Trescothick Aims To Please

Sunday 30 August 2009

Faithful reader, if the name Aimee Trescothick seems familiar to you, it may be from the occasions during the past few Trin and Voo shows, when Trin’s partner takes it upon herself to blow us all up, or run us over with a tank. However, it’s become more and more noticeable that very many residents know our sweet little Aims for her superb and innovative programming work, which has been making quite the name for her. This past week, she has been getting so much attention, that we decided that an interview was in order, to get a better perspective on the divine Ms Trescothick, and her own particular Second Life Story.

However, Aimee is know for not being the biggest self publicist inworld, and is almost notoriously shy when talking about herself, so in a first for me, I traveled in the real world for the interview, down to an undisclosed location in deepest Kernow (or Cornwall for our non Cornish readership). Once there, Aimee and I also logged into SL, and sat down at the Rez office on the Kernow sim where she and Trin live, and had a chat:


Voodoo – You've been a Second Life resident for almost four years now. What initially attracted you to SL?

Aimee – I actually first heard of Second Life while researching a sleep disorder. I happened to read someone comparing it to Lucid Dreaming, as a place that you can shape to fit your imagination, a description that intrigued me. I'd watched the field of virtual worlds develop with interest since I studied Computer Engineering in the early '90s, and tried various ones from time to time, but generally got bored once I'd seen everything and found nothing left to do. This sounded much more what I had been looking for, an actual world I could take a part in, rather than just another game. I have lost a lot more sleep to it ever since!

Voodoo - When I first met you, I knew you as an artist and flag maker on Kiva, the Lava Pit sim. Since then, it seems you have experimented with quite a few interests in-world?

Aimee – Around the same time I found Second Life I was made redundant from a job in research and development at a graphics card manufacturer. I enjoy experimenting and continually learning everything I can about the world around me, so finding myself without the creative outlet that my employment had provided, I was drawn into creating and scripting within Second Life. Having found a warm welcome from the regulars at the Lava Pit, I tended to do my building while hanging out there. Those experiments, and the friendships forged at the old Lava Pit eventually brought me a real life career.

Voodoo – Oh, yes, Kiva brought you into contact with Lord Leafblower, Founder of the Lava Pit club, and owner of Boxapixels?

Aimee – Yes, he asked me initially to help building an in-world presence for a large communications company, and later to build a flag-ship store for his sideline, the Lava Inside brand of gadgets. Through doing that work I eventually joined Boxapixels as its virtual worlds specialist.

Voodoo –You have gained quite a following for the Open Source work you have been doing on the Second Life viewer. How did you get involved in this?

Aimee – I have? :) I got involved through curiosity mostly, I saw fixing bugs as an opportunity to learn about it, and see what made it tick under the surface. A big leap forward for me came with the introduction of the Space Navigator as a method of controlling my avatar in Second Life, that acted as a catalyst for me. It was great to suddenly be able to move so much more freely, anyone that hasn't tried it is really missing out :) It was a big improvement, but I could still see limitations, where I knew it was capable of more. So I started creating a long list of JIRA entries on ways it could be made even better. Realizing that as it affected relatively few users, and at the time was probably a low priority within the Lab as they were making a concerted effort to improve client stability, I started working my way through fixing them myself.

Voodoo – Since then, you have developed quite a few other changes or improvements for the Second Life viewers. What sorts of things that you have been working on have ended up on release?

Aimee – Besides the Space Navigator improvements, mostly minor UI improvements and fixes, or things under the surface. Like turning off the mic automatically when ending voice IM calls, so you don't broadcast your private conversations (or the sound of eating your lunch) to the world, and clean-up of the code that drives the mini-map, to make it cleaner and more efficient, and to enable the community translators to translate text associated with it. I mostly try to pick up small tweaks, that will gradually add up to improve people's every day experience, in the hope that it will free up a little of the Lab's resources, helping them to concentrate on the real game-changing stuff. Most of my recent Open Source work, is going into Linden Lab's Snowglobe project, such as the increased zoom range of the mini-map there for example. I really just enjoy the chance to talk to and work along side some really talented people, both the other Open Source developers, and within the Lab, who I find I learn a lot from. The demos shown at SLCC gave just a little taster of some of the seriously awesome stuff the Lab are keeping up their sleeve right now, for Viewer 2.0 and beyond. I can't wait to see what's just around the corner.

