Linden Lab writes out 10K innovation contest

Linden Lab are offering $10K for projects that improve real life through virtual world.

Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, just announced that they are launching a $10,000 (USD) "Linden Prize" for "an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world." The criteria include:

• Work in Second Life that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life.
• Distinctive, original work using Second Life that clearly demonstrates high quality, execution, function, aesthetics and technical sophistication.
• Work that has the capacity for inspiring and influencing future development, knowledge, creativity, and collaboration both inside and outside of Second Life.

The price money offered is a substantial increase from previous initiatives (which in my opinion have been nothing but shameless crowdmining projects), including USC's "Public Good" challenge that offered $1,200 to three winning projects and the Foundation for Rich Content which has been providing small grants of $80 for projects that enhance Second Life in some way.

However, with 10K in the offering, I doubt it will be enough to attract larger real life businesses to compete and in the passing make a difference. For individual entrepeneurs and Metaverse evangelists, this might be a daring opportunity though.

Entries for this innovation contest are due January 19. See the Linden Prize site for further details.

Get yer free stack of virtual land

I just received word via twitter that Millions of Us is giving away free land to residents with creative ideas, a grand total of 8 complete sims:

"Social media is all about participation, right? In that spirit, Millions of Us will be opening up land on several of its sims in order to host the coolest projects you can come up with. We own 8 perimeter sims, clustered around the central eponymous sim — and that’s where we invite interested and motivated residents to help us fill those sims with fantastic Second Life content."

Read all at the Millions of Us blog.

5K Contest at StageSpace

There's big news at Stagespace was the introduction of an email I received from the German 3D platform Stagespace. In fall 2007 it will release its 1.0 version which will be a lot different from the current Beta version.

Stagespace will be a room for you, your creativity and your style, your stage on Internet and is organising a Design Contest with a 5K (hard euro's) reward. The contest is themed Pink is Green

Categories:

1. Architecture (interior of the locations)
2. Furniture and Object Design
3. Texture Design for clothing

The winner will take 5.000 euro in prize money, which is a nice challenge. To make sure of the quality, Stagespace has put together quite an impressive jury team to judge the entries, among which the well known industrial designer Prof. Luigi Colani.

The closing date for submitting entries is August 30 (2007)

More info on the website http://www.pinkistgruen.de/

Master Lordfly advances

I just heard that master builder Lordfly Digeridoo has advanced to round 2 of the Meltemi contest I've blogged on early april. I've been hanging around to see the build advance and now I finally get the chance to post some pics.

First series is some rapid prototyping

Though I really liked this side of hovering platforms, it didn't survive the next stage of the build.

The Final version:

Robert Jordan contest

Robert Jordan, author of the legendary the Wheel of Time series has set up a competition for the 2009 calendar, announced on the Dragonmount blog. The money raised by the calendar sales will go to benefit Amyloidosis Research at the Mayo Clinic where Robert Jordan is receiving his treatment from.

In Second Life a group named 'Wheel of Time Fans' has been around for a while now, and me being a total tWoT fan am a member of this group. It seemed like a good thing to get the group together to build an entry for this contest in collaboration.

Several group members have already signed up to participate .

IM VeeJay Burns for more information.

Looking for sponsors:

The group is looking for a piece of land where we can set up a build.

Here's a few more pics of what The Wheel of Time could look like in Second Life.

A'Lan Mandragoran and the Malkieri banner

a Whitecloack

Aloft Revisited

One of the grand openings this month is not a newcomer to Second Life, but actually an early pioneer. Aloft entered Second Life mid 2006 with a rather static sim -which was not a deadly sin at that time - but certainly understood the principle of crowdsourcing much better than Visa (previous post).

They've received an enormous amount of input from visitors and redecorated the whole sim. Aside from a dominating Aloft hotel, there are many interesting fountains, gardens, beaches and other retreats that will keep you busy for a while.

You'd assume they're here to stay, but they're not. Aloft has received enough input for a year ;) Now it's back to the drawing table for them to transfer that knowledge into their Real Life business. Their grand re-opening is at the same time a say goodbye.

One last great crowdsourcing trick that will surely involve the community: They're offering their sim for a whole year. Tell them how and why YOU need the sim for a year, and it's yours...

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/aloft%20island/128/128/0

Crayon Coke Cracker Competition

Oh yeah.... you've been suckered big time!

Last days the buzz was all about Coca Cola making their SL presence known on monday 16th.

Well, it didn't. Serious SL reporters and world wide financial newspapers have been virtually fooled.

The coke launch was a campaign run by Crayon and supported by their website at: http://www.virtualthirst.com/ No real coke here, but the essence of the liquid: Refreshment, Joy, Unity, Experience. It's a contest to make this essence a virtual reality.

So sign up, be creative and surprise us!

AMD

In the deep south of the Developers Archipelago lies the sim of AMD which opened mid February 2007. AMD is certainly not pushing the limits of Second Life's innovative potential, the sim is mainly used as a meeting point for techies with a few events. The design is quite sterile and you may have to wear sunglasses to protect you against snow blindness.


The sim was constructed by the guys at Metaversality.


From the press release:
"MD Opens Developer Pavilion to Promote Collaboration and Innovation in Second Life and Beyond- Contestants face off to win an AMD powered Dell Dimension SystemDev Central Pavilion on AMD Dev Central Island located within the Second Life (SL) metaverse, to extend its Developer Outreach program into a virtual space for meetings, lectures, training courses and networking opportunities for developers. To celebrate the launch of the pavilion, AMD will host a three-month treasure hunt contest with interactive Linden scripting language (LSL) and open source programming challenges. Developers who successfully complete the challenges in the Pavilion will be entered into a prize drawing for a Dell Dimension E521 system, powered by an AMD dual-core Athlon(tm) 64 X2 processor, 4GB DDR2 SDRAM, 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, 20 inch widescreen digital flat panelmonitor, and more."


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/AMD%20Dev%20Central/128/128/0

Building Competition

The Italian publishing company Meltemi Editore wants to establish a seat in Second Life and started a design competition. The deadline for the first stage is May 20th (2007) and the competition ends july 2007.

The winning design receives a price of 5,000 euro.

More on the competition: http://www.meltemieditore.it/concorso.asp#eng

Second Life Design Competition

An international architectural contest has been launched to rebuild Forum des Halles' [Paris]superstructures because they have been prematurely damaged. 10 candidates have been chosen to participate in this contest and the jury will announce the winner June 29th 2007.

The City is hesitating to organise a second competition regarding the garden as well as the building because the design proposed by the architect David Mangin is likely to be kept. However, these designs do not take into account the many expectations of those who will be using des Halles: visitors, residents, merchants, walkers… Nothing has changed in the last two years despite the numerous demands of users and studies that have been conducted...

Read more at: http://www.reperes-secondlife.com/