Both photos taken by Prad Prathivi at Heritage Key King Tut Virtual

We have been hammering away quite hard on OpenSim in the last while. I posted some notes about Top 10 Issues we see as of today over on the Rezzable.net blog. I probably missed something really obvious, irritating, but hey, 10 is a random number. Short summary: "In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex--maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago."

Also check my older post from last time we updated on OpenSim.

We have been working away to get perms implemented in the release version of BuilderBot. It seems to work ok, but there are some session issues that are a bit tweaky. In fact we sent a copy of the pre-release application over to Jack at LL last night. We would like to be among the first to have registered status for SL. There have been a lot of tech issues getting this to run smoothly -- makes us wonder if LL isn't messing around with something somewhere to block 3rd party applications completely. 

LL's latest threat to kill accounts that use "unapproved" viewers has also stopped our testing on the SL grid for BuilderBot. No one, rightly so, wants to give LL a reason to delete their account (especially if they can copy their own stuff off the grid)

Help us spread the love of our OpenSim-based grid! We are looking for a highly energized and dynamic person to help us get more activity going on our Rezzable Grid. It is an incredible chance for someone to dig deep into this new technology and engage with artists, builders and virtual world enthusiasts from all over the planet in order to get busy and get into the next phase of the 3D Web/Metaverse.

What exactly do we need help with?:

The Advanced menu in Second Life is one, often ignored and misunderstood, incredibly useful tool. There are so many things at your disposal with just the click of a button including: turning that annoying camera sound off when taking snapshots, disabling your camera's constraints, making your avatar's lips move when using SL voice, turning various parts of gameplay off (such as particles, trees, sky, water, etc), damning the man and flying where flight has been disabled, even enabling in-world shadows. So many things that can be of so much yes, yet because it is housed under the "Advanced" name, it is considered very intimidating to a lot of people.

Today I'd like to take the time to point out a few of my favorite choices in the Advanced menu and what they do. But first, let's start by activating the Advanced Menu. For the sake of this tutorial, I will be using the latest Second Life Release Candidate viewer.

Nice tip from Chris at ReactionGrid about some 3D collaboration tools that seem to be heading in a good direction. IL Immersive Collaboration by Jeff Lowe is a small set of tools (now) that help people make the most of being in a virtual space to do project stuff. 

Chris poses the same question I always wonder: "When people come to me talking about work in 3D, I can almost guarantee I'll hear the word "PowerPoint" in the first paragraph. What is it about this particular tool and why do they want it in 3D?" Powerpoint is so 1990's -- at least use photoshop! But clearly people struggle to express their ideas (err.. when they actually have some worth sharing). Getting to good ideas is much more exciting, albeit harder work.

Paid Content UK reports that Swedish Courts have reject an appreal against the controversial European Commission  IPRED laws (= Intellectual Property Rights Directive ) that force web service platforms to reveal the identities of copyright infringers.  According to the report: "Tuesday its appeal against the decision was thrown out. ePhone must pay SEK 750,000 (£64,500) in damages plus the publishers’ costs"  And the infringement had to do with unlicenced release of 27 books. Pirate Bay has been closed since 25 August.

Still from "Avatar" which promises to rock our 3D worlds Sam Worthing plays Sully who plays one of these tall elf-like warriors

 What is an avatar anyway? Kinda like the Matrix on purpose? Trailer for the upcoming "Avatar" film from James Cameron promise "a heroic battle to save civilization." Looks a little counter-culture to me, but wtf do I know. Doesn't seem like you can hit "appearance" so easily in this virtual world as imagined by "Titantic" director James Cameron. Also he made "the Abyss" which had some cool enough aliens and deep water scenes.

 A new sculptie piece over at Black Swan now.  It is next level of realism on the grid. Check and appreciate any comments on your impressions below. Visit it here at Black Swan.