Voodoo – Most recently you've gained quite a lot of attention for your work with the new media plugins. Imagine me a drooling technophobic child, can you explain what this is?

Aimee – Linden Lab announced at SLCC the release of the LLMedia Plug-in API, which is a way of allowing outside programmers to more easily extend the client, intended mostly as a way to expand the types of media Second Life can handle beyond Quicktime videos and basic web pages. When I got my hands on the initial developer release of the Plug-in API viewer and the Linden test application for developing and debugging them, I made a quick video just of what could be done with the Linden supplied plug-ins, to show a couple of the other Open Source developers what I was seeing. Before I knew it, the video had been shared around much more widely than I anticipated, even finding its way onto New World Notes. It created quite a large positive reaction, and that spurred me on to see what I could do with it myself. Through my work at Boxapixels I regularly have clients asking for better collaboration facilities within the virtual world. So as a first attempt while learning the API, I decided to make something of a Frankstein style experiment, and over a weekend spliced in the VNC remote desktop sharing protocol. I then posted another video of it in action, just to demonstrate the potential of the new API, and the ease with which it makes it possible to develop these sorts of projects. the reaction to that was phenomenal.

Voodoo – What kind of possibilities could this unlock for in-world residents?

Aimee – It makes it possible to view the desktop of another computer live on the surface of a prim in Second Life, the same way you would normally view a video stream. So as a fun example, I have a virtual replica Apple Mac on my Second Life desk, showing the display of my real one. In future it will also be possible to interact with it using your mouse and keyboard, it already works while running it in the Linden plug-in test software – as can be seen in my videos, but the support for those functions doesn't appear to be available quite yet in the client itself. More useful examples would be collaborating on shared documents, live software demonstrations in-world, or remote assistance, enabling people providing in-world training to see “over the shoulder” of the people they are teaching. The sort of capabilities that are provided by web conferencing applications such as Cisco's Webex, or AT&T Connect, but in the more flexible and inviting environment of the virtual world.

Voodoo – What kind of feedback have you received?

Aimee – I knew these facilities would be popular within the business and education communities, but as someone who generally avoids publicity and hides in the background, the amount of attention that it got has taken me a little by surprise! The messages of support and encouragement I have received have been fantastic, it felt a little like I'd unintentionally stumbled upon the Holy Grail. I have been told be several Lindens that the video has created quite a buzz while being passed around within the Lab too, which is flattering, really though the part I played is quite minimal. I just provided the glue between the VNC software and the new Linden API which between them do the real work, without them this would have been much harder to achieve.

Voodoo – Finally, can you give us a heads up on the sort of things you are working on now, and what is on the horizon for you?

Aimee – Well, for now, while this project is working already, there is still a fair amount of work to do to bring it up to stable production quality, ready for public consumption. So with the demand, I think I'd better finish it before I move on to anything else :) There are still other things I have in mind to further the joystick input support, and my other pet project the mini-map. As a registered Apple developer I have used Snow Leopard through the beta program for some time now, I would like to spend some time looking at improving the performance of the Second Life client using the new technologies found there, as I believe there is much to be gained. I do have a number of ideas for other media plug-ins I will be playing with, but it will mostly be a matter of pushing boundaries, trying different things, and seeing what grows out of it all.

As a final lovely gift to our readers, and to help further illustrate exactly what the VNC interface can do, Aimee also made for us this special new video for you to enjoy:



All photos and videos used with kind permission of Aimee Trescothick. All rights reserved.

Tourism in a Virtual World

Friday 28 August 2009

It can be said that a world like Second Life depends on several key factors; stability and a stable economy are of course key. The Second Life economy will be driven by market factors such as in-world spending, investment in land, and user accounts. New users are a key driving force for Linden Lab and whilst that has received mostly negative feedback from the community about the prioritisation of new members over long standing stability issues, it is clear that new residents are essential to the world’s future. Their ‘new’ money will be the difference that keeps us all in-world or all of us signing up for WoW accounts.

