Outsourced Collaborative Forensics And Video Games

Fascinating use of the Unity game engine:

"Game technology allows us as developers to create highly interactive and adaptable virtual environments," said Young.

"The game world will support multiple concurrent users, allowing several CSIs to interact with each other while exploring the virtual crime scene."

Do you get points for solving?
Leaderboards?

More about NC State and IC-CRIME.

Watch The Second Skin Doc

On WarCry Network (via HULU). The doc covers MMORPGS and virtual worlds and the people who play and inhabit them.

Where Can I Watch Eve Online TV?

The stuff that happens in this game is almost better than real life.

The head of a in-game banking institution has run off with about 200 billion ISK, converted it to $5K real world dollars, and used part of it for a payment on a house and for some medical bills. The news caused a run on the bank which deflated it's holding so much that it needed to be propped up by an inflow of capital.

Sound familiar?

BBC.
Massively.

It's not Madoff worthy, but it is ground breaking for virtual world economics.

But seriously, why are there not embedded cameras every where broadcasting the goings on to the world. We need real time embedded journalistic machinima (with decent procedural editing).

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Machinima Info Barf #14

Number 14.

I have not done one of these in awhile, and probably will not have time to do another for a few weeks.

Previous Info Barfs listed on the sidebar.

====

Machinima News:

Antics v. 5 released. I have reservations.
ZenCub3d new beta.
Xtra Normal releases online animation tool. I made a brief clip.

Contests/Festivals:

The New York festival is coming up. 99.999% sure I will make it. Nominees and Panels listed. Note, the New York marathon is Sunday Nov. 2nd.
The Machinima Expo lost it's real world appendage, but it's virtual head will reappear in Second Life on Nov. 9th.Pineapple Pictures promo.
Imagina Awards 2009.
48 hour machinima contest. I tried to set up a team but no one seems to have the time. That's too bad because that kind of time pressure contest is an experience everyone should survive.
Suzanne Awards winners announced.

Video Game/Virtual World News:

Political Machine (Stardock). Smear your opponent to appeal to your base. Evade all questions while winking at the camera. Offer no solutions. Just like real candidates.
Linux Gamers release.
Mellanium talks industrial archaeology.
Bioshock2 trailer.
Interview with the maker of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. Playing Columbine is a documentary on the whole thing made by Danny Ledonne. (Part I, II, III).

Machinima/Video Clips:

Universal declaration of human rights.
Time lapse tilt shift video.
ill clan releases Tiny Nation.
In a few months this blog post might look like this.
YouSuckAtPhotoshop has gone hardcore ARG.
Fear of the Dark animated trailer looks like a nice collection of darker themed shorts by IFC.
The credit crisis as Antarctic exploration.
Virtualization of the Universe.
Cellular automaton in Second Life.
World animation day. Why isn't there a world machinima day.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

New DSLR can do HD.
Stock photo royalties.
ILoveSketch. 3D curve sketching system.
Five Gimp tricks.
Fake tilt shifting in Photoshop.
Real time raytracing.
Photosynth explained.

Misc:

ReadTheWords.com. Reads aloud typed text (plugins for Firefox and IE available).
This Wired report on Ramayan 3392 AD film has some interesting images.
RIP: Remix Manifesto. Open Source Cinema. Rip the system.
Animation explained. From storyboards to render by Dale Myers.

The Virtual Continues To Wrap Its Slimy Fingers Around The Real

Two news articles:

A Japanese woman is reported to have been jailed for either 'murdering' or 'divorcing' her virtual avatar's husband in a virtual world (the game Maple Story?). Although when you read the story it appears that she was really jailed for illegal computer access by logging in with her 'virtual' husband's identity.

Two Dutch teens were convicted of theft of virtual property after coercing a younger teen to 'part ways' with some virtual loot. Basically, griefers get community service. Half of the net's population shudders as they realize they could be next.

Speaking of the virtual impacting the real, Charlie Kaufman's Synedoche opens this weekend (his directing debut - Review) .

Google Goes Virtual

Lively!



Can't wait to see what becomes of this.

