Comments on: Conference call 1, 'Second Life' 0

Holding conferences in a virtual-reality zone doesn't spice things up just yet, says CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland.

[DraconumPB]

What SL Really Needs...

...is better security. It seems to me as if the place is a literal free-for-all, where anyone and everyone can do whatever they want. That's great for building a community out of user-generated content, but there has to be some limits.

For example, there needs to be a mechanism by which companies and other organizations can hold meetings like this in a 'safe' zone where there's no danger of people randomly spouting ******* everywhere, or coming in dressed as a naked, large breasted vixen or something (I love furries as much as the next ubergeek, but I am not sure that they belong in a Cisco newsconference... I think.)

That way, for example, companies will have less to worry about in terms of griefing and nuclear explosions demolishing their (cyber) property.

This shouldn't, however, necessarily apply to the general shared landscape. But property owners need some control over their space, huh?

[Arrgster]

I tried SL

Thought it was a bit boring but then again I've never been into chat rooms ether. What I did find interesting is a good number of them admitted they had problems meeting people in the real world (RW). This is something I've never had a problem with and may point to why I don't care much for virtual worlds or chat rooms. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people communicating no matter what the method, But it does point to some interesting differences in human nature...

[Len Bullard]

You Haven't Seen the Real Thing, Fella

Didn't need SL to teach us what the VRMLers and other real-time 3D vets have been doing for years:

1. Avatars with names (not aliases) can provide a name just by mousing over them. That enables silent (out-of-band) chat without disrupting the main conversation.

2. An avatar at a virtual blackboard (secondary wrapped media content) or anywhere else in the room is easily identified so if you highlight them, you know who is talking. That is much easier than figuring it out from their voice particularly the first time.

3. It is easy to get a record of conversation from chat logs. It is easy to add annotations to them for further detail. You can do that in any live distributed collaboration media. Real-time 3D is a bit cheaper than video. Today, it can also use less bandwidth but since real-time 3D is a hypermedia wrapper, that use goes up as secondary media types are added.

4. With a little creativity, you can create avatars that have the group/role attributes built into their appearance just as is done in military uniforms.

You can do that without voice. Even with IVR, real-time 3D can get far beyond phone conferencing and already has. Don't judge the capability by SL. They are quite late to this application of real-time 3D. You are simply working for a company paid to hype them as if they are pioneers where really they are the flatlanders come to the mountains.