Since launch, the Fabjectory Gallery page has been a single page with a the flash Flickr photoviewer in it. At the time, this was a quick way to get pictures onto the site without a lot of hassle.

Lately though, I’ve found more and more people that have never been to Flickr (and therefore have to download a flash component just to see the pictures) and / or who don’t have or like Flash, etc.

So, I’ve just finished combining

Lightbox image viewer 2.03 + Working with Files in PHP + How to create thumbnails with PHP and gd = Super Newly Redone Gallery

I’m really pleased with the end result:

- To add new images, I just FTP images to a folder
- The page automatically reads through the folder and subfolders breaking them into sub-galleries (Mii and SecondLife currently)
- Thumbnails are created on the fly by PHP+GD, if a thumbnail already exists it’s skipped.
- No flash components, etc.

It’s still got one minor issue with IE7, where a placeholder image is missing, but overall it seems to be working really well. If anyone sees any other problems with it, please email me at:

mike@fabjectory.com

Thanks!

Rapid Prototyping is the general term for the manufacturing processes that generate the figures and objects that Fabjectory turns out. Core77 turned up an interesting example of slow prototyping. Bees are let loose in a vase shaped bee hive and the end result is a very interesting mix of the artificial and organic.

As part of the previously mentioned ITE Expo that happened this past weekend in SecondLife, I was interviewed by the people of SLCN.TV.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but they did a great job of producing and editing the video. I’ve embedded the video below. It’s become apparent that I really need to practice speaking without the “ums” as it appears to have moved from a mild nervous tic to full borne um every um other um word um.

I added a Media page to the site, to highlight some of the places that have been nice enough to write about the Fabjectory service and the work we’re trying to do to bring rapid prototyping tools into the consumer area.

Today through Sunday, there is an International Technology Expo going on in SecondLife that Fabjectory is exhibiting at. The quality of the vendors and people they’ve been able to attract to the event is really great.

Products being offered range from ad-networks to collaborative tools to applications for machinma or audio editing.

Cool stuff.

ITE Event Slurl

Powered by ScribeFire.

One of the first Fabjectory clients: Virtual Bailey recently did a very interesting build of her real life workspace in SecondLife.

She used a camera to take pictures of her desk including her Fabjectory statuette.

So she’s now completely round tripped her avatar from:

1. A representation of herself in SecondLife
2. A miniature statuette of her avatar in Real Life
3. A miniature model of her statuette from Real Life into SecondLife

You can see the mini statuette to the right of the laptop in the picture below:

I’m thinking to make the weirdness complete, I’d need to fab a model of the workspace. Hmmm.

[UPDATE 4-18-2007] - Fixed the links to the Paper and Presentation below.

W.J. Proctor is a graduate student doing research into using Virtual Worlds as prototypes for real business. Fabjectory is mentioned in the context of a business breaking down the virtual to real world product barriers.

Random Interesting Statistics:

• 43% of people didn’t think they’d ever take part part in a virtual world
• 42% of respondents would go and purchase a real world representation of product they bought in a virtual world
• People who thought they may use a virtual world at some point in their life appeared to be under the impression that they would have a wider range of products in a virtual world.
• People who thought they would never use a virtual world thought the total opposite and that there would be a wider product range available for them in the real world.

Full paper and presentation:

Paper - Doc Format

Presentation - PowerPoint Format

technorati tags:Virtual, Worlds, Research, SecondLife, Fabjectory

Kevin Zucker is an artist who combines painting with computer drawing. I found out about him as his latest artists statement has a link to Fabjectory under the “Some Perils of Translation” section.

This is amusing to me for several reasons:

1. I’m apparently culturally illiterate enough to not know that such a thing as an “artists statement” existed.

2. The other links in the “Perils of Translation” block are fascinating: automated joke making, computer programs writing new Chopin, and I’m pretty sure my small efforts aren’t in the same league.

3. I’m still stumped as to what “Peril” the Fabjectory service is putting people through. I suppose if you hold to the notion that having a photograph taken of you could steal your soul, that having a 3d representation of your soul put into a virtual world and then ripped out and fabbed on a machine probably wouldn’t meet with your approval either.

powered by performancing firefox

Ian Hughes and his SecondLife “ePredator” avatar were on the BBC program NewsNight discussing “Virtual Death”. Ian’s written up a little about the experience.

You view the segment online if you live in the UK. Long live Fabjectory figures and their virtual death experiences.

UPDATE

Seems the messages I got about the video only being available in the UK were faulty. With some encouragement from Mark Wallace I was able to get it going.

Screenshots of Ian and his Fabjectory Figure:

Ian Hughes has now succeeded in further blurring the lines between his real and virtual life by dressing himself in RL with a T-Shirt first made in SecondLife and in SecondLife with a leather jacket first made in Real Life (both of which his Fabjectory figure is wearing). Oh yeah, and he dropped his head into Rainbow Six Vegas as well.

[tags]SecondLife, IBM, Fabjectory, Fabject, Virtual2Real[/tags]

powered by performancing firefox