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InfoFez

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 1 month ago

Infofez with Ann Enigma

13:10 Ann Enigma: Shall we get started?

13:11 You: yes :)

13:11 Ann Enigma: Okay

13:11 Ann Enigma: I'm glad this is a small group, because I hope we can have an interesting discussion.

13:12 Ann Enigma: I'm going to introduce myself, then talk about the concept of the InfoFez, then open it up to brainstorming and playing with the toys

13:12 Ann Enigma: Please feel free to ask questions or comment as we go

13:12 Ann Enigma: I've met a couple you before, but quickly, I'm Hilary Mason (in RL)

13:12 Ann Enigma: I'm a computer science prof. in a new media department at a University in Rhode Island, in the US

13:12 Ann Enigma: And we are currently having a blizzard :-)

13:13 You: oh my

13:13 You: :)

13:13 Mark Kozhedub: Thanks

13:13 Ann Enigma: My interest in SL is both from the technical perspective and from the communication design perspective.

13:13 Ann Enigma: I'm glad it's not snowing in here! :) I will have to go after this talk and shovel my driveway.

13:13 You: :) lol

13:14 Ann Enigma: Over the last year, I've worked on several projects in SL. The largest was Virtual Morocco.

13:14 Ann Enigma: Over a year ago, we brought together a team of students from tech, business, and hospitality to look at using SL as a tool for educating people about the social and economic issues in Morocco.

13:14 You: :)

13:15 Mark Kozhedub: How is connectivity in Morocco for SL?

13:15 Ann Enigma: If you haven't seen it yet, please come visit. The sim is 'Casablanca'. And we have belly dancing and tea :)

13:15 NoiseBoy Racer: lol what a combination

13:15 You: :)

13:15 Ann Enigma: Mark, it's terrible. I would say maybe .5% of the population can access SL.

13:15 Mark Kozhedub: That's more than I espected

13:16 Ann Enigma: Our program goal is to take emerging technology and those who understand them, and have them apply those skills to problems in developing counties.

13:16 Ann Enigma: We have several people from Morocco who hang out with us in Casablanca, which is just awesome.

13:16 Ann Enigma: BUT... that's another talk!

13:16 Mark Kozhedub: I workedin Morocco for some time doing teacher training and development

13:16 Ann Enigma: One of the problems that we faced in that project was that we had all of these great facts to share.

13:17 Ann Enigma: Mark, that's so cool. We should chat later.

13:17 Mark Kozhedub: I'll have to check out thr virtula version

13:17 Ann Enigma: :-)

13:17 Ann Enigma: We managed to explain quite a bit of information visually, though the design of the space.

13:17 Dongroe Harley is Offline

13:18 Ann Enigma: The group went to a few museums and studied information design principles, which translate very well to SL.

13:18 Ann Enigma: But we hit a wall with simple facts.

13:18 Ann Enigma: Things like... this painting was created by this artist in this year to celebrate this holiday.

13:18 Jay May is Online

13:18 Ann Enigma: How do you express that visually, without cluttering up the world with text?

13:19 Ann Enigma: We tried notecards.

13:19 Ann Enigma: But notecards break the immersive quality of the environment.

13:19 Ann Enigma: lol, I'm lagged, so forgive me if things appear out of order!

13:20 Ann Enigma: It is very jarring to be wandering along and all of a sudden this amodal notecard appears.

13:20 Ann Enigma: You lose your connection to the world.

13:20 You: yes

13:20 Cheyenne Newman: yes I agree

13:20 Ann Enigma: We also wanted people to be able to opt in and opt out.

13:20 Ann Enigma: Some people just want to have fun, and that's okay, too. :)

13:20 BabyDoll LaFontaine: wouldnt having them click on the picture for the notecard solve that

13:21 Ann Enigma: Yes and no. We did that, and we still use notecards for larger text blurbs.

13:21 Ann Enigma: But for short text blurbs, we created the InfoFez.

13:21 Ann Enigma: When you rez in Casablanca, the first thing you see is the InfoFez stand.

13:21 Ann Enigma: You click that, and get a Fez. It's free.

13:22 Ann Enigma: The concept is simple. When you wear the InfoFez and walk around the island, you see these short text bursts in the chat window.

13:22 Ann Enigma: When you take the Fez off, they stop.

13:22 You: oh how cool

13:22 Cheyenne Newman: neat

13:22 Carla Coppens: love it!

13:22 Ann Enigma: You can also click the Fez to turn it on or off.

13:22 Ann Enigma: :-)

13:23 Mark Kozhedub: Is it location sensitive?

13:23 You: great concept

13:23 Cheyenne Newman: no

13:23 Ann Enigma: Are many of you familiar with LSL?

