Archives for November 2009

Weekend Whimsy

1. My Teen Second Life Photo Album

2. Burning Life 2009: Second Life

3. Kittymel’s Second Life Part 1

Interview – Simon Newstead, CEO of Frenzoo

Simon Newstead of FrenzooBack in May, we covered Frenzoo, a fashion-centric world with a lot of promise. Since that time, Frenzoo has continue to grow and has received further funding to continue its development.

CEO Simon Newstead is an expatriate Australian based in Hong Kong, and I took the opportunity to get some insight into Frenzoo‘s progress and future plans. He also discusses the role of Robin Harper and Anshe Chung, integration with services like Facebook and quite a bit more.

The take-home message for me is Frenzoo‘s focus on content creation, placing it amongst a handful of other players dedicated to that space. Fashion’s about creativity, so it’ll be interesting to see what growth trajectory Frenzoo takes. Read on for the interview:

Lowell: Can you give a brief biography of your career pre-Frenzoo?

Simon: Sure, before jumping into the online world with Frenzoo, I worked in Internet networking with Juniper Networks, the upstart competitor to Cisco.

There I was leading the Emerging Technologies team for Asia. That was a great job, dealing with customers in Korea and Japan through to emerging countries like India and Vietnam. Learning how and how not-to introduce new solutions to market, winning over early adopters, feeding requirements back to development teams – a lot of fun.

Before that I was in Melbourne with Juniper where I worked with Telstra to help design their 2nd generation broadband infrastructure (their DSL network). That was a great job for a young engineer, although I recall a lot of late nights living in their labs 🙂

Lowell: How would you describe Frenzoo’s progress over the past 12 months?

Simon: Great! After a slow start we’re starting to find our groove – a fledgling online world and 3d chat & creation community is up and running. Still early days but revenue starting to come in and growth picking up.

When we started our beta a year ago we had nothing – no users and a website with virtually no functionality: I remember an early tester making a comment “I love my avatar so much… but ummm what can I do with it?” It was a rude awakening, but all the early feedback helped us learn and adapt quickly – I really do subscribe to the “Fail Fast” startup school of thinking.

Since then we have learned a lot on what makes people them invest time and money and what they want out of Frenzoo. We’ve added and iterated our product countless times based on all the customer feedback: a big part of our culture – we gather a lot of user feedback, run regular usability tests, analyze usage data etc.

A turning point was introducing User generated content via our own web creation tool as well as 3ds modeling and collada import function. This has been great – the creative folks just love to design new things. When the world around you changes so much there is always inspiration for something new. People who love to mod sims love our environment – in fact some of our top content creators today are huge The Sims modders and creators.

Six months ago, the only things in the shop were made by Frenzoo, with limited choice. Now all the content on the marketplace is coming from the community and there are many thousands of diverse creator items to shop from and growing each day.

Lowell: What’s the company’s funding situation at present?

Simon: Earlier in the year we secured a solid round of funding from ASI – the Skype co-founders and other important angel investors. That takes us a long way to realizing our vision – by the time we consider the next phase of funding we should have completed the core development and started to ramp up audience and monetization.

Lowell: Virtual goods commerce is currently the core of your revenue model – can you explain a little how both you and designers can make money?

Simon: Sure. We run a dual currency system – we have silver and gold coins. Silver coins are the earned currency (being active on the site), gold coins are bought currency. When an item is purchased by a user using Gold coins, the creator of that item gains the Gold Coins (Frenzoo takes a small commission). Gold Coins can be sold for real money on 3rd party sites like First Meta Exchange and Anshe X. Those sites also allow transfer to and from other virtual currencies such as Linden dollars and IMVU credits.

Lowell: How many staff does Frenzoo have and are they still all based in Hong Kong?

Simon: We have a team of 10 folks – 7 engineers and 3 designers. Apart from that it’s myself, and Ceci, our marketing lead. We’re based in Hong Kong and we also have a couple of fantastic remote interns in the US who do a fantastic job helping with the community management.

We’re also lucky to have three very helpful strategic advisors – Robin Harper (ex Linden Labs) and Anshe Chung – Ailin Graef and Guntram Graef have really helped with giving us guidance and the insights from their considerable experience.

Lowell: What’s the geographic breakdown of your userbase at present?

Simon: Most members are coming from the US, however we have a healthy international mix from Europe and Asia. Australia is in the mix, a few percent of our base. We have localization to over 10 languages, including Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, German, Russian, Dutch etc It’s one of the many advantages of being purely browser based – it’s easy to add this. Right from the start we wanted to make this a global offering, not just English only.

