Friday, May 01, 2009

Oriental Dispatch: Blue Mars, Synthe

Hello from ak Yip. At this time, I introduce two consumer-generated-worlds in Japan.

Blue Mars
Blue Mars is a beautiful world which uses CryEngine2 to render. Users can generate contents. Especially game-related contents.
Beta test will start at June. After that, Blue Mars will launch at September officially.

You can subscribe about latest Blue Mars news here.
http://www.bluemarsonline.com/beta_subscribe/



via 「Blue Mars」国内開発者向け説明会を開催,βテストは6月から


Synthe
Today new world "Synthe"'s website has launched.
"Synthe" has many interesting features.

1)Built-in avatar design tool.
"FBX" fromat(I don't know about this) is supported and it seems to be possible to import 3D models.

2)Game-builder.
Script engine called "KIRIKIRI" is supported. With this, users can create games easily.

3)"KERO" currency.
"Synthe" has own currency called "KERO". Users can earn "KERO" by selling items. "KERO" seems to be possible to exchange to real currency.




via ホビーストック,汎用スクリプト吉里吉里を内蔵したメタバース「Synthe(シンセ)」のサービスを発表。プレオープンサイトが本日オープン

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Virtual Goods Taxation

Through Virtual World News

IRS Closer to Taxing Virtual Goods Transactions

The Internal Revenue Service inched closer to taxation of virtual goods Wednesday, as national taxpayer advocate Nina Olson released her 2008 Annual Report to Congress. The report describes ongoing issues faced by taxpayers and recommends issues for the IRS to address. For what appears to be the first time, the issue of virtual goods transactions in virtual worlds is cited as a major concern

"Economic activities in virtual worlds may present an emerging area of tax noncompliance, in part because the IRS has not provided guidance about whether and how taxpayers should report such activities," states the report's Executive Summary.

Read More

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Canada Post delivers (part 1)

Just like airliners in Second Life (see Brussels Airlines and Air France - KLM) a mail company in Second Life could be seen as a 2008 Metaverse Oddity, for surely, you don't need a mailman in a virtual world like this. If you buy virtual goods, they don't need to be delivered as they appear in your inventory immediately and can be rezzed anywhere you like. You don't need a mailman either to deliver your postcards to the ones you love, as Second Life has a built-in service which delivers your snapshots through email. Yet Canada Post isn't the odd one out in Second Life.

Canada Post Corporation (French: Société canadienne des postes) is the Canadian postal operator operated as a crown corporation. The Post Office Department of the Government of Canada was founded in 1867 and was rebranded Canada Post in the late 1960s though it officially remained the Post Office Department until October 16, 1981 when the Canada Post Corporation Act came into force. The Act set a new direction for the postal service, creating more reliable service and ensuring the postal service's financial security and independence. [Wikipedia]

Or maybe it is, in a positive way. The Canada Post presence in Second Life is one of the second wave corporations to explore the metaverse, and like the German Volksbank, they have a different approach to things than most of the first wave explorers had. Like the Volksbank they don't have a dedicated sim which is destined to lay bare once the 'grand opening festivities' are over, they bring a variety of shops on their sim.

The Canadian Post venture is called "Maple Grove" but won't be found on the island called maplegrove but on one called Solar. The sim is a heavily built urban sim which makes it rather slow to render, especially if you use 'ultra detail' settings like me to take some nice pictures for you folks. Once immersed at the center of the sim you'll find yourself amidst a variety of builds, one of which, obviously is the Canadian Post postoffice.



Aside from the Canadian Post shop you'll find a variety of retailers which are Canadian Post's 2008 retail partners, i.e. they ship their real life products with Canadian Post. The notecard you can pick up in front of the postoffice gives a good overview on what you can find on the sim:

Welcome to Canada Post's Maple Grove!

Canada Post is proud to showcase its 2008 partner retailers. Explore Maple Grove and discover the largest collection of real-life retailers sharing one sim in Second Life.

In the city centre, you can visit Toys R Us, Sky Mall, The Shopping Channel and Canada Post. New this year, we are introducing the Bright Spark Lab. The Lab is a virtual marketing agency designed to assist Second Life entrepreneurs. You will find free tools to make you Second Life business more successful. You will also find valuable information for creating a direct mail campaign in real life!

On Maple Street, we have a busy schedule of live music events at the Telus Theater. Be sure to check out Brookstone and Red Canoe. Don't forget to stop in the Green Cafe which has information about keeping your mail "green". Blackberry Lane is home to Sears and the Canada Post garage where you can get your own free mail truck.

On Hudson Avenue, you will find the Everything Olive store next to the Tower.

Thank you for visiting Maple Grove and be sure to leave us some feedback at the Canada Post office in the city centre.

I won't go into a detailed description of these companies in this post, that will have to wait untill later, but here's a few piccies to get an idea of the entire build




Most shops present on the sim put on a showcase of a number of items you can buy in their webshops and have the items delivered to you by Canada Post at home in the real world. I think this type of presence will work better than a sim dedicated to one brand only, as it kind of works like the old fashioned way: You go downtown to visit one store, you walk past another one and walk in on impulse.

I can understand Canadian Post offering this selection of shops, as they are real world partners in shipping, but I wonder how many virtual shoppers this particular combination will draw. Perhaps it would have been better to mix the real life companies with popular inworld shops.

There is a downside to this type of presence though, as it is quite a heavy urban build, it is very slow to render if you use a higher graphics setting. I don't think you can blame Canadian Post for this, but rather an unavoidable feat if you're working in Second Life. If corporations slowly start to work out their act in the Metaverse and start doing sensible business, companies and customers alike would like (and rightly so) a better performance from MSP's (Metaverse Service Providers) like Second Life. If performance can't be boosted to have a decent shopping experience, then maybe Second Life isn't the place to be for shops.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Solar/120/134/81

Resources:

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Virtual Banking (18): Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank

Among the first countries to ditch Second Life last summer were Germany and Austria, where public opinion rapidly went from ecstatic to outright negative and focus was laid on the dark side of Second Life. But they're back. Slowly (very slowly), companies are coming back to Second Life. This time it's the German based Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank which opened up their virtual shop earlier this week, making it real world bank number 18 to immerse itself in Second Life.

Initially I thought this build was from the Austrian based Volksbank AG, or Volksbank Group, but that's a mixup. This presence is the German Volksbank, a cooperation of different local banks.

Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken with over 15,7 million members and 30 million customers, is a pillar of the German banking industry and a major force in the German economy. As the central organization of the cooperative banking group, the BVR (Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken), functions as a promoter of, representative for, and a strategic partner of its members. [bvr]

Aside from an apparent turn in public opinion, this new endeavor supprisingly comes at a time in which most financial institutions keep a lid on their expenditure and innovation budget due to the Credit Crunch.

The Volksbank comes in a double sim presence, first of which is the Orientantion Island and the second one is the main sim. The main sim holds the VR Marktplatz (market) and VR Finanzlounge (finance lounge), which is built like a typical smalltown city center.


The Volksbank has a different approach to their presence than most other real life companies have, which is good. Most corporate sims are empty spaces, with only their own private little corporate build. Alongside the marketplace however, we find various shops, inworld, Second Life based boutiques. Also the Volksbank has set up a Real Estate agent at the corner of the marketplace, which offers building tips for building in Second Life. I think this is a very good crossover, as real estate products and real estate financing are closely tied in with the core products of a bank.




While exploring the sim I ran into two Volksbank teammembers, Alexander Auerbach and teamleader Pedro Barbosa, who kindly gave me some background information. The Volksbank presense is mainly a research project which is not directly focussed on doing actual banking business in Second Life, but in getting in touch with their clients. They want to collect experience which can help them improve their services and consultancy. They do want to find out though how far one can go in 'vermittlung', consultancy in an environment like this.

Their Second Life presence will a place to meet new customers, but since finance is a very private business, follow ups will have to be done the old fashioned way, with visits to your local bank. The lack of privacy was also one of the reasons ABN Amro moved over to Active Worlds.

They were quick to point out that the presence isn't finished yet, and were still working on filling in some details. The concept for the sim was made by people from GAD, a calculating center for banks and a member of the Volksbank cooperation. Also cooperative banks like the geno-verband Stuttgart and Rheinisch-Westfälischer Genossenschaftsverband participate in this build, which are both part of the Volksbank coop as well. The concept developed by GAD was checked with a Second Life agency though to see if it would hold up, but the build was entirely done with own employees.

Here's two promo videos about the Volksbank presense in Second Life:







SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/VR%20Land/114/19/24

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Will Dutch Court prosecute virtual theft?

Dutch prosecutors have demanded 180 hours of community service and conditional youth detention with a 2 year probation in case of theft of virtual goods in Runescape. This is the first time a Dutch Judge will have to say something on the value of virtual goods.

The suspects, two boys aged 14 and 15 alledgedly forced a 13 year old to transfer virtual items to their account in september 2007. Aside from physical abuse, the main issue in this case will be to judge wether or not virtual items can be considered goods which can be stolen and this can be considered a crime. If these goods have value to the owner, and he can no longer use them, then by traditional law this is judged theft. We'll have to see if this classifies in the same way.

It's not the first time a Virtual World makes it to Dutch court, last year a Dutchmen was apprehended for stealing furniture from Habbo hotel worth 4.000 Euro. By hacking accounts the Dutchmen could transfer these objects. Because Habbo Credits were bought with real money, the man was charged with hacking and theft. Uptill now, no conviction followed though.

The judge is expected to make a ruling in the Runescape case next week.

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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Credit Crunch Crash Course for VW's

Amidst all the turmoil on the current Credit Crunch, twitterati Malburns pointed me to an excellent article from the Metanomics.

My social web life seems to go down the drain because of the banking crisis, which makes me work day and night covering the endless stories of banks going bust, regulators and politicians scrambling to save them, the doom and gloom spreading and making consumers and investors extremely nervous.

It makes me aware of the fact that connectedness has its idealistic, hopeful face, like one can experience in the online Connectivism course but also a more ugly face, of spammers, griefers, online communities which seem to deal in hatred and stupidity.

Relating this to virtual worlds, I think there are some interesting similarities between banking, society at large and virtual worlds and communities.

Banking is an activity which is extremely connected. Long before people started talking about web2.0, social networks or even the internet, finance professionals linked up all over the globe using telegraph, phone, spreading information through private networks or monitoring wire services such as Reuters.

