Monthly Archives: June 2008

Active Worlds

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ActiveWorlds

Activeworlds Inc., headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts, provides software products and online services that permit users to enter, move about and interact with others in a computer generated, 3D virtual environment using the Internet. A 3D virtual environment enables users to move in three dimensions and  to create objects and structures which other users can see and move in real time.

The “Active Worlds Browser” runs on Windows and Linux. Active Worlds has two ways of entering its universe: as a free tourist or as a paid citizen. Tourist mode is Active Worlds’ version of a free account with several limitations. You can pay for a citizen for the price of $6.95/month or $69.95/year.

On June 28, 1995 AlphaWorld was renamed Active Worlds and officially launched as version 1.0. On June 16, 2008, Activeworlds, Inc. released the first major update to the browser in two years, version 4.2. The update was considered smooth and painless, being completed in a matter of only fifteen minutes, compared to the several days of version 4.1’s initial upgrade in 2006. Version 4.2 includes an enhanced graphics engine, captured web pages on objects, and, most notably, customizable avatars on a scale more complex than that of Second Life.

In 2008, Alphaworld is 429,025 km2 large, has more than 360.000 paid citizens, more than 200 million objects, more than 100 shops selling a wide variety of products and more than 1000 unique worlds to explore

i-dog, i-cat, i-cy, i-fish : Robotic Music Loving Pet’s

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Sega Cat

Sega Dog

Sega Pinguin

In 2005, SEGA Toys introduced a small robot dog called i-dog in Japan which played about 70 stored children’s songs and other favorites. A sensor on top of the dog was used to control the tempo of the song playback. The i-dog was also able to mimic the owners voice with sound that had similar wavelengths. The i-dog was licensed to Tiger Electronics, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc for distribution in the United States. Today, a complete series of robotic music loving pet’s is available in different colors and looks. i-pet’s can wear clothing and they react to music from an external source, such as an MP3 player. They feature seven flashing LED lights on its face and have the ability to ‘dance’ to the beat of the music. They also have a number of switches to react to user input. They have various emotions (which change based on user interaction) that provide different color patterns on its LED lights.

I-CAT, the musical feline is fond of rock, punk, rap, hip-hop, dance, techno and more! I-DOG entertains you with electronic lights, movements and sounds based on the music you play.  I-CY, the performing penguin, loves to dive into music and flap its flippers to your tunes. You make him happy with lots of music and interaction! I-CY communicates moods through musical riffs, movement and tons of blinking light patterns! It even squawks to let you know when it needs more attention! I-FISH dances by swishing it’s tail and spinning around.

To switch the I-DOG off, press the nose button more than 5 seconds.

McDonald iDog

In 2007, a basic version of the i-dog was manufactured for the McDonald’s corporation, with reduced functionality, different styling and without speaker or movement. The toy has a switch on its underside that turns it on, subsequent pressing of the nose button causes the lights in the head to flash varying colours.

Virtual iDog

The latest creation, I-DOG AMP (Automated Music Personality), is aivalable in four colors.  Plug it into your music player and get stereo sound – louder than before – when he plays your music through his built-in speaker! Control the volume with his tail and rock out! And with cooler moves than ever before, this doggone-good dancer taps his paw to the beat, bobs his head, wags his tail and gets his ears movin’ and groovin’!

A virtual I-DOG (digital representation of the new I-DOG AMP’D) can be downloaded from the Tiger Electronics website for MAC’s and PC’s. Virtual I-DOG dances in synch to the MP3 music files stored on your computer. Browse for a song using Virtual I-DOG’s interface and play a tune to watch him groove.

Blink 3D : a multi-user Web based 3D virtual worlds platform

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Blink 3D

Blink 3D®, a platform for creating multi-user Web based virtual worlds and 3D environments has been developped by Pelican Crossing. Blink 3D can be used for: Virtual Worlds, Games, Education, Virtual Heritage, Business, Online Stores, Machinima, Product Marketing and 3D chat.

Blink 3D is available in different editions including a free Ultra Lite edition. Blink 3D’s drag and drop, point and click interface makes it is easy to learn and you don’t have to program if you don’t want to. You can use 3D primitives to quickly build your world or you can import your models from a wide range of modeling products. If you are a programmer Blink 3D has the most extensive API available on the market today.

Version 2.0 of Blink 3D was released on June 27th, 2008.

Pelican Crossing was founded in 2001 by Clive Jackson. The companies initial focus was add-on products for Adobe Atmosphere. However with the demise of Atmosphere in Dec 2004, Pelican Crossing stepped into the resulting void with Blink 3D.

Furbies : the domestically-aimed robots

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Last update : December 2, 2013

Furbies

A Furby is an electronic toy made by Tiger Electronics (subsidiary of Hasbro Inc.) which was first shown at the International Toy Fair in 1998. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, the classical furby, which is 15 cm tall, originally retailed for about 35 $US. They were hard to find at the beginning and the growing demand for these toys drove the resale price as high as several hundred dollars in newspapers and in auctions. Nicknames were given to them, and sellers assigned rarity values to them. Furbies 1998 mainly had only 1 personality which is a calm and friendly furby. 24 Special Editions were produced, which range from all different genres of events.

Furbies 1998 can communicate with one another via a heart-shaped infrared port. Furbies start out speaking entirely Furbish, a language with short words, simple syllables, and various other sounds, but are programmed to speak less and less Furbish and more and more English as they “grow”. Simple electric motors and a system of gears close the Furby’s eyes and mouth, raise its ears, and lift it off the ground. The originals are still popular with many hackers as they can be dissected and made to do interesting things (see furby autopsy). In particular, their advanced audio capabilities and various sensory interfaces make them popular with the circuit bending community.

