de-activ8 Nestlé

One of the new entries in Second Life earlier this month is Swiss dairy mogul Nestlé.

"Nestlé is a multinational packaged food company
founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. It results from a merger in 1905 between the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company for milk products established by the Page Brothers in Cham, Switzerland, in 1866 and the Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé Company set up in 1867 by Henri Nestlé to provide an infant food product.
Several of Nestlé's brands are globally renowned, which made the company a global market leader in many product lines, including milk, chocolate, confectionery, bottled water, coffee, creamer, food seasoning and pet foods...
...Some of Nestlé's business practices have been considered unethical, especially the manner in which infant formula has been marketed in developing countries, which led to the Nestlé boycott from 1977."

[Wikipedia]

It's been a while since I've seen a good build, and beforehand I had expected a good professional build, but it was a disappointment. The first signs were good... when looking for the island I saw it was a double-sim build and there were about 25 people present. So it's generating traffic...

It's prime focus is the Nesquick Quicksk8 Park, a more or less urban style skate / ball park with a chocolatemilky river. This is what generates traffic today: The skatepark has been transformed into a cemetary with a Halloween party. Along the river you'll find the Nesquik Graffiti Wall. There's a shack where you can get skateboards and some info on milk. And that's about as Nesquick as it gets.

The build looks quite nesQuick 'n Dirty... it's a bit chaotic and disjoint. The landscaping looks a bit erratic and cheap. The rest of the double-sim venue is split up in various resorts, rentals, clubs and whatever; these are the areas I flew past:

• Activ8 Beach Resort
• Activ8 Nightlife Complex
• Activ8 Martini Lounge

It's a double sim and it's just too much. It's chaotic. I'd not yet read KZero's remarks (spot on!) and expected something like Charlie's-chocolate-factory-ish or Ben & Jerry style.

Here's what Nic from KZero has to say:

But, there’s a serious problem here.

Who is the target market for Nesquik? Is it late 20’s to early 30’s (as the main age group represented in SL) tech and media savvy early adopters? Or is it young kids? Or
maybe it’s the mothers and fathers that actually purchase the product in supermarkets?

If the target is kids, then from a media planning perspective, quite simply it’s the right time but wrong place for them. There’s no kids in Second Life - try There or Kaneva, in fact, go even younger, into Whyville, Club
Penguin or Habbo.

If the target is mothers and fathers, then the treatment and execution of this project again is out of focus - ever skateboarded in Second Life? Or even wanted to?

Somebody please tell me if I’ve missed the point here!?

As the venue is called activ8, my conclusion would be to de-activ8. Sorry folks.

Anyway, if you'd like to waste your time, here's the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ACTIV8/128/128/0

YSL fashion without body

The summertime has been extremely quiet when it comes to new corporate immersions. Now summer break is long gone and I'm having a hard time keeping up. There's hardly been time to do some proper simspotting. Since we've been on the television meets virtual world meme thing in the past weeks it might be of interest to see what's exactly behind the Sera Korea sims. These are a bunch that might supporting the Korean TV drama series Que Sera Sera. The Asian invasion doesn't end here, there's another heap of islands shouting the name Samsung.

Yves Saint Laurent & Elle

Asia isn't my particular interest, there's others who keep a closer watch on the devs from the Far East; I'd rather keep an eye one European and American corporations. Since I've been running a streak of Fashion and Girlworlds it seems fit to note the immersion of Yves Saint Laurent, a well known French house of Fashion.

Blogging it is also logical, because I might otherwise forget this one is actually here. It didn't impress me and may fade out of memory soon. YSL's immersion has been centered around their fragrance "Elle", or as Nic Mitham from KZero reports:

"YSL is using a fuschia-themed island in SL on a tactical basis during October to promote their new fragrance Elle.

Marketing Director of YSL Fragrances, Thomas Lalague commented:
“Elle is geared toward “an active woman who is urban and contemporary, daring and elegant, attractive and bohemian, smart and sexy. A woman who is open to the world and who wants to express her personality.”

