Saturday, March 29, 2008

Brussels Airlines: Subtle and Smart

Hundreds of companies are trying to understand the Metaverse and find a use for 3D environments that has meaning to their business. Most of them have failed... for now.

Last year I stumbled upon the website and blog B-Places, which basically is a guide to the toprated places in Second Life. Second Life residents rate the places they've visited and the website shows the sims to visit. An excellent move, even more so if you know that B-Places is powered by Brussels Airlines, a Belgian airliner.

The B-Places formula fits neatly into the corporate communications which uses the B-.... terminology a lot (see inset of b-flex economy) and what do you do when you're an airliner and get down to the Metaverse?

Exactly, an airline's core business is to bring people from place to place. In the virtual world however, you don't need transportation. You can just teleport. Airliners have become obsolete. Yet Brussels Airlines knows that bringing people from place to place is just a means to a goal. It is actually about people going to destinations. So if you can't do the transportation part, focus on the destinations. That's exactly what the B-Places directory does.

Here's a short promovid on YouTube:




Here's a snapshot of the website:


Toprated places in Second Life are the Botanical Gardens, but also Rezzable's Greenies and the Caribbean are among the citizens favorites. To me this is a very succesful and creative way to experiment with virtual worlds. It isn't outright branding, but subtle and smart.

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exitSL Avastar Recap

The new Linden Lab Trademark policies have caused a row amongst bloggers and citizens of Second Life. Allthough the actual legal impact may not be as big as feared at first sight, it still is a fuzz and the manner in which in was announced has certainly caused havoc. The exitSL logo I created to express my 'frustration' made it to this weeks' Avastar (Issue # 67).

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Friday, March 28, 2008

More Japanese Intelligence

Yesterday I checked out a particular sim in the Japanese cluster, called Intelligence. It belongs to yet another Japanese employment company, residing on the Doda website. I can't tell you much about the company, as there was no English page on the website available.

Wikipedia wasn't much help either, as it only writes:

"Doda (Dogri/Hindi: डोडा) is a town and a notified area committee in Doda district in Jammu & Kashmir of India. Or Job change information site in Japan"

As said, the sim is setup in the busy Japanese cluster, next to the marvellous sims of Mirai and Suntory, and is crafted as a futuristic urban sim, which is strengthened by the skyscrapers from some of the other sims surrounding it. There appear to be two main buildings:


A number of smaller buildings and stands can be found across the sim. Some with information and promotional stuff, some with unknown purpose.

As for the jobs... in the two main buildings there are several signs with avatars depicting jobs and japanese advertisements. Inside the main tower, at the center of the sim, is an information room, which I'll call the 'warp core room' as the central information pillar reminds me somewhat of a Star Trek warpcore.


From inside the main Intelligence Tower, the 'warp core room' you can also teleport up into the tower to a room in which you can experience a job, in this instance a Chinese Language Teacher. You have to look hard though, I needed a little help from a Japanese friend to find the teleport. It's located in the 'warp core room', look for a blue door, click it and answer some questions.


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/intelligence/126/72/42

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

SEAT and Mitsubishi inSL

Just spotted in Second Life: Car manufacturer SEAT. Not much more to tell as the island is blanked out and inaccesible.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/SEAT%20auto%20emocion/128/128/0


And another automotive company (and many other things) is rezzing in Second Life as well, Japanese Mitshubishi Corporation is going six isle strong.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mitsubishi%20Corporation/128/128/0

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Failure to Ping

There's something fishy going on. I changed my blog layout last week and suddenly it didn't update my technorati ratings anymore. After tweaking a bit with the metadata I did get an update.... but it was a one time only. Now three days have past and no update.

The funny thing is, it does show the blogs that link to the recent articles, but still it doesn't pick up the latests posts. Yet my feedreader picks up new posts without any problem.

Well, it's back to the drawing table. For now, I'll put back the old design.

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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Eduverse Symposium videos online

Finally... they're there. The online video's of the Eduverse Symposium.


"After a considerable amount of time transcoding, uploading and and messing with WP plugins, I have managed to get the entire first symposium parsed and online. The videos are viewable on the “Symposia” page"

If you can stand the sight of me, pay attention to the first intro video, titled "VJ's intro" where I try to start up the conversation on Education in Virtual Worlds. I'd advise you to pay close attention to Dr. Jay Bolter on Augmented Reality and Dr. D. Danforth on the Testis Tour.

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AWE kicks off Easter Quest 2008

AWE - Active Worlds Europe, is keen on Quests. Every year they organise several questsd in the 3D worlds of Activeworlds Europe, and every time in completely different surroundings. This time, everyone will be looking for Easter eggs in different worlds, and gain points that may entitle you to prizes.

The AWE Easter Quest 2008:

  • Start: Saturday, March 29, 19:00 hours (Dutch time)
  • End: Saturday, April 5, 24:00 hours (Dutch time)
  • Prize ceremony: Sunday, April 6, 19:00 hours (Dutch time)

This Quest has something special in addition to the other worlds… There are 12 mazes you can only get through if you are good at maths! Every room contains Easter eggs with points, but you can only visit the next room if you got an A for the exercise in the previous room! It could be a good exercise to test your maths knowledge. (and Dutch, as all exercises are in Dutch).

Many of us know only the online demo world of Active Worlds that's been sitting around for ages. You can register here for a tourist account and walk around for a few minutes. Citizenship comes at a price, but as Activeworlds Europe celebrates its 5th birthday this year you get a free membership (2 weeks). You can extend this citizenship by converting the points you've earned during the Quest. If you're good, you can earn yourself a free year of citizenship or even a dedicated private 3D world.

What's the difference between a citizen and a tourist in Active Worlds?

Tourism Everybody can enter our Universe for free as a
Tourist. You can chat with other people, play games, win prizes and even build your own home in one of the public worlds. However, your options and choices of Avatars are limited.

Citizenship Our Universe contains many public Web Worlds
that you can explore for free as a tourist, although citizenship gives you more privileges. If you want to explore all these options, become a Citizen of Activeworlds Europe. This gives you a registered name, a large choice of
avatars, permanent builds and features like contact lists, instant messaging and private conversations in most worlds. It also allows you to open your own Web World. Citizenship costs €6.50 per month or €65 per year.

Is this interesting for you English folks? Maybe not. Maybe you're not interested in doing math-quizzes at all. But with a two week free citizenship, it gives you the chance to explore more worlds and options than the online free demo and explore a bit and see what AW is capable of.

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inSL Program - exitSL Fun

Logging into Second Life yesterday, a new ToS (Terms of Service) was pushed. As usual, you hardly read these things and click 'accept', but this one is tricky. Especially for bloggers.

The thing is... they've started being picky about the use of the Second Life(TM) logo. On monday the 24th, Linden Lab opened the all new Brand Center;


"With the Brand Center, we’re also launching the inSL Logo Program, which provides a new community logo for Second Life Residents. Display the inSL logo to show you and your brands are a part of the Second Life community. This logo may be used on your website, business card, promotional materials, product packaging, and in many other places where you may wish to promote your contributions to the Second Life world. When using the logo, be sure to follow the Guidelines for Using the inSL Logo."

Be sure to comply, and change your blog. You've got 90 days;


"If, after reading the Trademark Guidelines, you realize you’re using a Linden Lab trademark incorrectly, please use the next 90 days to change your use to comply with the Guidelines. For more information, see our FAQ. Signing up for the inSL Logo program is fast and simple."

Signing up for the inSL Logo program might be fast and simple, changing years of blogging is not, and, what does it actually mean to you and me? As James Wagner Au describes it at New World Notes:

The Lindens have announced a 90 day amnesty for third party sites and individual users which incorporate the company's eye-in-hand logo or the Second Life/Linden Lab name into its material. Extensive FAQ here. An SL bloggers group has an extended conversation here, and offhand, I tend to agree with Kanomi Pikajuna, who says, "A company as dependent as Linden is on the goodwill and contributions of their community cannot possibly be stupid enough as to harass their fans for failing to put a TM after their company name. My guess is these guidelines are there to give them protection and cause to go after bogus currency exchange web sites and other profiteers."


Unsurprisingly, the new policy has caused some ripples of anxiety, particularly among longtime Residents who've enjoyed five years without this being much of an issue. (Especially as it'll apparently impact sites that have long included variations of "second life" in its URL.) Jennyfur Peregrine, for example, who co-launched the annual Second Life Community Convention with the Lindens' blessing in 2005, says, "I know that we are not alone in our contempt for this new decision."


One resident, Rheta Shan, has gone to extremes though in cynically replacing every mentioning of Second Life in her blog to You-Know-Where.




Another way is to replace the old Second Life(TM) logo with the logo of a Dutch shoe manufacturer, called Teva, which basically is the hand...

