Fiat Brasil

Since the final quarter of 2006 we've seen about a dozen automotive companies enter Second Life. As was with the internet, the automotive industry has been quick to pick up on new technology, finding ways to promote their vehicles.

Early april 2007 I spotted a triple sim setup called Fiat Brasil, Fiat Adventure 1 and Fiat Adventure 2 which accidentaly had left its restrictions off so I could blog the first pics. It has been closed ever since. When I spoke to one of the reps of the Brasilian MDC vj arquitetura at the opening of the Paramount/V3 group Transformer sim in June she said it was bound to open in a week or two. Those two weeks have grown into two quarters it seems, not that I've been trying on a regular basis, but still, today was the first day I found it open for public.

Somethings get better with age, I guess. The build itself looks very neat. Here are some snapshots:

The main venue of this build is the Fiat factory in which you'll see (a representation of) te production process and assembly line. Notice the Picasso painting the new Punto...

At the end of the line the new Punto is ready for a testdrive. What I liked best about the sim the architecture and the small pits of humor put into the design. We've seen the production process before in Second Life (e.g. Ben & Jerry's) and we've seen racing tracks (e.g. Nissan) but one of the things that make this sim work for me is that Fiat let go conventional architecture in the decorum.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fiat%20Adventure%20I/194/87/64

25% of Global top 100 in SL

In June I wrote 30% of Dutch Top100 corporations in Virtual Worlds, listing the top Dutch companies in Second Life. Earlier this month though SLionheads' Timbo Urbanowicz did the math on the global top 100 companies.



Based upon the Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard he checked to see which companies were in Second Life and concludes 20% of these Global brands have a presence in Second Life:

"Interbrand takes many ingredients into account when ranking the value of the
Best Global Brands. Even to qualifyfor the list, each brand must derive at least
a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizableoutside of its
base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. "

1. Coca Cola

2. Microsoft

3. IBM

6. Toyota

7. Intel

10. Mercedes-benz

13. BMW

18. Cisco

25. Sony

29. Nike

31. Dell

42. Philips

43. Siemens

44. Nintendo

52. MTV

62. Amazon

69. Adidas

76. Reuters

81. ING

98. Nissan




Missing on this list are apple (33), SAP (34), eBay (48), Accenture (50) and BP (84) though, so it's closer to 25%.



Some, like Coca Cola and SAP only hold a small spot in Second Life, others such as IBM have a multble island presence and others (like eBay and BP) are still under cosntruction.

Nissan skytrack

Nissan automobiles has created a 4 sim experience. On the first sim is the welcome area, with gadgets, a sandbox and a promotion show of the Nissan Altima (oh yeah, it's that good...).



Aside from the main sim there's a 3 sim track you can testdrive, complete with looping. And then there's the skytrack... a very promising feat!



The best feature is a candymachine... it's enormous and it doen't deliver the chewable but the drivable candy! The machine is equipped with a thorough disclaimer that these cars are intended for SL use only and can therefor do very UNreal things...ending with a warning like: so don't try this at home kids



Certainly a sim to come back to!

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nissan%20Altima/128/128/0