Croquet News

The Perils of Open Source

2007-04-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

Croquet is Open Source. This has had both a positive impact on the project and in some ways a decidedly negative impact. The positive is the positives that most open source projects enjoy - lots of interest and creativity building around the system, visibility, strong academic relationships - it even helps allay concerns of larger enterprise customers knowing that there will not be a Microsoft-type lock-in with a single vender.

From the start Croquet was developed completely out in the open. Even the very first, barely useful versions of the system were readily available to download, deconstruct, and criticize. Nothing wrong with this - we invited it, and the project profited from it. The big problem we had to deal with is people were disappointed with how much of the system was or wasn't working. I have heard people say "Yeah, I tried Croquet a few years back, but it.... " (you can fill in the blank with a number of choices). I can understand why people would be irritated. Some critical problems in Croquet took much longer for us to solve than we ever thought they would, we had spent a minimal amount of time on UI, back-end infrastructure, performance, etc... Getting something like Croquet to work at all was a monumental task. We didn't exactly have a model to work from. We were inventing - not reverse engineering.

Of course, anyone that has ever developed a larger project has seen these kinds of issues. I certainly have dealt with them many times. The big difference was no one saw any of my project's warts except my colleagues and me. And we worked hard to remove, or at least hide them before we unveiled the final polished application. Croquet was different - people have been able to randomly sample the state of the project and critique it based upon that sample. Even today, the Croquet API is not quite a user-centric architecture. It is much more akin to the Linux kernel, looking for a front end to empower the user and a back-end to help users find each other and provide additional services. On the other hand, it is doing almost everything we said it would - and it really works well. We have even started a company Qwaq, Inc. based upon the same open source system that you can download today. We are getting great reviews for our first product Qwaq Forums, even though it is till in beta today.

What is my point? I have enjoyed this very open development process. I have learned a lot, and made a huge number of new friends and colleagues. Overall, it has been fun in spite of certain comments from people. I do think that next time - if there is one - I will probably hold off releasing a new system until it is a bit more mature and robust. In some ways that is sad - I think people that have stayed with the project from the beginning have learned a lot about how a complex system gets built and how it evolves. Most of this would be missed if you were to jump into a more complete end-user experience. On the other hand, it would probably increase the probability of success. In marketing, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Qwaq Forums is making a GREAT first impression. It would have been nice if Croquet had the same opportunity.

David A. Smith

3D Worlds and Interoperability

2007-04-14T12:45:00.000-05:00

I attended a working lunch this week at Harvard to discuss 3D interoperability. It was an interesting discussion. I think the biggest problem was simply the definition of interoperability. For some people at the conference, it meant as little as reconstructing someone elses content in another 3D environment, or maybe being able to somehow copy 3D data sets from one place to another. Others viewed it as being able to reuse and dress-up your personal avatar for shopping or for role-playing.

We even discussed the possibility of hooking Croquet up to Second Life via Croquet portals. This should be relatively straightforward to do - it would require a compound application of some sort, but since Croquet is already designed to hand off rendering to the adjacent Island (Croquet Islands and Second Life Islands are different kinds of things) when rendering through a portal, handing it to the Second Life client would not be much different. Coming back the other way might require a bit more finesse, as we would have to add some portal support to SL, and would have to call into an image based system. We have been doing something similar recently, so it is quite possible.

I think David Reed (one of my fellow Croquet architects) really nailed what 3D interoperability should be. When we share 3D objects, we also need to share their behaviors. In most ways, the visual representation of an object is its least interesting aspect. What it can do, and how it interacts with the users and the worlds around it, however is REALLY interesting and very valuable.

This is also really hard to do. Everyone uses different languages and scripts, and some - like Croquet - use a very different mechanism for enabling behaviors. Croquet has TeaTime and the concept of future replicated messages to manage its behavior. This enables a peer-to-peer approach to designing interactions, which otherwise would be near impossible. The only other solution is what everyone else has to do, which is maintain a central server and replicate the results of the computations.

UBC Joins Croquet Consortium

2007-04-10T06:41:00.000-05:00

The University of British Columbia (UBC), home of the recently established Arts Metaverse project, has just joined the Croquet Consortium! We look forward to having our colleagues from UBC join the rest of us in helping to create open source tools to support the unique needs of higher education.

Arts Metaverse is a 3D virtual environment based on the open-source Croquet platform. It is being developed under the guidance of Tim Wang and Ulrich Rauch in the The University of British Columbia's Arts Instructional Suppport & Information Technology unit. Arts Metaverse is intended to provide a way for scholars, teachers, students, and interested individuals to create their own virtual spaces in which they can interact and collaborate with others.