What happens if I don't agree with this new stuff? I'm going to get kicked out of Second Life (TM). The thing is. I'm a paying resident. I agreed to the terms of service at the time I registered, and when I renewed my subscription. I'm actively considering to not renew my subscription and follow the EXITSL strategy as Linden Lab isn't doing much to keep the fun alive, nor to improve on business usage of the Grid.

PS - there's absolutely no Trademark or Copyright on the EXITSL logo. Use freely.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Wipro Innovation = Redundancy?

Today's last expedition led me to te Wipro Innovation Isle (I guess it they'd love to abbreviate it to Wii - but that one's already taken in SL). For people working in the IT Services a well known name as it is one of India's giants when it comes to IT services.

"Wipro Tech is an information technology service company established in India in 1980. It is the global IT services arm of Wipro Limited (in operation since 1945, incorporated 1946). It is headquartered in Bangalore and is the third largest IT services company in India. It has more than 79,832 employees as of December 2007, including its business process outsourcing (BPO) arm which it acquired in 2002. Wipro Technologies has over 300 customers across U.S., Europe and Japan including 50 of the Fortune 500 companies." (Wikipedia)

Near the end of 2007 there were speculations of Wipro Technologies considering to take over Capgemini and thus Sogeti as well, but in the end it was a no show. The corporate website puts focus on 'applied innovation';

"At Wipro we have fine-tuned the science of viewing innovation through the lens of practicality to design unique solutions for end customers. Applied Innovation is the ability to infuse newer ideas and newer ways of doing things into all parts of the organization, and improve business outcomes, often without major disruptive change. It is a 360-degree business approach covering process, delivery, business and technology Innovations that help Wipro to work
collaboratively with clients for cost take-outs, speed to market and new business opportunities."

It is this theme that is the starting point for the Wipro presence in Second Life, which looks to be in the first stage of the experiment. It is a 3 sim cluster, of which only one is fully build, one only holding an expo stand and an empty sim.

Applied Innovation is the ability to infuse newer ideas and newer ways of doing things into all parts of the organization, and I can well imagine this applies to their Second Life expedition as well. I do believe we have to bring Virtual Worlds (newer ways) beyond the average marketing department (i.e. into all parts of the organization). The question remains how to do this.

Let's see if Wipro can bring the answer. The sim is filled with an assorted array of buildings, with two larger builds standing out. The first of these is the 'Learning Center' and is shaped a little like the Sydney Opera (not really, buyt you can see which building I'm referring to).



Please reread the lines on the triple sim: "One build, one half build, one empty." This is pretty much the case with the Learning Center as well. It holds two auditoria, and right outside there's an amphitheater. Also, at the second level it has several empty officerooms.



Further onto the campus we see various buildings, like a 'Client Engagement' building, a library and a datacenter each filled with several workstations / cubicles.



Finally I arrived at the second large building, a four storey square concrete office block which looked a little cramped when I walked into the hall and up the staircase. It made me wonder how much of the build is actually shaped like their real life offices... This building is labelled 'Offshore Development Center' and that is what interests me, what would bring innovation to the virtual workspace.


I was a little disappointed though when there were more rooms with workstations, and more and more. But no show. One of the great benefits I see for Virtual Worlds is what they potentially can do for the offshoring industry, as offshoring projects often require a lot of attention; extra management, extra communication, extra code checking etcetera and in the virtual workspace where you can collaborate while both in offshore and rightshore location would greatly aid this process.

Yet I'm fully aware of the limitations Second Life has in this regard. There's no real integration with development suites or management tools. Then there's always the issue of security. I can't really blame Wipro for not finding the solution for Second Life, but I had hoped for more info, more ideas.

The last redundancy in the sim was when I moved from the cantine inside the ODC to 'the Glacier', a cafe on the campus.

As for the build itself, I find it of average quality. It is a melee of textures (a lot of default SL texturing) and styles. As I said, I'm under the impression that part of it is based upon real life buildings, so maybe they had to work with what they had. Otherwise, I'd say the triple auditorium, the cramped staircases etcetera don't really utilise the 3D-ness of a virtual environment.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wipro%20Innovation%20Isle/109/225/23

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Eye Gaze Interaction

For those of us having problems navigating Second Life, there's some new technology about to hit the market.

The video shows eye gaze interaction with Second Life using our "Snap Clutch" software; developed at De Montfort University, UK in collaboration with University of Tampere, Finland. The software allows us to change quickly between
interaction modes to allow for a more real-time gaming experience. This research will be presented at ETRA 2008, US.

For more information on the project please visit: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~svickers/ and http://www.cogain.org/

When looking at the video, I'm pretty impressed with the technology. However, when you've got both hands left, use them, as this is getting very passive.

Thanks to Pieter Bosch for the Tip.

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Pasona Recruitment

Remaining in the employment branch, but crossing an ocean in Real Life, there's Pasona which first started as Temporary Center Inc. in 1976 and now is one of the leading Employment services in Japan.

Ever since its inception, PASONA GROUP has used job creation to pursue a clear corporate philosophy of building a better society and creating a system of employment infrastructure that provides each individual the opportunity to work and the freedom to find the job of his or her choice.

There isn't much to tell about this build. Like many other Japanese firms they've decided not to build a dedicated island, but take a parcel in the busy Japanese cluster. And seemingly it works in this case. Today is just a regular Tuesday and the agency had a crowd of 25 avatars looking for a job, which is more than I've found in many many corporate sims on any given day except for 'grand openings'

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shibuya%20West/128/181/22/

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Monday, March 24, 2008

The Grand Ducale and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

The Grand Ducale

Sticking in the same region as my former blogpost on the Belgian recruitment sim of Vacature Reference there's another one from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , not surprisingly called "Grand Ducale" which is surrounded by sims called Luxemburg Careers and Luxemburg Business. Unlike the "Grand" part of the official name, Luxemburg itself is a pretty small country, I have no doubt there are ranches in the US and Australia which have larger backyards. A little history:

"The recorded history of Luxembourg begins with the acquisition of Lucilinburhuc (today Luxembourg Castle) by Siegfried, Count of Ardennes in 963. Around this fort, a town gradually developed, which became the centre of a small state of great strategic value. In 1437, the House of Luxembourg suffered a succession crisis, precipitated by the lack of a male heir to assume the throne, that led to the territory being sold to Philip the Good of Burgundy. In the following centuries, Luxembourg's fortress was steadily enlarged and strengthened by its successive occupants, the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and the French, among others. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Luxembourg was disputed between Prussia and the Netherlands. The Congress of Vienna formed Luxembourg as a Grand Duchy in personal union with the Netherlands. Luxembourg also became a member of the German Confederation, with a Confederate fortress manned by Prussian troops." (Wikipedia)

The triple sim setup is not about promoting Luxembourg by displaying it's landmarks, but is a rather cartoonish carnival of recruitment stands. It's lively colored and an original design. I like the small details like the sculpted trees and the overall quality of the build.


To get down to business, most of the time sites like these are rather empty, but it seems they are preparing themselves for large recruitment event, not only aimed at Luxembourg, but


The 3 sims, taken together, provide a large recruitment facility. The first event was actually held at the end of November, 2007, to recruit staff for GAX Technologies. I think this may have been something of a proof of concept, since GAX are (I think) the builders of the site. According to the Working Worlds website, the next fair is on the 28th March, 2008 - though the information on the island itself points towards a fair on 29th May. (Aleister Kronos)

Some familiar names appear (again), like recruitment companies Randstad and Manpower, both active in Second Life as well and a number of dedicated spaces for clients like Dexia (finance)








SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Grand%20Ducale/128/128/0

The Grand Duchy

There's also a sim out there called "Grand Duchy" which seems to be the national immersion zone for Luxembourg, but aside from a few shops it's still rather empty and under construction.




SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Grand%20Duchy/128/128/0

PS: I'm having a Technorati-frustration at the moment. It hasn't updated my blogposts for a while now. Either I screwed my rpc-ping settings when I changed the template, or Technorati is screwed for the weekend.

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Virtual Career City

The next Belgian sim is Vacature References, a joint effort by Belgian career sites vacatures.com (targeting the Dutch speaking Belgians and the German speaking minority near Eupen, St. Vith and Malmedy in the Ardennes) and references.be (which targets the French speaking Belgians), hence the double name.

Fortunately, this is a proper build. It is well designed, though a little low on texture (actually quite German-White in texturing).



It has several bars and lounges as well as a kind of jobshopping boulevard, a mall where several Job agencies, like Randstad, Accent and Eandis have a small office, but also clients like Logica CMG and Bosch.







SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vacature%20References/128/128/0

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Basic Belgian Business Builds

Up till now I haven't seen much Businesswise activity from the Belgians in Second Life, although there is a pretty active Belgian community present in Second Life, which shows in a pretty large amount of Belgian cities to be recreated in Second Life; We've got several Brussels / Bruxelles sims, Brugge, Gent etcetera. What I'm told though is that most attention still goes to entertainment and mature content.