Not only good ideas spread through those networks. Also toxic financial products, like repackaged dodgy loans, travel at the speed of light. Dubious financial practices originating in the US end up in Europe and Asia. Reckless over-leveraging in Europe affects Wall Street etc.

Read the full article here.

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

When virtual money becomes a horrid reality

There's no denying trouble at the Dow, or any other Stock Exchange. Some even say the storm of the century is blazing across Wall Street. There's so much going on that even I felt the need to comment on it, even while I focus on Virtual Worlds.

Come to think of it, it isn't that farfetched as the NYSE guys and shortshellers didn't speculate with real money either. They've thought up a virtual capital, a virtual economy, uncovered wealth to push the market in the direction of real profit. Now speculating with this virtual wealth falls through and to many people it becomes a horrid reality as they run into credit or mortgage trouble, or might be fired in the coming months.

Techblogger Robert Scoble wrote an article called Economic Idiocy and at this point in time we may face Idiocy, maybe even frenzy, but at its core is something much darker: It is greed. A ‘little while ago” Descarte wrote: “Cogito Ergo Sum”, I think therefor I exist. In the past century -and especially in the USA -it has grown to I shop, therefor I am.

Marketing guru’s like Edward Bernays have found the triggers that make us buy things we don’t need, all to keep the economy running. Now throw in a bunch of greedy stockowners and shortsellers and you’ve got a volatile mix, focussed on short term profits. Profit is the main driver in our present economy. We lack long term vision and that’s what’s killing us now.

In our drive for profits and growth we have overextended ourselves. Where did sound economics go that said “Don’t buy if you can’t afford”? Instead we’ve invented credit card debt. We let go of the gold standard an have invented trillions of dollars of State Debt. We started speculating with money we don’t have.

Well, now we drop dead shopping. Back to thinking, looking at what we’re doing out there. What do we need, and why do we think we need more? Why do we desperately want to have a bigger car than our neighbours, or a bigger house than our colleagues. If you’ve done healthy financial management, didn’t overextend and are debt free, the storm will pass. Maybe we’ve got to accept the fact that in other cases it’s a dreadfull, yet necessary correction to our unbridled greed.

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Monday, September 29, 2008

Virtual Banking (17): Banca MPS

Banca MPS

Amidst all the turmoil on the financial markets I decided to see if there has been any chance in the status of a couple of banks I spotted a while ago in Second Life. The sim is called Banca MPS, which stands for Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SPA

"Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SPA (MPS) is the oldest surviving bank in the world. Founded in 1472 by the Magistrate of the city state of Siena, Italy, it has been operating ever since. Today it consists of approximately 1,800 branches, 28,000 employees and 4.5 million customers in Italy, as well as branches and businesses abroad. A subsidiary, MPS Finance, handles consumer finance.

Its headquarters in the Palazzo Salimbeni in Siena are host to a magnificent art collection and a large number of priceless historical documents spanning the centuries of its existence. However, this collection is not usually open to the public" [wikipedia]

On the sim you see a complex of buildings, in which nothing much happens. I've spotted this sim about a year ago and the evolution has been slow. Yet the the detail on the buildings is pretty good.

As I couldn't get in, I couldn't explore the buildings. However, I could peek through the opened doors allowing me to get a view of classical Italian paintings. I suspect this is the collection Wikipedia refers to. If the Real Life collection is not usually open to visitors, giving them a free entrance in Second Life would probably be a good thing. So why not open up folks?

In the Netherlands, Banca MPS is primarily known for acquiring Banca Antonveneta from Grupo Santander late 2007, which took over a part of the Dutch ABN Amro Bank, which in its turn had just aquired Antonveneta, making it the first non-italian takeover in the industry in Italy

(Okay, this is a soap... ABN AMRO was taken over by a trio of banks, aside from Santander, these were Barclays and Fortis. The latter of which is now being rescued by Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburgh governments and there are talks of selling the ABN Amro part again at a severe loss, most likely to the Dutch ING or French BNP Parisbas).

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Banca%20MPS/128/128/0

Banca Transylvania

The second bank on my list is Banca Transylvania, but this one is also closed for public. It has no neighbouring sims so I couldn't get any snapshots of that one. Hopefully someone can give me a few pointers.

SLURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/Banca%20Transylvania/128/128/0

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Friday, August 22, 2008

ArcelorMittal: Virtual Stocks

Due to family issues I've not been poking around Second Life for quite some time now, and it's been a while since I've seen interesting reports and blogs on new companies entering the world of Second Life. Although I've not immersed myself for several months now, I did keep a close tap on several noteworthy blogs through my feedreader, and didn't see any new (noteworthy) companies entering Second Life.

We all know companies aren't as eager to enter Second Life as they once were (over a year ago), but every once in a while one does enter, and this time it's the worlds' largest Steel company:

"ArcelorMittal is the largest steel company in the world, with 310,000 employees in more than 60 countries. It has led the consolidation of the world steel industry and today ranks as the only truly global steelmaker. The company was founded in 2006 when Arcelor and Mittal Steel merged. It ranked at 39th position in Fortune Global 500 companies list. The company is headquartered in Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg, the former seat of Arcelor."

[Wikipedia]

Somehow you don't see a steelcompany to be a hip, Web 2.0 ready company, but Arcelor is doing the social Jive. In 2007 it launched its own Web TV, and inaugurated their virtual presence on June 17 this year. Here is the account from the ArcelorMittal blog:

"On June 17, ArcelorMittal held its annual Individual Shareholder Event. Whether in Japan, Russia or Europe, shareholders were able to listen in, ask questions
and access information - all in real time - as they were transported into a virtual ArcelorMittal world!

15 ArcelorMittal shareholders arrived at the snazzy lounge set-up at Luxembourg headquarters as Lakshmi Mittal, our
Chairman and CEO, hosted ArcelorMittal’s 2008 Individual Shareholder meeting. Another 60 existing and potential shareholders joined the event via Second Life – a virtual meeting centre which enables you to create your own character by choosing your physical features and your virtual name.

Another great advantage for shareholders was the possibility to consult the Company’s different publications (Activity Report, Fact Book, Sustainability Report, etc.) in one direct click from the meeting centre.

After a brief presentation by Julien Onillon, VP Investor Relations, outlining the Group’s growth targets and ambitions, shareholders were invited to put their questions to Mr Mittal via instant message. My favourite one? How do you make steel?!"

I haven't visited the facility yet, so I can't really show much more than a YouTube video of the meeting, but I think I'll peek in to see what they've actually built.





Here's a number of links to press coverage of this event:

So what do we do now ?

The question is, did it work out, and what will ArcelorMittal do with their Second Life presence in the future? I don't know yet, here's a quote from a sceptic blog:

Just read in MINT newspaper that Arcelor Mittal had organised shareholder meeting in Second Life, the popular online virtual world.

The result?? Well, the results were not even close to good, atleast that's what the newspaper reported. for this 90-minute long event around 50 avatars turened up. The event was confused and uncertain. The residents were puzzledabout what are they suppose to do. They kept asking so, what do we do now?

As for as the company is concerned they realized that it is difficult to find investors, especially on such sites!

So, What do we do now?? :)


Well, I'm for one am going to enjoy my last day of the summer holidays and seek out to visit the Arcelor site in Second Life in the near future.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pando/135/143/100

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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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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

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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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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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Friday, February 29, 2008

Syntens Innovation Island

It's been a while since I came across a new Dutch build in Second Life, but here's one under construction. It's called Innovation Island (in Dutch Innovatie Eiland).

The island is an initiative by Syntens and aims to be a Second Life portal to innovative companies. A Robot welcomes you (in Dutch again) and explains about the island which is divided into several regions, each for a specific branche;



  • Construction
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Logistics
  • Human Health
  • Industry

Then there is a knowledge region for Universities, TNO and the Dutch Telematica Institute and another region focusses on MKB (Small and Midcap companies) and innovation. The sim is far from completed yet, but it'll be interesting to see where this goes.





At this moment there's a farm in present and probable future shape, and a futuristic infrastructure on the island, but mainly it's occupied by spheres as placeholders for the various branches.
Syntens is an initiative by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs to aid Dutch companies in innovation projects.


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Innovatie%20Eiland/151/113/24

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

ABN metaverse update

Today I visited the Virtual World Seminar at the University of Delft and finally had time to sit down and talk with Popke Rein Munniksma, the team leader of ABN's 3D Experience and with Emmanuel Gruijs, CEO for Active Worlds Europe. In the past week we have had some contact on the blog ING and ABN flee Second Life which caused a little stir in the blogosphere.

First, of all, one of the remarks on the initial entry read:

"Maybe it has something to do with the company being taken over by Fortis."

Although the future isn't certain this has been denied completely. The takeover is not affecting ABN's presence in any way at this point in time. ABN is sticking in Second Life, but is indeed shifting focus to be able to do real business.

Popke Rein said: "As a bank we have the need to have 1 on 1 contact with our customers behind closed doors." By being a bank ABN is bound to very strict privacy and compliancy rules which make it impossible for them to conduct business in Second Life, hence their move towards Active Worlds.

Overview of ABN in Second Life

In December 2006 ABN Amro was the first European bank to enter Second Life and rode the wave of mass media attention perfectly. They primarily entered with a "just do it" mentality. Their initial 4 islands and offices have grown towards a 27 island presence at it's peak, but is being downsized now. A team of 4 full time employees on average has build and rebuild every experience over and over again, mainly based on user feedback (so I'm estimating a budget of close to 1 million euro).

Every build was an experiment to see to which part of the Bank's business they could find a virtual extention as they are convinced that Virtual Worlds are here to stay.

"Remember who said "The internet, we are not interested
in it," in 1993! That won't happen to ABN when it comes to virtual worlds. Every step the team made had to be checked with risk management and compliancy and other regulatory organs within the bank. We cannot afford to do that, go through that whole process, once virtual worlds become mainstream. Then it's too late."

That process of going through regulatory motions has become quite clear in their TechnoDesk and Tradeglobe sims in Second Life. In Real Life ABN has 5 TechnoDesk offices close to the 5 Technical Universities in the Netherlands. In these offices the bank offers information for High Tech startups and when looking at the population of Second Life, this was their logical 6th office.


The TradeGlobe is ABN's private banking vehicle with which they come into contact with their shamingly rich clients. In Second Life they've held investment meetings and so on.