Furby Baby

In 1999, the Furby Babies were introduced, which are smaller than the original, have higher voices, and cannot dance. In the following years, novel furbys and furby friends were released, like Gizmo, Yoda, E.T. and Shelby. The third species of Furby, Emoto-Tronic, was released in August 2005. Larger than the previous version, the new Furbies have been upgraded with a more emotional face and a voice recognition system, enabling them to communicate with humans. One year later, emo-tronic furby babies and funky furbies have been introduced.

Furby 2012, also known as Furby 3.0, was the long awaited revival of the Furby series by Tiger. This serie was followed by Furby Party Rockers in February 2013 and by Furby BOOM in August 2013.

In 1999, McDonalds teamed up with Tiger Electronics to create McFurbys, their latest Happy Meal toy. These were small plastic Furbies in a variety of colours. Some featured limited sound effects and/or movement capabilities. There were a total of 80 to collect.

“Every furby deserves a home” is the motto of the Furby Adoption Center. Fun, chat, infos, artworks, photos, stories and overview of the furby generations are the content of this website.

IMVU : the leading global 3D community

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IMVU

Founded in 2004 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA, IMVU Inc., is an online destination where young adults meet new people in 3D. In public beta, the company has already reached major milestones including 20 million registered users, 100.000 registered developers, and $1 million in revenue each month. Members of IMVU have fun meeting new people with similar interests and expressing themselves through personalized 3D avatars, themed rooms, one-to-one chats, and the creation of new and unique virtual products. With over 1.5 million user-generated virtual items, IMVU offers the world’s largest catalog of virtual goods. Revenue is derived from the direct sale of virtual credits, which are used to purchase virtual products such as room decorations, clothing items and hairstyles.

Nabaztag “Aenderhues”

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Nabaztag André

Aujourd’hui mon Nabaztag “Ouschterhues” a accueilli un frère, le Nabaztag “Aenderhues”.

Signé par André, c’est  le premier love graffiti communicant, édité en série limitée. Célèbre pour son Mr. A, l’artiste André, né en Suède en 1971, dessine dès son plus jeune âge sur les murs de sa maison ou de son école. Arrivé à Paris, en 1981, la rue est devenue son atelier. André, armé de ses bombes de peintures dessine sur les murs des villes son icône fétiche, Monsieur A. Avec son grand chapeau, ses longues jambes, son regard en croix, son sourire à pleines dents, l’arrogant Mr A exporte de New York à Hong-Kong en passant par Londres, Berlin et Tokyo, son message d’amour et ses Love Graffitis. En 2005, il a signé une série limitée de téléphones portables Mitsubishi.

série limitée

Monsieur André est aujourd’hui gérant de boites-de-nuits très chics de Paris (Le Baron, Le Paris-Paris, L’Hotel Amour, La Johnsson etc…)  et il a créé un shop à Paris, au Palais de Tokyo, appelé BlackBlock. Ces lieux et tout ce qui ce fait de plus cool à Paris sont regroupés dans l’association La Clique.

CPE WAN Management Protocole TR-069

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The growing complexity of the different Internet access possibilities with modems, routers, gateways, set-top-boxes and VoIP-phones makes it more and more difficult for the end-user to configure these equipements. For these reasons a remote management of the end-user devices, called CPE (Customer-premises equipment or customer-provided equipment), by the Internet Service Providers (ISP), was developed. An application layer protocol for the remote management of these end-user devices, entitled CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP), has been defined by the Broadband Forum (former DSL Forum) in the technical report TR-069. As a bidirectional SOAP/HTTP based protocol it provides the communication between CPE and Auto Configuration Servers (ACS).  It includes both a safe auto configuration and the control of other CPE management functions within an integrated framework.

The Broadband Forum is a global consortium of a few hundred leading companies covering the telecommunications, equipment, computing, networking and service provider sectors.

OpenNab

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J’ai installé ce week-end le logiciel open-source php OpenNab en mode stand-alone sur mon serveur local wamp2 pour tester les interactions directes avec mon lapin communiquant Nabaztag Ouschterhues.

Grâce aux nombreuses contributions fournies par les développeurs et testeurs sur le forum Nabaztag, depuis la version OpenNab 0.02 jusqu’à la version 0.09, j’ai réussi à faire fonctionner le système. Il importe de disposer d’un fichier bootcode.bin (taille 59K) relatif au serveur HTTP de Violet et de désactiver la fonction Log() dans le code vl/includes/ping.php.

Le projet OpenNab n’est plus poursuivi par ses développeurs du fait que le logiciel n’est plus compatible avec la version jabber du serveur Nabaztag de Violet. Les idées et résultats des analyses effectuées dans le cadre de ce projet sont intégrés dans le nouveau projet open source OpenJabNab.

Virtual World of Kaneva

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Kaneva

The Virtual World of Kaneva is an Internet-based virtual world first released in beta form in mid 2006. It competes with Second Life, IMVU, There, Active Worlds, and the erotic-oriented Red Light Center. It is developed by Atlanta-based startup Kaneva, using the Kaneva Game Platform. Unlike the more generalized Second Life or the more communication-based IMVU, the Virtual World of Kaneva focuses primarily on virtual shopping and entertainment. In 2008, Kaneva added the ability to view videos both on web profiles and inside 3D televisions in-world. According to its own statistics, the Virtual World of Kaneva possesses over 800.000 members and over 10.000 communities.