More at Wonderland, TerraNova.

Machinima Info Barf #12

Made two 48 Hr. Film Festival entries this year. What a blast.

Herb and Dorothy at Silverdocs is an awesome documentary and an inspiring film.

Previous Info Barfs listed on the sidebar.

====

Machinima News:

DigitalPhil asks about Gamestop's machinimercials.
NASA is sponsoring some SecondLife Machinima in the teengrid.
Freepixel asks some questions (and gets some answers).
Dr. of Machinima continues the "Machinima vs. Anymation" debate.

Contests/Festivals:

The Machinima festival in NY and the Montreal festival are one week apart. Is this maturation of the medium?
Dragoncon has machinima.
Nvision (see previous post).

Video Game/Virtual World News:

InSilico city is a fun Dystopian shopping mall. Too bad the stores bear the same gaudy neon lights as every other shopping mall in SL. With enough smoke and avatars, this would be straight out of Blade Runner.
Lego Designer (lifehacker).
MMORPG Tycoon lets you build games for virtual denizens?
3DFlash.
SF MMO.

Machinima/Video Clips:

This clip from the Onion describes the new Warcraft sequel that lets players play a player playing Warcraft. Very meta. This clip mentioned on Cinemassively is about Lagspikefilm's World of Workcraft where WoW characters play office workers (brilliantly filmed using Counterstrike's cs_office as background).
Rooster Teeth continues RvB Reconstruction, but also fires up Supreme Surrender.
The effort it took to make this giant Rube Goldberg apparatus in Gmod is either frightening or awe-inspiring.
Almost 40 minutes of Clear Skies, Half Life characters used in the Eve Online universe. Nice voice acting. Let's see more cross platform machinima (how does that change even the few rules we have on machinima usage)?
In For A Penny Part 1. Prologue. WoW B&W.
Another 40 minute machinima in Battlefield2 - The Break of Dawn (have not watched it).
The follow up to Half Life 2 Anxiety (see previous post - Nightmare).
Enter the Chameleon (more).


Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Color management in Firefox3 (FF3 broke all of my damn extensions BTW, good job - almost as good as Ubuntu breaking on the last release).
Lost Zombies - crowdsourcing the film making experience.
FrameFilter.
The Drive-In is 75.
Early Movie Reviews.

Misc:
The future of the cinema experience. (the future will be interactive).
More about 3D (why does every article cite the 3D Hannah Montana crap - as if 3D had anything to do with the success of that fad).
Snowglobe scenes - odd.
Wall.E sounds like one of the few Pixar movies I might actually want to see.
Sony on voice acting in games.
Death and taxidermy = not normal.

Forget Second Life

Moltov Alva is so last year (Cinemassively).

Welcome to Peopleburg.

The brilliant minds who brought us "You Suck At Photoshop" have just taken the piss out of virtual worlds, gaming, Second Life, game development, and hippies with their new series Sn4tchbuckl3r's Second Chance (Episode #1 at My Damn Channel).

Plus, as the link above shows, they like setting up some interesting websites.

(see YSAP mentioned previously here).

Time has an article on the creators (wow, that was quick).

Machima Info Barf #10

Away for a week, so enjoy some links.
Calling this #10, even though #9 was not titled.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9).

====

Updated*

Machinima News:

Bloodspell DVD released (thx Hugh).
RvB Boxed Set DVD released.


Contests/Festivals:

I posted about an online photoshop contest. The winners have been announced.
There's 12 videos tagged as 'animated' that are part of the Nine Inch Nails Ghosts Film Festival. There are none tagged as 'machinima'. Hello?!

Video Game/Virtual World News:

Flipside is an interesting premise for a game wherein the player must 'flip' from one side of reality to another (half life 2 net - mod review).
How soon before the Turing Test is passed? An AI has been created in Second Life.