Over the past year, the ABN greeter, the lovely Mrs. Jung, has had over 1.100 real business conversations with interested customers, which is more than the average local bankemployee has. In this regard, Second Life has been a success for the bank.

However, due to privacy rulings they found they would never be able to achieve one on one advice and were limited to general information only. Because of it's conservative nature and regulations the bank needs a secure environment to conduct one on one business. Active Worlds can offer this, said Emmanuel Gruijs on the growing affection between their world and the Dutch banker.

Trivia:
Popke Rein said: "Remember who said "The internet, we are not interested in it," in 1993!

Do you remember who said this?

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Phil's pick on Virtual Business

Wednesday, January 9 Philip Rosedale wrote Year-end Updates, and thanks for the Emmy! on the Second Life blog. One particular paragraph interested me:

"There has been lots of speculation and skepticism in the media regarding the success that businesses are having in-world. I’d like to point out that most of the most visible media coverage has focused narrowly on attempts to use SL
for brand marketing.

In reality, the majority of the business use we are seeing now in SL is focused on meetings and collaboration, and is rapidly increasing as more companies discover the efficiencies and unique capabilities that working together in a virtual world can offer. As I’ve said in the past, I think Second Life is going through a natural evolution which mirrors other new communications mediums, as individual early adopter usage shifts to include education and work collaboration. As far as we can tell, education and work use is now growing at a larger relative rate than the overall growth of SL, so we can expect to see lots more of it in-world."

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Virtual Banking (14): Banco Itau

Allthough some virtual worlds host the fastest growing economies in the world, there isn't a bank to be found that takes its business to the Metaverse. The latest financial corporate build in Second Life, Brasilian based Banco Itau is no different.

"Banco Itau began in 1945 under the name Banco Central de Crédito and later changed its name to Banco Federal de Crédito. In 1964, Itaú Holding merged Banco Federal de Crédito and Banco Itaú. Later that decade, Banco Itau acquired Banco Sul Americano (1966) and Banco da América (1969).

Banco Itaú it is a private-owned bank with its headquarters in São Paulo, Brazil. It is the second largest private bank in Brazil, after Bradesco. Itaú now accounts for about 11% of the Brazilian market for retail banking services. It is the most important affiliate of Investimentos Itaú (Itaúsa), a large conglomerate that ranks among Fortune magazine's top 500 corporations in the world." [source: Wikipedia]

Currently the Banco Itau uses half a sim, spread over three buildings:

  1. A welcome stage,
  2. An information center,
  3. An auditorium.

Somehow I've got some problems snapping a good shot from a certain distance with the Windlight Client, even with draw distance at 256 m. so excuse the lines in the first pic.


In general the build looks of good quality, but because it's only half an island I wonder if the build is half done, or they just ran out of ideas. The design would be worth expanding to a full sim. The banks focus seems to be the climate-hype with lots of information on Kioto, energy etcetera in the central info center.



The most prominent feature of the island is the auditorium though.



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

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Monday, January 14, 2008

The value of Virtual Money

The dust seems to have settled on Linden Labs recent 'Banning of Banking Activities'. A long overdue statement by Linden Labs who have taken a stance against malicious scammers, some who have managed to acquire over 700.000USD in two to three years. Several banks have protested, as well as several clients and residents. Casualties of this decision by claiming to do fair and honest business, or just general concern to get their money back.

But what caused the most controversy in my opinion is the fact Linden Labs seems to have acted as a 'Network Overlord', ruling law between citizen disputes. In earlier 'bannings' many felt Linden Labs hand was forced by long existing, international real world laws, such as the gambling policy and the stance against 'ageplay'. Dramatic extrapolations of this decision to ban banking speak of moral policing, where Linden Labs as owner of Second Life begins to seriously force their own values on their users resulting in the following question: Is Linden Labs policing citizens, interfering with things that aren't their concern in the spirit of free economy?

I don't think they did, I think they struck first at a potentially very dangerous, juridical situation, and here is why:

The value of the Linden Dollar

Just because the residents of Second Life pay money for their virtual 'credits' doesn't make in real money. You won't be able to exchange it outside the realm of Second Life, or Second Life related websites, its value is bound to the laws of its software (or rather its popularity), and it has a lot more flexibility than a real currency. But the Linden Dollar has more resemblance to real currency than any other 'gaming money'. It can be bought and redeemed at variable costs, based on supply and demand. There is an overseeing institution and it can buy services, even products not related to the software (Second Life) itself. But even though the Linden Dollar has some properties to qualify for a real currency - its not in the eyes of the current juridical system. So why then, would Linden Labs be afraid of lawsuits resulting in scams based on this 'play money'? As Rheta states in the comments - Couldn't Linden Labs easily claim "banking is a game activity like any other, and that losses are no more prosecutable than losing a fight in Counterstrike?"

Law & Order in the Metaverse

Even if the Linden Dollar is just 'Virtual property' instead of real money it doesn't put Linden Labs (or its users) in the clear. In the Netherlands a group of teenagers recently got arrested for 'Virtual Theft'. In the virtual chatbox Habbo Hotel they scammed furniture out of the account of several other players. Habbo Hotel works a bit different in the way that teenagers pay Habbo Hotel in order to get their 'online credits' - credit cost US$5.25 per 25 Habbo Credits. The players (mostly teens) are able to buy furniture of the Habbo Hotel owner, the Sulake Corporation - and only of the Sulake Corporation - to increase their status within the community by 'pimping' their rooms. This furniture can then only be traded, and Habbo Credits can not be changed back into real dollars.

But what the Habbo incident has proven is - at least in the Netherlands - Virtual Property has juridical value. It can be stolen, and the thieves can be held responsible for real life laws. In October 2007 a bank collapsed with estimated assets of over 700.000USD, the Habbo Hotel thief stole furniture worth about 4.000 Euro. Linden Labs new policy is only a confirmation of what can only be the logical conclusion to a fact real life laws have yet to catch up on in meatspace. The Linden Dollar is real money, real property, and stealing it is real theft. Not part of the gaming process.

Linden Labs strategic decision

So to answer the question "Is Linden Labs policing citizens, interfering with things that aren't their concern in the spirit of free economy?" - No they are not. The banning of banking activities was a preventive strike at what could be a major problem for the Virtual World in the near future. Linden Labs has declared their money 'real'. Real money, real scams, real crimes, and by doing so they have paved the way for the continued development of Second Life as a serious Business Platform. It fits perfectly in the line of banning gambling and 'ageplay' because of international law, it's just Linden Labs struck first this time instead of waiting for yet another media outrage.

Disclaimer: This was a guest publication by Rick van der Wal (Digado). My views may not necessarily represent those of Veejay Burns, main author of this blog.

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Monday, December 10, 2007

Metaverse Update November / December

Last weeks have been either too busy to blog or too quiet (i.e. I'd taken some days off to spend some quality time with the RL family), so I've lost track of a couple of new metaversal releases. Here's a couple of tidbits from the other blogs:


Ambling in Second Life

Aleister has been quite busy in the past weeks and blogged on a wide variety of topics, here's a few picks:

Another report from Ambling in SL is titled "AOL Pointe RIP", and reads:

AOL opened their AOL Pointe island in Second Life around the start of the year. I rather liked it, as I wrote back in February. However, I heard quite a lot of sniping about the site thereafter, and rarely saw much sign of an emerging SL community. By the end of the Summer I was hearing the damning "ghost sim" in relation to it. So perhaps it should come as no suprise to find that AOL have pulled out of Second Life.According to this AOL blog:

AOL Pointe was built to provide a fun and engaging place for the Second Life community. We created this experience to learn more about virtual worlds and what people like and don't like.

It has been a fun and rewarding ten months, with streaming music (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Linkin Park, etc.), Sticky Wall contests, and Friday nights at Club AOL. We are grateful to the avatars who attended these events, as well as took advantage of places like the Centrifuge Skate Park and the Quiz Time Lounge.

We've gained a lot of insight from our participation in Second Life and we're now refocusing our efforts in virtual worlds. While we have closed AOL Pointe, you will soon be seeing more of AOL products and content across the metaverse. So stay tuned to aol.com for more information about when and where.

AOL are not the first company to follow this route, and certainly won't be the last. I would be curious to know the real story here... or rather, the full story. And what of the future? Will we see AOL3D next year? Or more dabblings in other virtual worlds, such as There or (if you want to go global) HiPiHi?I still liked the AOL build and am sorry to see them go.

AOL isn't the first company to leave Second Life but it's good to know they're still game for virtual worlds.

3PointD Crash

Another departure is even more stunning, as the one time leading metaverse blog 3PointD has collapsed without prior notice. I mean I've been bad at blogging for some time now, but Mark Wallace used to be a paid blogger. I'm wondering how the 3PointD sponsors (Electric Sheep Company) feel about their investment and publicity engine gathering metaversal dust.

KZero's metaversal marketing news

KZero's Nic Mitham must have been bought. His attention and anticipation of the arrival of Football Superstars has been incredible. Another FS snapshot series can be read here: Latest player and environment imagery from Football Superstars.

But there's more to be read at KZero:

You've been Metaversed

Where 3PointD crashed, stocks are going upward for Nick Wilson at Metaversed.com. After a hugely succesfull start up of the Things to Do group (spring 2007) there was the more or less succesfull Grid Safari (summer 2007) and a promising podcast series (Second Rant with Prokofy Neva - which sadly went down the drain. After a slight dip Metaversed came up with another smash hit, the Metanomics sessions (fall 2007) on virtual economy (allthough some argue that this is a sponsor event and you get all sorts of economy and financial hotshots telling you all about how it should be without ever having been in a virtual world themselves).

Latest addition to the Metaversed event line-up is the VBI sessions, the Virtual Business Innovators (winter 2007) which focusses on the native metaverse content creators and innovators, the "Virtual Brands" as KZero would call them. Too bad I missed the first session.

There's a downside to this though, as there's no longer room for fun sessions like the Geek Meets (not even the Gadgeteer sessions) because it's no longer attractive (sponsorwise). That's a problem when you have to make a living of blogging and depending on sponsorships. I can blog, be critical, have fun and not wonder if I can buy dinner tomorrow. Anyway, it just takes away a bit of the fun and puts a slight ? behind "objective journalism"

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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Generali's Virtual Heroes

It's been quite a while since I first noticed the Generali island, but at the time it was still under construction and closed for the public. Today I tried once more and it's open. It's a good build with a lot of detail and well designed furniture.



