BT Group presence in Second Life

Earlier this week I blogged about the AvaTalk project which British Telecom ran in Second Life. I wasn't really positive about this project, which is about making phonecalls from Second Life to the Real World. I kept looking for positive things, and yes, there's more to BT in SL than first meets the eye.

First, let me introduce the players in the arena, which off course starts off with British Telecom.

"BT Group plc (formerly British Telecommunications plc) which trades as BT(previously known as British Telecom and still occasionally referred to by that name) is the privatised UK state telecommunications operator. It is the dominant fixed line telecommunications and broadband Internet provider in the United Kingdom. BT operates in more than 170 countries and almost a third of its revenue now comes from its Global Services division.

BT Group is the largest communications service provider in the United Kingdom. It is also one of the largest communication companies in the world." [Wikipedia]

British Telecom worked with Clarity International to create their Second Life experiences (note the plural).

Clarity International is a global design and communication management consultancy firm, headquartered near Milan in Italy, with offices in the United Kingdom and USA. specializing in helping clients simplify complex propositions and problems through focused expert consulting and visualisation of strategies, key concepts, products and services. (Clarity website)

Viewing Clarity's portfolio they have done quite a number of projects with BT, not only virtual, but in the real world as well. One of these projects is BT Contact - Your Personal Communication Hub! in which Clarity has been selected to work on the UI designs of BT Contact, a new way to manage all your IM, Email, VOIP and SMS communications on the web. If you link that to the AvaTalk project it starts to make a little sense.

BT Tradespace

Aside from the AvaTalk concept they have created a number of projects in Second Life. First of which is the BT Tradespace project.

BT Tradespace is an online community incorporating a business directory and marketplace. On its site you can buy and sell products and services, find a business and network with other like-minded individuals. Unlike a conventional business directory, BT Tradespace members can use social media tools such as blogs, photos, videos and podcasts to promote their products and services. For prospective customers, it provides the opportunity to get to know a business before buying from them and Clarity has brought this existing Tradespace into Second Life.

Read more on the BT Tradespace Trial on the SL Tradespace website.

BT 21 CN Innovation

Another Second Life project BT has done with Clarity takes place on an island named BT 21CN Innovation, which I think stands for 21st Century Innovation. In thisproject the virtual environment of Second Life is usedto explain the reuse concept. Avatars interact with a virtual shopping basket of capabilities to understand them, and view how these capabilities are "mashed-up" to create new products/services.

BT 21CN Innovation - Second Life - The funniest videos are a click away

A lot of my earlier scepsis has been taken away after digging into the other projects BT has done. They weren't the first of the telecom providers to dive into Second Life, they were probably the last one. Not everything they are doing is a smashing success, but at least they are trying to work out what they can do with their core business in virtual worlds, rather than use it as a marketing toy.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/BT%2021CN%20Innovation/128/128/0

Dutch Law wont Block Second Life

Dutch tech webzine Tweakers.net reports that the Dutch Minister of Justice won't force ISP's to block childpornography sites. A special note is made that the Justice department wont fix laws on 'virtual childporn' in Second Life either.

Earlier this it was reported that provider UPC would block a number of websites, in accordance with a list supplied by the KLPD, the national Police departments. Not much later KPN went along too. In March there were questions asked on virtual (child) pornography in the Dutch parliament.

Now the minister said that the providers have shown to be social consious and he does not deem it necessary to come up with regulation.

Virtual Traffic Jam

Second Life generates 7GB-8GB of traffic per second, and is currently supported by 8,000 servers. "When people see the broader architecture, they'll understand that's... it's Web-like. It's scalable," said Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2007.

I did run a hosting sideshow at one time in my life (am still running a webserver with the full-monty somewhere) and discspace isn't the issue, hosting prices are basically determined by datatraffic nowadays. A regular European ISP will charge you about 1 euro per GB of datatraffic. So 8 euro's per second, 1,680 per minute, 100K per hour and 1.2 Million dollar per day.... I think they're getting quantum discount ;)

Right now, just at the end of the maintenance window, the Traffic Jam is actually happening. There's a new client version (1.5) that's been massively downloaded. The Second Life site is virtually dead right now.