Tag Archives: search

Metaverse Ink Search for OpenSims

opensim-misearch

You knew this was coming, and here it is: Metaverse Ink Search is now serving OpenSims around the world! This has been in the works for a while — in fact, it has been working for a while — but we kept it under wraps. A month ago or so, Eric Reuters wrote an article about it, but we still didn’t say much of how this whole thing works for OpenSim. This post explains it.

We worked with the OpenSim project in implementing the basic plumbing for search engines to operate in virtual worlds. We think this basic plumbing is the right support for searching virtual worlds, be them closed or open to the world wide web, and we are happy to see the grid-wide search project now using this same basic plumbing. The fundamental design philosophy is that the region’s data exposure to clients other than the viewer is a decision that involves 3 authorities: grid operators (if regions are connected to grids), region administrators, and parcel owners/content producers:

  • Grid operators decide whether the grid is to be closed or open, and the amount of openness.  For closed grids, their data should be off-limits to external search engines like MI Search, just like the data in Bank Of America is off-limits to Google. This can easily be achieved by setting region configuration variables appropriately. Those configuration variables can be set so that only a grid-wide search engine can access the regions’ data.
  • For open grids and standalone sims, region administrators decide whether to expose the data, the level of data exposure, and *which search engines can access it*. This last part makes virtual world search subtly different from web search, and for the better. On the web, search engines find web servers, and their pages, by following hyperlinks. All data reached is assumed to be public and, as such, indexable. This has caused a lot of pain on the Web, so let’s not go there. The idea here is that region administrators decide who indexes their data, and how much data is exposed to them. Data can be exposed to one or more virtual world search engines.
  • Finally, parcel owners and content producers decide what data is intended to be found by checking the “show in search” check box in parcels and objects. In OpenSims, that checkbox tends to be free of charge.

All this is accomplished by configuring a core module of OpenSim called DataSnapshot. The configuration is done in OpenSim.ini, in the section pertaining to the DataSnapshot module, and it allows the variety of behaviors described above. So if you want the searchable data in your region listed with MI Search, go ahead and configure OpenSim.ini for it.

A second optional module deals with serving images (see how it looks here). This module, called ImageService, is a region module that extends regions with the ability to serve images onto the Web, so that explicitly marked, rich 2D content can be shared within a grid and/or with the whole world. The only images served are those whose keys are exposed via the DataSnapshot module, i.e. images related to things marked for search. That way we avoid exposing the entire collection of textures stored on the grid/asset server. The ImageService module is available from OpenSim’s GForge. If you want MI Search to show pictures of your wonderful regions, go ahead and place the dll of the ImageService in your OpenSim/bin directory.

The DataSnapshot module has been part of OpenSim since April 2008; the ImageService is our latest addition. OpenSim region operators have been able to figure it out, even though there were no announcements whatsoever. So much so, that we now have hundreds of regions on our opensim index in a variety of places, grid-ed and standalones. We are really excited to provide the first glimpse of the emerging Virtual World Web!

SLBrowser Integrated with Built-in Second Life Search

SLBrowser search integrated with Second Life client

Forget the “profile web page” hack we tried… that’s sooooo last month. Now we can truly integrate directly with the built-in search. Here’s the scoop:

Linden Labs included a new search feature in the Windlight release candidate client of Second Life. At first it looked like another closed system, but then DrenBoy Opus discovered that the search page is configurable via an obscure setting. Since Diva Canto and I have been running our SLBrowser search engine for the last 6 months, we’ve been looking for better ways to hook into SL. We turned DrenBoy’s discovery into something useful by creating Open Search for Seocnd Life to augment the Linden Search with some search alternatives. The Open Search page gives you quick access to multiple search pages, including SLBrowser, Linden Labs, OnRez, SLExchange, and Google. The line-up is subject to change, but this is our current offering. You get all the functionality of Linden Labs new search, plus these other great search engines. We believe that search should be open, and that the best way to improve things is for competition… where the users choose the best solution, rather than being forced to go with once choice. If you have the new Release Candidate (see the link above) you can easily configure it for Open Search. Thanks to Bettina Tizzy and DrenBoy Opus for letting us know about this possibility.

16 sqm text documents

16 sqm words

People’s creative solutions for overcoming technical limitations and for gaming the systems to their advantage always surprise me. The whole idea of camping (“earn money while sitting/standing here”), is in part a consequence of Linden Lab’s built-in search ranking the results based on traffic. Clever people thought “Let’s pay people to be here, so that we climb up the ranks!” Camping is an emergent activity and it ended up being a major attraction of SL. My step son camps for hours while playing other games on the computer.

I recently found yet another clever solution for a feature of SL that can be limiting. First let me describe the limitation. The limitation is that while SL is great for creating 3D content, it sucks at capturing plain old 1D text and 2D pictures. You build a fantastic virtual village with great shops and products, you want to list them in Linden Lab’s search-in-places, and then you have only 128 bytes to describe your creation. 128 bytes is about the size of this sentence that I’m artificially extending so that it uses exactly 128 characters. There. After you’ve done all that amazing work, you probably want to say a lot more, and preferably in several languages.

OK, the first approach is to divide the sim into parcels corresponding to the different stores and points of interest. That way you have 128 bytes to describe each one, and you can list them all in search-in-places for L$3o/week each. That’s better if you can afford it. But for some clever people that’s still not enough. They go on sub-dividing the space into the smallest possible units (16 sqm), using each of those little squares essentially as word-holders, text documents, for search-in-places. The picture above shows one of those. That particular square is about DUNGEON stuff, and the description is (hey, googlebot don’t index this, please) “Adult Free Sex Nude Beach & Orgy Room – free sex girls pussy cock orgy porn escort sexroom sexbed bdsm fuck cum bukkake”. Right next to it, there’s the DISCO square: “deutschland germany tanzen deutsch werbung treffpunkt disco party club dance shop rent disco camping events contests sex girls”. There are several more: FETISH, ESCORT, BONDAGE, SHOES,… That sim has 137 parcels, 133 of which are 16 sqm text documents. :-)

oil on canvas

First post, and it’s under the category “Stuff out There” — interesting stuff you can find in SL with the SLBrowser search engine.

Yhrrah Wakawaka GalleryIf I were rich I would spend a lot of money on paintings. I like the way they make rooms come to life. In SL there is a large number of RL visual artists selling digital copies of their RL creations (I hope they’re theirs!). ?oil on canvas finds lots of those digital reproductions. There’s a large exhibition in Hobak, but there’s lots more all over the grid. The picture here is of a gallery in Elim. Some of these paintings are amazing, and I only wish I could afford them in RL…