Archives for November 2007

SydSim is on its way

Telstra have announced the development of a replica of the Sydney CBD on their suite of islands. It’s a development with business firmly in mind:

“At SydSim, real world businesses will soon be able to explore the commercial opportunities available in the virtual world, by renting an office or shopfront at the virtual location of their existing real world premises.

This is an opportunity to secure top-notch locations in a 3D virtual skyscape of Sydney’s CBD, and see what sales, marketing and employee collaboration opportunities are available, without the fuss of setting up their own island.”

When we contacted Telstra and asked when SydSim would be a reality, we were told it was already live. All I could find this evening was the start of a build on two new sims: Martin Place and Loftus:

sydsim1.jpg

There’s never been any doubts about Telstra’s commercial focus within Second Life – this is an obvious evolution from the successful land rentals and the recent expansion of two more sims. I’d imagine there’ll be no problems selling the SydSim real estate – the real challenge will be managing lag issues on what is already a popular neck of the woods.

What’s not in doubt is Telstra’s committment to SL – the other Australian Telcos have some major catching up to do in the virtual world sphere.

Check it out in-world

The Wonderland saga – ageplay focus increases

Over the past day, the ageplay investigations by UK authorities has well and truly hit the mainstream media. WIth gambling now gone from SL, sex was always going to be the issue that piques the media’s interest, particularly when it potentially involves children.

At SLOz we’ve been contacted today by a couple of mainstream media outlets including one of the national TV news services. NineMSN has a perfunctory story on its site. Our comments to the media matched those we’ve made here: any efforts to remove child pornography are to be applauded, determining the actual age of SL users is fraught with difficulty and Linden Lab have a significant issue on their hands.

Linden Lab’s response response today is a re-hash of its previous position i.e. ‘tell us when you see it happen and we’ll investigate’. We’re assuming this is an initial response – there’s a momentum growing in a number of countries now and the status quo probably isn’t going to be good enough.

Update: there’s a sizeable discussion on the saga at TechCrunch.

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