The theme of the island is the story of Elle using audio/video of the TV spot as well as rooms containng further information."

For a casual visitor though, this story is hard to find. Yes, there this big fallic bottle in the center of the island which is hard to miss, and it has an audio outfit. But on a rather casual stroll, I didn't feel tempted to pick up one and listen to a lengthy story.

I hovered around a bit to see what the rest of this purple-sim was made of, but the hallways are rather empty. Without you taking time to listen to their story, this sim has no body. If this sim is about the expression of a woman's personality.... I think there's a bit more to most women out there.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/YSL/128/128/0

Fleck evolution of notecards

On the same run I ran into Wakoopa (see previous blogentry), I ran into Fleck. Now this might be one to watch. In short, Fleck is the evolution of the notecard.

Where we needed hammers, chisels, enormous walls and tons of paint to let our friends know we saw a bunch of horses in prehistoric times We had to nail our thoughts to the wall - or door, needing lots of paper, nails and a hammer and risk being burned at the stake in medieval times

At last we got rid of nails and push pins as it is no longer appropriate in our western culture that women have a red spot on their forehead, so we invented sticky notes.

Now Fleck is taking it to the next level. We no longer need to put up reminders on the edges of our screen, we can comment directly on the website that drives us to whichever thought we need to hold.

Here's the Techcrunch website sampled with Fleck's annotation bar and comments.

Here's Flecks own vision:

Fleck.com wants to add a new layer of interactivity to the web. Fleck is inspired on a story written in 1945 by Vannevar Bush and an article titled 'We Are The Web' by Kevin Kelly. Vannevar Bush predicted a machine called the Memex that would allow people to surf from one information page to another. Some people say that Hypertext and the World Wide Web are based on or at least inspired by the Memex.
One thing that the Memex had and the web doesn't is the ability to add new content to every page it contained. After reading the Wired article by Kevin Kelly we decided to try to add a new level to the web by adding new tools that would allow its users to add information rather than just consuming it.

Fleck allows you to interact with pages on the web just as if it were pages in a magazine. You can save your annotated page for yourself, send it to friends or colleagues or use it in your blog.

You can start using Fleck right now. It's free and what's best: you don't have to install anything on your computer. Try the search box at the top of this page or add Fleck to your browser with a Bookmarklet or Extention.

The easy part, and quite usefull is the option to add your notes on top of a webpages and other people will be able to see your remarks. These notes are freely draggable and you can add bullet points. In the bottom of the screen you'll see the Fleck toolbar which gives you the ability to blog, mail or save history.

The technique we're talking about here is annotation and Fleck isn't the first to walk this path. There's TrailFire, Stickis and Diigo that put up competition. Fleck is easier to use though, and you don't need an account. Last but not least, it's last pluspoint is that it's Dutch ;)

TechCrunch blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick has this to say on Fleck:

I can imagine myself quickly adding questions to pages on a site I’m reviewing and emailing those annotated pages back to a company. They could respond immediately on the page, with no need to download anything or start an account
with the annotation service. I like that. I also like that those collaborators would have a list of all the pages we’ve collaborated on created for them automatically.

Wakoopawhat?

Yesterday I stumbled upon yet another Web 2.0 application, that looks cool, but really doesn't do much: Wakoopa. Okay, it does a few things.

Let's have a look:

"Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use,
and lets you create your own software profile. Ready for you to share with the
world. Why? Because what you use on your desktop is who you are"

Wakoopa is a little program you install from a slick looking website:

Once installed Wakoopa tracks which applications you use. Why? Because what you use is who you are so the site says. Why would I want to track what applications I use? Haven't we furiously tried to ban all sorts of trackers and other malware from our PC's?

Here's the next level: I can see which programs my friends use through the Facebook Widget.