Generali, Italy's largest insurance company plans "to engage with the SL community and explore the nature and ‘insurability’ of risk in virtual worlds, as well as to interactively promote the Group’s image and business."



Let's start of with a few snapshots:









Since it's still early saturday morning I'm not going to describe the island but quote from Generali's Second Life flyer:


In Generali’s perspective, Second Life represents an opportunity laboratory for innovating (prototyping new products and services), learning and communicating as well as an interesting emerging market – virtual worlds inhabited by dynamic and knowledgeable users.


The main objectives of “Generali Virtual” could be summarized as follows:

On the left, places and areas on Generali Virtual

  • explore the extent to which virtual reality might affect and extend the nature of risk and risk management services
  • experiment with new insurance-related services relevant to a world where connectivity and virtuality become dominant features: insuring virtual risks in reality and real risks in virtuality
  • witness Generali’s effort in providing innovative services, and promote the Group’s image throughout non-traditional environments and communities.

The success of Second Life itself may be transient, but the phenomenon of technology-enabled virtual worlds will not and the Group is keen to put itself in a position of monitoring and learning early on in order to be ready for future challenges.

The Generali island is organized around a central piazza – the Community Area – which provides a space for presentations and virtual encounters, and potentially an alternative channel for real-world corporate events. A large screen can be used to show a registration or the live video from the event. On one side of the piazza the Generali Building provides up-to-date information about the Generali Group and links to the generali.com website. Close to it, a structure informally known as “Chill Area” is designed to provide a context for hosting some social, educational and entertainment activities of the SL community.

The large Water Tower is a panoramic view point with a room that gives a view of the whole island. The most interactive part of the island is the Warehouse Set, where a game can be played by visitors, in fact Generali Virtual offers to visitors an interactive game, a sort of “car chase” with prizes to be won, that is meant to convey a simple but effective message about the rewards for risk-adverse behaviour.


To be honest, I really couldn't spot the interactivity, tried a few warehouses but couldn't really get in. Perhaps there's a teleport point somewhere. A second thing I couldn't really figure out is what the islands' subtitle "keeping heroes safe" means.

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

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Friday, October 12, 2007

Big Business Money based on trust

Thursday, 4:30pm - 5:30pm


Virtual Currency / Virtual Business = Big Business Money


(Virtual currency) exchanges promise the opportunity to stimulate virtual economies not just throughout individual virtual worlds but across worlds. Join us for a discussion on what the future will look like as these exchanges take off and how users will conduct commerce. What does it take to build and foster a thriving virtual economy?



John Bates of Entropia was double booked, so he started off with a little insight on Entropia. This virtual world is the only one that has it's currency really pegged with the US Dollar at an exchange rate of 1 USD to 10. Entropia is a mixed world with gaming and social elements and when things cost you real money, it changes the came. Buying guns and bullets that cost you (even if it's nano-payment) makes the game take on a new dimension.


Anshe Chung Studios now is one of the largest of 45.000 profitable companies in Second Life, with total assets going up to the region of 800 islands / sims. What would happen if they withdrew all their assets at once? Both John Z of Linden Lab and Guntram Graef aren't afraid it would blow the economy. Linden Lab is putting on about the same amount of servers every month. Stop that for a month and the economy will stabelize.


The same happened with the banning of Gambling, said Zdanowski. We had to do this because of US regulations or run the risk of being shut down. Overnight the user to user transactions dropped with 40%. Was gambling such a large part? Not really. Zdanowski estimates that gambling was only up to 3% of the market. The exchange rate never dropped and within 3 weeks the stock exchange was level again. The Linden Dollar has been very stable in the past year and a half, leaving not much room for money traders and fluctiating only a couple of Linden cents to the dollar in this period.


Zdanowsky doesn't see the Linden Dollar as a real currency though, but more a licence to use certain aspects of Second Life. Residents have to have trust in the currency, it's stability, in order for Virtual Worlds to create successfull economies. Earlier this month Linden had to add VAT to their game for European Users. This also because of international monetary regulations, and the Lindens are fully aware that this puts European users, about 35% of their community at about a 20% disadvantage. User to User transactions aren't taxed though.


I asked John Z and Guntram how to make the economy safe, as in the Netherlands we've seen a story extortion and abuse over Runescape money several weeks back. Also think of money laundring between virtual worlds through the Anshe Chung Exchange. No problem here again, according to Linden's CFO. They're monitoring transactions and if there's a resident wanting to buy Linden dollars worth say 10.000 USD he'd personally invite them to fly in and find out what the heck they would wanna do with the money. This economy is based on trust. One fundamental rule for us is to know our residents. We know who makes money. It can happen that all of a sudden you're a new sucessfull virtual entrepeneur, but then I'd like to personally meet you and get to know your business. He expects the next wave of regulatory action to take place in the banking sector in Second Life and Linden have hired a hotshot laywer and former internet crime prosecutor to be up to speed with all the world wide regulations regarding this.


There is a lot of scepcis, a lot of resistance against Linden playing a strategy that's so much hands-on on the economy. Yet Virtual Worlds do take a new place in the world of global economy. They're dealing with micropayments all over the world. The European VAT regulation was never designed for this, it was designed to protect the local market in the 80's as US based companies like AOL started pricedumping their ISP services on the European market. Now Linden has to deal with it, or again risk shutdown in Europe. In my personal opinion, they're on the right track. John's solid performance was a sign of confidence on behalf of the Lindens that they're on top of the game.


Final tidbits:



  • Chung obtained an Entropia Banking Licence earlier this week

  • Chung is now implementing an interface to exchange IMVU credits

  • Chung also provides Venture Capital for virtual startups.

  • It took Peter Philips, former Linden Lab employee less than three weeks to program the Lindex

  • Entropia has a Swedish banking licence

  • Companies have to closely watch the market to stabalize it. Neither inlation or deflation is a good thing for an economy, even if it is virtual.

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Virtual Goods, the next big business model?

Thursday, 3:00pm - 4:00pm


Virtual Goods: The Next Big Business Model


Virtual goods and currencies have become the driving economic force for a number of virtual world companies. What does it takes to build a successful company with a strong virtual goods business? What types of items do consumer want to buy and in what context are they motivated to continually buy or upgrade their virtual items? How do you grow a virtual goods business and what are the pitfalls? In what cases does a virtual goods business model triumph over advertising or subscription models?-




Speakers:




What kind of Virtual goods do we have out there? There's





  • Decorative
    - stuff to decorate your home, dress up etc.
    - collectible and branded decorative virtual goods usually have high ASP (average sales prices)


  • Functional
    - improved functionality like boosting your car
    - usually at a higher price than (non-collectible) decorative goods


  • Behavioral
    - user interaction driven goods, like gifts, expressing opinion.
    - highest profit margins


  • Branded


Here's some on the worlds represented in the panel:



GAIA- an online hangout for teens:





  • 2.5 visitors who spend 1hr/day on average.


  • 1 million forum posts per day


  • $ 100 K sales per day.


As for branded content Gaia especially added cars to the platform for Toyota Scion. Then they created body shops to customize the cars, then created hang out places like car parks for teens to meet and hang out with their rides.



GOPETS





  • Use pets as a catalyst for human social interaction, like when you walk the dog in RL you naturally start interacting with other dog-owners.


  • Your pet lives on after you log off.


  • These worlds are global, and especially for teens this can create problems when it comes to languages. GOPETS created Icu, an icon based language.


  • People love to buy trees which produce fruit, then harvest the fruit, make pies and sell those for gold and spend the gold on games


SULAKE / HABBO HOTEL





  • It's an easy to use Virtual World.


  • You can make a living trading virtual goods


  • core functionality is user generated content / rooms


  • open ended play is vital to VW's


  • Habbo Hotel supports about 170 different payment methods worldwide


  • If translated to real world goods, the annual Habbo Hotel turnover would be $600 million.


NEOPETS





  • Started out back in 1999, so a real ancient thing.


  • Trading virtual goods only began this year


  • now 750K in daily transactions


  • Evolution of the game / world and innovation comes from listening to the community.


  • Has a forum section on when it's the best time to ask your parents to pay for things.


The virtual worlds represented here get about 60 to 85% of their revenues from the sales of virtual goods.



Selling virtual goods and using it as a business model is pretty much about making purchases as easy as possible. Stimulate impuls buying without the hassle of having to get some money somewhere first.



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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Christian's Keynote: What''s next?

Christian Renaud , Cisco – What’s Next?


This isn’t the first attempt to start virtual worlds and virtual business. This has a long history. And there are many steps to be made to get to the next level.



In 1988 there was a seminar on interoperability, TCP/IP and there were just a few attendees, five years later it was mass market.



What’s different right now is that we have all this creative energy. We’ve got mmorpgs, we’ve got unified communication tools. Taking that and combining it and slamming that together at this high speed and you can use Second Life or World of Warcraft as business tools.



It fills a need in the technology toolbox. Cisco likes to make probabilities from possibilities.



  • We have 6.5 billion people on the planet.
  • 2.3 b mobile phones (1/3)
  • 1.2 b internet connectivity (1/6)

That’s the audience for virtual worlds.



  • 465 M VW users (excluding Asia) appr. 1/12)
  • 45 M are active virtual residents, not tourists.

That’s about as big as all the early communities (compuserve, the well, aol, eworld etc) together had at their peak.


“We have to make the community grow, so I don’t have to explain what I do over and over again to the guy sitting next to me on the plane.”



We’ve failed with instant messaging. We’ve got these big walled gardens and need multiple clients to talk to all our friends. Do we need to find a standard, or do we have to have just one platform? We have to have interoperability. There has to be no switching cost. You have to be able to choose which platform gives you the best return on your investment.



There’s a 40 million people market, and as a business you have to choose one in 40 platforms, that’s a bad choice to get your ROI.



If we had this discussion about platforms 10 years ago we wouldn’t have web. Platform shouldn’t be the discussion. It’s the content put on it.


There are too many genetics and too many usecases to get one-size fits all jacket. It’s different tools for different jobs. There’s a number of different dimensions, like mobile and peer to peer needs that have to find a place in this landscape.



It’s not my intend to be a big corporation that brings in a bulldozer and levels the diversity of the landscape and put out a huge concrete mall strip. There has to be different modalities, variation between fun and work.



