March 2007

Of little interest to those not inclined to develop Twittery Things, but proposals have emerged for those creating Clients (such as the Twitterbox) to be able to identify their Device to the Twitterverse. Apparently the latest proposals can be found here, and involve setting values for the following headers:

X-Twitter-Client
X-Twitter-Client-URL
X-Twitter-Client-Version

I have modified my own control script for Twitterbox 0.3 to include these - fear not, no action is required on the part of any users.
Thank you for whatever attention you have seen fit to pay to this entry.

One solution to the various issues that face the Engineer of Items of Transport upon the Grid - though these issues I believe to be slowly but surely disappearing, hopefully to be banished into the annals of history, only to be brought out again to scare the newest of new residents, “the Sim Crossing Monster will eat you up and spit you out at 0,0,0 with your shoes in your rear end!” - is of course to design vehicles which are purely attachments.

These are sturdy, reliable things, and much can be done with them. Attention to custom animations is required, as well as careful attention to the current state of the wearer to instruct the device to behave as appropriate (see llGetAgentInfo and quite possibly llTakeControls; the former should be polled regularly on a timer, and appropriate link messages sent out for changes in status). Acceleration of the wearer, driver or pilot can be achieved with the use of llApplyImpulse or llSetForce.

I recently released photographs of my old compatriot Professor Gould’s Hovering Chair Device Thingy, and last night was reminded of this particular form of movement by the approach of Per Lagerkvist in a rattly Motorised Wheeled Chair. On the ground it moves back and forward with spinning wheels, chugging away, and when one takes to the air, Rotary Wings are extruded to allow powered flight. The little flag upon the mast can even be changed to different designs! I was most impressed.

More can be found at the Lagerkvist Inc HQ, Jeju (250, 170, 84).

Oh my giddy aunt, I forgot entirely to announce the release of version 0.3 of the Twitterbox before retiring the previous night.

Well, version 0.3 of the Twitterbox has been released. It is fairly similar to the previous version, as one might expect, with the addition of the ability to automatically post the URL of the latest entry in an “RSS” or “Atom” “feed”. Say, for instance, one places a photograph of one’s surroundings on Snapzilla - with proper configuration and a Twitterbox, one might include the word SNAPZILLA (or, depending on one’s preferences, ZILLA, SNAP, PHOTO, PORCUPINE or pretty much anything) in one’s twitterings and have it replaced with a conveniently-bijou tinyurl leading to the photograph. The same goes for a journal entry, or a phonographic recording, or, well, I am sure others are more inventive than I. (You may see a more full description in the “keywords” section of the main Twitter page.) Personally speaking I find it very convenient when combined with the Applescriptery mentioned in my previous entry.

I might also mention that I tidied up the reporting-of-errors function a little, so that it does not throw a whole mess of nonsense into one’s face whenever it is unable to locate something. This is a common enough wrinkle of the Aethernet for nonsense-mess-throwing to not be particularly desirable.

As usual, the Twitterbox can be found at my Caledon shop, or, shortly at SLExchange and SLBoutique. Similarly as usual, full details are on the main Twitterbox page.

I mentioned in my last Twitter-related post of inordinate length that it might be possible to set a Folder Action on the Apple Platform which would automatically upload full-sized snapshots to Flickr, although dealing with Applescript was like having porcupines in one’s socks. The porcupines have turned out not to be quite as troublesome as I first thought, and I have managed to squash together two existing Applescripts in order to make this possible. Do note that this is of no use to any reader whose Own Engine is not compatible with the “OS X” System, and I have no inclination, or indeed idea of how, to make such a thing work on other Systems.

Here is the code for the Folder Action:

• convert-flickr-send-folder-action.scpt

The exact details of how to set a folder action on a folder are a little beyond the explanatory power of this Journal, but I would advise anyone not familiar with the procedure to inspect the Apple Company’s own pages on the matter.

Firstly, create a folder to which you will be saving your pictures - I have one on my Desktop called “Send To Flickr”, but it could really be anywhere. Save the script above somewhere, edit it to include your own Email Address and your own personal Email Address For Sending Things To Flickr With (see here if not aware of this), then assign it as a Folder Action. The script itself includes detailed directions as to where you might stick your Email Addresses.

Once this has been done and one enters Second Life, the first snapshot that is saved to disc will have to be saved specifically to the folder which you created. You should, really, be able to remember its location. After that, any snapshot you take and save there - or in fact any that you move to that folder by hand, as it were - will be converted to the JPEG format, and then sent to Flickr. A simple “CTRL-” will be sufficient to publicly record your immediate surroundings, as long, of course, as you are a user of the Apple Company’s Mail.app device. And with Twitterbox 0.3 you will be able to swiftly send this picture to the world, or at least the Twitterworld, a dark and drunken hive of scum and villainy if you ask me.