Croquet was chosen as the foundational technology for the Arts Metaverse project because it provides:

A powerful P2P network support. When Croquet runs, it automatically detects other computers that are running Croquet.
Portal technology that allows application sharing between different operating systems. So that you can play a PC game with your Mac friends.
Video conferencing and other communication tools without using server technology.
Ability for users to freely define the space being created, providing “land owners” (the academics) complete customizable controls of the environment. (e.g. not just define the gravitational force in the land).
Ability to back up the contents published using Croquet, take worlds on line and off line, and avoid many copyright issues.
A structured p2p Croquet network that is much more secure than a server based large scale metaverse.

Croquet SDK 1.0 Released

2007-03-27T08:01:00.000-05:00

Nonprofit ‘Croquet Consortium’ Releases Open-Source Software Tool Kit to Promote Collaborative 3-D Virtual Environments

DURHAM, N.C. – March 27, 2007 – A nonprofit consortium of academic and corporate partners today announced the release of a free software toolkit for developers to use in creating 3-D "virtual environments."

"We’re seeking to enable the creation of a rich series of interconnected 'Croquet worlds' where people can engage in productive collaborative interactions in support of learning and commerce – worlds that can be created, maintained and continually modified without the constraints of proprietary computer code," said Julian Lombardi, assistant vice president of Duke’s Office of Information Technology.

The Croquet Consortium’s new "3-D Virtual Environments Software Developer’s Kit" (Croquet SDK 1.0) will promote collaboration among far-flung research teams working on everything from cancer cells to hurricanes, as well as active learning among students and their instructors. These networked 3-D teams from research, education and industry will be able to work together across a variety of computer platforms and devices, from laptops to cell phones.

"This will change the way people think about software and computation, from today’s device-oriented perspective to a perspective of computation as a persistent, pervasive service," said Patrick Scaglia, vice president and chief technology officer of HP's Imaging and Printing Group.

Croquet 3-D virtual environments can support live discussion among worldwide collaborators who come together in "real time" within a 3-D virtual space. They may view, manipulate and revise documents, dynamic visualizations or large amounts of data from sources such as laboratories or supercomputing centers.

Added Greg Nuyens, chief executive officer of Qwaq Inc., "we have found Croquet to be a compelling platform technology for developing very large scale, richly featured and interlinked virtual environments. With the release of the Croquet SDK, we are excited about the new possibilities for using Croquet in our products and see benefits for developers everywhere."

For example, public health officials and epidemiologists across a country could use the Croquet environment to track the spread of an infectious disease by sharing a dynamically changing display of infection data. Similarly, architects and engineers could collaborate on a building design, or chemists and biologists could prototype different chemical compositions for a new drug.

The free kit provides developers with a flexible tool to create virtual spaces with built-in networked telephony and a "late-binding object-oriented" programming language that allows multiple users to jointly create, animate or modify 3-D objects and dynamic simulations. Developers can also import and share resources, such as 2-D web applications or multimedia content, from their own systems. Working together across multiple locations, they can change simulations while they are running and work together to create new applications – all in "real time."

The kit can be downloaded from the consortium’s website, http://croquetconsortium.org.

The newly formed Croquet Consortium is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting the widespread adoption of open-source, Croquet technologies for research, education and industry. Its institutional supporters include Duke University, the University of Minnesota, HP, 3dSolve Inc. and Qwaq Inc. Croquet was initiated by Alan Kay – winner of the Kyoto Prize and the Turing and Draper awards – working in collaboration with David A. Smith, Andreas Raab, David P. Reed, Mark P. McCahill and Lombardi.

Croquet Consortium Launched

2007-03-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Technology giant HP (Hewlett-Packard), Duke University, The University of Minnesota, and Qwaq, Inc. have jointly announced the formation of The Croquet Consortium, Inc., a 501(3)c non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting the continued development and widespread adoption of open source Croquet technologies for use in education, research, and industry. The launch of The Croquet Consortium coincides with the Consortium’s release the open source Croquet Software Developer’s Kit 1.0 -- as free software under the Croquet Open Source License.

The Croquet Consortium provides an organizational base for the Croquet community of developers and users. Open to institutional and individual members, the Consortium offers an avenue for academic, corporate, and individual members ensure the long-term viability of the community by federating their Croquet software development projects mobilizing distributed resources on their behalf.