I crossed out the face of the one Facebook friend who also uses this software. He's definately geek.

For what it's worth, here are my most used apps, including my background thingies. Now, this is a business tool. My boss will make this mandatory software and see what I do all day. Can anybody tell me why we would like to use this? Judging from the usage of Internet Explorer and Firefix I'd say probably around 15.000 people.

I must say: The website looks cool and slick, very professionally web 2.0. As far as website technology goes, it's a sound piece of work. The technology behind the app... the tracker is pure evil in my opinion. I'm going to ban this sooner or later.... (like the first time I'd start up strip-poker or some other 'private' application I don't want my wife or boss to know about - but probably sooner)

First European Machinima Festival

Right after the Virtual World Conference (10-11 october) there was the European Machinima Festival in Leicester ( 12-14 october). No less than 3 Second Life production went home with a price:

• BEST COMMERCIAL: ‘When the postman spits twice‘ (SL-Inworld Productions)
• BEST TECHNICAL: ‘Machinima Island‘ (la.interactive)
• BEST SERIES: ‘The Grid Review‘ (ILL Clan)

‘New World Wonder‘ byPlanet Video and ‘Everwind‘ by ARFV Productions were also part of the official festival selection. This year Second Life is rapidly gaining ground in the machinima business.

Number of Award winners by platform:

• Second Life: 3


• Sims II: 1


• MotionBuilder: 1


• Halo II: 2


• Half-Life II: 1


• 3D Game Studio: 3 (same machinima)

With 3 awards the machinima 'Stolen Life' was the big winner of the festival. The machinima's initials SL haven't got anything to do with the platform it was produced on. 'Stolen Life' was produced by the Australian company Nanoflix.

CSI (6): Zuiker explains

CSI (5) The Aftermath

It's saturday night. Just a few days ago we were all watching the grid with great anticipation to see what would be the outcome of the first CSI:NY goes Second Life show. There's many blogs out that that voice an opinion, but I'd pick out Ambling in Second Life over almost any other blog.

Here's Aleister's views:

As the hubbub starts to subside on the whole CSI:NY thing, I thought I would record some of the stuff that’s been rattling around in my head over the last few days.

My first reaction when I read all the hullabaloo coming out of the Virtual Worlds Conference was: “Meh.” However, folks with a far keener interest and knowledge of the entertainment and media industry were at pains to assure me that this was groundbreaking stuff, and that is was “game changing.” I thought I should wait and see. The impression given was that this represented a real leap forward in the pursuit of convergent media, and is the way of the Future. To quote Mr Zuiker, proud owner of the CSI franchise: “What’s the future of television? It is as follows: TV, online, mobile, and gaming.”

As for Linden Lab, CEO Phil Rosedale’s take, as quoted at Ugotrade was: “I think it is a great project. We don’t look for traffic for Second Life in general we more look for opportunities to present Second Life to people in a more obvious way to people who don’t understand it, or haven’t experienced it.”

So… a major leap in convergent media – and good exposure for Linden Lab.What could possibly go wrong?

The big risk we all knew about was grid overload, but so far (touch wood) this has not happened, in part because the invasion of newcomers simply has not happened on anything like the anticipated scale.

However, what I think has gone wrong is, frankly, the whole shebang. What I’ve noted, rather than a magical blending and blurring of the lines between reality and virtuality, is simply the co-opting of Second Life to act as a games
platform. A role for which it is particularly inappropriate – and for which CSI has no need, since such platforms exist already. Now, I’m not trying to be precious about SL here. In the whole wide metaverse there is clearly a large need for entertainment and, indeed, for gaming. But to be blunt, Second Life cannot offer the level of gameplay that seasoned gamers have good reason to expect.