One of the first Belgian companies to rez was Dutch / Belgian radio station Q-Music (which has already left Second Life again). A second was telecom provider Belgacom and in november 2007 there was the Keytrade bank (which I blogged just before the weekend). When I published the updated version of the RL Brand Directory though, I was prompted with a number of Belgian firms on the grid. Most of these aren't on dedicated sims, so it's no wonder I haven't spotted them.

First of these firms are on the bordering sims Chopin and Beethoven, and are build by Metapartners.

MetaPartners NV currently owns 15 islands in Second Life®, making it the largest sim owner in Belgium: Beethoven, (home to Packaging & Converting Essentials), Grieg (home to MetaPartners itself), Chopin (home to UniPartners) as well as Vivaldi Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which are the R&D areas of UniPartners. Other islands are Albinoni, Bizet, Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Haydn, Ravel and Brahms.

The companies in question are Packaging & Converting Essentials - which deal in... guess what: Packaging and Converting -

Packaging & Converting Essentials has been using Second Life® for almost a year now as an additional communications tool to its RSS feeds, newsletters and website and has expanded its already global reach to a virtual environment, where residents can read the newsheadlines and access the
website directly.

and the second one, UniPartners, is an IT Service provider.

UniPartners NV, with over 80 IT specialists, uses the virtual world as a recruitment area, a meeting place for its own employees, a place for staff meetings, trainings and conferences. In addition to that, UniPartners NV also has a competence and R&D center.

To be honest, I wasn't really impressed when I visited the sims. It's all pretty basic. Here are a few snapshots:




There are a few other Beglian firms I intend to visit, I hope they'll be more like the Keytrade and Belgacom builds than these firms who probably don't have a clue to what the potential of virtual worlds can do for these companies.

SLURL Unipartners: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Chopin/128/128/0
SLURL P&CE: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beethoven/129/127/24

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vBusiness Expo - April 2008

It's been a couple of months since I heard the first plans from Clever Zebra to organise yet another vw conference and expo. Here's the first announcement:


The vBusiness Central project in Second Life will launch in April with a 4 day Expo, to be held bi-yearly in April and October (which coincides with the Virtual World Conference).

The conference aims to cover 4 key areas:

We'll be announcing dates and details very shortly. If you want to keep up with developments, including other Clever Zebra events and product updates then join our email list to be first with the news.

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Roleplaying Potter at Hogwarts

While browsing Paisley Beebe's Flickr Photostream I came acros this picture:

I couldn't find any more, so I went into Second Life to see if I could find Harry Potter and found the Hogwart Project Group. They've build several important decorums from the Potter series in Second Life (Two sims: Sunset Harbor and Phoenix Estates).


This first snapshot is of the Wizard's Alley:

The second snapshot is the Hogwarts school of Magic, and at the right bottom the Quidditch arena:



Finally, there's the Hogwarts express that traverses between the Hogwarts School of Magic and the Wizard's Alley.

A virtual world like Second Life is extremely suitable to do things which are not possible in Real Life, like playing Quidditch. I'd suggested this to a friend of mine a little over a year ago. He was very doubtfull. Off course, there are tons of Potter fans out there who'd love roleplaying the series. However, he was weary of copyright issues. The Potter series have been such a smashing success that it would probably be very hard to get Rowling's blessing to recreate the series in Second Life.


This build is certainly not an official build, but a very great hobby project. I don't think they've considered copyrights, but it's fun while its there.


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sunset%20Harbor/128/168/27

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It's Captain Jack

One of my daily routine jobs as a blogger is checking Technorati to see if there are new links to my blog. When following one of these links I noticed a familiar face...

Yes it's captain Jack Sparrow. It's not Johnny Depp though, but Tay Runo. The beautiful lady at his side is Jojamela Soon. The picture is taken by Paisley Beebe at Sailor's Cove.

Do have a look at Paisley's Flickr Photostream as there is a ton of really great pictures of Second Life, utilising almost every option provided by the WindLight client.

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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Blog Restyle

Here's a small update. Over at the main MindBlizzard website I've installed Joomla 1.5 and worked hard on the design. Last night I tweaked a bit and rebuild the Joomla template to replace my blogger template. Here's a snapshot, but off course, you already see the new template at work (unless you're reading the feed)

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Virtual Banking (16): Keytrade

Upon posting the update RL Brand Directory for Second Life just before the weekend, I received a number of tips on Belgian firms from my pal Pieter Bosch over at the Second Life Crew blog. One of them was already on my to do list, the Keytrade Bank. So, moving from Italy's Banca Carige to Belgium's Keytrade Bank would be a nice contrast.

The Belgian Keytrade Bank is an internet bank and is a 100% subsidiary of Crédit Agricole, also present in Second Life and blogged here at MindBlizzard in summer 2007.

Belgium's first online investment site VMS-Keytrade, saw the light of day in 1998. It experienced immediate success and dazzling growth. In 2002, VMS-Keytrade became Keytrade Bank and acquired its banking status by taking over RealBank.

Today, Keytrade Bank is part of the Crédit Agricole Group, one of Europe's largest banking groups (total assets of € 913 billion and own funds of € 66 billion).

The bank's build is quite simple: One main office at a small island, a little gardening to liven up the terraforming and that's it.


On the inside, there's a difference though. It's quite spaceous, with several seats and small offices filled with Scope Cleaver design.



Upon entering you cannot miss the sim's prime feature: The exchange. This is one of the first actually usefull features I've seen in visiting 16 banks and various financial corporations in Second Life as it gives a live exchangerate of the Linden Dollar against various currencies.






Aside from the live exchange, you'll find some freebees (T Shirts) and a nice Zeppelin to fly over the island. We're not done yet. Among the freebee stands, there's another usefull tool to be found: A HUD which also gives you the conversion rates plus financial news


"KEYTRADE BANK and DOW JONES NEWSWIRES launch on Friday the 23rd of November 2007 a NEW second generation Financial NEWS and Currency Conversion HUD in Second Life.This second generation HUD features besides the currency converter with Real Time currency conversion rates of 12 different currencies in relation to Linden $ now also Real Time FINANCIAL NEWS from DOW JONES NEWSWIRES.The NEWS are accurate financial breaking news and headlines, together with rolling commentary and in-depth analysis.With a click of a button on the Keytrade Bank
HUD a stylish news screen slides out of the HUD and displays more than 2000 characters of financial NEWS.The slide screen displays the NEWS with a Headline and date. You can further browse the NEWS feed by simply clicking on the page arrows."
(SL Newspaper BNC)

Although I can't say the build is spectacular, the HUD and exchange make up for it as this actually is a serious attempt at connecting the RL and Virtual markets.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Keytrade%20Bank/128/128/0

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Virtual Banking (15): Gruppo Banca Carige

Sticking in the Italian corner, there's the Gruppo Banca Carige, one of the many banks in Second Life and the 9th largest bank in Italy with a market capitalisation of 3.0 billion Euro's.


One of the things the bank boasts about is its international orientation;


At last a bank that cares for those who come from afar. The Banca Carige Group has created "Carige Senza Confini", the account that speaks every language in the world. But that's not all: Carige Senza Confini offers you an international
prepaid card to make payments and withdrawals, a money transfer service, a mortgage for your new home in Italy and much more. Carige Senza Confini is a service dedicated to all foreign nationals with residency in Italy.

Although, at the sim there was one building dedicated to the Senza Confini account, the only language on the sim was Italiano again. Let's have a look at the build:


It's main venue is something what I'll be calling Italian style. I've seen quite a number of Italian builds which have typically arched constructions build with aluminium and glass. The main office is dominated by the sound of silence.


Again it's hard to find a business sim that hasn't been blogged by Al Kronos already, and this one is no different:


"The previously mentioned Leisure Area seems to take up around a third of the island, with a (short!) golf course, tennis court, gym and pool. In a nod towards the city of Genoa, there seems to be a recreation of the city's
lighthouse. But we've not finished yet - no sirree. There are several more buildings - all largely complete: a recruitment office; an overseas relations office and meeting spaces for both domestic and business clients. Oh... and
finally, there's a dance area. Phew! And all of these set around an ornamental lake. It is a neat piece of juggling to fit in all of these features without it looking strained and crowded."

Here are the snapshots of the assorted melee of buildings:







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

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Cantiere SugarMusic

Yesterday I wrote I'd stay out of SL for the Easter holidays, but as the kids are asleep and Mrs. V. is out of the house, I couldn't help myself. Entering SL and skimming the map, I came across a heavy load of Italian sims. One stood out, as it wasn't called Genova, Torino or Milano, but carried the very Italian sounding name (not) "Sugar Music Land". What I could figure from the Italian Sugarmusic website wasn't much, as it was all Italiano. A little digging brought me to the mothercompany, Gruppo Sugarmusic from Spain.

