Ubiquitous computing, hardware hacking and Second Life. Given at XTech 2007.

1. Connecting First and Second Life
matt biddulph <matt@hackdiary.com>
www.hackdiary.com
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2. DOPPLR
DOPPLR
DOPPLR
Where next? 2
Where next?
I’m Matt Biddulph, CTO of Dopplr - the social network for frequent travellers. But I’m not here to talk
about that today.
Where next?

3. 3
quote: “The computing revolution was about digitising information. The wireless-communications
revolution is about making digital information about anything, available anywhere, at almost no cost.”
quote: “Huge amounts of data that were once impossible or too expensive to collect will become the
backbone of entirely new services.”
A disruptive change is occurring in the physical environment thanks to physical computing, pervasive
networks and abundant digital storage

4. 4
Bruce Sterling wrote about The Internet of Things in his book “Making Things”. In it, he invents the
work ‘Spime’ to describe the new kinds of active objects that are entering the world.

5. “A Spime is a location-aware,
environment-aware, self-logging,
self-documenting,
uniquely identified object that
flings off data about itself and its
environment in great quantities.”
Cory Doctorow, reviewing “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling
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Bruce Sterling wrote about The Internet of Things in his book “Making Things”. In it, he invents the
work ‘Spime’ to describe the new kinds of active objects that are entering the world.

6. 5
Spimes have a sense of place: eg, GPS
A Spime senses other things too. It records, logs, broadcasts.

7. 6
Spimes are Identifiable.
Spimes are Addressable, either ofline when interrogated, or over the network.

8. 7
An Internet of Things requires data mining and search
quot;I have an Internet-of-Things with a search engine of things. So I no longer hunt anxiously for my
missing shoes in the morning. I just Google them.”

9. 8
Mature CAD/CAM tools point to the way to easy personal fabrication of objects. They will enable a Ctrl
+P - Print for the real world.

10. 9
3D printers, enabling production on command.
The physical world’s closest thing to the internet concept of ‘free, infinite copies’
Works well with open source - send a cellphone design to Africa and let them modify it for local needs

11. “A universe of Spimes is an
informational universe.”
Cory Doctorow, reviewing “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling
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12. 11
Second Life is entirely UGC - it’s the myspace/youtube of 3D
6 million registered, 1.7million active users. 37,000 at midnight last night.
Seocnd Life objects can: move, listen, speak, change appearance, record data
As with “View Source” on the web, objects are “right-click to modify”
We can use this to prototype the future of physical computing.

13. “Second Life is like a dog's
walking on his hind legs. It is
not done well, but you are
surprised to find it done at all.”
with fond apologies to Samuel Johnson and Linden Lab
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Second Life is entirely UGC - it’s the myspace/youtube of 3D
6 million registered, 1.7million active users. 37,000 at midnight last night.
Seocnd Life objects can: move, listen, speak, change appearance, record data
As with “View Source” on the web, objects are “right-click to modify”
We can use this to prototype the future of physical computing.

14. XMLHttpRequest
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llHTTPRequest is the XHR of Second Life - for bringing in data from the web, and hence from the real
world

15. llHTTPRequest
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llHTTPRequest is the XHR of Second Life - for bringing in data from the web, and hence from the real
world

16. llHTTPRequest
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This is a Flickr mashup - pictures on the screen pulled in from the Flickr API

17. © IBM
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And this is IBM’s far more ambitious project to integrate sports telemetrics from near-live Wimbledon
games

18. 15
nature.com bring web 2.0 to scientists, in the form of:
Blogs
Podcasts
Connotea
Nature Network

19. 16
This science visualisation was produced with expensive software that is not collaborative.
Nature commissioned me to bring the workstation graphics into the Second Life world to open up
access to it.

20. 17
How to make a 3D Printer in Second Life?
Start with this carpenter’s helper - like a t-square and spirit level that broadcasts its own location. My first spime.

21. 18
Moving towards objects that make objects - early prototype with the wrong maths

22. 19
Using Quake data as prototype objects, because it has such low polygon counts. Early 3d games are
good for this.

23. 19
Using Quake data as prototype objects, because it has such low polygon counts. Early 3d games are
good for this.

24. 20
Movie of the quake character being 3d-printed

25. 21
An ideal knot surface, supplied by Ben Laurie of Google

26. 22
The points of the cell tomogram we saw earlier

27. 23
A video of the cell being printed. People are sitting on it!

28. 24
Second Life client released as open source. I modified it to say ‘mattb’ whenever I pressed a key, to
prove I could easily change its functionality. Coming back to this later.

29. 25
“IPv6 wants to transform everything in the world, even every part of every thing, into a node.”

30. 26
Atmel AVR microcontroller
Disruptive technology: cheap and scriptable
Compared to tiny Linux computers, it’s underpowered and has no OS. This is a good thing! Embed
them in anything, fit for purpose, low power.
Fingertip-sized
Chip costs 3 Euros

31. 27
Embed them in clothing!

32. 28
Arduino boards make the microcontroller easy to prototype with

33. void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // sets the LED on
delay(1000); // waits for a second
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // sets the LED off
delay(1000); // waits for a second
}
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Hello World - almost as easy as scripting
Documented online
Half an hour’s work from unpacking the arduino

34. 30
Arduino circuit board design is creative commons - make your own, improve the design.

35. 31
“If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It”
We modified a simple toy remote control car...

36. 32
... to have bluetooth control. It’s a mess, but so was my first CGI and now look at me. This is software
people making things happen in the physical world - “Right-click to modify the world”
Now back to Second Life

37. 33
See http://www.hackdiary.com/archives/000101.html for video on this page

38. 33
See http://www.hackdiary.com/archives/000101.html for video on this page

39. “It’s getting to the point
where it’s as easy to
get involved in this
world as it would be for
you to go home, open
Notepad, and start
writing HTML”
Matt Webb, http://schulzeandwebb.com/2007/hills/slides/?p=47
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Matt Webb is wise.

40. The End
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadya/54670483/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/244671618/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kengo/135795085/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevey/169199253/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/holyoutlaw/145168010/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinbell/109491910/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammersley/160737149/
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41. Thanks to
http://arduino.cc
http://tinker.it
http://v-2.org
http://nature.com
Matt Biddulph
DOP
matt@hackdiary.com
DOPPLR
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