And this leads to my next point. TV is an illusion, where it is necessary to tweak reality (and in this case, virtuality) in the interests of entertainment. CSI was not out to make a documentary about Second Life, and was bound to present it in a way designed to extract the maximum entertainment value. And this has led to 2 basic lies. First, that the Second Life virtual world is smooth, fast and beautifully detailed. This would be fine if newcomers weren’t then invited to come and try it out. The gulf between the TV version and the horribly laggy, grey, slow-rezzing virtuality cannot, to my mind, be called
“good exposure for Second Life”. The second lie is that Second Life is a sleazy game, populated by players. This lie was not necessary to the plot, and is the one with which I have the single biggest issue.

In common with many of the readers of this blog, I spend a great deal of time in Real Life extolling the features and benefits of Second Life and virtual worlds in general. Through this one piece of unnecessary scripting I feel like I’ve been thrown back a year in my own evangelising efforts; back to the days of: “Second Life? It’s just a game isn’t it? Full of sleazeballs and geeks.”
Again, how this view of Second Life can be viewed as “good exposure” I am at a loss to explain. This might also explain the less-than-impressive uptake of new accounts.

On a lighter note – I was tempted to call this piece: CISCO:NY. As I have mentioned previously, the grossly over-the-top “Ciscofication” was – to me at least – a complete turn-off.

I think Linden Lab have done themselves no favours here. It is not true that “all publicity is good publicity.” I am dismayed at the short-termism shown by Linden in going along with this farrago. Also, in handing over the source of the viewer to Electric Sheep we have the interesting situation where the open source code has been re-skinned, a few neat, new features added, and the whole thing seemingly locked up again as a proprietary product. Well that’s what I think.

So what did I get wrong?

The ciscofication maybe was a bit over the top, but here in Europe with tv stations like the BBC and public broadcasting companies in the Netherlands we do have a slightly different opinion of such blunt advertising. But seriously,

There's several blogs that have been negative over the amount of traffic generated by the CSI show. Well, it was aired in different timezones, people came in in several runs. And in the days after. True enough, these 16 million viewers didn't push the SL headcount from 9 to 10 million overnight, but it's too early to tell. There's a lot of speculation on how many came in. Prokovy Neva states (on the first timezone run):

"But the numbers of people on those sims, for the three
hours I watched them before, during, and after the CSINY show, couldn't have beat 5,000 concomittant, and no more than 20,000 max total arrivals. In fact, it's probably far lower."

For exact numbers we either have to wait for CSI or the Electric Sheep Company to come with traffic stats and onRez viewer downloads and compare them to next weeks' Headcount by Tareru Nino. I do believe though that the average number of concurrent logins is higher these days. I'm not saying it was a smashing success. The massive number of islands, the fuzz upfront made us expect a lot. Again, too early to tell. There may well be ROI's made, but not sure which. I hope it'll continue though. Haven't had time to start solving the murder yet, but I for one like the concept. Me liking something isn't a guarantee that it'll make you millions though.

Virtual CosmoGirls goes There.com

I just received a comment on The Office stars Second Life by an author of the Dutch "up the vortex" blog. I followed the link and took a peek. One of the most recent articles features another upcoming Girl-World: CosmoGirl. The American teenmagazine, which is also available in the Netherlands is partnering with Makena Technologies to build their virtual hotspot on There.com. Teen worlds seem to be the fastest growing in the industry.

Orangatility

A number of telecom providers have immersed in Second Life in the past year, including (Dutch) KPN, Vodaphone and T-Mobile. Now we've got Orange. As Orange is somewhat the national color of the Netherlands, some think it's another Dutch company. Here's a little from Aleister who sorted it out:

The company history is somewhat convoluted, but it was acquired as the mobile phone (cellphone) arm of French communications giant, France Telecom, in 2001. Since 2006 it has taken a broader role, as the global brand in front of many of the parent company's services - in particular, internet.

The folks over at Metaversatility are responsible for the build, and it shows. It is of superb quality. It is a double sim build which is very open and green. If I'd list the features of this island, you'd say it's nothing special, nothing new.