In parallel, it’s an argument by many that real world economies depend, heavily on tourists. A controversial but weighted argument that those lovely happy-snappy photographing tourists that put strain on our transport networks and hold us up on the street when we’re in a hurry are in fact crucial to the area we live and work in. Tourism provides investment and opportunities in areas, and for many parts of the world, that rely heavily on it. Of course this is not everyone’s opinion, many believe the weight of tourists on an area change it and create social and cultural damage in some of the worst cases.

As someone who works in the tourism industry in the real world in a popular tourist destination called Scotland, it’s pretty easy to see which side of the fence I will sit on when it comes to the ‘to tourist, or not to tourist’ debate.

I personally believe there are correlations between the need for tourists and the need for new residents. Allow me, if you will to explain. Tourists arrive in your home town/city with their freshly exchanged currencies, eager and willing to spend this leisure time, and their budget in the shops and stores in the area. This tourist ‘dollar’ helps to fund more jobs, brand growth, training, development, new concepts, and new outlets and of course pay your councils/ governments more taxes. Residents arrive into Second Life, with big eyes preparing to take it all in. Over time, perhaps, even spending money, developing skills, growing a brand, increasing productivity and opening their own store.

It is with this thought in my mind; I feel I must ponder why more RL tourist organisations aren’t open and accessible to Second Life. Oh of course don’t mistake me, some are here, notably Dublin in SL but where are the rest? Since it’s generally thought that holidays are no longer a luxury, but in actual fact a necessity wouldn’t it be wise for these tourist destinations around the globe to ‘sell’ themselves to you their potential tourists?

I think the answer lies in one of two reasons; budgets and bureaucracy. For a long time Second Life has fought a rather ‘seedy’ and pornographic stereotype. Since most tourist organisations in the real world are funded by governments and are ultimately answerable to you their tax payer, there is an unwillingness to venture into the digital world. These organisations, in my experience, are often driven by older, aged, non technical-friendly men and women who are wary of being associated with anything that may damage their image. Let’s face it; on the whole in the real world, Second Life doesn’t have a good image, largely thanks to the editors of newspapers and producers of news shows.

The other very real issue, especially in today’s world, is the questions of budgets. As I mentioned above these organisations are often funded by the tax payer and as such must be able to attribute some income, or at least return, from a virtual world spend. How exactly can you measure how successful your digital Visit Wherever is? Well surely that’s similar to the attribution of how successful an advertising campaign is? Surely Second Life is advertising. With this advertising thought in mind I conducted some research using Real Life media and an example of a Tourist Region pertaining to Scotland.

*indication of costs and numbers specific to Scotland

Obviously it does go without saying that an island in Second Life won’t get 80,000 visitors per day, but it’s also obvious to say that not all of the 34,000 people who saw the tv ad daily actually watched it and were not making a cup of coffee. Similarly one could argue that the 'advert' of Second Life wasn't sat on someone's lap staring them in the face as it would had it been a newspaper advertisement. However it's also tangible that the Second Life map could be aligned with circulation of a newspaper. There is no accessible way to measure how many people could visit a sim in a day, also with potential login screen advertising the message could be placed in-front of everyone logging in at that given time.

On the surface of these indicated figures it certainly seems that Second Life is an attractive advertising entity however we've all seen corporate companies come and go again, there must be a reason for this. Virtual Worlds however, do have distinct advantages over the older forms of advertising media, namely the ability to create replicas for tourist attractions and even accommodation establishments. As technology advances more tourists will plan holidays not only on a flashy website but the ability to experience the destination in a 3D format even before any plane tickets are bought.

So if and/or when will the Tourist organisations around the world see the potential of Second Life as a genuine global advertising platform for their destinations and if so, will they stay in the long term?