Lowell: What percentage of the designers are making significant money?

Simon: We’re just getting going, no millionaires I’m aware of yet 🙂

The majority of our creators are doing it for enjoyment – it’s a lot of fun dreaming up new designs, meeting people, entering contests, being creative.

For those folks when they earn a few bucks in the process that’s just a bonus. However we’re now starting to see the first few professional operations coming onto the site with the aim to make money. Anshe Chung Studios is one example, it’s also easy for them to publish their created items to both Frenzoo and other platforms like IMVU. We’re also looking forward to introducing 3D scenes so, for example, creators of Second Life environments and props can explore our platform.

Lowell: What mistakes that competitors have made are you hoping to avoid?

Simon: I have a lot of respect for the other avatar communities out there, I’m a big fan of Second Life in particular for their creative and open content environment. One thing we are striving to do is make our user interface really simple to use, and also make creation fun and accessible to everyone – in fact most of our active active members have created their own items.

As we are web online world compared with most others who are client based, we have our own unique set of challenges and opportunities. For example cross browser differences and testing is a hassle (don’t get me started on IE6!), but on other hand web based means we support Mac and PC as well as being able to quickly mash up and integrate – e.g. post pics to Facebook etc.

Lowell: Speaking of Facebook, do you have any plans for integration with other web applications like that?

Simon: We’d like to do more web integration next year for sure. Once we have built out most of our core platform we plan to swing back and look at off site integration and add what makes sense, be it Facebook app or other platforms and techniques. Whether that app might be avatar chat or creation or a mix is still something we have to think about.

Mobile is something also we considered when we settled on our 3D rendering engine – in fact Unity3d which we use is one of the leading engines for iPhone 3D games today. It’s an interesting future possibility for us and technically feasible.

Lowell: Who do you see as Frenzoo’s main competitors?

Simon: In terms of web 3D community with UGC marketplace and creation tools we are first to market, to my knowledge. Actually even in client solutions, I haven’t seen similar to our accessible fashion design tool.

Actually most of our energy is built on listening to our users and improving our service. Whilst we monitor and learn lessons from other virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life and IMVU who have built up successful economies), we’re mainly focussed on our users and improving for them.

Online World Frenzoo - 3D Avatar of Simon_is_yetiLowell: Do you have an estimated date for Frenzoo coming out of beta?

Simon: Not for some time yet…

Beta really is a mark that we are in constant iteration and improvement, it’s a label that encourages us to always be listening and improving. Of course, we’re running a virtual economy today and security and robustness are important but we like the idea of being in beta mode and responsive – it’s a cultural attribute.

Lowell: What’s the roadmap for Frenzoo over the coming year?

Simon: Now UGC is kicked off, our next big move is “social”. The first step is 3D chat, which we just launched 2 months ago. It’s pretty sparse now but we will be building it out. As part of the social drive we’ll be introducing 3D scenes, which will be the biggest upgrade to the site since launch. This will let people be creative and social a lot more than today where the avatar is in 3D but the scene is just in static 2D. A 3D online world in Frenzoo has been one of the top requests from our community.

Our goal within the next few months is to have a fun user created environments – dance parties people can hang out and virtual chat in, maybe beaches for moonlight walks, glamorous catwalk shows, and hopefully lots of ridiculously pimped out apartments 🙂

We’ll also continue to build out the creative tools and then start to do more mashups and integrations on the web to help people share their experiences easier.

Lowell: Can you shed light on the core Frenzoo user?

Simon: Sure. Our age ranges from 13 all the way to 30 and beyond. Several of our most active members are in their 30s, 40s and older. Our average age today is hovering around 18-20 years old, and we skew very heavily towards female. One of our goals over coming months is to also make Frenzoo interesting and engaging for us guys.

Lowell: As an expat Aussie, what’s your take on the virtual worlds industry here?

Simon: Well, I’m a big fan of some of the virtual world personalities who live in Australia – folks such as metaverse bloggers Tateru, Anstia and yourself, Steve Cropper who runs the Life On-Line show etc Also it’s nice to see some virtual world developers in Australia such as VSide/Exit Reality…and in general some great tech projects such as Google Wave out of Sydney. I’m always rooting for more Aussies to make it on the global stage 🙂

Amputee support, games health research and avatar perceptions

(This story originally appeared over at sister-site Metaverse Health earlier this week).

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a spike in mainstream media interest around virtual environments and health. I thought it’d be worth showcasing three notable stories / issues that you may not be aware of.