In this build you will find the usual stuff: Auditorium, workspace / meeting room, some info spaces and some spaces to chill. The quality of this build is that it's not all jammed together in a real-life office building but uses the option that a virtual world has to offer. The spaces are set up in an outdoor scene with lots of trees, water and small hills. You won't find a rooftop here and you can just fly in to wherever you want to be. For those who are still a little awkward with flying around, there are also paths that lead you to the various spaces.

There's a few things that are worth checking out. There's a massive sound sculpture blocking your path (should you choose to walk the path). There's also a hangglider if you don't want to navigate yourself.

The Orange venue opened up just yesterday with the following launchparty:

8:00 am SLT - Exploration of the island

10:00 am SLT - DJ Doubledown on the Lower Plaza

11:00 am SLT - Slim Warrior

12:15 pm SLT - Clint

For more on the orange buid there are excellent pictures at KZero and also a good story at Aleister's Ambling in Second Life.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Orange%201/128/128/0

The Office stars Second Life

Earlier this week (24th) we saw the worlds largest television enterprise, CSI, immerse in Second Life. On the 25th another popular television show featured second life: The Office

The Second Life Insider wrote this in anticipation:

Well ... at least Dwight is coming. Photos and info can be found on Just Jared including images of Dwight playing his identically dressed avatar. In fact, you can find the Dwight Shelford's avatar in search featuring a profile that proclaims his love of a variety of NBC Universal movies and shows, and his desire to "calculate the exchange rate between Schrute bucks and linden dollars."

Just Jared gives us a quick synopsis of the episode:

Check out new The Office stills from episode “Local Ad” Synopsis as follows:

“When the Scranton branch is asked to participate in a Dunder Mifflin ad, Michael seizes his chance to exhibit his creativity. Meanwhile, Dwight explores the online world of Second Life.”

Looks like JAM get it on this episode. And be sure to check out what’s on Dwight and Angela’s computer screens!!

The Office episode “Local Ad” airs on Thursday, October 25 @ 9PM on NBC

Defining the Virtual World Industry - input needed

Last week Nick Wilson started to try and define the virtual worlds. It's a pretty hard job to try and categorise this stuff. Currently I'm writing a few chapters for a (Dutch) book on Web 2.0 and emerging trends and am faced with the same question. Could you help out in making some educated guesses?

Defining the worlds

Here's some of the definitions I'm using:



Web 3D seems the most applicable generic term, but there is no such thing as a universal format for Web 3D and it comes in various guises, some more and some less likely to be used as a business platform.



Terms which are most commonly used are Virtual Worlds, Metaverse and NVE’s (Networked Virtual Environments). Virtual Worlds are not 3D by definition, there are many 2D platforms which are also considered as virtual worlds.

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users.[1]

The term NVE was first used by Gartner in a quick study on Second Life, but residents of various virtual worlds prefer to call it the Metaverse, as coined by Neil Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk classic ‘Snowcrash’



Another section of web 3D consists of the socalled Paraverse, sometimes also dubbed mirror worlds, since this world is most akin to our own reality.

The Paraverse Parallel Universe is a virtual environment that is based on real
world data such as GIS and satelite information that is overlayed with 3
dimensional objects representing the objects in the real space. Examples of a
paraverse include Google Earth, Microsofts Virtual Earth, Nasa's World Wind and
TerrainView.[2]

A large and booming business in the web 3D environment are the online gaming worlds, the socalled MMORPG’s (massively multiplayer online role plaing games) such as World of Warcraft, Runescape etcetera.



Finally, there are all sorts of variations and hybrids such as:

• Interverse A term used to describe a globally integrated NVE, accessible through a single common client and integrated by a common back plane.




• Intraverse A term to describe the 3D equivalent of the intranet, a private or corporate NVE residing on an internal network and accessible to users within that network environment only.




• Extraverse A term used for the 3D equivalent of the extranet which is privately or corporately owned and resides on a private network but accessible by one ore more organisation, but not by the general public.
  
