spider eye studios

In recent months, we have embraced using Amazon cloud services for many of our new hosting clients. It's been a truly amazing and affordable solution for dedicated co-location cloud hosting. We recommend it to every new project - small or large as the best option.

It's been a rocky road lately if you are a Second Life resident. After 7 years, growth of members hit a plateau. In an effort to attract new people to join, a new easy-to-use client viewer was rolled out. Some of the new features were exciting, and the user interface looked great. There was only one problem - existing SL residents did not like it, and didn't use it preferring 3rd party or open source viewers.

One of the things that Spider Eye gets involved in is managing a lot of servers and hosting for clients, including the Quicktime streaming server for Treet TV. The infrastructure serves both on-demand and live Quicktime video. The metaphor used for all this streaming is television, and Treet TV is a television network. They're called live programs and reruns, and unlike other online video destinations there is incredible stickiness with this content. People view for minutes (even hours), not seconds.

I have not had a lot of time to blog here lately as I've been busy with Drupal projects, Cattle Puppy & Facebook, Twitter, and still keeping tabs on the live music scene in Second Life. The shift in everyone's attention to virtual worlds in recent months has been very exciting to us. One of the most interesting events I've been involved in recently was a 'mixed-reality mashup' for a talk by Sandra Kearney of IBM. The best description of what actually happened may be from Gary's Facebook video.

SL Multimedia Arts CenterThere is a new program being offered by the Australian government for digital artists to explore their craft in the virtual world environment of Second Life. They are calling it a Second Life Artist Residency and up to three people can experiment with their combined creative efforts. It's a AU$20,000 grant and the deadline for applications is 27 July 2007.

The live action of the The Australian Open has begun here in Melbourne, and it's also taking place in Second Life. IBM has created a virtual Rod Laver Arena and set up a live action feed in-world of the matches. There have been a few early previews of the venue as described in this article in The Age and snapshots on Flickr-style gallery Snapzilla (by epredator Potato). The virtual match attendance is invitation only and not open to residents. This is mostly because of technical reasons right now and IBM is running live events like this as prototypes of potential uses of virtual worlds. There are already many live events taking place in Second Life involving multimedia - primarily streaming audio and video. These live events combined with the social nature of the community are the seeds of what can evolve into a truly unique experience, not limited by geography.

At this week's Macworld Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the opening keynote address and announced the much anticipated iPhone. i.e. iPod + mobile = iPhone

It will feel good, look good, and just work. It's not scheduled for release in Australia until 2008 so don't think you can rush out and get your hands on one anytime soon here. Certainly the first versions will have some glitches, but it really doesn't matter. It's already the most desirable moblie phone on the planet and it won't be available until June in the US. This single announcement has already impacted stock prices of other hand-held devices available in this consumer space.

Newbies From HeavenSeasons greetings and best wishes to all during this holiday break. I spent some time over the past week getting more familiar (and comfortable) in Second Life. All the media hype, anti hype, wild claims, and outright misinformation about Second Life going on right now must be wonderful music to Linden Labs ears. It's fantastic fuel for the promotional fire, and because of it - pro or con, more people now know about and have tried Second Life than did 12 months ago. It takes many hours to understand what is going on "in world" and connect with the subtle social and cultural nuances that are SL -- and time has no virtual conversion factor.

A recent interview with Second Life property developer Anshe Chung appeared locally in The Age. One of the questions started with: "A lot of people are still puzzled why otherwise intelligent people would spend real money on virtual assets..." There is a notion that objects and experiences in Second Life are somehow not real. They are as real as any digital item can be - just as photographs, music, video, and software are real. Add to that the real emotions, creativity and economy that the SL world brings to the equation and the potential of what this social network will evolve into is fascinating. The cultural expectations of the community feel very female to me. I do not have nearly enough time to spend on shopping, hair, skin, jewelry and shoes to be taken seriously as Miss Second Life, but there is help for me: Second Style magazine.

Lior at QMF 2005We are headed to the Queenscliff Music Festival this weekend with our rumpled Roocast hats on. Well, maybe just t-shirts. At last year's festival Roocast recorded some really good interviews with great Australian artists like Mia Dyson, Sophie Koh, Ash Grunwald and more. This photo was taken during one of the afternoon shows with Lior - he will be there again this year with his band. The 2006 line up looks fantastic and large kudos go out to Sohpie Best, this year's QMF Music Director. We will be talking to Sophie and a few other key Australian acts that will be performing over the weekend. Watch the Roocast site during December and January for installments from Queenscliff plus other Australian music podcasts coming your way.