Machinima/Video Clips:

A History of Evil (YouTube).
Lego and Biochemistry (YouTube).
Keiko Takamura sings about Bioshock (YouTube).
This robotic dog is bizarre (YouTube).
Roman Coppola makes an environmental short (nofatclips).
Interesting effect in this Half Life machinima - Message (YouTube).
I like this Portishead video (YouTube).
Low cost multitouch whiteboard (very cool - imagine the possibilities - YouTube).
This video of a TED talk by a neuroscientist discussing what happened when she had a stroke is very inspiring (TED).
Ammo Previz (some clips showing atmospheric previsualization).

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

As noted in Indymogul, this composer is offering to make free music for films/videos (forum post).
The secret strategies of viral videos.
Twenty-five brilliant animated shorts.
Photoshop Express is online, but beware the terms of use.
Kloseup is some sort of portal/online movie making platform? Example: (YouTube).

Misc:

Easter Eggs in your software (an amusing list of hidden embedded games and other easter eggs in a variety of programs, DVDs).
Maps and fiction - The 21 Steps. An interesting experiment (game, literature?).
OLPC is offering 8.5 GB of Creative Commons sample content (Wiki).

Forget The Regurgitory Nightmare Of Mainstream TV

TV will eat itself until there is nothing left (see previous post - wasn't there some mythological figure who did the same?).

New media produces wonders like this:



A college project that is a machinima graphic novel called "Guilt and Innocence" about survivor's guilt and the Holocaust. Beautifully haunting. Who new HL and Garry's Mod could produce such wonders.

Or how about this. Some good news in Second Life. People with autism and Asperger's syndrome communicating through the use of SL as reported by 4 News. Part of the report deals with a video made by an autistic person.



"In My Language" video by Amanda Bags.



Turn off your TV.

If I Hear The Word Avatar

Coming out of a TV character's mouth while they're investigating a crime where the suspects play virtual reality games (or MMORPGS, or ARGS, etc.) one more time I think I'm going to scream. Are all of these shows written by one guy or is the rate of theft so high that every story idea spreads within nanoseconds?

Or maybe I should just stop watching reruns.

Virtual World Documentary

Two documentaries I found out about recently, both having to do with virtual worlds.

This trailer for "Second Skin", is about some of the interesting events going on in virtual worlds (dating, addiction, gold farming, etc.). The trailer shows a lot of scenes from World of Warcraft.

This series, "Wonderland", from the BBC is about cheating in a virtual world (seems to be about Second Life).

Virtual worlds are beginning to have a very real impact on other media. The topic of virtual worlds is becoming more frequent in broadcast television (let alone cable TV) and not just in journalistic or documentary settings. I've now seen several episodes of sitcoms or copudramas referring to SL or WoW.

I can see where this is going

Machinima Info Barf #8

Today's post is brought to you by the word 'Gush'. Stand up and say it loud 10 times. Isn't that a fun word. Then after your family and friends look at you strangely settle back into your comfortable chair and peruse this enormous collection of links.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7).

Away for a week.

====

eSports:

The World Cyber Games are taking place this weekend. Coverage at GotFrag.
The Escapist covers fraggers.

Video Game News:

Bungie and Microsoft broke up (more at Law of the Game) from 8bitjoystick. You can send sympathy flowers.
Koster talks about the current game industry (Gamasutra).
Top 10 most influential AI games (via AIgamedev.net). Please, why is Black and White at #1?
In-game ads using discussing historical Monopoly, Monopoly today, and social commentary games like Disaffected (via Gamasutra).
Top 21 Linux Games (from LinuxGames).
The Guardian talks about in-game advertising.
BBspot has a flowchart for those who can't decide to stop playing video games.
McDonald's video game, social commentary? (via Play This Thing). Any game where you pay to corrupt politicians has to be fun?
Minerva single-player mod episode 3 for Half Life 2 released.
Writer's Guild announces video game writing award.
The next 25 years of video games on Cracked.com. Likely to be oh so wrong.

