My Skypecasts
Hey hey, only one day until ITG's first "mesh" event, whereby I try to combine both a party in Second Life and one in my apartment in real-life Chicago, using a clever low-budget combination of two Macs, my television, a cellphone camera, a WiFi router, a stereo microphone, Skype, Nicecast, and space on a streaming server. Whew! It's going to a miracle, frankly, if the entire thing ends up error-free; but it's the fun of the challenge, after all, that's inspired me to do it. Anyway, the way I've set up the Skype end of things is through what you should be seeing above; I've started a special "Skypecast" for the event, which will be live for four hours during the party itself. Anyone on the planet with a computer, speaker and microphone, then, and who has a free Skype account activated, can join this free Skypecast referenced above; during the party, then, your microphone will be as live as anyone else's, myself included, so that you can speak your mind whenever you want and have everyone hear it not only in Chicago but Second Life. We'll be limiting speakers to one at a time, then, during the performance-poetry part of the event, about an hour after we start; the steps above are also the way to perform at tomorrow's party, for those who want to do that too.
Anyway, don't forget that you don't necessarily have to be in Second Life to listen in real time either; those of you with iTunes, for example, can simply go to "Advanced/Open Stream" in your pulldown menu, and type in 'http://xltrax.com:8460' to listen that way. Of course, the easy solution is simply to attend via the grid; just hanging out on the ITG property [Yongdong 185/179/21] is all that's needed to hear the audio in that case, and with the opportunity to participate via traditional typing/chat as well. (We'll be running Second Life at the Chicago party as well, on my television screen; partygoers will take turns using my avatar to speak to the partygoers in the grid, as well as the audio option.) And hey, speaking of which, we even have a good four or five spaces left for the Chicago half of the party too! Live in the area? Seriously, I'm in the Uptown neighborhood, about six blocks due north of Wrigley Field; just drop me a line at inthegrid [at] gmail.com to obtain the specific address. I'll have WiFi, so it'd be great if you could bring your computer as well, so that we'll have one more option at the party for interacting with Second Life.)
In any case, things start up around 5pm SLT tomorrow (that's 7pm for Chicagoans), with performances taking place about an hour later. This is an experiment I've been wanting to do for a long time now -- to see what it would be like to add live real-life audience sounds to an event within the grid -- and I'm excited to see what the outcome's going to be. Hope you'll have a chance to stop by.