Truth & Beauty Lab Answer Board

The latest creation from the Truth & Beauty Lab, the Answer Board, was released yesterday 18-March-2012. The Answer Board is a Pandorabot based rotating sign that provides answers to just about any question or topic one can think of. The board responds to local chat and provides its answers from, first, Wikipedia if it finds a matching article then Wolfram Alpha if no Wikipedia article is found then AI chat from pandorabots.com if no Wolfram Alpha answer is found.

The Answer Board is preconfigured and requires no setup other than rezzing, positioning, and resizing if desired. It uses a shared Wolfram Alpha Application ID which gives the board access to Wolfram Alpha but on a shared basis with a limit of 2000 queries per month. Therefore, it is recommended that the owner of an Answer Board register for their own Wolfram Alpha Application ID at http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/

Although ready to use out-of-the-box, the Answer Board can be extensively customized. A detailed Owners Manual is provided and available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats. Non-owner users who touch the Answer Board receive a User Guide which is also available in PDF, Office, and OpenOffice formats.

The Answer Board can provide information on just about any topic due to the wealth of information available via the combined resources of Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. Based on the recently released Pandorabot V7 technology, the Answer Board can automatically detect the user's language and query that language Wikipedia. Language detection is provided for Nihongo, Russkiy, Nederlands, Português, Polski, Italiano, Español, Français, Deutsch or English. It is the smartest scripted agent in Second Life.

In addition, the Answer Board can be enabled as a Greeter to detect and greet new arrivals, deliver notecards and landmarks, and emit a wide variety of particle displays. There is an extensive command set available to the owner and an easy to use dialog menu. The Answer Board is available for L$395 on the Second Life Marketplace at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Truth-Beauty-Lab-Answer-Board/3304679

Here's what the Answer Board looks like:

New Truth & Beauty Lab Products 2/2012

The Truth & Beauty Lab (formerly Restless Studio) would like to inform you of some new products that may be useful, interesting, fun, entertaining, or otherwise of value.

Smart Rings and Smart Cuffs - http://bit.ly/y1hNrX

Stylishly textured in gold or silver, this line of single sculpted prim Smart Jewelry from the Truth & Beauty Lab can query Wikipedia, provide answers from Wolfram Alpha, emit a wide variety of particle displays, animate your avatar during particle displays, scan the area for objects and avatars, and target an object or avatar with a particle beam. One advantage of owning a Smart Ring or Smart Cuff is that, since the items are worn as attachments, you can travel anywhere on the grid and your Pandorabot featured ring or cuff is there to command.

Menhir Internationalized Pandorbots - http://bit.ly/ysFh7w

The Menhir Pandorabot is a single prim object shaped and textured as a Menhir ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir ). Menhir Pandorabots are scripted to include all the features of the Truth & Beauty Lab Pandorabots and the textured single sculpted prim provides a realistic recreation of a Menhir. Preconfigured Menhir language versions are available in English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Polski, and Português. The language configured Menhir will query the Wikipedia in that language, understanding that language chat and responding in that language when possible.

Smart Dance Pole & Smart Tip Jar Combo Pack - http://bit.ly/rMzxle

Automatically login an avatar and have it automatically start pole dancing, chatting, quoting Wikipedia, greeting new arrivals, delivering notecards and landmarks, monitoring and responding to group chat, and more. A super smart pole dance bot! The Truth & Beauty Lab Smart Dance Pole is scripted with the Pandorabot METAbolt Add-On and configured for use as a dance pole. It is an artificially intelligent dance pole and integrates with the Smart Tip Jar, accepting tips, triggering a pole dancing bot to undress, emote, change outfits, and interact with your visitors. Using an integrated Smart Dance Pole and Smart Tip Jar allows you to maintain an artificially intelligent pole dancing bot avatar who accepts tips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year round without monthly fees or hourly charges. The Smart Tip Jar can automatically trigger your dance pole bot avatar to undress when a tip threshold is reached and get dressed after a specified duration. NOTE: The Smart Tip Jar splits all tips - 90% going to the owner and 10% going to the Truth & Beauty Lab.