Amputee Support

A press release from ADL Company Inc. and Virtual Ability, Inc. touts the launch of a project to provide peer-support to those who have undergone amputation of a limb. The project’s impetus has come about due to some sobering US-based facts:

Recent US military casualty figures for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom indicate that between September 2001 and mid-January 2009 over a thousand amputation injuries occurred. Of the 935 amputations considered major, one in five wounded warriors lost more than one limb. While the rehabilitation goal is for the soldier to return to active duty, many reintegrate into their civilian communities. In either case, military amputations are often accompanied by additional wounds, depression, fear, phantom limb pain, and post traumatic stress disorder.

Spouses and family members often become the caregivers of military amputees after they are released from military hospitals and rehabilitation programs. Family support members have their own grieving process to go through related to the amputation and to the change to family life.

The platform for the project is the recently released Second Life Enterprise product, meaning that users have a greater deal of privacy to explore issues in a group context. You can also read about the project from the perspective of ADL Inc’s President, and regular virtual worlds writer, Doug Thompson (SL: Dusan Writer).

Avatars: Perceptions of Self

New Scientist has a good article on a study looking at brain activity (as measured by MRI) when discussing perceptions of real self versus a heavily played World of Warcraft character. The methodology:

To probe what brain activity might underlie people’s virtual behaviour, Caudle’s team convinced 15 World of Warcraft players in their twenties – 14 men and 1 woman – who play the game an average of 23 hours a week, to drag themselves away from their computers and spend some time having their brains scanned using functional MRI.

While in the scanner, Caudle asked them to rate how well various adjectives such as innocent, competent, jealous and intelligent described themselves, their avatars, their best friend in the real world and their World of Warcraft guild leader.

For the early results, read the article, but essentially things aren’t black and white about how we perceive ourselves versus our avatars. No big surprise there. One particularly interesting signpost for future research is the idea that those who perceive themselves and their avatars in a similar way may be the individuals at higher risk for addictive behaviours in regards to their use of virtual environments.

Health Games Research

Health Games Research is a website well worth perusing. It’s a US-based organisation devoted to “research to advance the innovation and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies intended to improve health”. There are yearly grants for research into games and health, with the 2009 funding round announced last week.

Three little pigs

This is a true story, proving how fascinating the mind of a six year old is. They think so logically.

A teacher was reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where first pig was trying to gather the building materials for his home. She read. ‘And so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said: ‘Pardon me sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house?’

The teacher paused then asked the class: ‘And what do you think the man said?’

One little boy raised his hand and said very matter-of-factly …’I think the man would have said – ‘Well, I’ll be fucked!! A talking pig!’

The teacher had to leave the room

UWA 3D Art and Design Challenge – October round winners

uwa-art-oct09-1st A fortnight or so ago we covered the great work being done by the University of Western Australia in Second Life. One of the centrepieces of their activity is the 3D Art and Design Challenge, with the October winners now announced.

You can see all the finalists here, but here’s the summary:

IMAGINE CHALLENGE – 3D Art

1st Prize:Willow by Bryn Oh ($L5,00
2nd Prize: Holophrasis by Snubnome Genopeak ($L1,250)
Best Non-Scripted Entry: Concentric Shells by Ichiko Miles ($L1,250)

Honourable Mention (Emotion): In Uterus/Pregnant First Record by Silene Christen ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Harmony): Living in Syn by Maya Paris ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Immersion & Application): Come Go With Me by Alizarin Goldflake ($L500)
Honourable Mention (Hidden Wonder): Beauty/Beast by Feathers Boa ($L500)

FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE

1st Prize : Sci-Fi Gallery by Nyx Breen ($L5,000)
2nd Prize: Art Gallery by Dusty Canning ($L1,250)

For those interested in the real detail of what UWA is doing, Jayjay Zifanwe’s speech announcing the winners is worth perusing. I’m really thrilled to be on the final judging panel for the competition and the UWA team have done a brilliant job in building some real interest in its activities through encouraging one of Second Life’s real strengths: creative expression.

Jayjay’s speech:

Greetings everyone, and welcome to the University of Western Australia, or UWA as she is known and also welcome to the October Round announcement of winners for the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge. As is tradition at UWA, I would like to acknowledge that the University is situated on Nyoongar land and that the Nyoongar people remain the spiritual and cultural custodians of their land and continue to uphold their values, languages, beliefs and knowledge.

I am so happy to see all of you here today. You honour us with your presence, and we have also been honoured by the incredible, varied and wondrous artworks submitted by the artists of Second Life for this round, with a total of 40 artworks and 11 building designs.

Artists & Builders taking part so far have come from Canada, the USA, the UK, Scotland, England, Spain, France, Brazil, Denmark, Holland and Australia.

