by: Gary Hayes
Three more of my cross posts from the LAMP Watercooler I write/edit.
1 SOCIAL NETWORKING 101 FOR MORNING TV AUDIENCES
I just captured and uploaded to YouTube a TV show (yes they are still going!) this morning featuring Australia’s leading social network strategist and social network hostess with the mostess, Laurel Papworth – also occasional LAMP mentor and speaker!.
Also featuring Aussie K (who has 102 000 MySpace Friends) they both talk with David and Kim (always playing dumb’ish) on the Channel 10 morning show on Thursday 17 April 2008 about how people can become social network ’stars’, business orientated ‘netrepeneurs’ making money from niche communities and various techniques in starting out and public and private safeguards. Laurel’s blog post has more info. Here is the show in two seven minute chunks:
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Coc9sumHlqk[/youtube]
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMDOMd8hfM[/youtube]
2 YOUR BODY AS GAME INTERFACE
I bought a Vuzix VR920 (3D slick glasses) the other day and can now experience World of Warcraft and Second Life amongst hundreds of other virtual worlds in 3D at 1024 resolution. This has an in built 3 axis gyro type control – so as you move your head the view changes naturally – what used to be $10s of thousands is now $350 US and things will get better quicker. But of course to move around and interact with objects you still have to use that clunky mouse and keyboard – so along comes Mitch Kapor of Linden Lab with his cheap and cheerful 3D motion detection camera – and to show how fast things are moving this was a 3 week project! Now we can all stand up and get some exercise while playing our favourite games (in 3D too!!)
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2t52gkAwJq8[/youtube]
More from CNET copied below:
While the Nintendo Wii has garnered attention from consumers and media alike for its innovative motion-based controls, Linden Lab is experimenting with a new way to interact with its Second Life virtual world with nothing more than a Webcam. Codenamed Segalen, the technology makes use of 3D Webcams, such as the ones from 3DVsystems, to track user’s body gestures to let them navigate and edit within the environment.
On Bossut’s blog he notes that the project has only been in “real” development for a little more than three weeks. Second Life users looking to get their hands on it will have to wait, however, the 3D cameras in use for the project are still not readily available to consumers.
Similar efforts to use Webcams for gaming include the XBOX 360 and its Live Vision camera as well as the Playstation’s EyeToy series, although neither had the 3D hardware capability that will give Kapor’s Handsfree 3D its extra dimension of spacial control.
3 DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH FRIENDS TO BE A CYBER CELEBRITY
An interesting insight into the most popular social networkers.
Went to a MySpace developers pre-launch party last night and had nice chats with the Australia MySpace crew and visiting US developer leads (see previous post) who are here to catalyse some really cool ‘widgets’ and apps for a still pretty dominant global Social Network. One thing they gave to us was a really cool top 10 list of celeb status, MySpace users based on the number of friends they have but as well as the stats a psychographic breakdown of these social network stars and an insight into why they are so popular. Without going into lots of detail on the background of these folk for now here is the top ten list, with their myspace.com page, age and how many friends they have!
| Rank | Username | MySpace page | Friend count | Gender | State | Age |
| 1 | Hanny | hanny | 212 727 | F | WA | 20 |
| 2 | SophBox | sophie_rox_ur_sox | 203 768 | F | NSW | 16 |
| 3 | TanyaBitterSweet | bit3_m3_whor3 | 135 551 | F | QLD | |
| 4 | CrazyChick187 | crazychick187 | 125 789 | F | VIC | 29 |
| 5 | Aussie K | miss_tease | 101 055 | F | VIC | 20 |
| 6 | Rach! | chicksaxplayer | 60 846 | F | WA | 35 |
| 7 | LunaTix | luna_tix_88 | 47 186 | M | SA | 20 |
| 8 | CHeLsIA | chlesiaroselambet | 45 557 | F | QLD | 35 |
| 9 | ShaundaPrawn | shaunny | 43 802 | M | NSW | 27 |
| 10 | Dan (the heartbreak kid) | dansharp89 | 40 996 | M | QLD | 19 |
OK without going into great detail on the above stats either interesting thoughts. That most are female, obviously the better social networkers! The age is actually quite high for the MySpace demographic at around 24 for these top MySpace celebs. Finally given most of us are around the 100-1000 friends across individual networks those figures are actually suggesting that famous long tail shape, the curve with 20% really popular then tailing off to us normal folk – what do you think?
Other notable stats about the Oz MySpace phenomenom:
- 24.5% of Australian internet users uniquely visit MySpace
- 4.3 million hours spent on MySpace during Jan 08
- Three quarters of MySpace users are 18 and above, around 2.1 million adults
- Nielsen online now report that half of the whole Australian population have social networking profiles, and in the next year another quarter said they will be signing onto one
- Hitwise track social networking sites and MySpace is the most popular with 22.12% with YouTube at 18.25% and Facebook at 12.05%. The suggestion as to its popularity here is that it is linked to cultural interests across music, fashion, comedy, sport and film.
Original Post: http://www.personalizemedia.com/socionet-101-body-interface-and-the-cyber-celeb/