With the launch of The Croquet Consortium, Inc., the development and adoption of scalable Croquet-based applications for use in education, research and industry enters a new, expanded, and highly-inclusive phase of multi-institutional collaboration. The Consortium 1) establishes a legal home for the Croquet community, 2) coordinates the management, definition and release of core interoperable Croquet architecture, 3) provides a clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of freely available Croquet open source software artifacts, 4) supplies a management structure for the solicitation and mobilization of distributed development resources, and 5) creates a focal point for outreach activities, including the Consortium Website, Annual Conference, training workshops, fellowships, and sponsored projects.

For more information about the Consortium, click here.

Qwaq Unveils Virtual Spaces Software For Secure Enterprise Collaboration

2007-03-13T20:43:00.000-05:00

Company releases Qwaq Forums, World’s First Virtual Workspace Application

PALO ALTO, CALIF. – March 13, 2007 – Qwaq, Inc., the creators of virtual spaces for the enterprise, today announced Qwaq Forums, the world’s only secure virtual workspace application. Qwaq Forums significantly enhances the productivity of distributed teams by bringing critical resources together in a virtual place, as if they were in an actual physical location, and providing them with all the tools and collaboration capabilities they need to work more effectively together. With Qwaq Forums, users can work together to establish workflow steps, create or review information in software applications, and evaluate designs in 2D and 3D, all while discussing topics using built-in text and voice chat. Further enhancing employee productivity, Qwaq Forums virtual workspaces are always available so users can return to a forum at another time to access and view changes that have occurred since they last visited the virtual space.

“Qwaq Forums is the first of several applications we’re building to provide enterprises with virtual spaces for real work,” said Greg Nuyens, Qwaq’s CEO. “We’ve received a fantastic response to the Qwaq Forums deployments in the energy market and by distributed industrial research teams. The virtual workspaces are allowing critical resources to collaborate more frequently and achieve better results.”

Qwaq Forums is easy to set up, use and navigate. Users can “drag-and-drop” content into a workspace from desktop and laptop computers, corporate servers or other locations. Information can be created, edited or reviewed using Microsoft Office and other productivity tools; corporate applications such as SAP, Oracle, or Salesforce.com; design and 3D modeling tools; web browsers; or Enterprise 2.0 applications. Qwaq Forums provides GUI controls that enable users to access remote applications and portals to other environments.

Unlike traditional collaboration tools, which only work while a session is in progress, Qwaq Forums is persistent, meaning it is accessible to authorized users all the time. Users can work with others in real time; enter Qwaq Forums any other time and see changes made by other team members since their last visit; and create or modify content, and hand off work to each other as needed.

“Our industrial research affiliates are scattered around the globe and Qwaq Forums enables us to easily bring these key players together in a virtual workspace,” said Charles House, executive director of Media X at Stanford University. “Qwaq Forums allows us to discuss and collaborate on critical research themes and make better decisions by reviewing intermediate research results more frequently.”

Qwaq Forums uses the Croquet open source software development environment, which enables the creation and deployment of large-scale, distributed multi-user virtual 3D applications and metaverses. The Croquet architecture, supported by the Croquet Consortium, provides synchronous communication, collaboration, resource sharing and computation among large numbers of users on multiple platforms and devices.

Qwaq’s founders, executives and advisory board members are all seasoned technology industry veterans and thought leaders with extensive experience working together to build successful companies. The Qwaq management team and key technical staff all share a deep background in developing and bringing to market highly scalable, distributed systems and have been involved in key industry developments such as graphical user interfaces, persistent networked objects, web services and Croquet. Qwaq’s team includes founder and CTO, David Smith, a 3D pioneer and chief system architect of the Croquet Project; Nuyens, former CEO of instant802, chief technologist at Inktomi and Xerox PARC alumni; and Vice President of Enterprise, Remy Malan, former marketing vice president at AtWeb and director at Sun Microsystems. Qwaq Advisory board members include Alan Kay, founder of the Croquet Project, winner of the Kyoto Prize, Turing and Draper Awards, and one of the earliest pioneers of object-oriented programming, personal computing, and graphical user interfaces; and Internet pioneer and Croquet architect David Reed.

Qwaq Forums is available immediately as a hosted service. A version of Qwaq Forums that can be deployed in the enterprise, behind the corporate firewall, will be available in the second quarter of 2007. For more information, visit www.qwaq.com

About Qwaq, Inc.

Qwaq, Inc. is creating virtual spaces for the enterprise that enable collaboration in ways that weren’t possible before. Qwaq Forums, the company’s first product, is a secure virtual workspace application that significantly increases the productivity of distributed teams by bringing critical resources together in virtual places, as if they were in an actual physical location. A highly interactive and persistent environment, Qwaq Forums enables users to work, collaborate with others, and identify and solve problems.

