hide random home screenshot http://chiba.picosof.com/about (World Wide Web Directory, 06/1995)
Web+MOO=WOO! (About ChibaMOO)

WOO!

SenseMedia Publishing proudly announces The Worlds First Public Access Web Server and Multi Media MOO. There is presently a lot of interest in the World Wide Web. The emergence of reliable versions of WWW clients such as Mosaic for Macintosh, Windows and Unix as well as the proliferation of personal PPP and SLIP dialup internet connections is causing the WWW as well as the internet to grow at an explosive rate. In another part of the internet exist the multi user domains (MUDS). MUDS are often shunned as a simple games that threaten countless academic careers. MUD has grown up and one of the most exciting is MOO (MUD Object Oriented.)

MOO is no longer a game. MOO is a complete virtual society where individuals socialize and interact as well as collaborate to build and create things using a really simple yet powerful object oriented programming language. Recently, there has been a lot of effort to combine the media rich content of the World Wide Web with the dynamic and interactive environment of MOO, creating WOO (Webbed MOO.)

Public Access Web Server

SenseMedia Publishing opened "ChibaMOO - The Sprawl" to the public in June of 1994. The Sprawl is one of the first significant pieces of collaborative, interactive fiction designed specifically for the World Wide Web . More than five hundred people, from all over the world are creating a fictional cyberspace of over one thousand rooms, and several thousands of objects. The Sprawl is constantly changing and growing, adding roughly seven new participants a day. The Sprawl makes publishing on the World Wide Web as accessible to grammar school kids as it is to the largest of media mega corporations.

The Sprawl is based on the same core of code that LambdaMOO defined, enhanced to support WOO Transaction Protocol (WTP.) WTP enhances the standard MOO login mechanism to support HTTP requests. WTP means that every object, room and player description is automagically published on the world wide web. Every object may have a real HTML description and verbs can dynamically create HTML to be returned on the fly. This makes publishing on the World Wide Web as easy as creating and describing an object on the MOO. Browsing The Sprawl is as easy as clicking on objects you want to see, or exits to places you want to go. WOO objects may even contain inlined images and audio. Anyone is welcome to login to The Sprawl and browse or publish their own home page.

ChibaMOO

ChibaMOO consists of three areas, "ChibaMOO" - the internal development system at SenseMedia, "The Sprawl" - on the outskirts of Chiba and "The World." The Sprawl is based on a cyberscape of streets and paths through a virtual city and wilderness. Anyone may create a character here and publish their own home page or build whatever they like to be connected to one of the streets. The World, in contrast, is based on reality, and anyone can log in and describe their favorite place, or somewhere they have been.

All three WOOs feature full web support, as well as interesting developments in MOO to MOO networking and are publicly browsable with a WWW client. The Sprawl and The World are open for the public to log in with TELNET or another MUD client. SenseMedia Publishing will soon be opening Chiba.U dedicated exclusively to teachers and classes of students K-Ph.D..

Multi Media MOO

One of the most exciting aspects of the WOO technology is that is adds the rich content and diverse media types of the World Wide Web to what was previously a text only virtual reality. MOO is designed from the start to support group socializing and collaboration and provides an excellent platform from which to launch interactive World Wide Web applications. Rooms on The Sprawl can have real pictures hanging on the wall, windows to current satellite images and play digitized music.

The Sprawl provides some powerful tools for collaborative web browsing and publishing including a group hotlist where anyone can browse for cool web sites, or file a cool web site for others. Cruising through the WOO is done by clicking on exits in Mosaic. The WOO server magically moves your character in your mud client! Explore the web with your friends, hold user groups, take field trips or publish a class newspaper on the Web for the whole world to see. WOO technology aims to let all the individuals browsing the web alone start interacting and browsing the web together.

Other Web/MOO Systems

Other efforts to further integrate WWW and MOO services are ongoing at Jay's House MOO, CardiffMOO, Hypertext Hotel and WaxWeb. Recently Hypertext Hotel and WaxWeb have integrated WTP into their system.

WAXweb is the hypermedia version of David Blair's film, "WAX, or the discovery of television among the bees". This MOO-based server, developed as a result of collaboration between David Blair and Tom Meyer, dynamically formats the 560 MPEG clips from the film, 2000 stills, the text and audio in English, German, French and Japanese, as well as additional material contributed by worldwide collaborators. Forms-based authoring tools let anyone add comments, links, and nodes to the hypermedia, while the MOO lets you talk with other readers or build whole new sections as you walk through the film.

Conclusion

WOO is cool because it opens up WWW publishing to a whole new level of internet users. WOO combines HTML publishing with MOO programming to create a dynamic, interactive, publishing system simple enough yet powerful enough for professionals and kids alike. woo woo!

Credits

The WOO concept was conceived at Picosof Systems, Santa Cruz, CA by Samuel Latt Epstein and Jay Campbell. Paul Kautz, Robert Armstrong and the Wizards of ChibaMOO are responsible for the continued and excellent development of this collaborative integrated media development effort. Rocker, Edge, Ashley, Paul, Crag, Fabuley, NetBlazer, Neuro, et al. Special thanks to Jay Carlson and the folks at JHM as well as Andrew Wilson of CardiffMOO.

Icons: SenseMedia (C) Picosof, Neuromancer (C) W. Gibson, Computer Lib (C) T. Nelson, Wax (C) D. Blair. In no way should the autograph be considered an endorsement, its just cool.

Picosof Systems, est. 1986 is a media and software development company and Node #0 for SenseMedia, providing flat rate unlimited/no idle PPP or SLIP to Santa Cruz, CA for $20/month as well as unique and affordable solutions for WWW publishing. SenseMedia can be reached at 408.335.9400.

Samuel Latt Epstein
Director, Technology - Picosof Systems
Director, Network Services - SenseMedia

Web + MOO = WOO! / Author: Samuel Latt Epstein / Date: 16 AUG 94 / sm@picosof.com
Copyright (C) 1994 Picosof Systems.