  
  
  [1] Virtual Worlds definition by Wikipedia
  
  [2] Paraverse definition by Wikipedia

Sizing the worlds

Now it's time to get into numbers. A first excellent start by doing a raw headcount of registered users was done by Christian Renaud at the Virtual World Conference. Now let's see if we can split up some other things:

1. Networked Virtual Environments can be split up 2 ways: Online Gaming and Social network worlds. How are they divided? 50-50%?




2. They can also be divided by 2D and 3D, what's this pick 40-60%?




3. How much of Online gaming worlds are 2D, is that 40%?




4. How much of Social Network Sites are 2D, is that 50%?




5. What is the division between Metaverse / Interverse, Intraverse, Extraverse and Paraverse?
   
   I'm using Extraverse as term for corporate sites, like themed sites, Laguna Beach etc.




6. I'm also looking at our usage of the web. Like web 2.0 stuff we use it at three levels:
   







1. Personal (like gaming)



2. Social (like Second Life)



3. Business (like Qwaq or dedicated training platforms)
   

   What's the spread for these in Virtual Worlds?

   
   

Go Supermodel

Last week I already mentioned the fashion vw goSupermodel in the article virtual Girlpower. Today I ran across a YouTube promo. Here it is.

All said and done, now you don't need to check out yourself ;)

CSI (4) The Show

CSI (3): Flying High

The CSY-NY virtual scene has been set up on a 4 sim base, 2 orientation sims (east and west) and two crimescene sims (north and south). This setup is repeated about a 100 times to be able to hold all these CSI addicts coming in tonight.

At this early hour there were quite a few people walking around already and it took a little while before our gray selves colored up and we could proudly fly our virtual colors again. This doesn't bode too well for later today, after the show.

Here's the Crimescene:

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/CSINY%20North%201/163/51/23

CSI (2) Down the Rabbit Hole

Wednesday, October 24, 10pm et/pt

In this episode CSI New York is all about finding Venus Game:

On October 24, Detective Mac Taylor chased a murderer, Venus, into Second Life. She's on the loose, and her virtual body count is rising. Track her down before she kills again!

CBS has finally opened up their website to support tonight's multimedia show. Also in Second Life the sims are ready to rock. The CSI-NY - Electric Sheep Company gang put in an amazing 416 islands, good enough to hold about 20.000 concurrent logins.

From their website you can immediately sign up for your new flashy virtual alter ego. Of course not necessary for those already having their Second Life avatar. However I took a little peek and I must admit, I didn't go further than the avatar selection, but the Electric Sheep Company did a good show on the graphics. It has a slick look and feel.

I skipped the registration part and went on to step 3: Downloading the new 34 Mb On-Rez viewer, available from this location. The first addon to the default Linden Lab viewer is that aside from English and Korean it now has German and Japanese language support.

Okay, time to immerse

CSI (1) D-Day for Second Life

It's october 24th, which means D-Day for Second Life stability. Today's the day that CSI New York will immerse into Second Life. Among the Second Life establishment the hour of truth brings about mixed feelings.

Everyone with a media background is looking forward to this event with great anticipation and anxiety. By putting Second Life (and virtual worlds in general) right in the spotlight of the world's largest (US$ 6billion) television show, bringing it to the homes of 16 million people at once today is a day that could potentially change the future of both the entertainment and the virtual world industry.

Everyone with a background in testing, infrastructure and risk management is looking forward to this event, while holding their breath or saying their prayers (except risk managers don't pray, they'd have fall-back scenario's) questioning if Second Life is ready to perform today. A normal will see about 45K concurrent logins. What if an additional 25K out of the 16 million viewers decides to check out Second Life within the hour after the show has ended?

As usual, the early bird catches the worm. Here's part of Aleister's thoughts on tonights moment of truth:

There's not much to say about this really. In my view, it is an interesting experiment but the lack of maturity and stability of virtual worlds like Second Life means this is happening far too early. Perhaps in another 12-18 months.