Croquet Featured at NMC 2006 Regional Conference

2006-11-09T20:19:00.000-05:00

Croquet technology is being prominently featured at The 2006 NMC Regional Conference at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas November 8-10, 2006. Croquet was discussed in a track entitled "Bringing Virtual 3-D Worlds to Reality" devoted to an exploration of emerging practices in the use of 3D collaborative spaces, including experimental worlds created with new tools like Croquet, commercial metaverses like Second Life and World of Warcraft, as well as the range of supporting concepts and assessment strategies.

3Dsolve Inc. Reveals Details on Advanced Croquet-based Data Visualization Tool

2006-11-08T20:19:00.000-05:00

3Dsolve Inc. has disclosed new information on Operational Views in 3D (OV3D), an innovative Croquet-based 3D visual simulation tool that enables the US Army to create scenarios describing communications networks in a modern battlespace environment.

Croquet SDK 1.0 Beta Released!

2006-04-18T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Croquet Software Developers’ Kit 1.0 Beta has been released. This represents the first complete public release of the core Croquet technology. Croquet is a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. It features a network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation among multiple users. Using Croquet, software developers can create powerful and highly collaborative multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations.

Croquet Technology Featured at NACS's CONTEXT 2006

2006-04-09T19:17:00.000-05:00

Julian Lombardi demonstrated Croquet as the ‘Digital Classroom of Tomorrow” as an invited speaker at the National Association of College Stores annual meeting in Reno, Nevada on April 8th, 2006.

Croquet Presented at Southern Graphics Conference

2006-04-06T19:16:00.000-05:00

University of Wisconsin Art Professor Michael Connors demonstrated Croquet as the potential future of the artistic critique at the Southern Graphics Council Conference on printmaking. The demonstration was based on Prof. Connors' classroom use of Croquet for critical discourse and ePortfolios.

Campus Croquet Users Win award at UW-Madison Showcase

2006-04-03T19:16:00.000-05:00

A group of administrative staff at the University of Wisconsin - Madison used Croquet to exhibit their group's work at a campus-wide exhibition of new ideas and best practices called Showcase. In their spare time over a few few weeks, this group built their own 3D multimedia wiki in this first-ever sustained end-user Croquet activity. The group was rewarded with a "Most Interactive" award presented by the Chancellor.

Croquet presented as part of the University of Maryland University College's "Future Watch" Series

2006-02-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

Julian Lombardi presented an invited lecture/demonstration of Croquet entitled “The Next Innovative Open-Source Online Learning and Teaching Technology” as part of UMUC’s Future Watch series on February 20th, 2006.

Croquet featured at ELI's 2006 Annual Meeting

2006-02-03T20:14:00.000-05:00

The Annual Meeting of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative featured a Croquet presentation by Julian Lombardi. The audience for this presentation included technologists and educators involved in planning, designing, and/or supporting teaching with technology who are drawn from the fields of information technology, instructional support, learners and faculty, librarians, and directors of learning centers. The presentation to a packed house took place in San Diego, California on January 30th, 2006.

Croqueteers to present multiple papers at C5 in Berkeley, California

2006-01-27T20:13:00.000-05:00

Alan Kay, David A. Smith, Andreas Raab, Julian Lombardi, Howard Stearns, and Mark P. McCahill as well as other key contributors to the Croquet Project will present papers on Croquet at The International Conference on Creating, Connecting, and Collaborating Through Computing in Berkeley, California on January 26th and 27th, 2006. The conference provides an international forum for technical discussion among researchers, developers and users of object-oriented computing (especially, Smalltalk, Squeak and Croquet), collaboration technologies and learning environments. This year, the conference features a series of special tracks on the future directions of Croquet.

Croquet Lecture at Stanford

2006-01-27T20:12:00.000-05:00

Lecture on the social and academic implications of Croquet technologies presented at the Standford Humanities Center Julian Lombardi presented a lecture on Croquet as part of the Stanford Humanities Center lecture series on New Directions in Humanities Research on January 25th, 2006.

Croquet Plenary to be Given at the 11th SLOAN-C International Conference

2005-11-15T20:11:00.000-05:00

Julian Lombardi and David P. Reed will co-present a plenary presentation at The 11th SLOAN-C International Conference on Asynchronous Learning Networks in Orlando, Florida on November 17th. The theme of the conference is on the Power of Online Learning: Mobilizing to Expand Community.