Virtual World News:

Habbo Hotel manager discusses the enormous popularity of this free retro virtual world (via Gamespot).
More on Habbo's development (via Gamasutra).
Habbo's mobile version has 110 000 users (via Virtual World News).
Some strange virtual worlds like The Endless Forest (via Clickable Culture).
Metaversed discusses MTV's 6 virtual worlds.
MellaniuM showcases Skype broadcasting of Second Life. I recently had a chance to talk to Joe Rigby about this, and he used Skype to show some virtual worlds they were creating (using Unreal Engine - see previous post and comments). Fascinating stuff.
Virtual world numbers from virtual world news.
Virtual world venture captial from Cnet.

Contests/Festivals:

Bitfilm voting is over. All machinima nominees are listed here.
Hellgate London is having a contest. Machinima accepted (via What Providence).
Machinima will be shown at U of Wisc.
Machinima Europe is next weekend. Who's going?

Machinima News:

Paraworld movie game for kids.
Blizzard introduces WoW machinima page, recognizing the importance of machinima and coupled with their recent announcements on machinima usage, this is great news (WoWInsider).
Machinima mailing list and wiki for Second Life. Linden labs also realizes the importance of machinima.
Plopp moves sculpted prims into Second Life.

Machinima/Video Clips:

Artist almost drawing dirty pictures and then transforming them into something else (NSFW - WebTVHub).
Burning man time lapse (via O'reilley Radar).
Richard Kelly's Southland Tales trailer shows that the movie certainly looks to raise the bar on the weirdness from his first movie, Donnie Darko. Brazil meets Inland Empire, meets Donnie Darko?
Virtual Guatanamo in Second Life.
NewTeeVee has a list of Nintendo Odes.
When Cell Phones Attack (ad from Argentinian Leandro Fuez).
23 Things We've Learned From Movies (metacafe). Hilarious slide show (the pics are brilliant). There should be a contest to parody all of them in a single movie.
MachinimaCam demo for SL (via SecondLifeInsider).
Game Probe explores video game narratives (Thinking Cinematic, ie. Lucifer Jones, ie. Mike Jones). He also does Motion Sketches which is very impressive.
I'm sick of Halo3, but the Believe ad is well made. Production info on Motionographer.
Wired covered The Sex Life of Robots. Then YouTube pulled the video.
Lego Half Life episode one and two. Remaking HL stories using stop motion lego.
Club Elona hi-res Guild Wars machinima (via Mike Abundo).
More Guild Wars machinima listed here (from Max Damage).
Pirates in Saskatchewan using Everquest (Captain Tractor song).
IdeaWorld documentary on early days of Second Life.
iCloneTV covers Second Life Convention. Isn't that a little strange?
Greek tragedy Oresteia in the Sims2.
Elk Cloner student animation is impressive (via Cartoon Brew).
Terrible video game endings (so 8 bit - via Videosift).
Grouchobeer is back with his bizarre political commentary - Strange Interregnum.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Some interesting notes on interactive cinema from the 1967 Montreal Expo from Czechoslovakia's entry the Kinoautomat (via Radio Praha).
NewTeeVee lists some new internet video startups. Scenecaster looks interesting (sharing 3D spaces with people?).
Graspr (more how-to videos).
Blade Runner to be released again this December. (Wired, NYT). One of my all time favorite movies, no matter what you think about the ending, the voiceover, or the ambiguity (or apparently not) about Deckard's humanity.
A comparison chart of 3D applications (extremely useful, but damn is 3DS expensive - via TDT 3D).
Flip Animation online magazine.
Digital puppetry (site, video).
David Cronenberg at the Washington Post
BoingBoingTV vs. Wired Science. Fight!
Dataisnature talks about live cinema. Interesting, and Indonesian shadow theater. Cool. (Solu).

Misc:

These images of the reimagining of books are fascinating (book autopsies - from Centripetal Notion). I wonder if it could be done with the world's longest book (million page books? - via
The Millions).

Google Virtual

Lots of talk on the web today about Google's possible foray into virtual worlds (MyWorld?). It sounds like a virtual social network/Google earth/maps/Google apps mashup that's being test driven by students at Arizona State.
TerraNova
Google Operating System
ArsTechnica

Machinima Info Barf #7

Been busy and have not done one of these in awhile, so the links accumulated.

Time to purge.

Welcome to the future. Grab some popcorn, this one is long.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6).