We will see.As I don't follow the show, or have any interest in it, I am not best positioned to judge the merits or otherwise of the gameplay - which looks fairly
straightforward to my eye. I have to say that the in-yer-face shameless promotion of Cisco I find particularly jarring. But then, I like to be seduced by advertising, not beaten about the head with it.

The Proky Soap: Episode Metaversed

It's the Proky show again. She (yes she) is getting a habit of getting herself banned for carrying her heart on her tongue (which often is quite sharp and critical)

Here's Prokofy's account on Second Thought:

Nick Wilson (57 Miles) in Second Life, IM'd me during the IBM/LL
Interoperability meeting today and told me that he was canning my podcast, and banning me from his
island, group, and site. I had "gone too far" yesterday in telling a heckler to
fuck off in group IM, he hadn't liked my last podcast critical of the Sheep, and
I "wasn't good for his business". He couldnt' really point to any *content*;
just his own nervousness about the optics of metaversed.com Like the Linden
said, who confessed that I hadn't actually violated the TOS when I was banned
for calling Aimee's name "like a cheerleader," it was "a business decision".
Nick offered to give me the domain name he had registered and offered to put out
a cover story that he was cutting the podcast because "he had no time" lol.

Now, I don't fear Proky's life here is at stake, since she's always gotten through and keeps her course (which some may think to be a head-on collision course with disaster) and nodoubtedly will continue to put her worries to blog on Second Thought.

The thing is that Metaversed has been gaining a lot of momentum in the past 6 months, becoming one of the leading blogs and discussion panels on Second Life and the metaverse in general, partly due to the effort of Prokofy and her sharp analysis on the podcast show. Now, will Nick be able to keep up, or will this have a shakeout?

What sticks out is: "I didn't violate the ToS when calling out Aimee's name like a cheerleader". I wish I had been there. Prokofy seems to have a deep grudge against Aimee, as being top of her envied/hated Feted Inner Core circle and I can't imagine her actually 'supporting' Aimee like a cheerleader. For the record... you just don't go out there calling Aimee names. That's just not done.

Proky's FIC-list is a list of Second Life celebrities whom she calls haughty, arrogant and whatever. Aimee is many things, but certainly none of the above, at least the way I have gotten to know her over the past months.

Real Life Cities (11): Copenhagen

Huh? It's empty!

I really was under the impression that somewhere someplace I read something about Copenhagen having it's virtual counterpart. Am I getting clairvoyant?

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Copenhagen%20City/128/127/28

Does Robbie Rock?

There's a platform out there that has some attraction to corporations, but hardly known in the regular Virtual World Business, named Why Robbie Rocks.

Now it's pretty hard to define what exactly is a virtual world (see this discussion at Metaversed), but I think Why Robbie Rocks should be considered one, except... it doesn't really show. There's quite a bit of preformatted avatar pimping, but that's about it.

A feature on the website is the Elle Girl shop / site which uses WRR. As for serious business, also Dutch banker Rabobank (one of the few triple A rated banks in Europe) runs WRR and the latest is the Dutch One Campaign version.

The fun parts though is that there's web 2.0 integration. You can put your avatar on the (Google) map, push it to MSN spaces, MSN Messenger or embed it on your website or as a gadget on the ruling Dutch social network site hyves.

I haven't been able to see the full potential of Why Robbie Rocks, so tell us, why should we sign up?

Dragons of Autumn Twilight

It's not World of Warcraft, not even a virtual world or online gaming experience, but a plain animation that caught my eye today.

This is the Paramount announcement:

"Dragonlance fans -- We’re sorry that it has taken this long to get a trailer
out. We had been waiting in hopes that we could show you the final trailer but
unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. key talent issues etc) we
have not been able to cut the final trailer together and get 100% approval. Ever
since we showed this piece at GenCon and DragonCon there has been a huge demand to see the trailer so we figured it’d be best to show you the rough version
instead of having everyone wait even longer. We appreciate your patience.
Enjoy!"