Although it is a Spanish firm, it is a publishing house for Italian music with a wide range of classical publications, but also big names like Andrea Bocelli. A little history:

Sugarmusic was founded with the name Edizioni Suvini Zerboni in 1907. At first specialized in the management of some important Milan theaters, the company then looked to pop music signing some of Italy 's most representative authors. In 1948, when Mr. Paolo Giordani passed away, Mr. Ladislao Sugar became the only owner of Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. Since then, the company business never stopped, achieving one success after the other.

Sugarmusic's current activities mainly focus on scouting young talents and helping them grow: Negramaro, born and bred in the label, have become Italy 's best selling act between 2005 and 2006 and had 9 songs pitched in Alessadro
D'Alatri's movie “La Febbre”.

Sugarmusic, holding of the Sugar Group, proudly administers a 60.000 titles catalogue and its rights acquiring and protection policy is carried on bearing in mind the quick progress of the digital era.

Okay, now let's have a look at the build, which is being performed by the folks of SL Consulting, and looks pretty neat. The build isn't finished yet. I couldn't enter the parcels, but I could fly over at 60 meters. The main venue is a pyramid and several walkways lead to smaller buildings, and a stage.





There were a number of things I couldn't explain. What is the enormous spiralling platform doing there? Another tyhing is that there were I few buildings on the side of the sim that looked totally out of place. As it isn't finished yet, I can't tell which way this sim is going to go, but from a building point of view it looks pretty decent.


SLURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sugar%20Music%20Land/128/128/0

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Updated Branddirectory for Second Life

Last night I had some problems to log into Second Life. This means I've finally had some time to update the MindBlizzard RL Brand Directory.

The MindBlizzard RL Brand Directory is a list of Real Life Companies which have a presence in Second Life. The list includes SLURL's for direct access. I've updated the brand directory with the brands I've blogged in the last 5 months and it's grown to about 150 entries. Surely there are more brands in Second Life and I'll do my best to get the list as complete as possible.


Here's the complete list as an image:



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Friday, March 21, 2008

VeeJay goes OOC

Don't worry, I'm not getting OOC as in Out Of Character... just have to get Out Of Computer for the holidays. Be back after easter

I think I may have to talk and play with the kids face to face ;)

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More more more worlds

After writing on the new Beta launches for RipLounge and Magi Nation I noticed a number of posts over at the KZero blog which also report on new teenworlds getting ready for launch. What is it these days that one after the other company releases their world?

The answer is probably very simple. A number of these worlds have been targeted to open up in 'early 2008' and didn't make the deadline in januari, but the prime reason for this sudden onrush is the Virtual World Conference, the industry's largest stage for promotion. The spring edition of the conference will be held in New York from 3 - 4 april and has a dedicated track for Kid and Teen Worlds.

Lego Universe

One of the most interesting new releases probably is the Lego Universe. Most interesting probably because of old-times-sake; Which one of us didn't grow up with Lego? KZero adds:

"Maybe they’ll also launch a Technical Lego version for us older kids"







Cartoon Network: Fusion Fall

Next in-line is a Cartoon Network release named Fusion Fall. You'd expected this one to spring next fall, but its scheduled for release this Spring.... maybe they've got their seasons fused.








Build a Bear

The youngest segment of the market, the under 10s also is a highly competative corner of the industry. Largest in this segment is NeoPets and now there's a bear world: Build a Bear Ville.







The Build a Bear world has the advantage that it already has a number of fans out there in the real world, as the brand has been around for some 10 years now.

Since 1997, at Build-A-Bear Workshop® we have created a safe place where your child can play, express their creativity and use their imagination. Please be assured that we bring these same qualities you value and trust about Build-A-Bear Workshop in the real world into our new virtual world of
buildabearville.com™

In this competative market it will be very hard for a truly new kid on the block to make a major stand, and it may well be that this will be the way to go for a number of 'established' toy companies.

VizWoz

Last in Line this week is another fuzzy name: VizWoz. It's probably best to quote KZero at this one:

"With phrases such as ‘the next big virtual community’, ‘Set to become the most dynamic virtual world’ and ‘virtual reality in its most realistic form’ Vizwoz sounded like a pretty exciting place"


But then the presentation went a little wrong...

So, I turned up and logged in at 4.55pm to beat the rush. First impressions, a standard 2.5d flash-based UI with click and glide avatar customisation. Ok, so what’s the differentiator here? How does this world plan to stand out from the (growing) number of MMOG’s and VW’s aimed at kids? What’s the revenue model? And where is everyone else?

I was given the wrong URL, no big deal. So, a quick logout and login took me back. The founder was set to arrive at 5 to give a tour of Vizwoz. Excellent I thought. And a chance to ask some questions beforehand. Even better. I managed
to ask five questions before he had to leave.

  1. What’s the target age range? Dan said 11 - 14. I actually asked this question to the PR agency before hand and they said 7 -14.
  2. What’s the gender split from the beta? 47% boys
  3. How many people were on the beta? 5,000.
  4. What’s the business model? Premium, was the answer. Premium what?

My fifth question was the one I was most interested in - differentiation. I managed to ask it but unfortunately Dan had to leave at this point. This was a shame, but one should remember that the site had just gone live to the public.
He did briefly give me the answer of ‘have you seen the GUI?’. Yes, I saw it, but that’s not differentiation - it’s a means to an end. The overall experience is good, it’s smooth and the interface works well but I still a feeling of something missing.

Read the rest of the KZero review here.

I guess we'll have to see how it turns out, but making a first impression like this might end any chance of success even before the world actually sees the light of day.

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Magi Nations Goes GoFish

Tuesday Cookie Jar Entertainment, one of the world’s leading children’s entertainment companies, announced that it has selected GoFish Corporation as the exclusive in-game advertising partner for their highly anticipated online, role-playing game Magi-Nation: Battle for the Moonlands.


Magi Nation is yet another rpg targeted at 8 to 14 year olds and is based on the popular children’s animated television series of the same name, which is televised in the US and Canada. The series follows the adventures of 15-year-old Tony Jones, an average teen from Earth who finds himself mysteriously transported to the magical world of Magi-Nation. Tony and his two young Magi heroes-in-training follow an incredible journey of riddles, battle and self-learning on their journey to defeat the evil Shadow Magi who are out to rule their world.


Magi-Nation: Battle for the Moonlands is currently in open beta testing with a commercial launch set for mid 2008. Interested open beta participants can sign up by visiting http://www.magi-nation.com/.

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RIPlounge moves into Beta

Earlier this week I got word that there's yet another Virtual World to be launched into beta. This time it's Riplounge. Now, I've been getting used to typical web 2.0 names like flickr, tumblr, xing and ning and so on, and virtual worlds do have their own peculiarities when it comes to finding an available url.... but RipLounge ?


You may think "Quod Nomen Est," but Riplounge. It immediately has several associations, like R.I.P. and Rip off, but that will probably not be the intend of the producers, Wyndstorm Corporation. If you look at the the typography in RipLounge and note the capitalised RL.

With this new platform Wyndstorm is trying to add more social web 2.0 functionality to the realm of NVE's, and thus make the crossover from the Metaverse to RL (real life), perhaps that explains the naming and typography. This is a sound business plan in itself. 3D Social Networking will be the mashup for the next few years. The question is, will it work out in riplounge?

RipLounge opened up for beta signup this week (and so I registered) and is to open early april. The only thing we've got to go by is the promo video out on the web:



Riplounge.com Demo - video powered by Metacafe

It's a little early to tell which way it's gonna go, but judging from the promo I'd say Virtual World is a big word. It looks more like your avatar will be confined in a limited number of rooms, much like Stagespace for instance.

The world is set up around music and clubs, and is aimed at the more grown-up audience in the range of 25 to 35 year olds. Year end 2007 we saw an enormous increase and focus for (girl) teen worlds, and RipLounge is setting itself a difficult challenge as this agegroup is much more critical and not easily satisfied with a few gimmicks. In this agegroup the world has to attain some level of persistance. RipLounge promises to showcase independent music artists and offers advertisers “in-scene” advertising in order to attempt this persistance.

From a graphics point of view RipLounge doesn't seem to offer new and improved stuff either, probably best described by Tech Crunch:

"Having not yet tested the service it would be perhaps unfair to make an assessment based on the demo video, however why avatars waddle around like penguins in each scene was not made clear. Maybe it’s a special feature…or maybe not."

However, within the limited are (judging from what we have now) and the quality of the graphics, RipLounge will have a mountain to climb to grab a bit of the market.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Nikon puts focus on Scenery

Bienvenuto Nikonista! is the first thing I see when the world rezzes around me. Just after blogging the Japanese Pioneer Corporation build in Second Life I immersed at Nikon island. Although another Japanese company, it's clear this isn't the mothership which has landed in Second Life.