====

Robots:

There seemed to be a lot of news about robots recently.
Artificial boy built.
According to defensetech.org, the first armed drone in Iraq has killed (the MQ-9 "Reaper").
More ED209 news from Iraq.
Is Iraq to be the playground for the military industrial complex R&D divisions?

eSports:

Shocking news, the WSVG is cancelled. I guess they could not compete with CGS.
CGS to give out $1 million in prizes.

Contests:

Amazon and Microsoft team up to allow up to 1000 indie film developers the ability to get their film pressed on to HD-DVD and available from Amazon.

Machinima news:

Oxhorn talks about advertising.
Anthony Bailey posts about the origins of the word machinima.
Adobe is entering real time 3D animation at least as a research project (and ray-tracing). I always wondered when some of the big players would start to enter this turf.
Shaping Youth talks about machinima.
Casual WoW lists some machinima guides.

Machinima/Video Clips:

Thes two clips mentioned at Frames Per Second magazine from the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival are fascinating. The first is Oh Hisse is by Hikaru Yamakawa and is either a celebration of rigidity, conformity, and the human machine, or is maybe a rejection of it, I haven't decided yet. Very Japanese. The second is Mix a Miniascape by Tomonori Hayase which has a cityscape constantly disassembling and reassembling as the viewer passes through it. Very cool (and must have taken a lot of work).
Speaking of lockstep, this human powered animation video is impressive.
Rubberdada episode #2 is released (rubberdada.com). This is just BIZARRE and sure to cause controversy. Juvenile, violent, immature, and yet strangely fascinating as it deals with topics like racism (episode #1 mentioned here). Think of South Park. They definitely seem to hate clowns.
More from the CRC Machinima Collection shot in SL. #1, #2.
This video of a system that allows users to create shadow puppets wherein extra animations are added in real time is very cool.
More Shadow Puppets.
Basho is a very impressive thirteen minute Japanese machinima (with English subtitles) made in Second Life with classic ninjas, shoguns, and the fate of a kingdom in hand at SL-machinima.com. Nice to see some hand-to-hand combat (English translated site; Metacafe trailer).
Someone liked the new GTAIV trailer so much, they remade it using GTAIII San Andreas (too bad the game is delayed till next year).
There's an epic machinima made in Halo called Trinity. I have not watched all of it.
Does what happen in Facebook stay in Facebook? Beware your personal bitstream and who's reading it.
Hallow3en is back with another musical machinima using U2's Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.
OneJovialSim's Bjork based machinima Akin.
Someone's trying to escape their world. Do they succeed? Infiltrator.
Afonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein's trailer for The Shock Doctrine.
Animation Ramblings lists some iClone examples.
List of Siggraph shorts.

Video Games:

Remember when the specs for Microsoft's Xbox360, Sony's PS3, and the Nintendo Wii were released. Remember how everyone said Nintendo didn't know what it was doing and that it obviously couldn't compete in the high tech arena. Guess who's laughing now as the Wii outsells both the Xbox360 and the PS3, even after being released a year after the Xbox360. Never underestimate the company behind the plumber power Mario.
Neuromatrix is an educational video game where you enter a neuroscience facility and track down the nanobots invading the brains of the scientists within. Made by Morphonix. Check out the video introduction.
There was a report from the Eve Online economist and an interview on Slashdot. It would be nice to see reports from Second Life, WoW, and other MMOGs.
Artificial worlds to be artificial intelligence incubators. Now if only they can obey directions like "no, say it with more emotion".
Artificial worlds are the future of commerce.
The marines are using virtual worlds as training simulators.
VastPark is a virtual world content creation system. Site.
Next week, virtual worlds will do my laundry and wash the windows.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Steam is a digital content delivery platform developed by Valve. Not only are a wide variety of games available, but apparently steammovies.com has been registered by Valve. If you've seen the recent videos Valve has made for Team Fortress 2 you will realize that high quality video can be delivered via Steam, either for free or after paying (via credit card).
Overman lists some free filmmaking tools. Other freeware/shareware lists specifically for Mac and more general tools here. More DIY list from The Workbook Project.
Revver has paid out $1 million to content creators to at least 25 000 people (the winners are the Diet Coke and Mentos people at $50 000). It may not be MySpace, which just seems to keep picking up new shows, but it is definitely a site to consider.
Speaking of which, NewTeeVee discusses what makes an online hit.
Brand Worlds 3D production for Flash and the web.
3D holographic display developed. Now when can I play Tank War Europa on it.
More 3D image creation using plasma balls.
SciVee brings science to the world of internet video.
IndyMogul talks about Reverse Shot, a film quarterly that goes into detail about film and cinema. Check out this extensive article on "the cut".