As an addition, I have designed an icon appropriate for a Flickr-uploading folder which you are very welcome to use, until such time as Lawyers force me to remove it, which I hope they will not. “Flickr” is a trademark of somebody or something, and no infringement is meant blah-de-blah.

Next, we shall examine methods of forcing Second Life to make one tea and toast. Or perhaps some other subject will arise.

I had decided that the next iteration of the Twitterbox (note that the official spelling has now been set as the previous, rather than “TwitterBox”, for reasons of idleness quite honestly) - which will be 0.3 - should incorporate some form of support for images. As is my wont, I am mostly interested in an client for Twitter in the respect that it can be individual to, and send data regarding one’s activities in, Second Life itself - otherwise, why not simply use one of the other excellent methods of communicating with it?

I find the Twitterbox very convenient for taking notes of travels and the locations of things, somewhat in the same way as my existing Slurlblogger, but more immediate and clearly more fashionable; the automatic “tinyslurl” function in version 0.2 has the intention of making this even easier. (I find the tinyurl function provided by Twitter a little unreliable and unpredictable, and would rather do it all myself.) Clearly what readers really desire from a travelogue is photography, though. Twitter is not capable of delivering actual pictures, but is perfectly capable of providing links to pictures stored outside of it, on Aethernet sites such as Flickr and Snapzilla.

It is at this point that one starts to butt against the limitations of (L)SL. It is currently impossible to have a script take a picture. The only way to extract images from the Grid is for one to do it manually oneself with the “snapshot” function; this can then be saved to one’s own Machine (quickest, but not terribly useful) or sent elsewhere as a rather decorated Email, or Postcard. As many will be aware, it is possible to send images directly via Email to Flickr, but Flickr considers the Postcards sent to be too confusing to manage and refuses to accept them. Snapzilla is specialised for the receipt of Postcards (and will even cross-post them to Flickr if properly instructed) but unfortunately I am having… issues with Snapzilla with which I will not bore you but which are currently preventing me from taking advantage of its existence. In either case, sending Postcards still takes a little time, and is not nearly as convenient as typing in a line of text to twitter.

Not for socks.

Ironically the only way that automated picture-taking-and-uploading may be implemented at the present time that I know of is to modify one’s own client or use an Automaton, an early example of which was Destroy Television. From that piece of November 2006 we see the following:

Jerry Paffendorf, the Sheep’s resident futurist, is hot on the idea of Destroy TV as it relates to lifelogging. He imagines residents of virtual worlds traveling around with a similar service attached to them, Flickring every moment of their virtual lives.

A noble imagining, Mr Paffendorf, and one which corresponds somewhat to my own desires here, though I have a feeling that Flickring every moment of their lives might not be universally popular with residents. However, I podo not personally have the time or quite frankly ability to modify clients to do this, and would much prefer if they were included for all to use within LSL. A thought has occurred just the moment that it might be possible for me to write some sort of Applescript which would react to the process of Second Life taking and saving pictures to one’s (Apple) Machine - in other words, it throws a huge bitmap onto one’s desktop - by converting the picture and sending it off to Flickr, so that just one keypress would result in an uploading… but I heartily despise Applescript and the experience for me would be rather like having a porcupine take refuge in my sock. I shall take a look to see whether it works out to be a Simple Task, but I warn you that I will not be suffering quills under the toenails for long.

I seem to have digressed somewhat from discussion of the Twitterbox here, as usual, and should return to my original point for this post before I wander completely off the face of the Grid. Sending picture links via Twitter, yes, that was it, pay attention Ordinal.

So. Last night I was thinking: how could one’s Twitterbox actually find the URL of an appropriate picture to display? Well, I could have a system which received Postcards, sent them to Flickr, and then made a Twitter entry about them, but (a) I do not have the time (b) I do not have the energy (c) other people have done things like that already, for instance Kisa Naumova, which look far better than any poor effort I might be able to knock up and (d) it would result in the Twitterbox code ending up hideously bloated and unreadable, which I submit is not really the point of it. I wish to keep the thing relatively lightweight and able to be read easily by Scripters of PHP and LSL alike. Please do not tell me, readers of the Scripting persuasion, that you really love to read page after page of such stuff. Even if you do, honestly, love to read page after page of such stuff, please avoid mentioning it, as I will not cater to your peculiar fancies.

I decided instead to toy with the idea of providing a keyword, as with the one for tinyslurls (”SLURL”). This keyword, say “FLICKR”, if included would result in Twitterbox Control looking back on the user’s recent Flickr pictures - as taken from the RSS Feed for that person’s account - and turning the link for the latest one into a tinyurl. In short, it posts a tinyurl to your most recent Flickr picture. I do not even bother to properly parse the RSS feed to be honest, just grab the first available thing and assume it is right.