T3-M4 Scanning Follower Droid - http://bit.ly/zj69hQ

The Truth & Beauty Lab T3-M4 Scanning Follower will follow its owner at a configurable offset and can be controlled via a dialog menu interface. Included in its features is the ability to scan the area for objects and avatars then assemble and display a report which includes statistics on the resource consumption of the detected objects and avatars. The T3-M4 Scanning Follower can fire a laser at selected avatars or detected objects/avatars from one of its scans. It also makes cute bot sounds. The boxed product includes preconfigured Scanning Followers - two T3-M4 Astromech Droids. The droids are a realistic reconstruction of the T3-M4 from the Old Republic Star Wars era. The T3-M4 Scanning Follower integrates with the Truth & Beauty Lab Pandorabots so versions of it that chat, query Wikipedia, supply answers from Wolfram Alpha, greet arrivals, etc are also available in the marketplace store. A single prim Eye Candy Scanning Follower is also available for those who prefer to conserve resources and display cool visuals while providing identical functionality as the 39 prim T3-M4 Scanning Follower.

Particle Textures Display Heart - http://bit.ly/y0Fyaa

This single prim sculpted heart rotates, emits particle displays using the particle textures in its contents, and accepts new particle textures allowing you to view your particle displays easily and quickly. The prim cycles through whatever particle textures are in its contents. Clicking the heart prim steps to the next particle texture.

Truth & Beauty Lab Heart Follower - http://bit.ly/y4rPKK

This single prim sculpted heart rotates, follows its owner at a specified offset, changes textures, emits particle displays, and can be used to scan the area for objects and avatars producing a complete detailed report.

Second Life Haiku Generator - http://bit.ly/AjiqZ9

Rez this portrait of Basho, the famous Japanese haiku poet, and click it to get an automatically generated Second Life related haiku. Each time the portrait is clicked a different Second Life related haiku will be generated. The large collection of words and phrases used to construct the haikus is constantly growing and the haikus are generated on a server so you never have to update the inworld object.

The Truth & Beauty Lab Marketplace - http://bit.ly/xaFZ92

Many more new, entertaining, informative, useful, fun, and interesting products are available at the Truth & Beauty Lab Marketplace. Please visit https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/44210 and browse the shop.

Feedback

Do you have suggestions, requests, comments, criticism, kudos, testimonials, funny stories, etc. concerning any of the Truth & Beauty Lab products? Email missyrestless@gmail.com or IM Missy Restless and let me know what you think. I'm always happy to help if I can and many products ideas and improvements have originated with suggestions and requests from clients & casual encounters.

Truth & Beauty Lab "Heart Follower"

The latest release from the Laboratory of Truth & Beauty is a single sculpted 3D heart shaped prim that follows its owner, emits a variety of particle displays, changes textures, and slowly rotates. The owner can control some of the functions of the "Heart Follower" via a dialog menu interface. The heart can also scan the area for objects and avatars, producing a detailed report or targeting one of the objects/avatars for a particle beam. Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Available on the Second Life Marketplace for L$149

Rebranding as Truth & Beauty Lab

I am rebranding the Restless Reviews blog, Restless Studio (my inworld development and demonstration area), and my Second Life Marketplace store as "Truth & Beauty Lab".

I'll be focusing more on product reviews here and highlighting some of my newly released products. The Second Life Pandorabots blog will still be the primary area for info, news, and how-to's on Second Life Pandorabots.

Here's a couple of new Truth & Beauty Lab images to get you going:

Second Life Premium Membership plus I Rant at Cynical SL Bloggers

Gawd, I am so sick of reading all the negative blog posts on everything Linden Lab does. First off, I have no affiliation with Linden Lab and they don't even read what I write. I just think it is horribly misleading for established SL residents and respected bloggers to criticize every single action LL takes. They could offer free money (as they sorta do with money trees and the recent Linden Realms game) and these bloggers would call it unfair that hard working residents like themselves were being undercut by "the Boys" giving away money. In fact, the currently running 50% discount on Premium membership is very much "free money". Check this out.

Linden Lab is currently offering a quarterly Premium membership plan that includes a 50% discount on the first quarter. Signup for one quarter of Premium membership at $11.25. Assuming a $L250 per $1 US exchange rate, your one quarter of Premium membership costs approximately $L2812. Premium benefits include a $L1000 signup bonus for first time members and a $L300 per week stipend. Let's do some simple arithmetic.

One quarter is 52/4 = 13 weeks
13 weeks x $L300 per week = $L3900 quarterly stipend
$L1000 signup bonus + $L3900 stipend = $L4900 you receive
$L4900 - $L2812 cost of 1st quarter = $L2088 profit

Linden Lab is paying you approximately $8.35 US to try Premium membership for a quarter!