Re-Tronned

Twenty-five years after that Disney movie with ground-breaking special effects (and a lack lustre story), Tron is going to come to the big screen again. It sounds like it will be a sequel.

1982. So long ago. There was still a cold war on, Reagan was president, and I was playing on an Atari 2600, or maybe a Colecovision, or more likely, playing Donkey Kong (the first time Mario ever appeared!) in the arcade. The Commodore64 came out.

Basically, how are they going to redo this story (or make a sequel) now that we have virtual worlds, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry, eSports is catching on, machinima is everywhere and the idea of entering a computer is sort of ho-hum (The Matrix Trilogy, eXistenZ, The Truman Show, etc.) is a question I have to ask.

Bigger fancier effects? Light cycles in 3 dimensions? Enormous grid bugs?

The director (Kosinski) has also apparently signed on to redo Logan's Run? Hmmm...but David Fincher was the one who noticed him.

I guess I'll take a wait and see approach.

More Virtual Worlds Machinima

Not exactly hot on the heels of the Second Life announcement (see last post) but some other virtual worlds are getting in on the machinima craze (I'm ignoring the 800 pound gorillas like WoW for now).

Habbo Hotel is hosting a film making competition (from Wonderland). The winner can win a trip to Hollywood along with virtual Habbo credits. This looks like fun. Check out "Stop That Hacker".

There's some sort of educational/student contest in Singapore using a MMOG called Granado Espada. Very strange topic requirements that to myself seem unbelievably nationalistic. Bizarre. And in a game I've never heard about.

I've posted about Croquet before (other note), an open source virtual world, and there is some development in that area towards recording machinima (via Wetmachines). It looks quite crude right now, but the graphics could improve in the future. This project by the University of Minnesota might be an interesting alternative to commercial virtual worlds and definitely a great educational resource.

Machinima Info Barf #6

Another huge collection of links all packed with vitamins and minerals.

Previous Info Barfs (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5).

Festival news:

There actually is some machinima being shown in the western hemisphere (see my nanorant on European machinima festivals).
The Second Life Community Convention in Chicago (Aug 24-26) will have a machinima track led by Moo Money.
Blizzcon announced the machinima winners for their contest in Ca. Oxhorn had an extensive post-fest writeup.

Interesting that the two large conventions/events holding machinima are both about virtual worlds/MMORPGs. Would you ever see something like this for The Sims, The Movies, Half Life? With all of these eSports events going on, why don't they showcase some machinima too?

Other festival news.

The International Fertility Film Festival will accept machinima (bizarre).
Bitfilm announces nominees. Now if only they would link the damn movies.

eSports:

New WoW observer mode discussed. Will it help sell eSports to the lay audience? Will it help in machinima?

Games:

A brief report on modding at TechNewsWorld including mention of Microsoft's XNA, and Sony's LittleBigPlanet (bringing modding and development to the consoles).
Unity game engine developers are having a dev contest. Interesting that it is for the Mac.
The Game Innovation DB. Who came up with what first?
Top 100 indie games at GameTunnel and 50 good indie games at Tigsource, and a list of linux games.

Machinima news:

Borg wars report at Nashua Telegraph.
Interview with Alexander Winn (The Codex, The Heretic).
Siggraph 2007 blog briefly mentions motion capture integration via iClone3 and animazoo's consumer-priced mo-cap suite.
Global Kids receiving a Macarthur Foundation award is awesome news. They will also be at SLCC.
Moviestorm to sponsor Mobile Jam Festival. Impressive looking creative festival.