18 & Life: Part II

Tuesday 25 August 2009

"With over 3 million accounts, Teen Second Life is in place for the younger people (13-17) in our world to enjoy the possibilities of another world. A safe environment where only teenagers, Linden and approved adults may enter the Teen Grid (TG) is a growing community of our young adults and future Main Grid (MG) residents."

Some of you may remember I spoke to Daniel Voyager on the brink of his eighteenth birthday as he prepared to transfer from Teen SL and into the main Second Life grid. At the time Daniel was hopeful and excited about the adventure that he was about to embark on and little melancholy about leaving his teen friends behind. Also at the time there was a lot of discussion about the potential merging of the two grids which of course I asked Daniel about. At the time he said he believed they would be merged and indicated he felt this would be a good move.


I took the opportunity 10 months after his birthday to catch up with Daniel to see his his hopes had been realised and if he still felt the same about the possible grid merge.

When we last spoke you were preparing to move from TeenSL to the main grid can you tell us a little about the process involved for that to happen?

I can't believe it's been 8 and a half months since I transferred from the Teen Grid. The process involved in transferring from TeenSL to the main grid went smoothly and I managed to send my support ticket way in advance before my 18th birthday to be transferred on time. I created a TG transfer status updates page and posts on my blog to countdown the remaining days left in TSL. I spent the last few days doing a final tour of TeenSL and saying my final goodbyes which was very emotional to do. I remember sending my support ticket with my ID on the 11th of December 2008 and then got a reply back from Linden Lab the next day saying my ticket was assigned to the appropriate queue. I checked my ticket early on my birthday and it said "Happy Birthday! I have set the process to transfer you from Teen Second Life to Second Life to run on your next login. Please contact us if there is any difficulty with the transfer. Chiyo Linden!"

I couldn't wait any longer so I closed down my windows and started Second Life straight away. I few minutes later I arrived on the Main Grid, afterwards was teleported over to the TG Transfer Station along with tons of other cool places to meet new friends, SL Mentors and catch up with former TG friends. I was then flooded with IMs (50+), birthday gifts, cakes, notecards, landmarks and SL guides all day long. In the evening many residents set up massive birthday parties just for me and I enjoyed every second of it all. Today I'm known very well on the Main Grid and many do think I'm a celebrity. haha :)

Do you feel there is any way the transition process could be improved?

Yes. The TG Transfer Station located in Baffin needs to be the home location when teens transfer because recent former teen grid residents are saying they have been put in Welcome Areas around the grid. The TG Transfer Station needs to have information kioks and build to be switched on because it's not at the moment for some reason. The TG Transfer Station needs to host parties for new teens transferring turning 18 which would be great to see happen. The Teen Grid transfer groups could become more active by having weekly group notices on new transfers, upcoming parties and more.

What do you miss from Teen SL?

I miss being around my TG friends, blogging about activities happening in TeenSL, exploring, building, uploading snapshots to Flickr and not being able to help out TG educational projects anymore. I miss sending out group notices to educational, news groups and friend groups to let everyone know of interesting TG events and upcoming things in the community. One of things I will miss more than anything is mentoring new teens to the TG community because I loved doing that. Today I still keep in contact though email and messenger services because I wouldn't want to destory the relationships we had.

You said you were looking forward to the new exciting adventure that awaited you in Second Life, has it been such an adventure?

Yes, it has been a exciting new adventure on the Main Grid so far because I've been to hundreds of great places in Second Life. It's been great exploring a new grid which I've never been in before. I have enjoyed visiting Showcase places in Second Life and I have enjoyed attending great events in Second Life over the course of this year. I've been working on exciting projects in Second Life and being able to do things I couldn't do back on the TG. I have enjoyed attending office hours because every week there is always something cool happening. Mentoring on the Main Grid has been awesome helping new residents out at infohubs, welcome areas, help islands and sharing knowlege with them.

Has there been anything that's disappointed you?

Not that I know of because the experience so far has been great.

What sort of reception have you received from the main grid residents?

I have received a happy, fun, relaxed reception from main grid residents since I've been on the Main Grid. When I arrived I was so happy to meet so many cool people and friends. Many friends took me on a tour around the Main Grid on my first week showing me what's what which was great. Others sent me birthday treats, christmas gifts and IMs to make sure I was doing alright in the new big adult world.

