The Praized Blog

(via the Washington Post)

HBO said on Tuesday it has acquired the rights to a short-form documentary shot entirely within Second Life, as entertainment companies increasingly turn to virtual worlds as a source for new content. “My Second Life: The video diaries of Molotov Alta” purports to tell the story of a man who “disappeared from his California home” and began issuing video dispatches from Second Life.

The popular virtual world, which has its own currency and a growing economy, has drawn millions of users who create alter egos called avatars and interact with people from around the world. HBO, the premium channel owned by Time Warner Inc, paid a six-figure sum for the rights, Douglas Gayeton, who made the film, said in an interview. Gayeton, who uses the avatar Molotov Alta in Second Life, said the documentary is scheduled for release in 2008.

Second Life has hosted dozens of real world companies in the past year, usually as a means of promoting products like cars or movies. However, Hollywood has been increasingly interested in using worlds like Second Life as virtual movie sets, a process known as machinima. (…) The pilot episode of “My Second Life” is available on YouTube.

What it means: There was a lot of excitement around Second Life in the last 12 months but it seems to be dying down. Wired even said: “The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it’s just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.” But I wonder: maybe the big potential currently is leveraging Second Life in the real life?

The Microsoft Virtual Earth team just announced their latest update. It includes a new rendered map style that they’ve been calling ‘hill shaded’ which gives their road style maps the ability to show elevation. You can see what it looks like on their blog.

In addition, all of these cities/regions have new or expanded Aerial imagery and most have textured 3D buildings and cityscapes

Canada: Hamilton, Quebec, Toronto (Montreal is in their next release)

Europe: Toulouse France, Eastbourne UK

United States: Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile, Phoenix (expanded), Arden, Denver (expanded), Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, Fort Myers, Tampa West, St Petersburg, Coral Gables, Cape Coral West, Pembroke Pines, Orlando, Hialea, Columbus GA, Jackson, Oak Park IL, Rockford IL, Ohare IL, Baton Rouge, Shreveport New Orleans, Metarie, Jersey City, Elizabeth, East Ruth, Newark, Paterson, Brooklyn, Niagara Falls, Portland (expanded), Nashville, Chattanooga, Milwaukee

What it means: Microsoft continues moving towards the creation of a virtual 3D world. I think most people do not see the full value at this point but I’m convinced we’ll be able to do local shopping in MSN Virtual Earth within a three to five-year period.

(via O’Reilly Radar)

Everyscape aims to be able to show you the whole world — both inside and out — from its website. It plans to do this with normal 2D photos. Using proprietary technology Everyscape will stitch these photos together and 3D-ify them. The result is a pan-n-scan world accessible through a Flash viewer.

When looking at their viewer you are presented with small, green arrows that direct you around their representation of the realworld. When you click one of the arrows you zoom though the 3D’d photo (a neat affect). It’s not just outside some of the arrows will take you inside buildings. Throughout the app you’ll see web links and info boxes in the form of small blue circles. You can currently check out San Francisco’s Union Square with the Everyscape
viewer.

To make their representation of the world Everyscape needs to know the lat-long and the orientation of the camera when a picture was taken. This data is used to stitch the photos together and place them in the world. The comparisons to Microsoft’s Photosynth are very obvious. The models generated by Everyscape are less CPU-internsive to generate and require less data, but are not nearly as detailed — given Everyscape’s goal I am not sure that it needs to be. (…)

Everyscape is launching with San Francisco this fall. They told me that they would have ten cities by the end of the year. On the homepage they list San Francisco, Boston, New York , and Seattle as coming soon. They claim that takes three weeks for them to record a city (the same number that MS quoted at Where 2.0) so expect the roster to expand quickly after the initial batch. (…)

Everyscape is still determining their revenue model. They can easily embed advertising and local search into their application. There may be other methods of monetizing their “eye-level search”. Real estate agents would probably love to put their houses up in a viewer like this. (…)

Update: Techcrunch has more information about the various players in this space.

What it means: I had seen the Microsoft technology last year at Mix06 and it really excited me. More players in the field means more opportunities for technology licensing (and better prices!). I think I’ve said before I’m a big believer in 3D visual city navigation. I’m convinced that it will become a new way to do local searches in the future. In the demo above, you can even enter in the Salvatore Ferragamo store!

Lots of things I want to blog about today (the Facebook f8 Platform announcement, Christer Pettersson’s presentation at the EADP conference) but, as I’m just coming back from Barcelona, I have a lot of catching up to do and am still jet-lagged. So, here’s a grab bag of noteworthy news that happened while I was away:

• Local Matters launched a beta version of LocalGuides.com, their Local-Social play (what I call Local 2.0). Perry Evans had shown me an alpha release a few weeks ago and I was very impressed with the concept and the site. They describe it as “a new approach to creating a “social-local” experience in the Local Search domain”. Perry adds: “The site empowers consumers with the tools to create, annotate, expand and share lists of local businesses
  and places – publishing their own personal local guides.” You can read more on Perry’s blog. I’ll get back to it in a few days once I’ve had the chance to play with it.

• Publicar announced the re-launch of their local search engine for Latin America at www.PaginasAmarillas.com. The new site powered by i411 provides business and residential information for 14 countries in Latin America.

• Directories.ch offers 3D views from selected Swiss localities (via EADP.org)

(via Forbes.com)

Seat Pagine Gialle SpA’s 2008-2011 business plan, due to be released on May 11, will include investments into the company’s internet activities and its international operations, chief executive Luca Majocchi said.

In an interview with Milano Finanza on Saturday, Majocchi said investments will be financed via the strong cash flow he expects from Seat PG’s activities in Italy, where also an ‘interesting’ sales growth is expected.

Majocchi said the re-engineering project at is UK unit Thomson will be brought ahead, and in Germany an internet business will be launched.

Turning to new markets, he said in that Turkey Seat is developing a joint venture with Dogan and in China it plans to reinforce its position.

In further comments, Majocchi said he expects a ’strong growth’ of operating margin this year thanks to the absence of one-off costs for the launch of new products and organic growth in Italy.

What it means: I consider SEAT PG one of the most innovative directory publishers in the world (and they are very fun to work with!). Can’t wait to see what they have in store. Check out their 3D view of major cities in Italy (similar to what I blogged about on Monday) to get an idea of their innovations online. Click on the 3D button and select Roma to see Rome’s colosseum. Very cool!

Just found this. Pages Jaunes, France’s official directory publisher, just launched 3D versions of Paris and Rennes. You can see top tourist attractions in beautiful 3D glory and you can search for businesses as well. Their web site mentions that it was done in partnership with Archividéo, the City of Rennes, the Institut Géographique National and InterAtlas.

What it means: beautiful execution. I am a strong believer that we will eventually navigate and find businesses through 3D interfaces. I think Pages Jaunes Groupe in France has taken yet another important step to continue locking up France’s online market via great innovations.