up. You can ask them a direct question, but basically, unless they are put on the spot, these students will not volunteer their own opinions in class, and I think that there are various reasons why people are reticent and don't want to do that. Sometimes I think people are shy and don't want to be put on the spot — all the conversation stops, and everyone turns to look at them. In some cases, students for whom English is not their first language, it really can be an intimidating thing to have to extemporaneously put together English sentences like that in a classroom environment.

In Second Life, that problem of students not participating in class discussions just totally disappeared. And when I thought about it, these reasons, these challenges of speaking up in a regular class went away in this environment. In Second Life, when you want to contribute something to the class discussion, you just go ahead and start typing it in your chat box, and nobody turns to look at you, even if they do notice that your avatar is doing the typing motions, they are not actually looking at you, it's just your avatar, and your avatar is not doing anything embarrassing. When you are ready to enter your comment into the conversation, you just hit enter. And it doesn't have that moment where everybody stops and looks at you. Your comment just goes right into the conversation, along with everybody else's. So i think a lot of the anxiety that goes along with the public-speaking aspect of participating in class discussions, is just removed in this environment.

On the flip side, we didn't have any trouble with students who dominate the discussion. There's always been the phenomenon of the student who ends every sentence with a conjunction in order to not stop their comment, and you can do that as much as you like in Second Life, and it doesn't stop anybody else from participating in the discussions. What's nice about that is very frequently people who usually speak a lot in class have a lot of very good things to contribute, and it's hard as a teacher to shut somebody down in order to make space for other students, especially if you do feel that you want to be encouraging of their interest and enthusiasm. And this just takes away that problem as well.

So for me the idea that I would actually end up almost preferring to run a class in a text-based environment to a voice-based environment, that was a huge surprise.

Lamont: In Second Life, or a virtual world, or any chat environment, don't you have students who are really stepping over each other, and it's impossible to sort out all the questions that really need to be answered?

Nesson: Well, it turns out that that was not a problem, and I think there are a few reasons for this. First of all, over the course of the semester, I developed some skill at moderating this type of group discussion in this type of environment. Basically, what happens is you have a few different threads of discussion that start, and the job of a teacher or discussion moderator becomes continually trying to weave the threads together, so that you don't end up with a discussion that's too fragmented. Because if it's too fragmented, it's as you described — it's just a bunch of disconnected things going on.

But you also have some help as a moderator, from just the natural effect of trying to participate in one of these discussions. If there's a lot going on, you have to put a fair amount of energy into reading the discussions and sorting out what's happening. So even if there are a lot of people, it's not that easy for everyone to be adding some totally different thing all at once. People sort of tend to stay on one topic or another, especially if the moderator is doing her job well.

But that said, we definitely did break the class up into smaller groups for discussions fairly frequently for exactly this reason — just like with any discussion, it's just much more effective if you have it with smaller groups.

Now that Linden Lab has open sourced the viewer for Second Life, there are quite a few possibilities open to make this management task easier. Right now when you chat in Second Life, everything just goes into an undifferentiated chat history. But it would be possible to add some simple threading technology to help identify different threads in the discussion and make it easier to follow. Perhaps even some moderation tools that would let the moderator modify what was going on in the discussion in some reasonable way. I am not exactly sure what that would look like.

Lamont: What's going to happen when voice chat is added to virtual worlds like Second Life? Will that kind of lead to the problems that you've had in the real world educating and getting people to speak up?

Nesson: I am not sure I am able to predict what's going to happen. I do think that there are some potential serious problems because it's going to be harder for people to access it and participate and get good sound quality at first. It will be difficult, because there are some people who don't have the ability to listen to sound when they come into a discussion that's mostly happening in voice. That could be problematic.

But assuming that everything works just fine technically, then I think the biggest challenge will be seeing if everyone can integrate text and voice. If everyone can speak and type at the same time, will anybody bother typing anymore? And I'm not sure. I just don't know whether people will do that. What I imagine is that Linden Lab is going to make it possible to have areas in which voice is not permitted and areas in which voice is permitted.

We're at the moment considering building a campus for the Extension School in Second Life, and one part of our design is to have some classrooms that are text based classrooms, and some that are voice-based classrooms.

I do think the voice is going to be very, very tempting for people, and it's also going to be very useful in some situations and for some purposes. And I certainly wouldn't want to say, “no it shouldn't be used.” I do think that as soon as you have voice, you get back to these regular problems of having to wait, and speak one at a time, and people can monopolize the mike and that kind of thing.

Lamont: In virtual reality classroom environments, what's your perspective on grading and evaluating students?

Nesson: It's really no different than in a regular face-to-face class. For CyberOne, we obviously had to know the real-life identities of the students who were in our class, in order to grade them. For some people, who wanted to keep their other avatars anoymous, they created a new avatar to take our class. From my perspective, I expect that it is the actual student who is operating their own avatar, and I grade them just as I would in another environment.

Lamont: What types of tools would help you be a better educator? If you could magically create or program some tools or objects or something in Second Life that would help you teach, what would they be?

Nesson: I'll tell you what we used that were really great. We had a video screen which was wonderful and also streaming audio, which was great. If you want to use any lecture-type material in Second Life, those are total must-haves.