13:23 NoiseBoy Racer: only uber basics

13:23 BabyDoll LaFontaine: same

13:23 Ann Enigma: I don't want to overwhelm with code details, but I'll explain how it works

13:23 Decka Mah: aware not write it

13:23 Ann Enigma: okie dokie

13:23 You: enough to know I tried it and have a long way to go

13:23 Ann Enigma: There is an object called "broadcast node" in this box

13:24 Ann Enigma: It contains a notecard and a script

13:24 Ann Enigma: We had one of our students - a hospitality major, very non-techie - write up the notecards

13:24 Ann Enigma: then she put them in objects are the island, with the script

13:24 Ann Enigma: the script broadcasts the notecard text on a certain channel

13:24 Ann Enigma: the InfoFez listens on that channel, and if it's on, will relay the infomation to whoever is wearing it

13:25 NoiseBoy Racer: makes sense

13:25 NoiseBoy Racer: i take it its whispered

13:25 Carla Coppens: that's fantastic. Do you run into much lag with the listener always on?

13:25 NoiseBoy Racer: so you arent bombarded too much

13:25 Ann Enigma: It uses llOwnerSay

13:25 Ann Enigma: ...so only you see it

13:25 Ann Enigma: Carla, no, because the listener is in the attachment

13:26 Ann Enigma: The broadcast nodes themselves just have a timer script. It's minimally laggy.

13:26 Ann Enigma: My goal with the project is to make this tool available

13:26 Carla Coppens: Excellent -- I've been experiementing with brodcast, so I'm happy to hear you're having a good experience with it!

13:26 Ann Enigma: ...to everyone

13:27 Ann Enigma: if you have a sim where a fez is not appropriate, you can create any object for people to wear

13:27 Ann Enigma: One of the testers made a cute little parrot that sits on your shoulder (I wish I thought of that :)

13:27 You: lol cute

13:27 NoiseBoy Racer: could be transparent

13:27 Ann Enigma: I would love to see a network of "Info Enabled" spaces

13:28 Ann Enigma: Where people would know they could wear their favorite attachment and see that extra level of information

13:28 User not online - inventory has been saved.

13:28 Ann Enigma: Right... in Casablanca, we actually put the broadcast scripts into the doors, walls, and objects that were already on the island

13:28 Ann Enigma: ...it saves prims that way

13:29 Etherian Kamaboko is Online

13:29 Ann Enigma: So all of the code and examples are in this box, and you are all welcome to take a copy and distribute it, use it, or make fun of it as you pleaes :)

13:30 Ann Enigma: I will be putting up a web page to share the code and link people to examples of how it is being used

13:30 Skubwa Prototype is Offline

13:30 You: oh nice :)

13:30 Ann Enigma: I meant to do it for today, but we just lost several of our university computers to a robbery... so it dropped off the todo list :)

13:30 Ann Enigma: does anyone have any questions?

13:30 Carla Coppens: that's great of you!

13:30 NoiseBoy Racer: ouch

13:30 Ann Enigma: ideas?

13:31 Pits Yao: do u already have the url of the web page you'll be doing ann?

13:31 Ann Enigma: I'm also happy to help you set this up, if it's a little too techie and you still want to play with it

13:32 Ann Enigma: Not yet. We're registering a new domain for our SL activities. :)

13:33 You: fantastic

13:33 Ann Enigma: It's been a fun project. We've had it running since November 2006, and it's worked out wonderfully for us.

13:33 Decka Mah: great thanks Ann

13:34 Mark Kozhedub: It sounds really interesting. I'm in the process of writing some Business English Sims which it could possibly be used in

13:34 Ann Enigma: Ah, Mark, you're touching on another thing I've been working on

13:34 You: :)

13:34 Ann Enigma: Which is having an attachment that knows your native language

13:34 Ann Enigma: so that the environment can adapt

13:34 Cheyenne Newman: oh nice Ann

13:34 Lewis Trenton is Online

13:34 Pits Yao: nice!

13:34 Ann Enigma: If you speak French, you can see signs in French... etc.

13:35 NoiseBoy Racer: thats gonna lag surely

13:35 Ann Enigma: Most of Casablanca is in use by only a few people at a time. I think this would be interesting.

[13:35 Mark Kozhedub: Interesting stuff. How many languages can it do?

13:35 Mark Kozhedub: Can it handle no roman scripts?

13:35 Ann Enigma: Right now? Two... I just have a tiny demo.

13:35 Ann Enigma: The lag is something we'll need to evaluate

13:36 Decka Mah: sounds powerful Ann

13:36 Ann Enigma: Mark, I have the textures switching based on language... so it can handle anything that you can put on a texture

13:36 Ann Enigma: Though we would also like to add language to the InfoFez... you can write the text in several languages and people can choose the one that they would like to see.

13:36 Mark Kozhedub: That sounds good

13:36 Ann Enigma: No lag issues there.

13:37 Ann Enigma: ...but I'm not sure about non-Roman characters

13:37 Ann Enigma: I think it depends on the fonts on the machine? But I really don't know. :)

13:37 NoiseBoy Racer: if you can put it on a notecard, u can make something say it

13:37 Ann Enigma: yes

13:37 NoiseBoy Racer: ∂

13:37 NoiseBoy Racer: see that?

13:37 Ann Enigma: ahh, neat

13:38 Ann Enigma: But I occassionally speak to people who are speaking Arabic, and sometimes their text does not work for me.

13:38 Ann Enigma: Not that I could understand it anyway :)

13:38 You: :)