Croquet featured at Accelerate Madison business and technology event in Madison, Wisconsin

2005-10-13T19:10:00.000-05:00

Julian Lombardi and Preston Austin presented a full demonstration of the “Jasmine” release of Croquet at Accelerate Madison’s premier event for business and technology on October 13th.

Croquet track at OOPSLA 2005

2005-07-05T19:09:00.000-05:00

Croquet to be featured prominently at OOPSLA 2005 in San Diego from October 16-20. On Monday the 17th, there will be a full-day Croquet workshop presented by the Croquet Architects. Also, David Reed will give a keynote talk describing TeaTime. OOPSLA promises to be a great event for developers, users, and anyone else interested in Croquet!

Croquet to be Featured at NLII's 2005 Focus Session on Emerging Practices and Learning Technologies

2005-02-18T20:08:00.000-05:00

The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative's 2005 Spring Focus session on Emerging Practices and Learning Technologies (co-hosted by Rice University) will feature a Croquet presentation and discussion with Julian Lombardi and Mark P. McCahill. The Spring Focus Session explores new technologies on campus and the students driving these changes. Using learner-centered principles as a guide, the session will be used to evaluate emerging learning practices enabled by new technologies as well as alternative pedagogies. The audience for this session will include those involved in planning, designing, and/or supporting teaching with technology who are drawn from the fields of information technology, instructional support, learners and faculty, librarians, directors of learning centers. The session will take place at Rice University on March 8th-9th in Houston Texas.

Mark P. McCahill and Julian Lombardi to present at CNI 2005

2005-02-18T20:04:00.000-05:00

Mark P. McCahill and Julian Lombardi have been invited to do a plenary presentation on Croquet at the Coalition for Networked Information's (CNI) Spring Task Force Meeting on April 4th and 5th, 2005 in Washington D.C.. The title of the plenary is: Croquet: Croquet - A Collaborative 3D Virtual Learning Environment. Twice each year, representatives from the member organizations of the Coaltion for Networked Information gather for Task Force Meetings. The meetings are designed to explore new technologies, content and applications; to further collaboration; to analyze technology policy issues; and to catalyze the development and deployment of new projects. The meetings also seek to address s state-of-the-art developments and issues of interest to the membership, as outlined in each year's Program Plan. Interoperability and standards, developing and managing networked information content, and innovations in teaching and learning are topics that consistently engage CNI members' interests

Japan's NICT Signs Croquet Development Contract with University of Wisconsin

2005-02-17T20:06:00.000-05:00

In December 2004, The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT) of Japan signed a $200,000 contract with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop new educational uses for Croquet. "Private developers and now government agencies are beginning to take note of Croquet's possibilities," says Julian Lombardi, director of the project at the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW-Madison. "Our Japanese colleagues are interested in working with Alan Kay and our team to develop new ways for all of us to interact with network-deliverable information." Alan Kay presently serves as Senior Scientist at UW's Division of Information Technology.

3DSolve begins developing commercial software using Croquet

2005-02-14T20:05:00.000-05:00

3Dsolve, a North Carolina-based technology company, has begun developing commercial educational software using Croquet. Like 3Dsolve, NICT sees Croquet as a communications platform and service, available anytime, anywhere, from any device. Croquet is designed to run on everything, from a PDA through a set-top box. “What we’re doing here is very early work, less research and more development – bringing over our work into Croquet,” said Frank Boosman, chief marketing officer for 3Dsolve. “It’s obvious that Croquet is an excellent vehicle for e-learning, and lends itself extremely well to simulation learning.” Observers say that Croquet will change the way people think about software and computation, from today's device-oriented perspective to a perspective of computation as a persistent, pervasive service.

Croqueteers invited to present multiple papers at C5 in Kyoto, Japan

2005-01-28T20:03:00.000-05:00

Alan Kay, David A. Smith, Andreas Raab, Julian Lombardi, and Mark P. McCahill as well as other key contributors to the Croquet Project will present papers on Croquet at The International Conference on Creating, Connecting, and Collaborating Through Computing in Kyoto, Japan on January 28th and 29th, 2005. The conference provides an international forum for technical discussion among researchers, developers and users of object-oriented computing (especially, Smalltalk, Squeak and Croquet), collaboration technologies and learning environments.

Julian Lombardi and Mark P. McCahill present at NLII 2005

2005-01-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Julian Lombardi and Mark P. McCahill, have been invited to present a pre-conference workshop on Croquet at the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative's (NLII) Annual Meeting on January 23rd, 2005 in New Oleans, LA. Julian and Mark will discuss the application of Croquet as a learning infrastructure.