Then we aslso used a basic slide projector, which is similar to having PowerPoint, and that obviously can be useful. I didn't use it all that much.

One thing were using right now in the Internet and Society course which I am not teaching, but other people at the Berkman Center are teaching, is something called the Question Tool, which is a great tool that the Berkman Center has developed. How their class works is that it's webcast live into our classroom in Second Life. So students who are taking the class from a distance can attend the class in real time and watch it and they can sit with the other students in Second Life.

And the way that they can participate in the class is through the Question Tool. How it works is that anybody who wants to can post a question on the Question Tool, or they can vote on somebody else's question. And the Question Tool organizes the questions from the top of the page to the bottom of the page, in order of popularity [depending on] how many votes they've gotten, so the professor then has access to this list of questions or comments coming from the student audience that's sorted in a way that's actually meaningful in terms of their level of relevance and interest to the students in the class.

One of the things that's really cool about it for the Internet and Society class is that students who are physically in the classroom at Harvard Law School and the students who are in Second Life are using the same instances of the Question Tool so that they're interacting directly with each other through that. So that is one great tool, and it's not actually in Second Life, in the sense that you do everyithing in Second Life. Right now, we just have it set up so that there's an object you click in Second Life and it takes you to the Web page, which is the interface for the Question Tool.

The main thing that doesn't exist in Second Life and I can't for the life of me figure out how one could program, is something that's more like a blackboard. A free-form writing tool is something that I would really love to have. As a person who studies Computer Science, I am frequently wanting to draw all kinds of diagrams on a board if I am teaching students about Computer Science, and there's really no way to do that in Second Life. So you have to simulate doing everything you want to do like that, using slides, and the problem with that is when a question comes up, and you need to give an example that isn't already on your slides, there's not really any good way to do that in Second Life right now.

Lamont: Based on your experience with CyberOne, and your observation with the ongoing Internet and Society class, and the upcoming Virtual Worlds class, do you think that virtual world activities and classes are here to stay at Harvard, or it's still in the experimental stage, and you don't really know how it's going to end up?

Nesson: I think it's still in the experimental stage definitely, but I also think that it's here to stay. I am not sure that Second Life is the thing that's going to stay, but virtual worlds technology in general is just a giant leap forward ahead of any of the previous education technologies that we were using for distance education. And at least in distance education, I can't see moving backwards from that, especially once we get better abilities to represent people using gestures, facial expressions, voice maybe, various different things that actually make the experience even richer than it is now.

It's a real challenge to figure out how to best use technology like this in conjunction with face-to-face classes. What we did in the fall that was I think pretty exciting and definitely an innovating thing to do was to incorporate Second Life as a way to invite people that were part of the public at large to participate in the class, and actually provide something of use to the students who were enrolled in the class in exchange for having free access to the materials. So for them, we held some office hours in Second Life where they could come and they could discuss the lectures and issues that were going on in class. They had full access to all the lecture videos and the materials for the class.

And as the semester progressed we started to realize that it was important for that group of people to contribute something back to the students in the class, so the students in the class wouldn't feel that they were having the experience that they had paid for diluted by sharing it for free with other people.

I think that there are just so many ways that this could be done. This is just one tiny example and only really the tip of the iceberg, as far as this is concerned. We came up with the idea of having a "trial" in which the [Harvard Law School] students could practice their lawyering skills and actually go through the whole experience of a trial, and we were able to recruit people from our at-large participant group to participate as jurors in the trial. So they sat and listened to all the arguments and deliberated, and returned a verdict.

This was a pretty good use of Second Life because it was a great way for us to bring together a group of volunteers. it would have been extremely difficult to recruit and get them together at the Law School for a real mock trial. And also because for Law School students, who are trying to learn how to actually raise the appropriate objection at the appropriate time in a trial, in a real-life mock trial, often those moments go by too fast, and it's just extremely difficult to practice it. So in Second Life, in the text-based environment, things go a little bit more slowly, and additionally you can have a whole team of Law students operating a single avatar. So you can have a bunch of minds working together and discussing together — without actually talking out loud in the courtroom — and helping to direct their avatars to do the right thing. So that turned out to be a great experiment.

We've now done two trials in Second Life, and they haven't been perfect, but they've certainly been big successes and very interesting.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Nesson is the instructor for Virtual Worlds, scheduled for the Fall 2007 semester at the Harvard Extension School. She is currently a candidate for a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she studies computational linguistics and conducts research in the area of synchronous grammar formalisms and applications to computational semantics and machine translation. Nesson is also a 2001 graduate of the Harvard Law School and an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Guest Author on Terra Nova

For the month of May, I have been invited to be a guest author on Terra Nova. Terra Nova is an online community that discusses issues relating to virtual worlds -- a topic that I have frequently covered on Harvard Extended, I, Lamont, and my Computerworld blog. During my monthly tenure on Terra Nova, I intend to address infrastructure-related issues as well as the impact of 3D technologies on new media formats. There's already one active discussion, "Second Life's infrastructure issues prompt an open letter to Linden Lab."