Attention is the only currency left. Attention needs diversity. Howver, work needs to be fun as well. Screen, desk, a very industrial setup will have to change.



We also have to rid ourselves of stereotypes like:

  • A 12 year old girl: level 70 night elf
  • A 70 year old couple: owning 8 neopets
  • An asian businessman: Puzzle Pirate.

There’s too much overlap throughout the industry to categorise. Think of the industry and it will get bigger, don’t focus on the little piece of the pie you cut out for yourself.



There are things we can do from a technology point of view to help secure the content of VW’s. We need to have a strong concept of idendity, it’s based on trust. We haven’t been able to solve open-ID for the internet, but maybe we can do so for virtual worlds.



A strong Identity can give you credit, a reputation, a trust that helps you sell, make your business, How do we manage our presence? Let people know we are busy etc.

  • Identity
  • Reputation
  • Presence

There are things we can't do as good as we can in RL, but there are things we can do better than in RL as well. Augmentation, specific content based upon who you're talking to.

The new math:

If it's just amongst us we can throw out every number we like. When talking to people outside we have to rationalise, come with metrics. Real facts and figures. The industry has to step forward and come with universal metrics. Business needs to know where the money is.

One of the good initiatives is MMI, the metaverse market index. (spin off from Metaversed's Grid Safari's and Metanomics sessions. This is a derisking and industry building initiative.

Common Platforms:

There's work going on on interoperability. Content is core, platform flexible. Convergence over divergence will benefit the industry.

MIT Collective Intelligence:

We've gotta look for pitfalls and not stick to the "we could this" suggestions, but also consider if "we should this" element. What can we do for collective intelligence. What can we do for collaboration, for culture? What can we instrument, do to overcome deficiencies in our options in Virtual Worlds?

Wrap up:

  • Common Identities
  • Common Denominators
  • Common Platforms
  • Common Understanding

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Navigating Uncharted Terrain



One of yesterday's sessions was IBM's talk on Navigating Uncharted Terrain. Here's the announcement:






Wednesday, 11:00am - 12:00pm





Virtual Worlds: The BEST platforms for Enterprise Value
An Examination of Virtual World Platforms From the Enterprise Perspective.
The number of virtual worlds platforms are proliferating from publicly operated virtual worlds to private world engines. Where does an enterprise start when evaluating a platform based on BEST: Business, Economic Value, Social Interaction and Technology? This detailed session will review the leading platforms for enterprise use, talk about the real business value being realized in virtual worlds today and have a look into the future of virtual worlds fit for business.






Speaker: Sandy Kearney, IBM Global Director, IBM 3D Internet and Virtual Business






Here's my notes:








  • Like With the internet we've explored, done a lot of things that we don't want to repeat.


  • It's uncharted terrain with new tools to navigate


  • 3D internet is everywhere, anytime


  • It took IBM 10 years to understand the e-business. It took us 8 months to understand the value of v-business


  • IBM is currently engaged with over 400 clients in v-business.


  • There's an increasing market accelleration.


  • Market trends are guideposts for pioneers.


  • Orienting goals towards Business Value: BEST
    (Business, Economics, Social and Technology goals)




  • There's an enormous value in Enterprise and consumer social platforms: Recognition, interaction, social bonding and a sense of belonging in global enterprises.


  • The IBM Intraverse runs on an Active Worlds platform. A presentation of the intraverse was given at Cornell, and was live-streamed into Second Life to the Metanomics meeting.


  • We're going do see 4D very soon. Already there are people programming their avatars to do stuff when they're long gone. VW's are going temporal.


  • As a community we need to
    - realize business value (leverage the 3D capability)
    - sustain & protect value (ensure 3D internet is fit for business and community)
    - expand value (ensure interoperability, make vw's open and available, easy to use)


  • The desire to be plugged in is growing


  • A universal and generic approach makes VW's more open and available, mass marketable.


  • We're moving from the information age to the conceptual age.


  • Identity management is going to be a very very hot issue in VW's in the coming years.

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Sibley's Keynote

I already blogged a few things that came by during today's convention sessions, but here's some more on the Keynotes.


The convention kick-off was presented by Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company. Now everybody was exited about this CSI thing, but Sibley also said a few other noteworthy things.


He started with an overview of the industry. Here's a few pointers:


  • Lots of Virtual Worlds focus on special agegroups

  • Teen worlds are currently the most successfull when it comes to business returns.

  • We're still early in the game, but there are already some breakthrough sucesses.

  • Teen worlds are going to see brutal competition in the next year and a half.

  • Because of this competition and success, teenworlds are the spots where the innovation will be.

  • One businessmodel comes to taking existing teen communities and communications and add virtual components and value.

  • Other models will be build around sponshorship and advertisement

  • I'm missing VW's that take all and incorporate profiling and stuff.

  • In adult spaces a lot of technology has been developed, yet it's lagging in innovation.

  • In 5 to 10 years from now there will be more e-commerce in Virtual Worlds than on the World Wide Web.

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Saturday, October 06, 2007

VeeJay @ San Jose Conference

Real Life has been very stressfull and very very busy this last month. Since there's Mrs. V and the Kids to keep in touch with I haven't really had time to dig into Second Life, let alone blog it.

Sorry folks.

The good news is, I'm getting back up to speed, starting with visiting the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo next week in San Jose, California. I'm really looking forward to it, especially since I've got an appointment with a Linden Lab employee on tuesday.


On wednesday and thursday you'd probably be able to catch me on these tracks:

Wednesday (10th):

  • Business Strategy & Investment --Economics of Virtual Worlds
  • Entertainment, Media & Marketing -- ROI How the rules are changing
  • Entertainment, Media & Marketing -- Entertainment in Virtual Worlds - It's Not Games. it's Not TV. It's....
  • Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise -- Applications that Work

Thursday (11th):

  • Business Strategy & Investment -- The Future of VW's
  • Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise -- Best practises for employees in VW's
  • Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise -- Creating a user community
  • Business Strategy & Investment -- Finance in a VW

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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Phat's Vibe

Second Life is a rich environment for shared experiences. One of these experiences is listening to music and dancing together with your friends, enjoying the music and the vibe. No wonder there are tons of disco's and bars playing (live) music. What's the general SL taste?

Not the techno trance you'd expect, but the slowdance to classic songs like "over the rainbow" at Phat Cat's danceclub is the current favorite. The Phat Land sim stands firmly at the top of Tateru Nino's Headcount list with an estimated weekly average of 25.000 visitors!


But dancing isn't the only crowddrawer at Phatland. Aside from just being a place to dance, almost half the sim (island) is filled with shops and boutiques so everyone can find their perfect ballroom attire and dance in style. This is serving the crowd, providing the tools at the spot.




SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/PhatLand/150/89/58

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Friday, August 03, 2007

Geek Meet - the Celeb Edition?

Another Geekmeet Friday with a show packed with Second Life goodies went down at Dr. Dobbs island again. Tonight's lineup:


  • MSo Lambert and Sensual Casanove from Synthetic speaking on the Subscribe-O-Matic.
  • Navillus Batra, aka Jacob Sullivan of i3D demonstrating the brand new LSL unit testing tech that Linden Lab commisioned his company to build.
  • Felix Wakmann and Diva Canto of the SLBrowser giving a demo of the new 2.0 version.

Since this was a first (full) voice edition, it was a bloggersnightmare, but a great show once more.

The Subscribe-O-Matic is basically tying to work about a couple of problems business owners face when trying to use groups to stay in touch with their customers, or potential customers. It is a networked system of devices that sellers can use in their shops, which customers can simply touch to "subscribe" to their Subscribe-O-Matic list


The best way to say something on the Unit Testing done by i3D is by giving a quote from Metaversed:



"Scriptors will be able to plug individual units of code into the system and stress test and debug with verbose reporting. They'll even be able to track individual functions performance within different units, helping to narrow down bug hunts, and tune performance of complex apps. "



read full piece here




The final stand was made by Felix Wakmann on the SL Browser, which is to some extend a mash-up of the Metamart hud and the Electric Sheep Search Engine.




Perhaps due to the talks on i3D's testing unit the Geekmeet turned out to almost being a celeb-edition with several Linden employees attending and also Aimee Weber was sighted.



Aric Linden, Linden Labs' QA has enjoyed working with i3D pretty much:



"We've really enjoyed working with them and we're very excited to be able to collaborate with folks. We hope to be doing more of it in the future."



Aimee has told me a few weeks ago that she was too busy to keep up with stuff, but has been meaning to come to one of these events for some time now. This time she finally found some time to squeeze it in her busy schedule.


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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

It's Infocalypse for Second Life

Infocalypse at the economic heart of Second Life?

It's a warzone! The Linden Index has crashed, it's economy is imploding and one after the other financial scandal is hitting the blogoshpere. Someone just shouted "The end is near!" over at twitter. Well, there is some truth in this part of the blog.

Due to Linden Labs taking actions against gambling in SL - incorporating RL law there has been a drop in money exchange. This will be a temporary setback as it will make way for new and healthy business. What is serious is that there has been theft at the WSE, the World Stock Exchange, an inside-job so it seems. Extensive coverage can be found at the Virtually Blind blog.

Infocalypse at the social heart of Second Life?

Then there is rumours of Terrorism in Second Life, coming from a paper Down Under. Fortunately this piece of bad-research has quickly been dysected by Mitch Wagner at Informationweek:

"The article cites well-known reports of "griefing" in Second Life -- malicious practical joking -- and employs a lot of breathless prose and distortion to make it seem like the global terror network is on the brink of using Second Life to launch a real-world terror campaign against all decent people everywhere."

There's no such thing as Second Life taking casualties. We're not talking about real life bombings. What we are talking about is griefing, which is WEB -10.0 [in other words neanderthal behaviour which is sooo 2007 (BC)]

What will be the fall-out of these stories? In my personal opinion it is way overdone. These blogposts over at Second Thoughts and Metaversed are providing the Griefers a sublime stage. They're feeding it! It seems Prokofy's fabled paranoia and FICification have entered the next stage of the conspiracy-theory-virus.

In my humble opinion, this is all strongly overhyped. This is confirmed by reliable sources who say that Linden "can shoot themselves in the foot just fine."

Infocalypse at the creative heart of Second Life!

Before we all go dramatic on Second Life, here's the twist: The only place where real infocalypse is going down is on the islands of Infocalypse, Saijo City and Nexus Prime, home to the cyberpunk community and spindoctor Eric Rice.