Machinima/Video Clips:

Some referential machinima.
Overman noted that Officer Dan is back. In the extended Machinima vs. Frag Video, there's a riff on Deviation at the beginning.
Someone has cut up This Spartan Life and Red vs. Blue.

Other clips.

This looks like a discussion of machinima in German.
The Information Machine. 1957 cartoon about information.
Fatal Mortality - gamer riff on famous characters from movies and Mortal Kombat. Bizarre. Watch Rainman vs. Jules.
FonejackerTV. Bizarre animated prank calls. Odeon cinema. Flat to rent.

Digital Online Video/Cinema/Imaging:

Apparently someone liked my idea of having multiple YouTube videos playing at the same time so much that they created a site for them (ok, it was already there and I just discovered it). There's even a blog dedicated to split screen cinema.
Lance Weiler from The Workbook Project is interviewed extensively at Knowledge@Wharton. There's a lot of information here on digital distribution and how indie filmmakers can succeed.
A bloody expensive camera presented at Sci-Foo that can capture enough information to produce a 3D image. Forget the mapping potential, imagine capturing the "real world" around you and being able to reproduce in a virtual world.
Save a film. Upload it to the archive.
Digital screens expanding.
Marketing Harry Potter in Second Life (Hollywood Reporter, New World Notes). Successful or not? There has been a lot of discussion lately on whether Second Life is useful for marketing or not, including an article in Wired.
A list of free music sources (free and Creative Commons) for podcasters. Of interest to filmmakers too?
SFGate has an article on Charles Ferguson who made "No End In Sight", a documentary on Iraq. Internet millionaire decides to focus his life.
Anyone heard of Frameforge 3D previz and storyboarding software?

Scientific Research In Virtual Worlds

A sort of review article in Science this week by William Bainbridge on the sorts of research one can do in virtual worlds (not sure if it is full access or not). The references might be the most useful part of the paper as I did not read anything all that new (mostly introducing these virtual worlds like Second Life and WoW to a scientific audience and then listing the types of research or interesting events that occur in them). Unfortunately many of the references will not be accessible to the lay person

WTF Is MellaniuM?

I found this video on YouTube that mentions the use of MellaniuM technology for the creation of virtual worlds. WTF I thought to myself? A new virtual world platform? A machinima platform (a competitor to iClone or Moviestorm)? What is it? The YouTube user, copper13, has a number of videos that appear to showcase this tech with the earliest video approximately a year ago. Is this something that I had not heard about?

Mission statement:

We aim to provide you with a 3D Virtual Real World that is realistic of the past, present, future, or imaginary world. These 3D worlds can be used for many applications, e.g., advertising, tourism, marketing, meeting places, conferences, engineering definition, education, entertainment, travel, architecture, etc., Trips down the Nile, Great pyramid recreation, Great Wall of China, Great Barrier Reef are some of the ambitious Virtual Real Worlds yet to be created. As first to market with Tele3DWorld™ and Virtual Real Worlds products we aim to become the world leader in Virtual Real World 3D environments, and supporting animation production.

The website mellanium.com does not seem very professional (nor Tele3DWorld). I searched for the name in some blog search engines, but a lot of the search results seem to be spam blog noise. Zero hits in a news search. The video itself is not that impressive: an off screen narrator tells us that with MellaniuM technology you can create virtual 3D networked spaces wherein upwards of 30-40 people can join in (paraphrased). Big deal, I thought, so can QuakeWorld. The video shows a nondescript LCD screen on a nameless desk (surprisingly devoid of decoration) and the narrator is never shown. Is this video even showcasing the technology they purport to make or is it simply another gaming engine?

Is this some poor entrepreneur's attempt to cash in on the virtual world craze? Is it legitimate, or something else? Spam noise with some pretty videos in order to pump up some non existent company in order to get infusions of cash? Or perhaps it's just an ARG (alternate reality game).

If anyone has any real information I would like to hear it. Otherwise, let the speculations run rampant.