"Nikon Corporation is a Japanese company specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include cameras, binoculars, microscopes, measurement instruments, and the steppers used in the photolithography steps of semiconductor fabrication. It was founded in 1917 as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō ("Japan Optical Industries"); the company was renamed Nikon Corporation, after its cameras, in 1988. Nikon is one of the major companies of the Mitsubishi Group. The name Nikon, which dates from 1946, is a merging of Nippon Kōgaku ( "Japan Optical") and an imitation of Zeiss Ikon. Among its famous products are Nikkor camera lenses (notably those designed for the company's own F-mount SLR cameras), Nikonos underwater cameras, the Nikon F-series of
professional 135 film SLR cameras, and the Nikon D-series digital SLRs. Nikon has helped lead the transition to digital photography with both the Coolpix line of consumer and prosumer cameras as well as DSLR system cameras."
(wikipedia)

The island basically has one building, surrounded by a number of small information stands on the Nikon group in Second Life and competitions.


The main building has two levels and at ground level we find various seats in front of slideshows and some general info on Nikon and their latest camera models. The second level houses a museum with information on early Nikon camera's.




However, the sims main focus is not on the brand, but on the scenery, which I think is an excellent choice. Not just another build and another brand, but an attempt to show the beauty of things, trying to depict the essence of why people start with photography. I must say, the scenery is absolutely fantastic.




The build was done by an Italian MDC named "NoReal-it" (I doubt there's a pun intended), which in my opinion have done a great job at the scenery and in putting the foucs there.

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

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Life 2.0 in Wonderland

One of the prime Technology events is Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0 Conference. Today saw a series of talks in Second Life as well. Unfortunately I didn't have time to drop in. The good thing was that I was kept up to date through the Metanomics group IM on today's keynote;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9:00 AM PDT - 10:00 AM PDTKEYNOTE:
Project Wonderland - 3D Toolkit for Building Virtual Worlds. Nicole Yankelovich, Principal Investigator, Collaborative Environments Project, Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Project Wonderland is an open source toolkit for building 3D virtual worlds for business and education collaboration. Within a Wonderland virtual! world, p s, interact with team members, and have chance encounters with colleagues, all using natural voice interaction. Most importantly, real work can be accomplished with Wonderland's support of X and Java applications as well as innovative telephone integration. With application sharing as the default, people can create, edit, and share documents within the virtual world.

Wonderland is built on top of the Project Darkstar game server platform, which provides enterprise-grade scalability, reliability, and flexible integration with other enterprise systems.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Surprisingly enough, synchronisity strikes again. Thursday I have to give a presentation on collaboration and project management in Virtual Worlds, and one of the options I will discuss is the Wonderland project as it is one of the most advanced platforms when it comes to collaboration at this point in time, I think.

Perhaps we have to clarify a bit on the names used, as it sometimes causes some confusion.

  • Darkstar: (also referred to as project ~) The game server platform which is the foundation of the technology
  • Wonderland: (or project ~) The open source virtual world produced by Sun, which is built on top of the Darkstar platform.
  • MPK20: The wonderland version Sun uses as its own private development VW.


Some bits and pieces on Darkstar / Wonderland from the speech:

Darkstar permits users to participate in one space without sharding. In addition to Darkstar they use jVoiceBridge for audio. It also permits interacting with telephone systems. They are also trying to get their artwork to be open source or CCL. Part of Wonderland includes collaboration capability that can be extended to enterprise software.It can interact with business data. Darkstar also scales down...an instance with 2-3 users can run on a laptop

There are external worlds live today: and some coming up fairly soon. They have tested some already. Small wonder; Wonderland is not planned to interact with SL... However, except maybe in the interoperability space (transportable avatars, etc.) and they will cooperate as much as possible.


For a complete schedule of the Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0 conference in Second Life click here.
More info on the Wonderland click here.

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Pioneering SL with sound, vision and soul

When browsing the map and randomly entering a few letters in the search I noticed a sim called "Pioneer Corporation." I had noticed the plain "Pioneer" sim months ago, but that wasn't any corporate build. This one is.



Pioneer Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation that specializes in digital entertainment products, based in Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop. Today, Pioneer is well-known for technology advancements in the consumer electronics industry.


Pioneer played a role in the development of interactive cable TV, the Laser Disc player, the first automotive Compact Disc player, the first detachable face car stereo, Supertuner technology, DVD and DVD recording, plasma display, and Organic LED display (OLED). The company works with optical disc and display technology and software products and is also a manufacturer. Sharp Corporation
took a controlling stake in Pioneer in 2007.
(Wikipedia)


The sim is actually built quite well to cover a wide range of products offered by Pioneer. The main venture is the AV Tower in which various systems are on display.



In the North-East corner there is a small residential block in which their KURO hometheatre systems are on display.



The various locations on the island are linked by a road, winding across the island. Take a balloon trip, or rent a car (with Pioneer sound off course) to see the scenery. There's a waterfall and a surf area. Unlike most (western) corporate sims, this one was actually in use. I counted about 9 people coming in for a balloon flight or a surf on the beach.



NB: Pioneer's slogan is "Sound, Vision, Soul" Although I like the sim, I missed out on the visionary part for Virtual Worlds.

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Mercedes (B) Enz SL Adventure

In skimming the blogosphere a post caught my eye, which read: Mercedes-Benz ends Second Life test run with positive findings.

The article in question was posted earlier today on the Mercedes Benz SL blog which had been quiet since august 2007. Seeing the inactivity at the blog for the last 7 months, this isn't a big surprise, but it doesn't mean Mercedes has been inactive in Second Life during these months.



The remarkable thing that they end their test run with positive findings. The blog reads:

"A little over a year, Mercedes-Benz opened its dedicated presence in the virtual world of ‘Second Life’. Since the launch of the brand’s virtual island, we won several vital insights and received plenty of positive feedback, especially for our unique communications policy. Over the course of the year, our brand avatar ‘Mercedes Milestone’ led more than 10,000 inspired dialogues.

We truly enjoyed developing this new, innovative communications platform and would like to extend our thanks to all those who visited Mercedes-Benz Island and demonstrated interest in our virtual outpost.

Our ‘Second Life’ stint will draw to an end on March 18th 2008 – as of this day, you will no longer be able to access Mercedes-Benz Island. This brief and exciting foray into virtual communities brought us several essential realisations and the conviction that 3D worlds play a vital role as engaging communication channels. We will continue to monitor this theme and keep you updated on any new developments."


Well, Mercedes has new insights. Good for them. It is still a withdrawal from a virtual world, and the umpteenth withdrawal from Second Life which makes it very clear that companies still have a very hard time in making a usefull and persistent presence in a virtual world and that Second Life desperately needs to improve if it wants to play a role as a business platform.

Since august 2006 Second Life has been the premier platform for companies to start experimenting with the Metaverse, which worked for a year or so. It's key attraction point has been the relatively low cost its ease of building and its economy. Due to this immersion Second Life has seen an enormous growth between august 06 and august 07. Since august 07 the corporate exodus has begun as the initial advantages are getting outweighed by its disadvantages, such as:

  • Lack of security
  • Lack of real collaboration tools
  • Lack of interfaces

Take heed Linden Lab

No doubt Linden Lab will state that they're not worried by the exodus of companies. There's still hundreds left, and more coming. Yet these initial pioneers have greatly aided in the growth of Second Life with the attention they received. Linden Lab is probably focussing on making a better world, but if they can't provide for these companies, if they can't make the tools work that companies need then there's only one conclusion possible:

Second Life will degrade to being just another pimped 3D chatroom, a game with bad graphics or a chaotic placeholder for a surplus of user generated content no one needs.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Virtual Healthcare 3: MS Island

Hidden between a number of ABN Amro employee islands I stumbled upon a simulator called "MS Island". As things go with synchronicity, this week seems to run a streak of hospitals and medication in the virtual and real world alike.

Probably the best way to describe the intended use of the build is by dropping the notecard which comes in Dutch and English:

This is the island of VU university medical center and the MS Center Amsterdam. This is a pilot project to see if a virtual world and community can have a positive influence on the wellbeing of people with MS.


This project is a cooperation of:

  • VU university medical center
  • MS Center Amsterdam
  • MSWeb
  • Dutch MS Research Foundation
  • Dutch MS Society (MSVN)
  • Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF)

In this building you will find more information about these organizations, a meeting room for people with MS and other interested parties, and a presentation and consultation room.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask one of the hosts.


The agenda contains the opening hours of the pub and presentations.


We wish you a pleasant stay.

The build itself is quite different from the slick Palomar hospital. The main venue is decently build and gives a lot of information on MS.



The rest of the sim is a little too unorganised in my opinion. A large part is set up as a stage (what's the use of a permanent set up if you only give a concert at the opening of the sim?) and is surrounded by a jumble of market stands and advertisements. Collecting money isn't a crime, especially not for organisations like this and it is admirable that residents donate their stuff to be sold, still it had a somewhat cheapy look and feel to it.







One of the lines in the introduction note was waiting to be answered:

This is a pilot project to see if a virtual world and community can have a positive influence on the wellbeing of people with MS.