It's been a while since I read the Dragonlance Saga by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, must have been somewhere near 1999 while I was working on my thesis "the Alternate Word" a study in correlation between bible, mythology and fantasy literature. It'll be fun watching the tale again. Really looking forward to it.

Also from a virtual world and gaming aspect I've been keeping an eye on Margaret Weis as she's got a new startup, MWP (Margaret Weis Productions - obviously) which is bringing the Battlestar Galactica roleplaying game.

see also the Dragonlance website here

Smirnoff meltdown

After a hard days work I needed a drink. Usually I turn to whiskey, but tonight I was invited to grab one of the last available Vodka's by Smirnoff.

The above picture was taken by TerryAnn Antonelli when the sim was complete. Now it's slowly fading away as global heating devours the ice. Only the ice castle still stands, but no one is really sure for how long. Today, tomorrow or next week this build may be gone completely.

The Smirnoff sim has been around for only a month or so, originally set up for the sole purpose of making a machinima (which isn't out yet I believe) and now melts away just as many many other things come and go in Second Life. At least in machinima and some blogs a bit of its memory will survive.

More pictures by TerryAnn Antonelli

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Smirnoff%20Island/128/128/0

Armani drops more than a stitch

On august 9 I wrote this:

Next stop on the mediterranean tour is the rumours of Armani coming to SL, supposedly at this island. If it's true, they will have to compete with several 'impostors' as there are many Armani, Emporio and other related groups and shops in Second Life.

Well, my guess was right. Armani has immersed at that location a little while back. This time I went to see what it looked like. The Armani venue is based upon it's Milanese main store on the Via Manzoni. The build looks solid, yet somewhat empty. It's only the Armani store, no further context. Even the subway entrance is there, but that's about it. Underneath no spectacular fashion show, just a big black hole.

Upon entering the store my line of sight was sometimes a bit blocked by various columns and walls. Even though the store seems quite large and well build, I'm under the impression that the scale is a bit off for a virtual world, perhaps a tad larger than the real life venue, but too small for this virtual world.

Now this is nitpicking of course. Every bit of criticism would have been out of the question when you could come to Armani in Second Life and buy top of the bill clothing. In the Real World, Armani is a wanna have commodity. In virtual world, clothing is considered to be a valuable commodity as well. Armani would probably have made it to the top of the traffic lists when it had opened up shop in Second Life instead of show. Buying exclusive Armani clothing to dress up your avatar would have worked. No other real life commodity has as much value in a virtual world than clothing.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ARMANI%20via%20Manzoni/128/128/0

NB: Allesandro Manzoni was a Milanese poet and author of several tragedies.

virtual Girlpower

One of the most targeted audiences for Virtual World and general online advertising has become the teen and tween girlscene. In the wake of tv-programmes like (America's) Next Topmodel and various makeover series this group has an appetite for fashion and beauty.

doll 2.0

By the end of october Red Chocolate will come with doll 2.0 which will have to put this Dutch startup ahead of compeition. Doll 2.0 has been developed with the watAgame software. This Danish enterprise is also responsible for girlcommunity goSupermodel, and recently received an additional 3,000,000 euro in funding. goSupermodel now has about 1,5 million unique visitors worldwide.

Girlz'own City

Another Dutch girlpower developer is CiC Mercurius which teamed up with Mindscape. Last june saw the beta release of Girlz'own City. Mindscape backs up the technical aspects and CiC Mercurius powers the look & feel from a marketing point of view.

Girl Classics

Other specialised Girly sites are Cartoon Doll Emporium, Stardoll, Girlsense and Barbiegirls.
Another Dutch site dealing with fashion and dressing up is Why Robbie Rocks which brings a beauty shop and an ELLE-girl special mashup.