So, Linden Lab is giving away money and old bitter cynical Second Life bloggers are complaining. Not only do they complain about this 50% discount, they complain about the free gifts you get as a Premium member. Hahaha! Free gifts! So, I thought, these gifts must be awful if people are complaining about something that is free. I went to a kiosk and got my gifts and look! The couch is way cool:

Premium membership gets you a lot of other benefits too. I recommend the annual membership as it is cheaper in the long run. The quarterly membership 50% discount only applies to the 1st quarter so a year on that plan would cost $78.75 while the annual membership plan costs $72. Either way, it is a great deal with excellent benefits and you are supporting the continued existence and improvement of Second Life.

In short, Second Life Premium membership is a no brainer. Everybody should upgrade!

Email2IM - Practical Kinetic Art

One of the scripted objects I created and sell is Email2IM. This single prim object allows me to respond to IM's via Email when I am not logged in to Second Life. I find it quite useful and a great aid in allowing me to assist my customers. I use it almost daily.

Email2IM requires that the single prim object be rezzed somewhere with scripts enabled. I decided to make it something I would want to have in my home in Second Life so I added some texturing and a variety of geometrical deformations to the script. The Email2IM prim became a kinetic art object that is pleasing to watch and changes continually. Voila, art meets practical!

Here is a video of the Email2IM prim hovering over my house:

 The Email2IM Owner Manual is available in PDF format on Scribd. From the manual's introduction:

The Email2IM object enables the owner to email a message to a Second Life resident.The object acts parses incoming email and relays the body of the message as anInstant Message to the Second Life resident whose name appears in the Subject lineof the email. Owners of the Email2IM system are thus able to respond to forwardedIM's even when not online by simply sending email to the object's address with thename of the resident as the subject line.In addition, the Email2IM object changes shape and texture, acting as an art object soas to be pleasing to the eye while in use.

Email2IM is available on the Second Life Marketplace for L$195

Automatic Facial Animation HUD

I purchased a nice little automatic facial animation HUD made by Outy Banjo. Called "Auto Emote", the HUD consumes a modest amount of screen real estate and provides a fairly extensive set of facial animation and programmable trigger phrases. When not in active use the HUD can be minimized to consume even less screen.

The HUD includes over 300 trigger phrases and operates in 3 modes - automatic, click only, and loop mode allowing you to hold animations indefinitely and combine animations.

From the description on Outy's Second Life Marketplace:

With this HUD, you can mix facial expressions like paint. Great for models who need to hold a pose indefinately, in-world performers who want their mouth to perform dynamic movements during a performance, those who want a timed auto-smile, or even those who just want to make silly or ugly faces(Combining animations can make for some pretty crazy faces).

Auto Emote v2.0 supports 950 phrases, and you can edit them to your liking. The Auto Emote Trigger Phrases notecard contains groups of 50 triggers per facial animation.

Here's a  video I made of me using the Auto Emote HUD:

Available on the Second Life Marketplace for L$500

DJ Healer at BURN2

Last night I had a great time at BURN2 listening and dancing to a great set by DJ Healer Ladybird. Lots of Organicans were there as well as a cast of crazies - all dancing wildly. Here's a few snapshots and a couple of videos I took:

Become A Second Life Video DJ - My Video Playlists

Recently I've laboriously gone through all 26 video playlists I maintain and updated them - revising links that no longer play in Second Life, adding new videos & playlists, and removing videos that are no longer available. There are nearly 500 videos linked in these playlists so the process was tedious but enjoyable since I get to watch a lot of great videos while I revise the lists.

The playlists are formatted for various media devices in Second Life - the NHC Media Center, Damani MediaViewer, and Icarus V2000. These Second Life televisions allow an SL resident to watch YouTube videos, play movies, view streaming video content and web TV shows, etc. I maintain the playlists inworld for my own use, on the Second Life Wiki Media playlists article, and available for purchase on the Second Life Marketplace.

There are playlists for Cake, Evanescence, Green Day, Pink Floyd, Slow Dances, Muse, lots of female artists (e.g. Kat Deluna, Beyonce, Priscilla Ahn, A Fine Frenzy), Lady Gaga, Machinima, Trance, Fractals, Second Life music videos, Tech N9ne, Infected Mushroom, Weezer, U2, AC/DC, Guns N Roses, and much more.

Each playlist is a notecard written in that media device manufacturer's  playlist format. Simply drag the playlists you want to use from your inventory into the Contents tab of your media device. The playlists should then show up on the TV's menu.

