The tops of ornamented lintels, carved
With bevels, claw-feet foyer tables caught
In dust: a prelude silk and parquet smooth
Where children march to pianistic doom.
I have to admit that I have done a whole bunch of these Geekiest Vacations on eWeek. Not all of them were for vacations, but I’ve been to the National Computer Museum twice (gave a talk there once, actually, for the Churchill Club), to Worldcon, the National Air and Space Museum, and yes, the Quark Bar.
Oh, and some of the other stuff, like going to a great place for nerdy reasons (Switzerland for a social policy conference? Check), traveling laden down with gadgets including a headphone splitter to watch movies with my wife, and of course, #1 — taking a road trip to visit blog buddies.
Well, MUD-Dev buddies and other game devs. But whatever, close enough. 🙂
It helps to have someone fluent in Japanese in the office. 🙂 So first up, here’s word on Cyber MEGACITY, a newly announced virtual world.
Nikkei Exchange (Japan’s NYSE) announcement of a new virtual space research/holding company.
SBI Holdings is forming a new subsidiary (SBI Robo) in partnership with design firm Beyond C and marketing group ArchiveGate (AG Consulting) to create a new virtual space called Cyber MEGACITY, based on Tokyo’s 0th administrative ward.
Forterra Systems has announced OLIVE, an SDK for building virtual worlds.
For those who don’t know the history: once upon a time, there was one company called There, and it made a world called There.com. There had trouble gaining traction with its consumer service, and eventually, there were moves made to shut it down. This despite the fact that it featured, IMHO, some of the best interaction design in social virtual worlds — in some ways, just ahead of its time.
Wired has an article titled ‘Next-Gen Multiplayer Worlds Are Built to Snare Nongamers’ that is adorned with screenshots from Tabula Rasa and Fury. I cannot think of any non-gamers I know who would jump at either of those. 🙂 They also have a pic of Whirled though it does seem to feature a zombie.
Hmm, where’s the online world that looks like a Michael’s craft store?