Unfortunately, the sim has given me no answer, nor was there any greeter who could help me out. Because I could not find any answer to these project goals I was largely disappointed in this build.

However, please drop in and donate a few Linden Dollars to this good cause!

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

SL's Next Gridmaster ?

What if... Usually it's pretty useless to talk about 'what ifs', and perhaps it is in this case too, but it's an opportunity.


Yesterday we received the news that Philip Rosedale is stepping down as CEO of Linden Lab, the Metaverse Service Provider (MSP) for Second Life and as far as the news goes, no successor has been named yet.


I am of the opinion (and there are others with me apparently) recognition of the fact that a big, grown-up company (which Linden Lab has now become) requires an entirely different sort of leadership then the hip, young start-up LL has been in the first years of development. Though not everyone has the same idea though, one of the contradictory views is voiced by Prokofy Neva in the comments to my previous blogpost as she writes:


"I find it really distasteful seeing all these tekkie male Internet gurus slapping each other on the back and saying "I told you so" about having Philip, the visionary, "log-off" and have "the grown-up management types" come in, as if
this is progress."
(full comment here)

Linden Lab, Headquartered in San Francisco, has grown rapidly over the past year and a half, but has been one step behind the explosive growth of Second Life for most of the time. A lot of metaversal residents still feel LL needs to improve its service, the stability of the grid and so on...


The question is:


What would you do if you were appointed Second Life's Next Gridmaster?


This almost sounds like a contest like America's Next Top Model or American Idols, but I challenge you to write down your ideas for the future of Second Life. What are the things you would change. What are the things you'd choose as keyprojects? What would the future of Second Life and Linden Lab be in your eyes?

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Rosedale logs off

Mister Second Life himself, Philip Rosedale a.k.a. Philip Linden, founder and CEO of Linden Research Inc. announced he steps down as CEO.


“I feel that the most important contributions I have made and will continue to make to Second Life are related to building both the product and the company through my direct contributions to vision, strategy, and design. As we grow, the role of our CEO will increasingly be to hire and grow the right team - to lead and help the company scale - to thousands of people and tens of millions of users of Second Life. I believe that we can hire a fantastic person in that
role, and also give me the ability to totally focus myself on the job that I do well. I bet this will be the most interesting job opening in the technology world.”

It is not that the man who brought in the idea and the streaming technology into Sansome Street, San Francisco, will be shut off from the grid entirely, According to Reuters he...


"will become chairman of the Linden Lab board when his successor is found, replacing Mitch Kapor, who will remain a board member and the company’s largest investor. Rosedale said he will also keep a full-time role at the company
working on product development and strategy."


This move comes as a surprise to many as Philip has been the real life personification of Linden Lab. Will it really change? Will Phil fade to grey as this snapshot predicted?



Though nobody is panicking, things are changing at Sansome street. By the end of 2007 we saw Cory Ondrejka leaving the buidling as well. Aleister Kronos has a pretty accurate remark about the change of flavor and Linden Lab:



There doesn't seem to be any air of panic, just the recognition that a big, grown-up company (which Linden Lab has now become) requires an entirely different sort of leadership from a hip, young start-up. I made this point (as many others did) when Cory Ondrejka left Linden Lab at the tail end of last year: "once you have a large (and largely
successful) implementation on your hands, your focus shifts from rapid innovation and heads more towards Quality of Service and effective service delivery."


Provided they get the right person - and that's a big proviso - then this should be a good thing for consumers of Linden Lab's services - that's us residents, both private and corporate. Hopefully, we will continue to see innovation and creativity from the Lab, after all Mr Rosedale is only moving within the outfit, but tempered with the skills needed to deliver a customer-centric, high quality service. Well... I can hope, can't I?


The question is, who's going to be the new man? I do know a couple of candidates...

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Dark Discovery: a promising ARG

Just little over an hour I ago Reuben Steiger, Millions of Us CEO announced the release of the worlds first ARG through his twitterstream. As already defined by Wikipedia, an ARG is:


"An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions."

On the Millions of Us blog we find the introduction to the story:



2 weeks before the launch of the new Fox show “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” a website for an unusual company
appeared
. In their first video they claimed to have developed a tachyon camera that sensed faster-than-light particles and could therefore generate images of the future.


Their first blog post generated significant online controversy, with 53 posts suggesting ways of testing the camera’s capabilities. In their second video, the researchers followed the audience’s suggestions, taking photos of mirrors, newspapers, and cityscapes. The images they revealed suggested a dark and apocalyptic future.
Soon the audience became directly involved in the story,
digging up similar camera devices around the United States.


Finally, the researchers found themselves being hunted by a deadly entity seeking to stop their work permanently. The drama built to an explosive conclusion in the Sausalito parking lot of Enitech’s offices. Now that it’s concluded we’d like to show you a bit of it.


If you want to know more, check out Enitechlabs.com.


Introductions may look good, but the screening of the story may be disappointing. The preview though posted at the MoU blog looks very impressive though and may put the MoU back into the drivers seat of the mixed reality metarati:





The ARG is part of the new Fox tv series "The Sarah Connor Chronicles". Does the name ring a bell? Here's a little info on the show:



"At the end of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Sarah vanquished the Terminator sent from the future to kill her teenage son, John. Sarah and John now find themselves alone in a very dangerous, complicated world. Fugitives from the law, they are confronted with the reality that still more enemies from the future, and the present, could attack at any moment.


TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES reveals what happens when SARAH (Lena Headey) stops running and goes on the offensive against an ever-evolving technological enemy bent on destroying her life, and perhaps the world. Her son, 15-year-old JOHN CONNOR (Thomas Dekker), knows that he may be the future savior of mankind, but is not yet ready to take on the mantle of leadership that he's told is his destiny. John finds himself inextricably drawn to CAMERON (Summer Glau), an enigmatic and otherworldly student at his high school, who soon proves to be much more than his confidante - she assumes the role of Sarah and John's fearless protector. On their trail are not only threats from the future, but an intelligent and tough FBI agent, JAMES ELLISON (Richard T.Jones), who soon becomes a powerful ally."

The Enitech website and blog is supporting the show, being the official blog for the resistance. Read the blog to find out more about the Terminator machines, the SkyNet company and the show episodes of course. Here's an entry from the blog:

"Brief update in the wake of the Enitech tragedy

March 3rd, 2008

Enitech admin here again. As many of you have now heard, Enitech Research labs was destroyed and several employees were killed last week. I’ve heard a rumor that a media outlet was able to get a hold of video footage, an interview with Anna Kies, before her untimely death during the Enitech Attack. Hopefully this will shed some light on the many questions we still have in the wake of such a senseless tragedy.

Posted in EniTech News 11 Comments »"

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Virtual Healthcare 2: Palomar Pomerado Health

This week I suddenly was confronted with more hospital visits than I'd hoped for (though not personal), and kept delaying writing this post for days.

Early april 2007 I wrote a short blogpost on the Cleveland Heart Clinic in Second Life which was probably the first hospital to enter Second Life. The question I ended that particular blogpost with was: "I wonder though, are they about to perform virtual surgery? I'm hoping they can explain what SL can add to hospital care."

The times, they are changing though. Nearly a year later I see how virtual worlds can perform a massive role in education and training. A world like second life offers a lot of opportunities for modelling the complex human anatomy (see for instance the Testis Tour) and virtually practising surgery would overcome a shortage of breathing guinneepigs.

Research company Forrester also sees virtual Healthcare as one of the promising areas when it it comes to the virtual workspace. In the "Getting real work done in Virtual Worlds" they describe one healthcare project in particular:

Developing effective healthcare team coordination. Duke University and Virtual Heroes are collaborating on a high-fidelity 3-D virtual environment for healthcare, funded by the US Army. The initial project, targeting healthcare team coordination skills, is called 3DiTeams and combines gaming concepts with the healthcare team coordination training curriculum developed by the US Department of Defense and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

In the past year we've seen several smaller 'medical experiments' in Second Life, but late February saw two major projects enter Second Life; the IBM Healthcare island and Palomar West, both opening in the wake of the HIMMS'08 healthcare conference.


The Palomar West simulation is a joint effort by Cisco and Palomar Pomerado Health, though in developing the Second Life sim, Cisco has had major help from Millions of Us. The february 25 press release reads:

Cisco® and Palomar Pomerado Health (PPH) today cut the ribbon on a new hospital in the online virtual world "Second Life." The virtual hospital, a simulation of a real-world hospital campus due to open in 2011, gives visitors the opportunity to tour the hospital years before its doors actually open.

The virtual hospital showcases the rich assortment of design and technology innovations planned for the real-world Palomar West Medical Campus in San Diego, Calif., and to gather feedback that will be used to enhance the way that care is delivered. The immersive quality of "Second Life" allows visitors to experience the progressive nature-embracing design of the hospital firsthand. Visitors will also be able to experience Connected Hospital technologies that will be delivered in the real hospital by Cisco. (Full press release here.)

