Sunday, July 26, 2009

weird stuff...


weird stuff..., originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

a screen from the video playing on my island, Library Studios, is showing up on surfaces/textures on other sims when I teleport...
everywere I look has that same image on it.. but it's from a video.
once the object rezzes, the image from the machinima disappears. So weird!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Improving the retail experience one virtual racetrack at a time...

Library Studios Island sits amidst the popular Alliance Virtual Library and partner sims in the Information Archipelago; American Library Association (ALA) to the north, Stanford Libraries to the west and one of the Cybrary City Islands to the east. The expansive sandy coast with its wild ("out of sim lines") rocky refuges begged for California "real". I don't know a coastal community in California where the deep greens of Somerset actually meet the ocean waves. So, working our little avatar legs off, with the estate/region window open, we attempted raising and decrease the default 'highs and lows' for the texture files... it was one surprise after another. The most daring change in the height levels for the SouthWest quadrant brought a wave of 'virgin sand' rezzing across the English greens, leaving it more like SoCal... Oh, no, this is Sonoma!
Now the roads... Hyacinth and I have been working on piecing together the sculpty pieces. Daunting. I need an escape.
Shopping in Second Life® should set me on a new path of retail therapy or bring me to my Linden Dollar senses and just try to pull together a few coastal slopes and winding roads from the road packages and textures I had previously collected .
So let's buy some roads:
First stop, PR Hollywood's Fusion City (101, 99)

It's at this point that I have rezzed and re-rezzed PR Hollywood's race courses... watching the pieces fly through the air in an urban dance as it darts across the black skies; certainly enough to qualify as a higher level retail experience.
The choices span the screen and the imagination. I find myself contemplating a racetrack running through my formerly calm landscape where I can still hear the waves crashing against the digital shore while laying out streets and arguments atop Fusion City's midnight platform.
Well, still streetless, I'll have to contemplate the options and return tomorrow to scan XstreetSL® and the SL® search before going back to my roadwork jigsaw that is currently sprawled across the sim.


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fusion%20City/97/96/1001


road_shopping_fusioncity101_99fusionworldsprefabdemorezz

Thoughts from Library Studios Island (pick up machinima workflow instructions here) in the very beautiful Second Life®.
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Library%20Studios/32/45/23

Monday, July 13, 2009

Exploring Twtpoll: do you already have a personal Twitter account?

So we had a great session today exploring creative ways to use Twtpoll in a 50 minute or 1:50 minute instruction session.
We had created ten twitter accounts and my colleague and I went through the tedious task of having all accounts follow each other in an attempt to save time since we only had 45 minutes at the end of the meeting that we could dedicate to Twtpoll & Twitter. Some of the suggestions after a brief exploration included traditional ways that the instructor might use any sort of polling application: pre-tests,post-tests, quiz questions, off-topic questions to wake everyone up... not really! Melissa and I created about 10 twitter accounts for colleagues to use, so we could just jump in and begin using twtpoll with the existing twitter accounts.
Here are some of sample test runs of questions that we later used for classes: http://twtpoll.com/lilshields_01
Sample question for upcoming Doctoring 3 class in Veterinary Medicine following a two hour hands-on session where students were a huge class of approx. 100 split into smaller groups to explore which of the ten databases/resources would best answer this question:




These are ony sample responses, not the actual results:



Some Twtpoll samples: http://twtpoll.com/lilshields_01

This the protected twitter account that I use to create the twtpolls: http://twitter.com/vetmedresources

The accompanying web page for the VMD400 class, created by Mary Wood:
Here is our web page: http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/CCAB/doctoringtwo.html and the related video that we used for the outset of the class (filled with clues for group the activities that followed): http://www.youtube.com/libraryvideochannel#p/u/3/1Zmp1xtj6rY. We actually had a looped 5 minute version that played while students were entering the room and it included all of the resources they would be using during the hands-on portion of the session.

Brainstorming uses for Twtpoll and Twitter:
Other interesting ideas included having the students work in break-out groups on the same question using different library resources and then create a Twtpoll to share with the other students. I should mention though that a couple of people had trouble using the application... most likely issues with our own connectivity in the Laab.

Using the embed code on the twtpoll site, you are able to edit the size of the chart displaying poll results. The default is 200 as shown. I am assuming this is pixels. You can also use the polls in stand-alone mode on the twtpoll site, rather than embedding or sharing on one of the many liste popular sites, cell phones, email, etc.
The URLs are nice and short! For a small donation, you are able to personalize the pole with your twitter account profile image and short bio.

http://twtpoll.com/btyzzb