What this allows me to do inworld is easily plan and create an audio/video set either for personal use or as a Video DJ. No need for expensive difficult to setup Shoutcast stream server plus you get to watch the video :) Some SL media players allow you to simply click "Play List" and sit back or dance for hours while the TV streams dozens of videos inworld. Others you have to step through the list manually. Some players allow guests at your event to sync their viewers with yours, others only support asynchronous play. I use the NHC Media Center as it is cheap, plays lists, and guests can sync plus it comes with a Media Dome replete with dance floor visuals and a VJ booth.

Let me know if you find any links that need updating, have any requests or suggestions, would like to contribute playlists or links to the wiki, or have any questions about how to set yourself up as a Video DJ.

Here's a video treat from my "Wow Volume 1" playlist:

Five of My Favorite Second Life Blogs

Recently Hamlet Au at New World Notes posted five of his favorite SL blogs. Hey, I can do that too :) I follow dozens of Second Life blogs so these are just 5 I follow. It's a little surprising to me how few people seemingly follow SL blogs since the number and quality is high. I guess Second Life is still primarily an inworld experience but I find a lot of products, clothing, events, and pretty interesting socio-political-wtf drama in the SLogosphere.

Here are 5 blogs I find extremely informative:

1. New World Notes - Hamlet Au was formerly an embedded journalist for Linden Lab and now runs what is arguably the best Second Life news blog or anyway, the one I plurk/tweet most often.

2. Daniel Voyager's Blog - Ok, well, maybe Hamlet's isn't the best SL news blog since Daniel's is arguably better. Daniel is also a contributor to the History of Second Life wiki article. Both of these guys seem to have excellent insider LL connections or anyway they are right on top of official announcements, events, and trends.

3. Living in the Modem World: Thoughts on Virtual Living - Inara Pey maintains one of my favorite technically oriented Second Life blogs. Inara's is not strictly a technical blog - she also posts on fashion, design, devices, events, and more. However, her tech savvy is excellent and she provides detailed easy-to-understand explanations of breaking technical news.

4. StrawberrySingh.com - Berry is another eclectic SL blogger, posting on fashion, tech issues, lifestyle, travel, and providing excellent tutorials. One of SL's best photographers, Berry's posts almost always include stunning pics. I copy her fashion advice often.

5. Shopping Cart Disco - this collaborative fashion and gossip blog is the home of SL Secret and the What I Like series, two of my favorites. SCD is a full service blog with posts on all topics written by a group of bloggers and contributors.

If you find it too time consuming or tedious to visit a bunch of blogs then you might prefer to use an RSS reader. I use Google Reader so that all the blogs I follow are aggregated into a single view inside my reader. It makes clicking through blog posts from all over much easier.

Photos and Video from BURN2 Press Day

I was invited to BURN2 Press Day, a preview day for press and bloggers to get a peek at the 2011 BURN2 installation. BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups, and the only Regional to burn the Man.

It's pretty impressive. Emulating the real world Burning Man, the festival is laid out on a playa and includes a temple, themed art camps, and of course The Man. I selected a Windlight setting of my own (Barcelona) as I thought it looked better - use your own judgement. You may also want to wear only necessary attachments, leave your huds at home, and reduce your script count as the playa can be laggy due to the complexity of the installation.

BURN2 is open to Second Life residents October 1-9.

Here's a video and a few photos of what I saw today - enjoy!

YouTube Keeps Us On Our Toes - Newly Revised NHC Media Playlists

I create and maintain a set of media playlists for several of the major media players in Second Life. One set, the NHC Media Playlists, I offer on the Second Life Marketplace for L$25. It's really convenient and kinda cool to be able to automatically play a series of YouTube videos on your land or in your club. Sort of like a Video DJ.

However, the videos tend to disappear over time or become unplayable in Second Life. Several things can happen to make a video disappear. The user can pull it or quit YouTube. YouTube can make the video unavailable due to Copyright infringement. But, by far, the most frequent cause of YouTube videos disappearing or becoming unplayable in Second Life is due to the actions of the Warner Music Group (WMG). Since WMG owns the rights to the songs recorded by artists under contract with them, they can get YouTube to pull them over Copyright dispute even if the artists do not object or actively encourage the free distribution and viewing of their music videos. All the artists can do is make the videos of live performances of their music available and most do.

That artists do not control the distribution and terms of use of their own artistic creations seems wrong to me. It seems like a crime.