In short, The Second Life island is a representation of a new Healthcare campus to be opened in 2011. It actually is a very good build. For n00bs there's a short introduction to navigating Second Life near the entrance of the hospital.


I received my Hospital tag which guided me through the hospital, making sure I went to the right rooms to have my gall bladder repaired. Throughout the tour a lot of information was pushed through excellent movies, but they essentially are a promo talk on the Cisco solutions for Unified Communications, telepresence monitoring, rfID, etcetera. I can see this part of the simulator become real in the near future.



Fully automated, or robot-driven surgery probably won't be integrated in the RL campus opening in 2011.




After surgery I returned to my hospital room for a few second to recuperate, but soon was sent outside as 'clean air' helps a lot for speedy recovery. The downside is that I entered into an 'Al-Gorish' speech about minimizing the footprint, low emission products and more green bla bla.


For information about Cisco Connected Health technologies, visit www.cisco.com/go/healthcare

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/PalomarWest%20Hospital/30/120/35






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Bantam Dell: a little lack of creativity

It's been a while since I look in the area surrounding the Electric Sheep Island, but early this morning I scrolled by and noticed the Bantam Dell island.

Probably depending on which writer to promote and which audience to target the mothercompany Random House uses one of their many subsidiary imprints as a stand alone publisher or a combination. This time it's the Bantam-Dell combination, which are both respected publishing houses.

Probably best known of all the Random House imprints is Bantam which has published major science finction writers such as Isaac Asimov, Jean Michel Auel and the early metarati such as William Gibson and Neil Stephenson.

Bantam has published the entire original run of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of children's books, as well as the first original novels (aimed at adults) based upon the Star Trek franchise, publishing about a dozen such books
between 1970 and 1982 when the licence was taken over by Pocket Books. Bantam also published a dozen volumes of short story adaptations of scripts from Star Trek: The Original Series. Bantam is the American paperback publisher of The
Guinness Book of Records.
(wikipedia)

The other part of this imprint is Dell Publishing, most notable for publishing works by H.G. Wells and Alfred Hitchcock.

Dell Publishing was an American publisher of books, magazines, and comic books. It was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr.. During the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp
magazines. From 1929 to 1974, they published comics under the Dell Comics line, the bulk of which (1938-62) was done in partnership with Western Publishing. In 1943, Dell entered into paperback book publishing with "Dell Paperbacks". They also used the book imprint of "Dial Press", "Delacorte Books", "Yearling Books" and "Laurel Leaf Library".
(wikipedia)

The Bantam Dell island is an excellent build, as far as building goes. The island is set up for 6 builds, but only half of it is build: The Bantam Dell Bookshop & Cafe, the central plaza and the auditorium.

The main venue is the Bantam Dell Bookshop & Cafe which is an excellent build and breathes the atmosphere of a classic bookshop and lounge. The books on display aren't the ones I'd buy at Bantam though.



As for interactivity there isn't much beyond clicking the books and opening the corresponding webpage (old fashioned style with an external browser) and a HUD promoting the Bantam Dell podcasts.



There are event lawns which are currently empty and asking for ideas. This is pretty much a disappointment for me as the Bantam Dell combination has a wide range of authors that would fit in with this new media of virtual worlds. I'd suggest they combine elements and scenes from the aforementioned writers to create an immersive experience, a tour of the future rather than settle for an old fashioned bookshop.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bantam%20Dell%20Island/133/124/25

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Grid Zero: Open Grid Protocol

Earlier today a new page emerged at the Second Life wiki. It's a page many of us have been waiting for: Zero Linden publishes the first draft outline for opening up the Second Life grid in Second Life Grid Open Grid Protocol, SLGOGP for short.

Here's a short extract:


"This protocol is about a three way interaction between viewer, agent and region in order to facilitate a shared experience between people. The viewer is the element that senses and acts on the state of the virtual world. The viewer does so from the vantage point of an agent. An agent is persistent identity and persona that interacts in a virtual world. The agent persists and can be interacted with even when the user controlling it (though a viewer) is off-line.

Regions are persistent locations in the virtual world. Multiple agents may be present in a region at the same time, and when they are they have a shared experience. Groups of regions and agents are managed by domains. A region domain is responsible for a collection of regions. An agent domain manages agent accounts.

This protocol makes few assumptions about how a domain manages its collection of elements. In particular, it does not assume that a region will be entirely managed on a single host, nor that an agent will or won’t be managed by
a single process. It is useful to think of the “stance” that each element takes in the three-way protocol: The viewer is the direct proxy for a human that wants to control an agent. This control can be direct as in the case of an interactive 3D viewer, or indirect as in the case of a web site that the user directs to display their agent’s status.

The agent domain is responsible for the agent itself. The persistent state of the agent is held within the agent
domain, and requests to interact with the agent, even by the viewer, are mediated by the agent domain. The region domain runs the live simulations of regions in the virtual world. The region domain manages the persistent state of these regions."



(Architecture representation by Ugotrade, september 2007)



SL watcher for Massively, Tateru Nino writes:


"While very preliminary and far from complete, the SLGOGP is essentially the beginnings of the technical underpinning that will ultimately allow the cohesive operation of both Linden-operated and non-Linden-operated Second-Life style
simulators and grids."
I can't wait for the grid to open up and I'll be able to hook up my own sim.

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MindBlizzard statistics update

I've talked with a number of people on how hard it is to keep blogging. Since December 07 I've had a hard time keeping up with blogging at the pace I did before, and it showed in my technorati ratings. The positive thing is that the number of unique visitors is steadily going up again. Thanks folks for reading my thoughts.

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Under Construction: Unilever


Just spotted: Unilever.


Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch conglomerate with hundreds of brands, much like Procter & Gamble. One of its brands, Ben & Jerrys has tested the virtual waters in 2007, and now the mothership is coming down with a double sim under construction. Not yet accessible though.

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Immersive Shopping at Weltbild.de

Purely by accident I landed on a sim called 'Weltbild'. Not only the name is German, also the style of the build: A surplus of white. Every German build in Second Life seems to display an absense of color. A color which is used as support-color for the build is a deep red, a combination which reminded me of the Avastar build.

The island is owned by the Weltbild Publishing Group, which is a major German publisher and media retailer, owned by the dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church of Germany, based in Augsburg (see also Augsburg in SL) and now in Second Life as well.

"As of 2006, Weltbild claims to be Germany's largest media and mail-order company, with a market share of ten percent. It also says it is No. 2 among online book retailers (presumably after Amazon.de). Weltbild employs some 4,500
employees and has a revenue of 1,4 billion EUR. According to the enterprise, some 5,5 million customers in the German-speaking countries buy Weltbild books by mail order, in one of the 300 Weltbild shops or over the Internet. Its
mail-order catalogue has a print run of four million.".
(Wikipedia)

The island is another tropical beach setting, like many builds from the rainy North-European continent, today I don't mind however. The weather outside is indeed shitty and I can use some sunshine.




The Avastar association is perhaps more than coincidental, as the islands auditorium is showing a movie auditioning contest in cohoots with the Avastar newspaper.

The main venue of the island consists of three shops:

  1. Film
  2. Books
  3. Music

The thing I like about these shops is that they're not only plain links to the Weltbild website, but also offer trailers you can watch with your friends so it really is a first step towards immersive shopping.


Immersive movies:



Despite my prejudice about German builds I like the quality of the build. There are a few unnecessary things, like a telescope pointing to nowhere and a totally lost 3D tetris game though.




I wonder if the build will be revamped with the new html-on-a-prim technology, making direct interaction with their webshop possible.


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

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Nokia: Connecting Communities

Many telecom companies have ventured into Second Life in the past year. Usually they've played with the environment without much success. Once I noticed the Nokia sim and went over for a quick visit, my first impression was that it wasn't much different then what the other Telco's have done. The longer I stayed, the more positive I got though.

There are several Nokia Islands to be found, usually the Nokia-Siemens combination, but these aren't accessible. yet. This blog will focus on the Nokia island, in a later stadium I may blog Nokia Italia, which focusses on the Nokia Trendlabs.

"Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation, focused on wired and wireless telecommunications, with 112,262 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of 51.058 billion euros as of 2007. It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones: its global device market share was about 40% in Q4 of 2007. Nokia produces mobile phones for every major market segment and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA (UMTS).

Nokia's subsidiary Nokia Siemens Networks produces
telecommunications network equipments, solutions and services.

Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland: it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007. "
(Wikipedia)


The first thing I received on the island which opened in february was a notecard which read:


Welcome to Nokia Island!


Have fun and relax!


Visit the beach and take a swim, and get a yourself a brand new free Jetski!


HOLODECK FUN!


Enjoy the spectacular experience of being inside a real Holodeck.


VIRTUAL DEVICES


You can view some models is the shop, from where you can 'Zoom in' on the object in the designated productrooms. Use the Shop sign to return to the store.


