Friday night Australian time, the ABC gave ABC Friends group members the opportunity to preview ABC Island and group members well and truly took the opportunity.
Some more shots of the island:
Archives for March 2007
ABC Island – preview for ABC friends a success
March 16, 2007 by 4 Comments
First in, best dressed – is SL worth it for Aussie Universities?
March 15, 2007 by 2 Comments
For some time now I have been following the developments of three particular universities that have established islands in SL. The RMIT island known as Ormond Island, the USQ island of Terra Incognita and the amazingly designed Esperance Island of the Australian Film TV and Radio School.
These three islands are relatively easy to locate by a simple use of the “Place” tab in the SL search window an using the term “University”. For the AFTRS presence searchers need to use “AFTRS”. I feel that AFTRS would benefit in using the term university in their descriptor, as the average person may find locating them difficult.
The resulting 49 hits from a “university” term search will give the sum total of serious contenders on the SL Education market. To date Ormond Island, Terra Incognita and Esperance are the only three Australian universities that have actively sought to allow non-student visitors to explore and consider the options of tertiary education experiences via the SL medium.
This is a vitally important aspect to consider in relation to the global marketing of education. Many Australian universities provide distant education courses yet currently we have only three exploring the provision, practising or marketing of their product via SL.
With the launch of the BigPond islands and the soon to be launched ABC Island, there will be an increased number of Australians exploring this strange, bizarre and somewhat perplexing world. All of these newbies will have one question on their minds: “What is there to do here?”
For USQ, RMIT and AFTRS their answer is simple – come and do a course with us! Without such provision of subsidiary offerings, SL becomes just another form of chat forums for people with ‘interesting proclivities’.
Looking for Telstra Bigpond’s Islands?
March 13, 2007 by 14 Comments
One of the criticisms that has been levelled at SL has been the way in which the search function works. This is frustratingly true for those of us trying to find Telstra’s Bigpond presence.
Most people will do the obvious thing and just type in Telstra or Bigpond in the search window. Note that the default tab is “All”. This is one of the main problems with the search function. If you choose the other tabs you need to type in your search all over again.
Most people would assume that the “All” tab means just that, all categories are searched and results posted, in some cases you find what you want in others, as above, you have a zero result.
In the BigPond Islands example, a search of “All” is not very successful at all:
However, if you select the “Places” tab and retype your query you will find that not only is BigPond easily located, but all the sub-sections and islands are listed:
So the moral of the story is to try and use a variety of queries and tabs when searching for a specific area. It may take a while but you may just find what you’re looking for.
Telstra bringing a population boom?
March 11, 2007 by 5 Comments
Since Telstra’s launch on Friday, I’ve spent around 30 minutes on half a dozen occasions, at a central point on one of the Telstra Islands. The time spent has been well and truly worth it, as it has demonstrated the power of a corporate Australian presence in SL.
BigPond are promoting their Second Life presence on their front page. Any BigPond members who sign-up via that page start out at Telstra’s own Orientation Island ( a SL feature described by Logan Linden during our interview with him). All of these new SL users end up at the Telstra Islands. Over the weekend the influx of Australian SL users has been incredible – I don’t have numbers but each time I’ve been there, dozens of new people have arrived within minutes of each other.
This leads to a second point: all these new people are lost. They wander around like most of us did initially, wondering what to do next. The difference is, there’s a real sense that people aren’t quite aware that there’s a lot more to SL than the Telstra Islands. Each time I interacted with a new user I’d get questions like ‘so what’s good to look at around here?’. I’d give some suggestions and off they’d wander, coming back later on having wandered around the islands but not having teleported anywhere else. It’ll be interesting to see how many Telstra sign-ups remain longer term users.
Overall my perception of the first few days of operation is that older SL users see the Telstra Islands as an interesting new development mixed with a healthy scepticism around the reasons Telstra has launched in-world. And a corporate presence like this is a magnet for protest although nothing organised has occurred to date. I did however see one member of the Second Life Liberation Army taking a tour…..
Again. we’d love to hear your thoughts on Australia’s largest corporate presence – good, bad or indifferent.
SLOz HQ – The Build is Complete
March 10, 2007 by 2 Comments
At SLOz we’ve been working for weeks on completing our in-world presence and it’s pretty much done. So to celebrate, we’re having a launch party on Wed 21st March 8pm to 11pm AEST (3am to 6am SL time on Wednesday 21st).
There’ll be beer, a BBQ, music (Aussie DJ’s or performers feel free to IM me if you’d like to showcase yourself) and maybe even a RL celebrity or two. More importantly, if you’ve got suggestions as to what you’d like our in-world presence to offer Australians in SL, please let us know.
Telstra Launch Second Life Presence
March 9, 2007 by 9 Comments
After months of development Telstra have launched their SL presence. And a significant presence it is – eleven islands called The Pond, Ponderosa, Billabong, Ponden, Ponderama, Pondessa, Pondex, Pondfield, Pondice, Pondillion and Pondshen (pictured above). Each offers a range of activities and sights which we’ll cover in-depth in future, but for now an overview of the sights:
The Opera House:
An impressive rendition though the claim that the true Opera House shape can’t be rendered in SL to me seems to stand – it’s damn close though.
The compulsory outback pub (The Billabong Bar):
Uluru:
The BigPond Dome:
A highlight, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, fireworks included:
We’d love to hear your initial impressions – are you inspired or indifferent? Do you find the whole thing amazing or kitsch? Let us know.
Apple Mac users – SL is the only option
March 7, 2007 by 8 Comments
One demographic within the SL user base that hasn’t been discussed in detail is Operating System. For the sake of the discussion I’ll talk about Windows versus Mac OS although most applies to Linux users. Second Life was my first stop for virtual worlds and I hadn’t really investigated others in details, until today. I had decided to register accounts with There.com, Entropia Universe, IMVU. In all three cases, if you run Mac OS, forget about using the client / browser for each service. There.com is not even compliant with browsers outside of Internet Explorer. Australian startup, Outback Online has stated up front there’ll be no Mac support either.
This means that SL probably has an unusually high proportion of Mac users. There’s certainly a Mac users group and the odd Mac devotee area in SL. You can purchase mock-ups of the whole Mac range from one vendor (pictured) and another vendor offers the MPod which looks very similar to a well-known music device. Just don’t look around for a Mac-friendly alternative to Second Life.
Machinima – Oz Style
March 6, 2007 by 2 Comments
Machinima in SL can be a very hit and miss affair, but its appeal continues to grow. One reason for the growth is the use of machinima by companies to promote their in-world presences. Australia has its own specialist machinima creator in Skribe Forti.
A veteran of nearly twenty years working in the Australian film and television industries, Skribe now spends much of his time in Second Life making videos there.
“There’s so much potential for video in Second Life, both as a means of artistic expression, but also corporate promotion. We already get land owners piping movies into their sims. There’s no reason why that can’t be used to show whatever the owner wants – whether it’s the features of a new product, publicising an event or just providing a reason to hang around. There are a million active residents spending two million bucks a day. If you’re on the sell, you’ve gotta have a piece of that. And that’s where we come in.”
Forti’s initial impressions of Second Life were less than complimentary.
“It looked to me as though it was just IRC with funky graphics – a video game without a purpose. My initial impressions were wrong. It’s like life. You make your own purpose. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
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