Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'second life'

Jan 26th is the day to start learning Silverlight

Adam Kinney — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:27:00 GMT

Of course any day is fine day but while tracking events covering Silverlight, I've noticed that January 26th is an especially good day to learn about Silverlight. There are three events this coming Saturday that include a lot of Silverlight goodness:

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter in New York - Even though the quality of the logo has degraded over time (I should send them an original), I don't believe the content has. This is a free one day event covering all the aspects of Silverlight 1.0: XAML, Graphics, Animation, Media, Developer Tools and Expression Tools.

Seattle Code Camp - This two day event is covering a wide variety of topics, including a few sessions on Silverlight. Sessions that have been scheduled include Uses for Silverlight 1.0 and Dynamic User Interfaces with Silverlight 2.0. There a few others waiting for a time slot including a session I proposed around the development of a Silverlight-based SideBar gadget. My plan is to center that talk around a new release of the XboxFriendsWatch gadget, I just need to finish it first :)

Second Life .NET User Group meeting - If you can't make it to New York or Seattle by Saturday you can login to Second Life and listen to Todd Anglin's presentation on Visual Studio Island. I had fun last time I was there and brought back a few screenshots.

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter Videos - And if you can't make it to New York or Seattle or wake up by 12:00 PM SLT to make it Todd's session, then you can still take your sleepy self to the Fire Starter video site. Heck you can go there anytime or even you do make it to one of the presentations above. Those videos are just waiting to be streamed to you.

Photo recap of Silverlight presentation in Second Life

Adam Kinney — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:36:00 GMT

Last Thursday I attended Brad Abrams' presentation about Silverlight on Visual Studio island in Second Life. The experience was unique including a variety of attendees (top hats, wings, horns, etc.) a flying presenter and vertically stacked screens.

Tim Heuer was not too impressed and due to some technical issues and general acclimation to the virtual world. I can understand though, if I had not been in Second Life before I would not have prepared for the experience. The graphics are not impressive, we topped out performance and the controls are not too intuitive ( I still have trouble navigating my camera).

But the potential is definitely there and the ideas really started flowing once I saw the giant wall of screens and then especially when Brad flew over to the Silverlight poster on the left side of the stage.

Above is one of the screenshots from the presentation. The full set is available on flickr.

Brad has own screenshots available as well as links to the demos and slides.

Ultimately I think the idea of virtual 3D presentations is fun and worth exploring and I'm glad we're dipping our toe in the water. I'll think I'll look for more Second life presentations to get ideas on how others are taking advantage of the virtual world.

Two upcoming Silverlight events in Second Life

Adam Kinney — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Brad Abrams posted last month about events taking place in Second Life on Visual Studio Island. After hearing about these, I added them to the Upcoming Events page on the Silverlight wiki. Then it got it a little weird.

Looking to spread the word about these unique events a little further, I jumped on to the Silverlight Group page on Facebook and added Related Events to let Silverlight Facebookers know about events going on in a different virtual world.

I guess its not completely odd. Its a bit like posting an announcement in one building to advertise a party going on in another building. It was just all so virtual.

Anyways, if you're interested the upcoming events are as follows:

Visual Studio Island presents: Silverlight and VB.NET
Amanda Silver
Tuesday, July 31, 2007 4:30-5:30 PM
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft/147/213/27/

Visual Studio Island presents: Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX
Brad Abrams
Thursday, August 30th, 2007 3:00 - 4:00 PM
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft/147/213/27/

Furries welcome.

Post SL meetup thoughts

Adam Kinney — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:49:00 GMT

So around 7pm PDT tonight I jumped into Second Life for the planned 10 party. We had some of the team there Laura, Tina, Erik and a little late due to technical difficulties Jeff.We had some fans of 10 show up and even some who had not heard of 10. At the peak I'd say we had about 10 people there (fitting total), but it was a good learning experience. We need a better place to dance. We need to update the video every day. Its actually pretty interesting watching a 10 video from inside a virtual world. Your avatar is sitting there on the couch watching real people on the big screen. The world flipped inside out.

It was fun getting to meet those who came, although we may have to meet earlier next time for those who came from the east coast and UK. I didn't even think to take snapshots, I was trying to figure out how to share and use the dang spaceship I brought (I figured out afterwards, very cool), but luckily Chris did. Here's a quick snapshot and he said he'll have more tomorrow. Hopefully along with a new Geometry Wars wallpaper, too.

Actually you should check out his site 360Style.net. Lots of nice Xbox360 wallpapers on there. Nice gallery UI as well.

A virtual meetup for the 10 team

Adam Kinney — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:15:00 GMT

Tomorrow night (Thurs. Apr 20th) at 7pm PDT, we're having our first planned event on the 10 island. The 10 island exists in the virtual world of Second Life. Laura and Tina are going to be there. Scoble said he'd even try stop by. Should be a fun time and offer us as the 10 team to virtually meetup with fans of the show and others who are just interested in what's we're doing.

But a meetup in Second Life? What's that all about? I've another entry coming up just on games and playing habits, but for this case Second Life works perfectly. Everyone can login for free, we've setup our own island (props to Eric Rice) and its pretty simple move around in and get started. The most difficult beginner task is changing your avatar to look a little different than the standard cookie cutter beginner body. But if you come to the party, we'll help you get started by giving you a free 10 shirt :)