To properly use this function one must have previously sent a picture to Flickr, and thus it is a two-or-more-stage process: extract a picture somehow, get it into Flickr somehow, then sent a tweet. This does in fact work as it is, but it is not particularly convenient compared to, say, a BlogHUD.

In my disheartenment this morning, though, a thought struck me: why should this be restricted to pictures? Almost everything has an RSS feed these days, and they (should) all use the same format. Why not simply have a function which can be given the appropriate RSS feed, and will extract the latest item on it to post a link to? It could be something on Vimeo, or Odeo, or even another Twitter account. It need not necessarily even be yours. The point of this is a little limited perhaps but the possibility of possibilities intrigues me.

At this moment I am considering a notecard to be placed within the device and edited by the user, which would let keywords be defined for inclusion, so a line reading

FLICKR http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=25972087@N00&format=rss_200

would mean that any mention of the word FLICKR would be replaced by a tinyurl to the latest Flickr entry defined by the feed at that particular address. (It is mine, in case you were wondering.) One could have several different services. Perhaps with both FLICKR and SLURL being used in the same post, the SLURL could incorporate a thumbnail from the latest Flickr post. See - I have managed to turn the fact that it does not actually do what I wanted it to into a feature! The ghastly vision of a future in sales flashes briefly before my eyes, leaving me sweaty and shaken.

Please do not take the above as being necessarily indicative of the contents of Twitterbox 0.3, but there will be at least some vague and incompetent attempt to implement them.

Post Scriptum: I am currently using the “Google Documents” system to compose this and finding it surprisingly convenient.

I would like to keep this particular entry for people using the TwitterBox to add any suggestions or hints they might have in the comments. So, really, this entry does not have a huge amount of content. I am sure though that there will be many terrific ideas which put me to shame emerging here.

Remember that the latest version of the Twitterbox can always be found at the main page:

http://ordinalmalaprop.com/twitter/

and that all posts relating to the TwitterBox can be found at

http://ordinalmalaprop.com/engine/category/twitter/

Twitterbox 0.2 post animation on Vimeo

The latest version of the TwitterBox, 0.2, has just this minute been made available. There are two main changes here:

1. The TwitterBox now has more decorative and animated effects when twittering - see the video above;
2. More practically, if one includes the word SLURL (as written, all capitals) in a tweet, it will be replaced with the TinyURL to a SLurl for one’s present location.

As usual, full details, including links to the SLX and SLB pages concerned, can be found on the main Twitter page, and of course it is all free. I shall be posting the code at my earliest convenience.

Oh, and as an addendum - I have previously complained that Vimeo, my preferred Video Hosting Place, restricted uploads to a mere Thirty Megabytes per Week. They have recently changed their policies to permit Two Hundred and Fifty Megabytes per Week, and at no cost! I would thus heartily recommend them for all Machiniminamists without reservation; the resolution is the highest (400×300 rather than the usual 320×240), they allow direct access to one’s source files if one wishes, and their interface is simply a joy to use.

Daring avatars have provided us with a visual example of a Seance, which I am interested to see, though I do not think this is the best advertisement - it manages to appear simultaneously boring and a bit scary. In a circle of friends, two manage to say anything, and there is no connection between the Audible Part and anything that one can see. Otherworldly Voices come seemingly out of nowhere, as might be expected of them, and say little of interest. A much more detailed vocal explanation can be seen here.

Still. I’m sure we will be seeing a wide array of cinematography soon. Personally, I prefer to have a glass moving around on a table for my communications with other worlds; the traditional way.

With all that in mind, I would mention that the next version of the Twitterbox possesses functions to automatically include a SLurl to one’s current location if one says the word “SLURL”. There are also moves afoot to include a social service, inviting anyone within twenty metres to become your friend. I am not sure that this is desirable, all told, and may remove it.

The persistent rumours that folk on the Grid will soon be able to hear voices in their heads appear to be approaching a state of reality.