Being new into the main grid, but not new to the interface do you believe there is any way the main grid could be improved following your experiences in TeenSL?

I believe there are ways for the main grid to be improved for former tg residents by having regions set up for former tg residents to meet up and have fun in. Having enough information about the main grid is important for former tg residents because many don't know where to start when they arrive on the main grid. This could be done through the TG transfer groups already set up ensuring that teens have the best experience possible when they arrive.
Be inspired! Have fun!

Following your Main Grid experiences do you think TeenSL and the main grid should be merged?

No. I think both grids should remain separate and Linden Lab should spend more attention on TeenSL issues. I changed my mind earlier this year after being featured on a metanomics show about the future of both grids. If the grids were merged together it would cause alot of serious problems and it wouldn't be right at all because it's a bad idea. There will be tons of lawsuits by residents taking action against LL, residents quitting and the TSL community will fall apart straight away. But whatever happens in the coming months or years I hope Linden Lab are making the right decision.

*Photographs all used from Daniel's Flickr stream with his kind permission, more images can be seen here. For more information on Daniel check out.*

Following a Dream of Becoming a Second Life DJ

Sunday 23 August 2009

“It was a fantasy of mine to become a DJ ever since I signed on to SL because music is a passion of mine,” says Mike Kesten, a DJ in SL after graduating from the Blue Moon DJ Training Academy. “I went to another so-called DJ school, but felt completely lost. I loved it here, so this was a dream come true.”

Kesten now does DJ work at least six days a week in SL and may consider doing it in real life sometime in the future.


“The training I received here and what I do now has completely changed my SL life,” Kesten says. “I learned and now I can do what I love.”



The Blue Moon DJ Training Academy is the brainchild of Kasha Morgath. She works closely with Kiara Lanzet, who focuses on the host/dancing side of the academy.


“We saw the need for professional training,” Morgath says. “Most of the schools here in SL simply are not equipped to provide good training. Many of us at the academy also are entertainers in real life, so we know what it is like. We offer training and hands-on experience, not just videos or papers to go through.”


The academy has three floors of classrooms and a mockup of a SL club so students can get the feel for what it will be like when they start working.


“Some clubs do their own training, but they don’t usually have a lot of time to do it,” Lanzet says. “We make sure the students are well-trained here at the academy.”


DJ students go through two weeks of training. The first week is in the classroom, while the second is an internship. Classes range from what it means to be an Internet DJ to voice and emote training.




“I can teach all day, but the student needs to be dedicated to learning,” says Joslyn Bonetto, an academy instructor. “I help with voice control, explain streams and software, musical genres and timing. I talk candidly to the students about his or her voice. However, if a student is very knowledgeable about the music, the student doesn’t have to speak.”


Bonetto says a great deal also has to do with stage presence. “You have to engage the crowd or it doesn’t matter how great you sound.”


The internship consists of training at SL clubs. This gives students the opportunity to work with different music genres, listeners and styles. Students start with one set per evening and then more as they progress.


Students who go through the academy must pass a test at the end of two weeks to be certified as a graduate of the academy.


“I personally make sure the student is certified before we release them,” Morgath says. “Our reputation is very important to us, so the students know right away they have to pass the test. The academy is not a hobby for us, it’s our passion.”


The academy does not guarantee that students will find a job after graduation. However, it does act as a placement agency and has recently hired India Cerise as a marketing instructor to help the students.


“We teach DJs, hostesses, dancers or anyone else how to market and promote themselves,” Cerise says. “We have three levels starting with image and business development, branding strategy and professionalism. The next levels include video portfolio development and group or one-on-one coaching.”


Morgath and Lanzet say there are minimum computer requirements that are needed by the students. Prospective students are encouraged to contact one of them for more information.


“But the biggest requirement is the desire to learn,” Lanzet says.


For Mike Kesten, the academy’s help and that desire to learn has enabled him to fulfill his fantasy of becoming a very busy DJ in SL.