There's the Infocalypse project which is offering a podium and decorum for writing vivid new cyberpunk stories. Second Life proofs to be an excellent stage once more for collaboration and making stories come to life!
Here's an extract from the original blogpost mixed with some screenshots of these sims:
Say you wanted to create derivative work, say, a novel or video game or drawing, and place it in those locations, technically you can’t. You *can* if you consider fan fiction (’fanfic’ for short), but don’t ever expect to do anything with it beyond your own personal amusement. Build as little as a fan site, one that celebrates a franchise, and you could be beamed up to the USS Litigation. This has a long history and is certainly not new (flashback: Wired, Dec. 1996).

Enter Saijo City. Saijo exists as a newborn franchise that could be any one of those works of fiction. There are characters and there is the place of the city itself. Saijo’s genre is cyberpunk, set in a near future of maybe 60-100 years out.

What makes Saijo City different and not spectacularly ‘new’, is that it exists as many pieces, both traditional and contemporary, that are simply rearranged. It would be easy to say, “Yes, I’m writing a science fiction book, due out this summer,” and the conversation would be over.
But that’s not how life in my city goes.
Saijo City as a piece of transliterate content, operates on some very simple and familiar principles. (read more at I, Platform)

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Virtual Accountability

It's time you kept your records straight. Have pen and pencil ready at your virtual counter to register every sold hair-extention.





Actually, your transaction history doesn't last long. 5 days at the moment, so you can fool your accountant every week. Accountants being as they are don't like that and are coming to Second Life to poke around your virtual proceedings.




The Dutch magazine 'the Accountant' runs a story on Second Life title "Second Life, a legal no-mans land" on accountancy in Cyberspace. For an accountancy paper it's remarkably positive on Virtual Worlds, especially in light of the recent negative media sweep. Here are a few lines:




"Not only a new world is created, but a complete economy with new business models. Accountants need to get into these developments or run the risk of being out of business"

"There are people that still consider Second Life as a hype, but it looks like they are proven wrong, just like the internet-sceptics 15 years ago. This kind of virtual worlds is rapidly developing not only in technological and graphical but also in economic ways."




Price Waterhouse Coopers is looking into al sorts of legal and financial aspects of Second Life and also the Congressional US Joint Economic Comittee will come forth with a study on the fiscal issues in "virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft"



The first two pictures are of the CPA Island (Certified Public Accountants) founded by the MACPA, the Maryland Association for CPA's of which the first image is the virtual office of the KAWG&F , a large Maryland based CPA frim which immersed in Februari 2007. The last image is that of Berk Accountants, a Dutch accountancy firm, also present in Second Life since februari 2007.

The Dutch accountants primarily focus on getting in touch with Young Professionals. Hans Koning, Managing partner of Berk says “Our branche is a relatively closed world, while our future colleagues are used to much more openess through the internet. We try to anticipate in this."

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

3D Business Search Directory

Tonights Things To Do was all about the introduction of a new tool in Second Life called Business Link.

It is quite a cool new system, created by Tue Turok, and is basically a 3D business directory that aims to help Second Life residents find businesses without running into crappy, sloppy sexadvertisements and invalid locations.

Although it has much of the functionality you'd expect to find in a classic web directory, there are some interesting web2.0 tie ins.
Tonights Demo was a square setup with a search cube centered in the middle, surrounded by four walls of billboards. Once you select your category in the center, the walls around you will display the results.
Each screen is divided into several areas:

1. Top area for products
2. Center Area for Logo and Landmark
3. Lower Left for online/ofline status vendor and
4. Lower Right for website and other stuff

It's a little early to tell if this is going to be the next big SL tool since it's just launched and the directory has to be filled yet. A good thing to take into consideration might be KZero's thoughts on "Why Billboards don't work in Second Life" Normal Billboards will surely not work for Real Life brands trying to get people to visit their sim or website, but in this case it might work for the Metabrands.

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Friday, June 29, 2007

Geek Meet Gadgeteers

Fridaynight - Geek meet time. This time not at the Metaversed home but at Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0 island where hip and techsavvy things are as common as bugs in Microsoft. This week brings something new to the Geek Meet as it's the first time it gets sponsored by Information Week.

First off, some snaps of the Dr. Dobbs island.
This weeks line up as announced by Metaversed:
"Alidar Moxie of Mechanized Life, makers of the popular Calendar Cogs Google API integration app for Second Life as welll as the new StatsCollector RSS app, and Vincent Shore, creator of Squawk, the Second Life Twitter / Jaiku presence and bookmarking app, will be joining Mystical Cookie, creator of the MystiTool, who we confirmed earlier at this week's Friday Geek Meet. Our regular Friday tech forum in Second Life is co-sponsored by Dr. Dobb's Journal, InformationWeek and of course Metaversed, and has quickly become the virtual worlds top regular technology and business networking event, where bloggers, journalists, new media types and tech heads of all kinds come to talk about the business and technology of virtual worlds. "

Vincent Shore - Squawk
Vincent created the popular Squawk app that that incorporates twitter, jailku and delicious into SL.
"Squawk is essentially a tool for connecting your Second Life experiences up with popular web services. It began as just a presence client for Twitter but has progressively grown in scope as time has gone on. Today, Squawk supports Twitter, Jaiku, del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia, with more services on the way.
In terms of presencing, Squawk can do anything traditional clients can do, and a bit more. Squawk can attach a geocode to your updates, allowing friends to see where you are in SL, or teleport in to check out something cool you microblogged about. If you visit Squawknest.com, those geocodes are used to visually place markers on a web map. Squawk also automatically builds your Nest profile and tags based on what you like to microblog about."
The latest addon to Squawk is social bookmarking, or gridmarking.
"Squawk is a combination of LSL scripts (housed within the virtual Squawk bracelet) and a number of intermediary PHP scripts housed on Vincents web server, which translate API calls and make the response data easier for Second Life to handle."

Alidar Moxie - Mechanized Life
Alidar received a great welcome by Nick Wilson:
"Next I'd like to introduce you to a great scriptor, one I think of as an "integration" specialist. She deals mostly in API's and RSS and other ways of bringing our 2D stuff into SL. She's famous for Calender Cogs, a Google Calendar API implementaion, but recently has released StatsCollector, which I think you'll find even more intriguing. Please welcome Alidar Moxie!"
On Calendar Cogs:
"I have two real lines of things I've worked on the first was 'Calendar Cogs' I wrote it because I was literally writing on post its on my monitor when I wanted to go to events then I said 'why not use Google's thing to do this for me. I wrote 2 objects, a Hud for personal reminders and a Kiosk for people to place on land and tell others of their events both pull events directly from the Google calendar and use them in world and Huds talk to kiosks. I think I had a similar issue to Vincent in that the API for google had SO MUCH information that I had to write a ton of scripts between the Google Stuff and LSL."
On StatsCollector:
"It simply records who comes in contact with it but then allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of those visits and recently allows you to find out if they are credit card users, how old they are
what time of day is your busiest, etc. At the moment you can pull either graphs or HTML versions of the data in the near future I plan to allow XML downloads and I am working on my own API so that others can make their own objects to 'talk' to the systemso to speak"
The statcollector could be a breakthrough in Inworld purchase history as a vendor could be written to record who purchased an item and when. Transaction history in Second Life is only kept for 30 days, the default for the current version of Statcollector as well, due to server capacity in logging.
Mystical Cookie - MystiTool
The Mystitool app was named Metabrand no. 1 by KZero a few weeks ago and is classified as an essential tool for Second Life survival.
"After my first month in SL, i had several things on my hud.. a spatial radar, a popular "shield" after being attacked on my own first land, ao, and a few things i was playing with ..."
"...Anyway, I was learning lsl and I wanted to keep all of my toys in one place.. i also did not like having so many hud attachments, and i wanted to learn how they worked.. so i started writing my own replacements for things. i started giving copies to friends.. as time went on, i added things.. av scanner, non-physical vehicle (a pseudo shield), etc. Mystitool has several privacy and convenience features in a single hud attachment.. all easily accessible by hud menus, it was designed to consume the least possible hud real estate to keep the screen clear for play and provide certain basic functionality which is missing from the SL client.. things such as knowing who is near you.. a quick "favorites" list of locations, teleport history, and basic anti-stalker and anti-griefer tools. Mystitool has grown in features as friends and customers suggest new things to be added or improved.. i also add things as i need them and with the latest update, there is now a plugin system in place to allow other scripters to write their own mystitool plugins, which will place buttons into the main mystitool hud menus :)"
The above parts are the introductions to the products, for the tech-talk I'd advise you to read the transcripts that will be on at Metaversed soon.

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Coca Cola releases Trademark in SL

From Metaversed:

"Though there's no mention of any kind of legal document to support it, and the information is coming from a third party, it does appear at least that Coca Cola, who's virtual thirst campaign in Second Life asks residents to create a vending experience in the virtual world that captures the "spirit" of the brand, have released their trademark to residents.

My friend Vint Falken reports that she received the following message from SLX, a web based shopping engine for the Second Life: "We have spoken to Coca-Cola and they have released their trademark to SL Merchants. Therefore, any of your items that were disabled on June 7, 2007 have been retrieved….". The email was in follow up to a take down of a "coke suit" Vint had made and put up for sale on the site."

Once again this proves that Second Life has a strong impact in the world of big business. The Coca Cola company has been untouchable in the Real World, but it seems they have to follow the laws laid out in Second Life as well. This might be a very interesting case-study for business-law and Intellectual Property.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Amsterdam sold once more

ANP, the Dutch Reuters, reports that Virtual Amsterdam is finally sold! This is the second time it is sold, the first deal fell through in early may. The buyer is 3dutch.com, part of the Boom TV company.

The deal is countering recent Dutch press that is taking a negative view on Second Life. After Linden Labs released the official activity stats the Dutch press got a negative hiccup saying "only 17,000 Dutchmen are active in Second Life" Eric Rijkaart, Boom TV's CEO says that they've estimated Dutch activity to be around 7,000 at the time of purchase, so the new stats do open perspective in his view.

They're not expecting a shortterm ROI but inted to gather experience in Virtual Worlds which can be used later in other metaverses.

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Virtual Banking (9): Suruga Bank

The Suntory sim I just peeked at was merely a pitstop on my way to the Suruga Bank.
This Japanese bank was spotted and blogged by Aleister Kronos a little while back.

