The visualisation takes Twitter.com's public postings (called tweets) and displays them in Second Life as bubbles drifting up from the fountain. The bubbles float up under the influence of Second Life's physics. Set in peaceful gardens, within a pool of Koi carp each tweet bubble that rises from the fountain is a unique snapshot of individual thoughts at that moment in time. As each bubble rises, slightly different impulses ensure that they drift away from the Twitter Fountain as randomly as the tweets they contain.
The visualisation builds on previous work done by Birmingham UK based Daden Limited in taking data from the web and displaying it in Second Life. Such combinations of systems (called mash-ups) provide a very rapid way of creating new applications, or combining or looking at data in new ways. For example Daden have also depicted near-live data of aircraft locations around Los Angeles on their Second Life island Daden Prime.
“As Twitter entries are limited to 140 characters they are ideal for use in Second Life. Given our previous work with Google Earth we first thought about doing an implementation of TwitterVision (a map based view of Twitter posts) in Second Life. But then we decided to do something that could only be done in a virtual world.” said David Burden, Managing Director of Daden Limited.
David continued “This is an excellent example of the power of Second Life, and virtual worlds in general, in providing a shared visualisation system. For us the fountain is just a way of getting to people and organisations to think about how they could see their own data in different and unique ways”.
The Twitter Fountain will shortly be made available for sale on Daden Prime and through Second Life retail sites such as SLExchange.
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Notes to Editor:
1.Daden Limited is a virtual worlds agency working in Second Life and other virtual worlds. Our aim is to help you engage with your audience using some of the most interesting technologies around today. We offer 4 main services:
Inform - help you understand virtual worlds
Involve - build your presence
Integrate - connect SL to/from web services & real world devices
Interact - create virtual characters & chatbots
Daden is based in Birmingham UK. See http://www.daden.co.uk> for more information.
2.Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp. Twitter can be found at www.twitter.com.
3.Second Life is a virtual world with over 10 million registrations, operated by Linden Lab. See www.secondlife.com for more information.
LINKS:
The Second Life Demo can be visited on the Daden Prime sim in Second Life at 202,101, 24. The SLURL is:
http://slurl.com/
or Teleport to Daden Prime (find it under Places or Map) (Second Life required).
MEDIA:
Images are available at: http://www.daden.co.uk/
A video is available at: http://www.youtube.com/