Speaking personally, and after taking medical advice, I have no intention of listening to Otherworldly Voices within SL or inviting other people to do the same, and it strikes me from a quick look at different reactions so far across many different Aethernet publications that a lot of others seem to feel the same way, or at least are sceptical as to their practical utility. Reasons given include:

• “it will ruin immersion to have inappropriate voices for appearances” / “my voice is part of my RL identity, not my SL one”
• “people are idiots“
• “group discussion would be even more of a nightmare than it is at the moment”. As others have said, it is hard to shout over other people with text, whereas any decent-sized group discussion with voice unless carefully managed becomes a bit of a mess.
• “any busy area would be a nightmare” (imagine - or perhaps try to avoid imagining - a Welcome Area or busy club)
• “people will start to spam by voice, not just text”
• “it is bad for non-native English speakers, who will have a harder time interpreting accents etc and expressing themselves” and one can’t use a Babbler with voice
• “there is no simple logging and analysis of voice chat”

The immersion and separation points are very important. One spends so much time customising one’s appearance and the way one comes across to others in Second Life, yet there is little one can do about one’s Other World voice - “masking” technologies aren’t really very good and don’t change one’s phrasing in any case. A couple of examples - Fiend Ludwig in the Herald’s comment area says:

SL is all about a *second* life - my voice is an exclusive feature of my first life and I want it to stay that way.

I also like Mr Nate Combs’ related statement about the “ebbing away of the distinction between the virtual and the real identity/experience”, that any direct insertion of voice (and by necessity ambient sound) intrinsically chips away at one’s sense of otherworldness whatever it is used for. Clearly this is something of an “immersionist” / “augmentationist” issue - some people simply will not see the issue, or think it silly - but I know which side of that I am most on.

The issue of logging or simple persistence of text on a screen, though it has not really been mentioned an awful lot, seems to me to be very significant as well. At the moment, an automatic record is created of every single conversation that I have on the Grid, which easily be searched within or without it, thus I can in an instant check whether I have spoken to someone before, what they said about my parentage and so on. Unless one is prepared to record and transcribe every conversation, this becomes rather difficult with Otherworldly Voices.

Even when one thinks simply of the advantages of (with text) being able to lose concentration for a moment or do something else - make a cup of tea, give a burglar what for - and then reread the last few messages in a conversation without anyone noticing that one has even been away, it becomes clear that there is a great advantage in such logging. Voice is immediate and demands attention or it is gone, or at least very hard to get back; having multiple conversations at once is tricky at the best of times.

Oh, and think of the issues when one is having more than one conversation at once, with people in different parts of the Grid! Speaking to A, B and C individually at the same time is simple with text, if one allows a certain delay, but three simultaneous voice conversations with the parties not hearing anyone else I do not think would be at all practical. It may be that these Voices will have to be limited to those who are in close physical proximity. I am surely not the only person who never seems to be conversing with just one person at once.

Now, the above might be taken to indicate that I am opposed to the idea of Otherworldly Voices intruding onto this plane. This is not the case - I possess no hostility to this projected Spiritualism and see few who do either. There are worries, though, that those not using Otherworldly Voices will be seen as evasive, or simply ignored, and that using the system will become the norm, driving out those who do not wish to for whatever reason. I do not personally fear this, as I consider that, given the number of doubts I see expressed even within hours of the announcement, for the foreseeable future the use of text will remain the default, particularly in group activities, where one must take the abilities and preferences of every participant into account.

To be quite honest, if I encountered someone who insisted on using voice to communicate on some matter of business, I would assume - as I have in the past, with External OV Services - that they were attempting to evade any possibility of their speech being recorded for the attention of the Linden Judges or for future evidence of contracts and agreement. I am only a rather amateur shopkeeper, but were I to be dealing with many customers at once, I would be most concerned that certain types would try to exploit the difficulty of logging. This corresponds, now that I think of it, to my mistrust of people in the Other World who wish only to communicate via the Telephone and refuse to send Emails of Confirmation - I consider them rude (for demanding that I reply at their convenience, i.e. when they call, not mine, i.e. when I get around to it) and potentially duplicitous (wishing to make promises and then avoid taking responsibility for them later through lack of evidence).

To sum up, there is certainly nothing wrong with people using OVs within Second Life - they do quite frequently already - but I would not expect it to become the dominant form of communication, instead reserved more for certain people and certain occasions. I imagine that it would be useful for some forms of discussion or lecture where the main speakers can communicate more easily by, well, speaking, than they can with a keyboard. I imagine that those who already chat in this way will find a built-in system more convenient, and that some others will encounter it for the first time and find that it suits them. It will remain an added option.

The day when one is ostracised for preferring to speak in the form of the written word I do not see approaching - particularly as there is no proposal to differentiate between residents in terms of access (though perhaps between landowners - a different kettle of fish) and thus use of voice does not become a social signifier in itself. Voice is useful when playing games, where it provides quick communication without having to release controls for a moment and potentially die, but that is not common in Second Life. There are also many more people here interested in tinkering with their identity, appearance, setting and other such elements who would find that the general use of un-tinkerable voice interferes with their enjoyment.

Here, as an addendum, are a few other pieces on the subject:

• Official Linden “Blog”
• Second Life Insider
• Vivox Press Release
• Second Life Herald
• Second Life Education Research
• A thread in the second_lifers Livejournal community