Suruga is a regional bank, based in the Shizuoka Prefecture and has the following divisions: Banking Operations and Other. Banking Operations division deals in deposits, loans, domestic exchange, foreign exchange, related services. Other Operations division deals with help supply services, printing, leasing, guaranty, consulting, systems development, credit cards.

The sim is quite original, as it is pitch-dark. There's no sandy beach, just a starry underground above which the spaceship Suruga hovers, build by D-Labo.

After flying around a bit inside the spacecraft I came to the captain's quarters (at least I think they were), which looked very contemporary. It gave me a little "Star Trek" feeling where the captains always collected historic goodies from the 20th century.

This part of the ship contains a library, an information point and lockers...
After blogging 8 banks in Second Life, this is the first to show signs of being an actual bank.

As far as the build is concerned, it is a good build, a good design. As to content, I cannot really judge since my Japanese is a littly rusty.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/SURUGA%20bank/150/132/86

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Monday, June 18, 2007

Virtual Banking (8): BNP Paribas

The title of this blog is the the order in Which I've blogged financial corps in Second Life, as Aleister already described the Japanese Suruga bank. For a chronological timeline of entries you should check Nic's blog

BNP Paribas Group-sim

First of all BNP has a group island in which it promotes their French and German CRR brands. This island is partly accessible and has a major promotion-wall (left) stating it'll open in June. The only finished items I can spot are the press center (right).

Next to the press center is a nice pond with terras and the rest of the sim consists of restricted parcels. A large parcel in the SE corner is covered with a white box, but with some camera-juggling I managed to peek inside. It looks like some offices are being build here (left)


BNP Paribas-sim

The second sim is totally inaccessible, but from the BNP Paribas group sim you can have some view on what they're up to. (above right, below left and right).

From this distance I can't really see what is going on, but the build has a nice fresh look to it. The circle in the bottom-right corner is meant for recruitment and on the left pic it shows several funplaces, like jetskis and campfires.

Sofar, it's a regular sim, no new things spotted. I hope to get a good look soon to judge the build.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/BNP%20PARIBAS%20GROUP/128/128/0

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Saturday, June 09, 2007

Virtual Banking (7): DNB Bank Norway

Another international Bank has opened up shop in Second Life, this time it's the Norwegian DNB, not to be confused with the Dutch national bank, also called DNB.

After ABN AMRO, ING (The Netherlands), Wirecard (Germany) and Saxo (Denmark) this is the fifth major European finance company coming to Second Life (with BNP Paribas still in development)

The sim starts of with a neat 3D model of the sim (very popular these days), which is devided into several smaller islands. The overall theme is summertime Norway, as I'm told by one of the freelancers who worked at this build. A main feature is the auditorium (right) which is a good build.

The second main build is a hovering globe -which is quite low on textures - and though most of the sim is bilingual (Norwegian and English), this was solely Norwegian, so I can't give you the full monty on this.
Then there's a small terras showing the Nobel-Peace-prize winners and a series of gazebo's intended as learning centers.
Throughout the sim various Norwegianish things appear, like sunken ships, swimming orca's, campsite, windsurf and diving spots, small fishingboats etcetera.
The build is developed by a company called Design Container, working with several Freelancers. This makes up for several degrees of quality in the build, some are neatly texturised, others are a bit low on textures (pic left, the gallery), or have a few textures askew. The DNB NOR car (right) is very primitive.
In the pic below an example of where it's neatly done, even tidal influences are considered in this build (left). The other one, an ancient worship tree is a little buggy in the script (right).

All in all I must say that the overall quality of the build varies enormously, and also the theme is too unfocussed. It's a bit of everything and I'm not sure where the root of this problem lies. It could well be that DNB Nor didn't have a fixed idea of what they intend to do in Second Life, or there was a basic plan that saw several ideas gone wild because of working with too many different freelancers.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Blogwars !?

I was reading up on some other blogs and found out sometimes our allegiance switches. When it comes to Skynews I'm in line with Nic at KZero in liking it, contrary to Aleister.
When it comes to Comcast though, me and Al like it, and Nic doesn't. Now we're all pretty serious bloggers, so where's the switch? Why do you like a build, or why don't you, what makes you think a build will work, or not?

Here's a little comparative reading:

AL on Comcast : http://www.3pointd.com/20070605/comcast-parachutes-into-second-life/
AL on SkyNews: http://www.3pointd.com/20070605/can-sky-news-rise-to-second-life/
Nic on Comcast : http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=728
Nic on SkyNews: http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=658
Me on Comcast : http://blog.mindblizzard.com/2007/06/comcast-plugged-in-sl.html
Me on Skynews: http://blog.mindblizzard.com/2007/05/skynews-hits-virtual-sky.html

Obviously we have different tastes, and sometimes we like Rivers Run Red and not Millions of Us, or the other way around. But should that matter when it comes to judging a build. We should be able to go beyond that and spot the key elements for branding, for business integration and potential to actively engage the community.

It seems that it is a complex cocktail of several factors after all.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Virtual Banking (6): Wirecard unwired

I blogged earlier that Germans are coming to town. Many German cities are immersing lately, like Augsburg and Munich. When I speak of Munich, I speak with respect, it is an impressive project with high levels of texturing.

This is so untrue for German business sims. In the early days of this blog I wrote on German Design, on the sims of Toca Me and BMW New World as being a desing without any texturing. This Wirecard sim is no different, leaving me under the impression that Photoshop isn't available in German.

The Wirecard is a pain in the eye, another German impulse to spread snowblindness. However, it's not all that bad. The design itself is exploring the future, though with a very minimalist approach.

As for strategy Wirecard is taking a different approach than e.g. ABN AMRO (or Barclays or Bank of Scotland... what will it be next week?), ING or Saxo and tries to push their core business, Finance, to SL.
It's time to sit back and observe to see they'll succeed. They've got a chance...
A trivia for this build is that they didn't hire pro's but resourced it internally.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Chung boosts virtual finance

Earlier this month I've blogged about Anshe Chung getting a banking licence for the Entropia universe. It seems like that this was just a starter for our Metaverse Mogul, according to a press release on the AC Studio website:

"Anshe Chung Studios is preparing to launch a virtual financial market, financial products and a set of services that are going to, for the first time, allow direct capital flow and investment across virtual world boundaries. This step will be the first of many in the creation of an open, cross platform Metaverse economy that transcends individual virtual worlds. "Some virtual worlds like Second Life (R), Entropia Universe (R) and IMVU (R) have demonstrated the enormous economic potential that exists when key sectors of a virtual world economy such as content creation, trade, banking and services are privatized. This has lead to a boom in each of these worlds that has yet to be matched by any other economy, real or virtual", says founder Ailin Graef a.k.a. Anshe Chung. "Now the time is right to go further and link these exciting spaces together, to begin with the creation of the global Metaverse." [read the full article @ Anshe's site]

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Price Waterhouse Coopers

Price Waterhouse Coopers is the next serious consulting corp that has an opinion on Second Life: The virtual world of the internetplatform Second Life is getting more real for many companies. Small and medium sized businesses are getting interested in the millions of dollars that are spent in Second Life. The biggest mistake you can make is by considering it the next internethype. Second Life is an economic reality with many opportunities"

"Second Life's biggest win is that it can offer an extra dimension to your webproposition", say Ilja Linnemeijer and Ronald van Tongeren, PWC's media and telecom consultants, "By being present in such a platform you connect your business to a portal that's accessible for everyone"

Their conclusion is a little strong "You have to hurry. This is the time in which this alternative economy is getting shape and everyone is taking in positions. Think about what these developments mean for your organisation before it is too late."

update:

You can find the whole thing here. I'll warn you upfront, nothing new or visionary to be found.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Gartner says 80% will use Virtual World in 2011

One of the potentially hyped quotes from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2007 I mentioned in the blog 2 hours ago was a bold statement:

“By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a ’second life,’ but not necessarily in Second Life,” the company said on Wednesday in a statement released during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in San Francisco.

Let's hypothesize on that. Let's assume the economics for Second Life are a market average. There are now about 6 million Second Lifers, spending 1.5 million USD a day. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, there were about 330 million active Internet home users in March, 2007 (monitored in 10 countries).

330 Mi beats the current 6 Mi about 55 times, extrapolate that to the daily turnover and in 5 years we'll have a virtual market valued at 65 Mi. USD daily and an annual turnover of about 25 Billion dollars, not counting a rise in active internet users ;)

Let's assume Linden Labs will be the sole survivor. Now they're at 8 GB data traffic per second and 8,000 server. Let's do the math: In 2011 Linden Labs will have to deal with about 500 GB per second Data Traffic and 500.000 servers. I'd say.... Let's invest in ISP's and Serverfarms :)

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Racer group expects landprice drop

NAUTILUS IV - Close to the ESC cluster a humongous grey block on the sattelite appeared. At least 60 sims are lined up by the Linden Labs for auctioning. Thai Racer, owner of the Racer Real Estate doesn't look happy. "There's too many out there as it is." he said, and expects landprices may see a surge downward.

Many virtual residents would look at it from the opposite, as many still believe prices are too high. A passing Sandbox Ghost remarked that he's still waiting for that 200-sim desert, but also noticed that Linden is using new terrain textures.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Virtual Fortunes

As Lordly already posted, businessweek is doing an SL special, here's the interesting part:

"Meet the virtual world moguls. The number of Second Life residents generating more than $5,000 in monthly income has more than quadrupled to 116 in the past year."

The millionares:

  1. Phillip Rosendale (the guy who did SL)
  2. Ailin Graef(Anshe Chung real estate)
  3. Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us)
  4. Sibley Verbeck (Electric Sheep)
  5. Alyssa LaRoche (Aimee Weber)
  6. Adam Frisby (real estate)
  7. Kevin Alderman (Strokerz Toys & Amsterdam Sim)
  8. Peter Lokke (clothing)
  9. Christiano Diaz (snapzilla SL)
  10. Adam Anders (whatever, over 100.000 sales a day)

To wrap it up: No 1 is the one who dunnit, 2 real estate owners, 3 big builders, 2 clothing &kinky toys and 1 sidekick. So if you're not good at actually doing something, you can always invest in real estate.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Shop till you drop at Aarhof

Shoppingcentre Aarhof from Alphen a/d Rijn has it's virtual counterpart in SL. The shopzone itself looks a pretty decent job and contains lots of shops. Some smaller parts are not exactly designerwork... (like the cash register) but that doesn't matter.


