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IBM, Linden Labs Call For Portable Avatars
destinyland writes "IBM just announced a push for universal avatars with Second Life's creator Linden Labs. Then they joined Google, Cisco, Intel, Sony, Microsoft, and Motorola for the first planning session on how to make it happen. There's already speculation that Google is working on a 3-D social networking environment incorporating Google Earth and Google Maps." Virtual Worlds News has up a copy of the joint press release.
At least we'll have open and standardized furry suits and dildo hats, now. Thanks.
While IBM, the Second Life Guys, Sun, and who knows all else want portable avatars, I from my company, Mightyware (annual sales: $78), thinks that Avatars should be proprietary and incompatible.
"Universal avatars mean an LCD approach to avatars, or a hideously complicated API, and to what end?" says, Stork. "Why not allow all developers, in the name of freedom, to make up their own kinds of Avatars...these things represent your -life-, and so, while an LCD approach might be ok for things like Java, they certainly should not apply to a digital representation of your own psyche."
Let's all agree that the privacy invading portable avatar nonsense is just that, and get back to the business of writing our own propreitary avatars...
This is my sig.
Yeah, there are going to be 1000 comments about why not just step outside? But I think it could be a great resource if I could step out my virtual front door and
Look to my left and see my neighbors blog and the books he's published
Look further down to see another slashdot reader living a few doors down
Look to my right and see the restaurant hours and menu posted
Look down the street a block or two and see what movies are playing
and of course... add a pink flag to any and all women living in the area that are my age, and have their social networking profiles set to single.
one persons utopia is another's dystopia of course but I like the concept.