Introducing ak Yip as MindBlizzard reporter Japan

Time and again I have been frustrated by the fact that I just can't make head or tale from Japanese sites. In the past year and a half many Japanese firms have established a presence in Second Life and set up supporting websites. I have had a hard time figuring out what the companies were about and which message they were conveying in Second Life. Besides Second Life, there is a whole lot going on in the Asian World when it comes to Virtual Worlds, of which only occasionally a name, a new startup comes through to the English speaking world.

Therefor I'm very pleased to welcome ak Yip as a guest author to the MindBlizzard blog. ak Yip has helped me out in the past quite a few times in providing details on Japanese firms and he has agreed to blog the Japanese Metaverse at MindBlizzard.

His main blog is AvatarWatch - which I can't read again as it is in Japanese. You can also find ak Yip blogging at 100 Innovations in Second Life and Metaverse Mashup

ak, I hope you'll enjoy blogging for MinBlizzard from Japan, as I'm sure we'll enjoy exploring the Virtual Realms from the land of the Rising Sun.

Cheers,

Veejay

Me the Media - about me as well

Mid april the Sogeti Vint Institute released its latest book, called "Me the Media. Past, Present and Future of the Third Media Revolution".

VINT is Sogeti Group's New Technology Research Institute, founded as the Verkennings Instituut Nieuwe Technologie in the Netherlands in 1994. Currently VINT has offices in Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm and Washington.

"Me the Media " investigates the exciting development of web media. It envisages a future of hyper-individualization, of ICTainment on top of ICTechnology, and of meaningful web conversations between organizations, customers and employees. Somewhere in the book you run into a picture of yours truly, both avatar and Real Life and referral to the MindBlizzard blog. On the Me The Media website you'll find a short outline of the book in English as well.

To get more info on the novel, sign up for the book presentation at the Vint Quarterly Technology Update in 't Spant in Bussum on May 13th.

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.

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)

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:

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.

MindBlizzard Belgiums' Finest

The MindBlizzard crowd is getting more and more international by the day. Last week I received a call from Belgium requesting to put up a feed of this blog in their Second Life space.

So MindBlizzard is one of Belgium's Finest blogs (be it that I write from the Netherlands) and they've put me up next to the Official Linden Blog. Thanks Frans!

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Belgiums%20Finest/128/128/0/

I can has cameras and stuff

I believe I can fly - or I can has camera's?

Yesterday was a quiet day at the office and we had some nice talks on Second Life. There was quite a fun discussion going on about building our Sogeti presence in Second Life.

At some point in the discussion we were al making fun of staircases and escalators in Second Life. "Who needs escalators... you can fly man." One of my colleagues thought himself to be a great, well-metaversed, explorer and never walks in Second Life, only flies. However, our good friend Damanios Thetan once said: "you fly? I never fly. I move my camera..."

Just a small example of how we all have to adjust to the metaverse.

I can has good ranking

Earlier today I took a peek at Technorati to see if their were any new links to the Mindblizzard blog. Bummer. No new fans. Looking at the rating I'd say there must be something strange going on...

Mindblizzard blog rank 1? That's an error. Or do I misinterpret? World no 1. blog surely is I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER.

Teva Shoes logo

Last week we bought new shoes for my daughter (nearly 3 years old). They were sandals of the Teva brand. Nothing special, nothing fancy, but just good quality of a fairly well known brand. It wasn't until yesterday I noticed their logo... Looks familiar, dunnit?

Mindblizzard now top 100K

Thanks to all readers and commenters the MindBlizzard blog now entered the Technorati top 100.000. Quite a good job I think, considering I started out barely 3 months ago.

Next objective is 50K :)

MindBlizzard growing

The MindBlizzard blog has been up for just 4 months, but it's growing (too) fast...

Size

This is getting a regular habit I fear. Right now I'm having a hard time publishing to my blog. It's been barely a month ago that I upgraded my hostingaccount from 50 to 100 Mb and DataTraffic limits from 2 Gb/month to 4 Gb per month.

Now, halway through July I'm at 3.2 Gb Data Traffic already and have grown beyond 100Mb.
Maybe I should start considering getting a sponsor as well.

Reputation

To look on the bright side of life: In the past month my technorati rating has rocketed from autority 26 to authority 50, and closing in on the top 100K blogs. Not bad for a 4 month old blog.

Readers

In the past months I've seen various people comment on and link to my blog, such as:

• Aimee Weber (Aimee Weber Studios)
• Christian Renaud (Cisco)
• Ian Hughes (IBM)
• Jerry Paffendorf (Electric Sheep Company - at time of commenting)
• Justin Bovington (Rivers Run Red)
• Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us)
• Robert Scoble (Scobleizer)
• Trevor Smith (Ogoglio / Transmutable)

The MindBlizzard Crowd (2)

Here's a little update on the readers of this blog. Let's start of with a welcome to the new visitors coming from China, Singapore, Latvia and Yugoslavia.

Then there's an increase in visitors from Southern Europe, like Italy, Portugal and Spain, but the sharpest increase comes from France, Japan and India. So Aleister's observation that Asia is slowly discovering Second Life does have a point. His report on the first Korean Content Creator in Second Life is another sign, and if the massively cyworld addicted Korean nation is truly getting to Second Life, we might see a few good shows with their nationwide virtual world experience.

Here's a few links to places that linked to MindBlizzard:

Mindblizzard in France

• Second Life reporter (French Video reports on Second Life)
• A Brand New Place
• Hebi Flash blog

Mindblizzard in Japan

• Metaverse.jp

The MindBlizzard Crowd

A little earlier I gave you some clinical stats on april's visits to the blog, here's a more personal touch:
When I was checking some things I noticed the MindBlizzard blog was mentioned at the Spotfire site... good to know :)

Aside from that some people like to keep stats of where Business Week is mentioned, this past week I scored 2 points. And there's Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us who reacted to my blog on his 2007 predictions for Second Life and Paul Verhoeven who turned out to be a well metaversed SL-savvy director and kind enough to take half an hour to sit and have a chat with me on his new movie Black Book and auditioning in SL.

In the past month I've gotten to know Aleister Kronos, who's employed at a competing corp, a passionate blogger at Ambling in SL and 57 miles, professional bloggernaut at Metaversed. A month blogging like a lunatic earned me some nice friends, some scoops, some sleepless nights and some nice credits.

Blogstats April

Well, I've started this blog in February, but only got serious somewhere this month.
The first 10 days of april saw an average of 5 visitors a day, the last 10 days an average of 146. So it's been a good month :)

Here's where our visitors came from:

1. Netherlands
2. Usa
3. Japan
4. Italy
5. Singapore
6. Denmark
7. Canada
8. United Kingdom
9. Australia
10. Belgium

Our top referrers:

1. Ambling in Second Life
2. Google
3. Technorati
4. 3pointD
5. Secondlife Blogo