All Of Me Beta Invites - New lifestream timeline

All Of Me, a new lifestream visualizer is out in closed beta. Although they don't offer an RSS feed importer, they link to flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Picassaweb and will soon add Facebook and Google Calendar. You can also upload local images, videos and web pages from your computer. One nice unique feature out soon is a playable, embeddable widget that comes in a number of styles.

I have 100 beta invites to share, so feel free to give it a try.

Step into the Avatar Transformer if you dare

If you don't think you're identified with your avatar then I dare you – I double dare you – to step into the Avatar Transformer at Botgirl's Identity Circus.

Zada Zenovka took what I thought was an NPSL idea I've been toying with for months and figured out how to make it work.

For all humanity's diverse experimentation with avatar forms, it is one thing to step into a new look that you choose; quite another to spin the wheel and take whatever comes your way. UnezzedRuth or LittleHobbit. AndiyAndrogyny or BettyBimbette.

Give it a try before your next social engagement and then show up in a random form. See what it feels like. If you dare.

Whew!

The opening of Botgirl's Identity Circus went flawlessly! I want to especially thank a few people who really helped make it a success:

Sabrinaa Nightfire for building the incredible tent that housed the show, plus very cool commemorative t-shirts;

Charlanna Beresford for taking charge of the avatar transformation exhibit and listening to me whine about all the long hours; and

Zada Zenovka who created what is, as far as I know, the first-ever random avatar dispenser and transformation-assist device in Second Life.

Also thanks to Dale Innis posing for yet another morph video and Georg Janick for hosting the event and inviting me to put it together.

Oh yeah, and Majic for begin such a good sport.

The exhibit will be up at least until SL Comic-Con on October 3, so please stop by if you get a chance.

Here's the new Dale video that premiered at the show:

Plurk hole: Privacy part 2

Your Plurk user name and identifying information are passed along every time you click a link embedded in a Plurk message from your timestream. Here is an example from my blog reports. I've inked out everyone but Codie.



Going from your user name to additional identifying information is just a click away. The next image shows that if you are at work or school, that information is also passed along. Wonder what someone at Microsoft was doing on my blog for 102 minutes? I think they're looking for a Jerry Seinfeld replacement for commercials and are considering Botgirl.



One more click and your physical location, operating system and other tidbits are revealed.



The key security flaw in Plurk, is that you view posts in a url that has your user name, for instance: http://www.plurk.com/user/botgirl. So when I click a link, my user name goes right along with it. Twitter doesn't have that problem because the browsing url is twitter.com/home.

There are two easy ways to avoid this issue if you care about it. First, don't click links. Instead, copy the link and paste it into a new browser tab. Another more sneaky way is to browse another user's timeline and click from there. That will send their user name along with your other information.

That's all here till Monday. I hope to meet some of you at the Identity Circus opening on Sunday.

Morphing all night long

I was up late, late again to finish the morphing part of the Dale-to-Dale Video, using Fantamorph. I have a lot to learn about morphing techniques, especially for tough sections such as Dale's left eye area that starts with glasses in the male avatar and ends being covered by hair in the female image. I cheated on it a little due to time constraints and did kind of a cross between a fade and a morph. Ideally, I would have gone into Photoshop and either morphed in multiple layers, or cleaned up the multiple frames one at a time. Here's an example of the orginal male avatar and a frame about halfway through the change.

This morning, I imported the series of still images from Fanatmorph into Motion so the video can include some camera moves. A first draft is about a third of the way through rendering after an hour of processing. It's taking so long because I started with very high resolution images so I could zoom around without artifacts. We'll see.

Cuddling with Jacek: Testing animations for art installation

Although my inner clock keeps ticking louder and faster, I am making good progress checking off to-do items for Sunday's show. One of the exhibits I'm most looking forward to will give atendees a chance to cuddle with my chatbot. Sharing a romantic animation with an attractive yet empty avatar is a great way to get a feel for the power virtuality has to induce an emotional or even physical response.

Trouble was that I'd put off selecting an animation until last night. I went to Bits and Bobs, an animation store Gabby recommended. The animations that seemed to hold most promise required two avatars to test. I put out a request on Plurk for assistance, and Jacek Antonelli, noted and geekalicious artist, builder, scripter, animator and instructor was kind enough to offer to help.

Although we hang out with eros-Goddess Codie, Jacek and I are a bit on the, well, Spockish site of the street. So I felt a bit awkward saying a brief hello to my barely-konwn acquaintence and then jumping onto some very hot poseballs and watching us very, very closely in order to evaluate the animations.

It was a lot of fun. This Goldilocks had to try more than three before finding one that was just right. We both agreed that the animation eventually selected was a clear winner. It was good enough to make each of us feel a bit embarrassed be so seemingly physically intimate. And dare I say stir up a little feeling?

Anyone interesting in beta testing the cuddle bot exhibit before we officially open should drop me a line or comment. :)

You're invited to the grand opening of Botgirl's Identity Circus

Botgirl's Identity Circus: Visual explorations of virtuality, will have a grand opening in the New Caerleon sim on Sunday, September 21, 2008 from 11am - 2pm SLT. The art exhibition will feature a variety of works including the premier of the "Night vs. Human" comic, the debut of a new avatar morphing video and an interactive "Cuddle With a Bot" installation.

The show will be hosted by New Caerleon, an open source university campus founded by Georg Janick, aka Gary Zabel, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. It will be housed in a customized circus tent built specifically for the Identity Circus by Sabrinaa Nightfire.

Please stop by and help me celebrate my first-ever public show. Feel free to spam all of your lists, IM all your ex's, re-tweet, re-Plurk, re-Facebook...well, you get the idea.

The address in Second life is http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Caerleon/31/217/22