Some major Dutch retailers now suddenly have a virtual outlet. I can imagine that a lingerie shop like Livera goes SL as lingerie is a desirable asset in SL. Same goes for clothing (e.g.) Didi, or the bookshop Bruna which also runs an online shop. I fail to see the use of a local bakery or butcher's in SL though. I can't order bread, nor can I eat it's virtual counterpart. Okay, presence and branding is one thing, setting up a business driven sim another.
The combination of an existing shoppingcenter with big brands in clothing and other possible virtual assets could have merit in its own. Yet the concept fails short because half of the outlets don't have right of existance in SL (yet).


SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aarhof/182/72/28

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Gartner digs SL

"The grid is down while we bang on things..." says Linden while leaving me time to ponder the immersive world study by Garnter, one of the leading information and technology research and advisory firms headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.

Gartner concludes that SL has pedagogical advantages in several subjects [Gartner, 22 March 2007/ID Number: G00147015] and has published an analysis of NVE's (Networked virtual environments) and states that there is a lot of potential. [Gartner 22 December 2006/ID Number: G00145046]. This study also names the top challenges for NVE's or immersive worlds (or whatever)
  • Technology
  • Implementation
  • Access
  • Governance
  • Productivity
  • Security and Privacy
Well, when Gartner says it, it's truth ;)

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PCM reviews Businesses at SL

It's wednesday, patchday. And as usually there is planned downtime. Well, scheduled maintenance. Linden blogs "scheduled maintenance postponed..." then suddenly while trying to log into SL it reads "scheduled maintenance *now* happening" which pretty much comes down to preponed?

Well, at least it gives me time to blog something about an article in the Dutch PCM (personal computer magazine). Roughly the article reads:

Businesses opening up virtual shop in SL do not meet consumer expectations. During daytime business sims are completely empty. The German micromanagement company Komjuniti did a poll among 200 SL residents on their expectations. 42% of those questioned do admit that the company's presence has a positive effect on their branding. However, businesses really fall short in treating virtual clients. Visitors want to communicate

PCM ends the article with a nice overview of visitors of Dutch Business Sims during lunchtime ;)
Well... Who didn't. While I was looking around I did a google search as the PCM names the shopping centre Aarhaf. I also saw several blog blindly copied the intel and never did a data integrity check. It's Aarhof ;)

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Reebok

Earlier today I posted a blogentry about the Mediacorp BBH and noted that their design had much of the same coloring as the Reebok sims. I just realised I haven't blogged my Reebok visit yet.
As I said it the BBH blog, there's a distinct resemblance. Rivers Run Red surely ran dry on creativity for a while and stuck to a certain type of build with severals sims.
As for Reebok, international manufacturer of sportswear, the concept is rather boring: Let's create a shop to sell our stuff. C'mon! Sports is an adventure, you've got to live live to the max! If I want to buy a Reebok, I'll go to the store and see which shoe fits me. In an immersive world, you've gotta convince me why Reebok is my brand
(err... due to my professional occupation I'd probably stick to handcrafted Dutch Van Bommel shoes anyway)
Aside from the Reebok shop with traditional shoestands the sim has one distinct feature though: The Reebok store is set up in a downtown area, a heavy urban built sim at first glance. Yet the buildings are kinda twisted. A nice non-RL-conformative detail ;)

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Fairchang Real Estate

Second Life's first and foremost real estate millionare Anshe Chung inspired many to invest in virtual land. One of the big newcomers is Fairchang Real Estate. Just south of IBM's Codestation and Dev World, the socalled Developers Archipelago, a whole new continent is emerging from the virtual sea.
As per now it consists of nearly forty sims, and if all rented / sold, should be able to give mr. Garth Fairchang a healthy little something to spend.

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Real Life Cities 1: Amsterdam

When in Holland and you want to start a conversation on Second Life, or any other immersive world for that matter, the discussion is bound to touch virtual Amsterdam very soon. Amsterdam is probably the best known sim in Holland, mentioned in almost every SL story.

It usually is referred to as one of the largest sims (forgetting that all sims are created equal), or largest builds. The sim itself encompasses Amsterdam Central Station, the Damrak and the Dam itself with the monument, the New Church and the Royal Palace. Then there are some canals lined with shops. It's hardly a surprise to see half the shops are sex related. When making that conclusion, it's no surprise to see Amsterdam always is one of the favorite places in the Metaverse.


Since I don't dig virtual sex, I judged slamsterdam by it's architectural values. It's true that it is heavily built, and there's an enormous amount of textures used, making the sim very slow to render, which for me is a show-stopper.

The sim was originally built by Strokerz Toy, but was recently purchased by Nedstede, an Amsterdam based real estate firm. The sim was actioned at E-bay and the deal closed at 50,000 euro. I'm not sure the clientele is what they would like to see in Real Life.

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

If Nedstede is willing to spend that amount of money, they should call Lordlfy who did an extremely good impression of Amsterdam for SL's 2nd Relay for Live event in 2006. Though the sim is no longer live, its contents can be found somewhere in the deeps of Lordfly's inventory. Here are some impressions:


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Virtual Pizzatime

The silicon website ran a story on new developments at Domino's. Work had to be done at the websites for the ever growing demand for e-pizza. Well, there has to be v-pizza too!

Domino's plans to get even more tech-savvy. A mobile text-based order service is in the pipeline and it will be using Second Life to reach more pizza-hungry punters. Jane Kimberlin, IT director of Domino's, told silicon.com: Second Life is where Domino's customers are and therefore that's where the pizza company needs to be too.

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Virtual Camping

Throughout Second Life you find happy campers and sturdy dancers. At least, when I first noticed them I thought they were happy. A bunch of people having fun dancing on the beach, sitting near a campfire telling tales to eachother.

It was not much later I learned that these are not tourists traversing the Metaverse, but plain beggars. Camping and Dancing is a way to make money and is certainly not the romantic, fun or relaxing activity you'd want your holiday to be. It's a world gone crazy!

Second Life seems to be littered with these dancing-pods, campfires and money-trees which lure you into participating for a lousy fee (varying from 1 to 25 L$ per 10 minutes). Lately I have done some observing and profiling on these campers.
The obvious thing to notice is that we're almost solely dealing with basic account menbers, i.e. non-paying members who don't get a weekly stipend. Yet they spend hours online (receiving less L$ than wasted on energy bills). About 80% of these members are women who seem to spend lots of money on clothing and face-lifting. They're good looking and could easily pass for members who buy a few thousand Linden dollars to look good.

So a lot of time and effort is put into making those few bucks and looking good. To what end? I tried to start a conversation with one stunning beauty, but she was too busy to answer. Well, she's making 25 bucks per 10 minutes, so I gave her L$ 50, that would buy me some time to get an answer I thought... Well it came a few hours later. The lady in question was not very talkative, too busy.

So what's the use of spending hours in Second Life, working hard to get money to look good, then don't have time for a social life to show it? I took the liberty of speaking to one of the managers.
CS: oh they are [talkative]- once you get to know them ...they are always chatting to me..too much even lol which is great
VeeJay Burns: I'm trying to figure out why they spend hours online for a few lousy bucks, then spend all that money in order to look goodfand have no time to socialize[
CS: Well, I think there is a community feel that keeps them together. They have joined the camping community, wherever they are. So they get to know each other. There are many nationalities here - some do not speak English that is probably hampering conversation a tad.
VeeJay Burns: any idea what age category they're in? Are they teenagers who don't have credit cards
CS: ah no, they are all mature adults mainly.
VeeJay Burns: okay, and mostly female it seems
CS: for sure but a fair sprinkling of men campers too
VeeJay Burns: how much are they making on average
CS: gosh now you are asking ! not a lot anyway in a week, we pay out very little
VeeJay Burns: in short, you're paying them a few bucks to keep your place popular?
CS: Not really. We have other reasons and actually, there are loads of camping places around but half of them are empty, people seem to like the atmosphere here -camping aside

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Virtual banking (4) Saxo Bank

In january and february virtual land was falling short and the Lindens had a large que of requests. Early march we saw an explosion of new sims. One of these new launches was the Saxo Bank, an online investment bank, based in Copenhagen, Denmark.


Jeffrey Limpele, executive director of quantitative analysis at Saxo Bank (whatever that means), told SLNN that the bank ultimately plans to offer "leveraged Forex trading on the lindens... We want to give you access from Second Life to your Real Life foreign exchange." We'll see.



The bank shares the island with a volcano viewable from the bank's roof terrace. There is also a bizarre Rio carnival parade that processes around the island. Whether there is some deep symbolism in the use of the volcano and carnival, or whether it is an amusing whimsy.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Saxo%20Bank/128/128/0
The site is built by Beta Technologies
Pictures kindly provided by Sir Aleister Kronos

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Virtual Banking (2): ING and Our Virtual Holland

At the Media Plaza Second Life seminar Gertjan Kaaij, Business Innovator of the ING held a presentation about ING in Second Life.... well, not exactly. The Dutch baking and insurance company ING they started cruising the virtual worlds in late 2006, but did not see a ROI on short term.

So there wasn't a big ING hit to launch, then what else to do? For the time being, ING uses SL mainly as a branding medium. They've hired Rivers Run Red to build a region of sims called "Our Virtual Holland"


The plan is for Our Virtual Holland to evolve into a virtual mini-state, and to this end they have been offering free parcels of land to would-be residents. Don't all rush to the website though - the offer closed on 21st March. Rather than churn out all the details here, I would refer you to this page of their website, which tells you everything you need to know (if not, try their FAQ). As is usual with SL that magic word for 2007, "Innovation", looms large. I will be interested to see what emerges. Certainly the pittoresque windmills will add to that innovative spirit...


At the moment ING is working with partners like the Rijksmuseum to add some spirit to the sims.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Holland/128/128/0
Pictures kindly provided by Sir Aleister Kronos

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Friday, April 06, 2007

Virtual Banking (1): ABN Amro

The ABN Amro sims has been online for some time now, a true omission in my blog. But what's there to say?

The sim consists of several hovering platforms connected by several airbridges. personally I like the design, but I'm wondering what ABN's intentions are.

One platform holds a shop where you can buy suits (not the best quality) and other pieces of clothing, there's an auditorium, some coffee corners where you can watch some ABN commercials... But where's the bank?

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