The second most common thing WMG (and others, like Sony) do to "protect" "their" intellectual property is to disable embedding of the video. What this means is that you can watch the video on YouTube but the Second Life media players cannot play it in Second Life.

All this adds up to making my playlists go stale over time as they gradually are inundated with links that no longer work in SL. Recently I've refreshed a few of my playlists and that is the reason for this post.  I have updated my NHC Media Playlists product on the SL Marketplace replacing unavailable links with new ones that play in Second Life.

I will soon be updating the SL Wiki and inworld freebies I make available.

The Amazing Art of Marcus Inkpen at The Looking Glass

Sharni Azalee and Marcus Inkpen have created a beautiful art gallery and surrounding sim, The Looking Glass at Horizon Dream. I initially visited to see the artwork of Marcus Inkpen as featured in the SL Designers Challenge. I was quickly drawn to the exquisite artwork of J. Matthew Root, on display in the gallery. Astounded, I looked him up on the web and in SL. Duh! J. Matthew Root is the RL artist also known as Marcus Inkpen in SL. Anyway, the art is awesome. Here is a selection of snapshots I took of some of his art starting with the one I went to see, La Mer, a 64 prim glass violin aquarium with animated tail & fins (L$600):

The next two snapshots are a piece titled OPIUM (L$600)

Next is a piece called ESCAPE (L$600)

This next one is called SLEEPY FAERIE (L$600)

The next snapshot is of THE IMAGINE WIND (L$600)

Next we have DISCOVERY (L$600)

Finally, this one is called WATER LILY (L$600)

Truly amazing. Thank you Marcus Inkpen. Hey, did everybody notice how all the art (even the animated aquarium) is only L$600 ? That is a way great deal. Go to Looking Glass and look around.

Reservation and Payment System

I've recently added several new features to my Reservation Board. I received some excellent feedback from several board owners (especially Giovanni Benazzi) and have just released an update incorporating these new features.

The Restless Studio Reservation and Payment System is a one prim board that, when touched, presents a series of dialog menus allowing the user to select a destination/event, date, time, and class/duration of event. It will then accept payment to secure the reservation. Both the user and owner of the board are notified via Instant Message and, optionally, email. In addition to the details of the reservation being messaged, the board can be configured to deliver a ticket upon receipt of payment.

The Reservation System is available on the Second Life Marketplace and includes three pre-configured textured boards - one for airline reservations, one for event reservations, and one for escort bookings. The system is fully configurable and can easily be reconfigured and deployed in another context. Open Document and PDF formatted documentation for the Reservation System is freely available for review or download.

New features in this release include:

• Classes of Events (e.g. Economy Class, Business Class, First Class). The type of class can be configured. For example, an event class type of "Duration" might have values of 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and 90 minutes with different prices for each.
• Ticket delivery - upon receipt of payment for a reservation, a notecard, texture, or object can be delivered to the user. This can be used at the time of the event as a verification of reservation (e.g. a pilot who is not the owner of the board can confirm a passenger list). Tickets are No Copy / No Modify / Transfer.
• A "Price List" button has been added for easy quick review of a list of destinations/events/classes and their prices.
• A "Start Over" button has been added to allow the user to begin the reservation booking process over.
• Multiple bookings in a single session are now supported.
• Configuration notecard settings are verified. If you misconfigure the DAYS or TIMES setting so it doesn't exactly match up with the number of EVENTS then it reverts back to the default (all days, all times on the hour) and IM's the owner with a warning.

 What does all this add up to ? Well, according to Giovanni Benazzi, owner and operator of BENAIR Private Charters at Second Life International Airport:

[2011/09/16 11:11]  Giovanni Benazzi: you have the best airline booking available out there  :)

Uesugi Daishō Katana/Wakizashi from Needful Pixel

The Uesugi Daishō (大小), literally "big and small", is a Japanese term referring to the traditional pair of edged weapons of the Samurai. The daishō is composed of the long sword (Katana) and the shorter sword (Wakizashi). These weapons of the Uesugi series are Spellfire v4.0 "dual swords" scripted weapons. Only L$149 on the Second Life Marketplace from Needful Pixel.

 The package includes a sheath, worn on the hip, for both swords.

 The swords can be drawn and sheathed using either gestures or a HUD.

 Sometimes I like to wear the sheathed swords just for the look ...

but sometimes I like to fight!

A wooden stand to rez and display your swords is included.