(Note the immense typo in the virtual devices part - I know my blog isn't typo-free, but this is a corporate build, come on!)


The second thing I saw was the Auditorium Maximus (left), which didn't really impress me. With this mindset I turned towards the Nokia shop (right) and thought it to be just one of those things.




Inside the shop it got a little better. On the ground floor it focussed on the usual promotion stuf, but it offered huds and flying phones as well.



The second floor has a phonestand in which you can give feedback on the various models



When I walked out of the shop, my view was largely blocked by a large peacock, which stood in front of a rental sign. "Oh no... not rentals," was my first thought.


Then suddenly I noticed the virtual representation of the Burj Al Arab, the world's tallest hotel.in Dubai, which had several empty floors, several Nokia branded offices (mainly Scope Cleaver Design) and finally I noticed a MetaLife office. Here I got my first impression that they are really trying to fit their slogan "Connecting People" to this virtual world.




With that in mind I suddenly looked upon the build with new eyes. The whole of the sim is set up as a beach resort with various huts and bars along the inner lake. Although the main landmark is the Burj al Arad from Dubai, the statues from Easter Island dominate the scenery. The beachhuts are filled with benches, fireplaces and jacuzzi's to meet up. The sitting animations are always in couples. It's about connecting people, not sitting alone.


Finally, I took a ride with the Jetski and noticed a Greenie on the sim as well.



It wasn't really busy at the sim, so I can't really tell if it's a big success. To me it looks like they've managed to take their presence a step beyond their competition, but I don't know if it will be enough to really start connecting communities. It will probably depend on the type and frequency of events they will plan at the island.

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

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Association of Virtual Worlds Advisory Board Goes Global

I just checked the PRWEB and didn't see the press release there yet, but I just picked up one that's about to air on the Association of Virtual Worlds.


Jacksonville, Fla. (PRWEB) March 10, 2008



The Association of Virtual Worlds welcomes four new members to its Advisory Board: Dr. Sara de Freitas, Director of Research at the Serious Games Institute at the University of Coventry in the UK; Darius Lahoutifard, CEO, Altadyn, with offices in Paris, France and California; Rahul Dutta, CEO, Trimensions-Metaverse Development, of Gurgaon, India; and Bruno Cerboni, Founder and CEO of Virtual Italian Parks, of Rome, Italy.


“I am thrilled that these four leaders in their fields have agreed to join the Advisory Board of the Association of Virtual Worlds. The Association is truly a global organization and the addition of these four international members to the Advisory Board underscore the global aspect of this new group.” says Dave Elchoness, Executive Director.


The Association of Virtual Worlds is experiencing rapid growth both in the US and around the world. “It is extremely exciting to see such an enormous global interest in this organization,” says Edita Kaye, Founder.


The Association of Virtual Words is a global industry association for the rapidly growing virtual worlds industry. It serves as a resource for those wishing to experiment and explore virtual worlds for work or play. The Association’s mission is to educate, network, recruit, and further the membership’s collective goals.


For more information please contact: dave@associationofvirtualworlds.com or edita@associationofvirtualworlds.com


Dave Elchoness,
Executive Director
Visit
Association of Virtual Worlds at:
http://www.associationofvirtualworlds.com/



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New HOAP for Second Life















I had lost a little faith in Second Life, but there's new hope coming about when it comes to Second Life being a serious tool for business: Html-On-A-Prim.

Gwynneth Llewelyn wrote an excellent article on this new feature and its implications, here's a short extract:

"A few months ago - not many in terms of “real life”
hours, but an eternity in Second Life® - a brief discussion with Linden Lab exposed the rumour that they were planning to integrate an HTML browser inside the Second Life application client. This is not a revolutionary breakthrough - things like ActiveWorlds or OpenCroquet have done it ages ago, and the world did not shatter and end at that time.

Some eager residents of SL were happy about the idea. At the very least, you would be able to exchange notecards with “rich text”. Perhaps even have a way to browse a bit while in-world - no more need to open up your browser to check the Help pages, do some forum posting, or even insert events directly from in-world.

On a second stage (according to Linden Lab®), HTML may be directly drawn on top of a prim face. This would mean, for starters, a way to get outside information on top of a 3D world. Older platforms already allow for this usage of HTML. Things like proper text management on top of a prim are finally possible - books, slide-show presenters, coreboards, even clothes vendors, will be able to get away with textures for writing text, and use HTML-rendered text instead.

The third stage is full integration. Prims with HTML pages (and LL is still thinking on how this will happen) will be point-and-click browseable. Neither we nor Linden Lab have yet figured out how exactly this will be implemented..."


HTML on a Prim boosts options for virtual workspace

Although the features at this time are pretty basic, it has brought Second Life back into focus for me as a possible platform for serious collaboration. My frustration with SL was mainly caused by lack of real collaboration possibilities.

What it all boils down to is that you rez a prim and put a webpage on it. Now you can look at a webpage with others. Nothing spectacular, but it gets more serious when you can look at secure webpages. I've done some tests with a colleague displaying secure content. Through the built-in media browser you can access and log into secure sites, then use the option to 'send current URL to parcel' and it will display set itself at the parcel media URL and display at the screen. Your fellow observer won't see the webpage unless he's logged in as well. Today we started working through some of our project tools (like JIRA) in which we can monitor our projects.

It works. We could both look at 'classified content' and discuss the status of a project, manage service calls and have a look at the time budgets for the project at hand. At the end there was one question nagging me: Security? Anyone?

The thing is, Second Life doesn't have the reputation of being a safe and sound business environment (remember ABN is partly moving to Active Worlds because they need a secure environment). What happens with my username and password when I enter this info in the built in browser?

A Quick HOWTO:

Maybe it's me, but it took me some time to fiddle out how it worked. And because there's a little bug (it can crash your sim) I thought I'd do you the favour of a quick 'howto'.

The feature only works with the new Release Candidate 1.19.1 client (March 6th) and there are a few new features that are obvious - such as the extra media tab next to the talk settings - and some little settings to tweak in the 'Preferences' bit.

The basic element for displaying web content is in the estate management settings, the 'About Land' configuration where you have the option to set the media url for the parcel. The downside is that you can only set one URL per parcel. Remember to select the texture that will be used on the prims to display the content as well. If you're working behind a firewall or proxy, you now have the option to set proxy stuff as well in the preferences bit (pic right)


Then build the prim, select the desired texture (in this case the new *default media texture) corresponding with the texture set at the media options in the previous step. Then go to the general tab and select prim properties. Where you used to have buy, open and sit options, there are now two extra's: Open Media Content and Play Media Content.

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Sunday, March 02, 2008

NEC calls from SL, but says what?

Last wednesday I picked up a press release by Nec, stating they are going to connect Second Life to real life with their SCI Platform solution;

NEC Corporation, a provider of Next Generation IP Voice and Media service solutions, announced that their intention to connect the virtual world, namely "Second Life" to the real world using their SCI Platform solution. SCI Platform,
which incorporates components of NEC's Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for providers of IP voice and multimedia services, will liberate currently closed virtual world communications and connect them to the real world by using a unique `NEC communicator` placed in Second Life world.

Virtual to real world cell phone calls
NEC's vision for "real world gateways", as illustrated by this demonstration, helps its customers to find new Web 2.0 revenue streams by taking critical "virtual to real world"
interface roles in terms of ubiquitous communication, payment, media distribution and context distribution. NEC will further communicate their vision for IP Voice and Media innovation, convergence and service evolution through other exciting demonstrations.

SCI Platform at Mobile World Congress
At NEC's booth, Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, visitors can enter Second Life and control an avatar to make calls to another person in the real world by using the
NEC communicator. Additionally, visitors can send text oriented messages such as SMS, email and IP Messaging from Second Life to the real world.

Second Life phone calls
The NEC Communicator will be located at "Tokutoku Pocket Island" in the Second Life world during Mobile World Congress 2008. NEC launched "NEC Island", "Tokutoku Pocket Island" and several other virtual points of presence in September 2007 to initiate branding, marketing and new business opportunities activities in the virtual world.

We've seen claims made in the past about unique stuff in a Virtual World. I have noticed NEC island before, I've never been able to enter at that time, and later I just simply forgot about them., so this time I went down to see what is going on.






The Tokutoku sim certainly looks futuristic. Nec really is communicatiing a whole lot, but I don't have a clue as to what they're saying as it's all in Japanese. Please comment if you know what the island is about ;)


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Autism in Second Life

Second Life can be a place to meet and greet, and because of the anonimity an NVE offers hope for many who have social disabilities. Here's a YouTube movie about Autism in Second Life:



Although I've been writing about Education in virtual worlds, I really wasn't looking for this one. I got pointed to this one while keeping up with my favorite authors. The one pointing out to this particular video was one of the metarati, William Gibson, who wrote:

THE COOLEST THING IN SECOND LIFE

Absolutely . [hat-tip to my wife]

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