 |
Avatars United: Facebook For Avatars
Avatars United is a new community website that brings virtual characters together from all online worlds. Users can blog, send messages and upload pictures and movies. Users can talk about their next adventure in the games being played or boast of their past exploits; avatars can even talk about daily life in the real world. I was able to get an interview with one of the principals, Swedish developer Thor Olof Philogene.
(Avatars United sci-fi theme)
Technovelgy: Is Avatars United ready for use?
Thor Olof Philogene: The site is still in beta phase and we are constantly trying to improve it as much as we can, using the feedback we receive from our users. So write to us with ideas, we’re quick to reply!
Tech: How long have you been working on Avatars United? Who is working on it?
TOP: Avatars United is a project initiated in 2007 by a group of three real-life friends with friendships dating back to the early 1980s.
As such, Avatars United (AU) is a community website bringing virtual characters from all online worlds together. The project is built in recognition of the fact that strong bonds and close friendships actually can be tied within virtual spaces and has furthermore gone one step further in recognizing virtual personnas as persons in their own right by building a community for avatars only.
(Avatars United social profile page)
Tech: Do you read science fiction? If so, what authors and books do you like?
TOP: Though I love science fiction as a genre I have substituted a great deal of my time exploring future spaces in books to virtual world exploration in Eve Online. In terms of literary sci-fi background I would like to mention authors such as Gibson, Sterling and Stephenson among those who have influenced me the most.
As a side note, all drawings for the sci-fi, fantasy and social theme of AU has been made by a member of our team.
(Avatars United fantasy game theme)
Tech: What inspired you to create a site that works like Facebook for avatars?
TOP: Contrary to commonly held beliefs we think gaming is a social phenomenon and are hoping that AU will prove us right. By and large, we felt that the “out of game” social aspect of online games had been neglected. With tools to communicate with, find and track old virtual friends and share experiences from virtual realms AU wishes to stand out as a community highlighting the social aspect of life within virtual worlds.
Tech: Will you work with gaming sites and sites like Second Life to give access to the contents of your site?
TOP: Yes. Anything that can help us improve the user experience is good. Currently we already fetch data from various game APIs and we hope to extend the list in the future. If you manage an MMO-site let us know as we could include your news on AU. If you are an individual blogger you can already fetch your blog via RSS and add it to your profile page. So don’t hesitate to contact us…
The idea of avatars has been around in sf for a while; see the entry for avatar, from Neal Stephenson's 1992 book Snow Crash, which popularized the term and fixed its usage.
Find out more at the Avatars United website; they are looking to set up a world-wide community.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/26/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
Deepfakes Imperil Democracy (George Orwell, Right Again)
'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.' - George Orwell, 1948.
Inspired By Japan, Nap Pods For Hajj
It's always a good time for a nap.
'Snapchat Dysmorphia' Now A Thing, Say Plastic Surgeons
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.' - Bruce Sterling, 1985.
Bot Tweets Venmo Drug Transactions
An alarming item to find on your twitter feed.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Current News
Jaguar I-Pace Audible Vehicle Alert System For EVs
'Of course not a vehicle moved by means of internal explosions of a derivative of rock oil...'
Autonomous 'Fiberbots' Weave Large Structures
'It extrudes material like a spider.'
Birds Aren't Real - Wake Up, California! (With Bird Watching Guide)
'When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit.'
Self-Healing Material Pulls Carbon Out Of The Air
'... could seal the punctures.'
IRL Glasses Block Screens, Limit Vision To Real Life
'If you couldn't see the ads, how would you know what was fashionable?'
Testing The Single-Person Spacecraft
'...the lower part of the suit was simply a rigid cylinder.'
Shapeshifting Materials Transform By Light
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.'
Fully Automated Farm Iron Ox Hydroponics
'Had these machines in some incredible fashion been provided with brains?'
BrainNet Social Network Of Brains
'I used my implant to tell MILLIE what we wanted and she took care of it'
Phil Nuyttnn's City Under The Sea
'Under the lower roof there was no water, but a clear and luminous atmosphere...'
IONITY Opens First 10 Fast-Charging Stations
'Recharge the batteries... in almost every town and village...'
Superstrong Multilayer Metal-Graphene Composite Material
Negligible increase in weight increased material strength by hundreds of times.
Deepfakes Imperil Democracy (George Orwell, Right Again)
'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.'
String Art Courtesy Of Robot Artist
The number of different ways to span a thread between a larger number of hooks is astronomical.
Still Wondering If You'd Work For A Robot Boss?
'This is all coming to you courtesy of the simstim unit wired into your deck, of course.'
World's First Autonomous Tram In Germany
What's it like for autonomous trams when they're turned off at night?