Before going on, I would like for everyone to give a big round of applause to a tireless champion of the arts, the person most responsible for everything we see all around us now, and co-host of the UWA 3D Art & Design challenge, quadrapop Lane !!!

I also want to acknowledge the Cultural Precinct at the University of Western Australia and ShedworX.com and www.etshirts.com who have all contributed such that the total prize pool for the UWA 3D Art & Design Competition is sitting at well over $L357,000.

Something new for November only at the moment, is that an Artist Book Prize is being awarded. Juanita Deharo who owns Second Edition group is offering a L$2000 prize for an ‘artist book’ . “An artists’ book is an artwork in a book format, or an artwork which has its origin in the form or concept of the book.” You can interpret this in any way you want. This prize may be ongoing. All entries to the IMAGINE CHALLENGE that have conceptual roots in a book will be considered for the Artist Book Prize.

The special Artists Participation Pool that had been established, raised $L6,000 for the artists participating in the October round. I want to acknowledge the generosity of Sasun Steinbeck, Tranguloid Trefoil & Phillip Vought whose contributions form the bedrock of this pool.

I would however like to quickly acknowledge evryone who did contribute. Please forgive me for this long list, but it is important to me to acknowledge them!

Thank you MidnightRain Glas, Jesse Keyes, Lady Caitlyn Inglewood, Dusty Canning, Juliete3D Quinzet, Kayo Houston, Ichiko Miles, Lubnatsi Papp, Rae Larkham, Mab MacMoragh, Tweetie Birdbrain, Mrs Brandi, Genivieve Caproni, Briarmelle Quintessa and Bacon Hellershanks

As described previously all artists who submit a genuine entry (not a block of plywood) and who do not receive one of the main prizes, will receive a share of what has been contributed to the donation jar for that month. Nothing is being kept for the land tier, 100% will go back to artists.

I know the amount is not a whole lot, but following this months total contributions, all participating artists who are not one of the main prize winners will receive $L220 for the October round. I know for a few it will be the first time they received Lindens based on an art creation by them, and for the vetrans, I am sure this can be out to you in furthering the cause art or helping others in need!

This was reset today, and the pool restarted with $L4,000

Also, something else new that was initiated a week ago is A People’s Choice Award, along with the judges categories. We hope to give this award every month. Voting panel will go up each month for the days between the closing of the month’s entries and the announcement of the winners. The panel will be just along the pathway between the main entry landmark and this platform holding the IMAGINE entries. You register your vote by touching the image of the work you like best – one vote per person. This award is a fun award with a $L500 prize.

I would like also to acknowledge the members of the judging panel. On the panel were:
1. Professor Ted Snell (RL) – Director, Cultural Precinct, The University of Western Australia
2. Frank Roberts (RL) – The University Architect, The University of Western Australi
3. John Barret-Lennard (RL) – Curatorial Director, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
4. Raphaella Nightfire (SL) – CEO of the Evane Model Agency, CEO of the SW&MB Fashion Productions, Seniorr Writer for Best of SL Magazine, Owner Sanctorum Gallery
5. Tranguloid Trefoil (SL) – Owner of WASP at the University of Western Australia
and yours truly

The panel for the Grand Prize will be an expanded one and will include:
1. Frolic Mills – Best of Second Life & CO CEO
2. Sasun Steinbeck – artist, scripter, and maintainer of the Art Galleries of SL list at http://sasun.info/ArtGalleriesofSL.aspx
3. Wil Dreadlow, ICON Lifestyle Magazine CEO & Publisher
4. Lowell Cremorne, Owner of The Metaverse Journal

On the panel for the Artist Book Prize, are:
1. Juko Tempel – Australian living in Paris. Librarian, photographer, linguist, educator and collector of new media art.
2. Victor Vezina – Journalist, artist, writes weekly column on digital toys and virtual worlds for Guardian newspaper, London. Gallery owner, experimental artist, art collector in SL.
3. Juanita Deharo – Gallery owner, Art educator, professional artist specialising in artist books, small sculptures, printmaking.
and yours truly

I apologize for the long speech. Now to announce the winers. The winers will be announced in 1 minute intervals. We do invite everyone to comment and congratulate the winners and for the winners to respond before the next announcement. Winners also please do ensure you get a photo of you and your artwork taken by quadrapop before you go. This will go into the UWA in Second Life Blog and a number of other journals and blogs. http://uwainsl.blogspot.com/

A lot of images of the artworks and buildings are also up on KOINUP (with thanks again to the expert camerawork of quadrapop) http://www.koinup.com/UWAinSL/works/

4 Honourable mention prizes have been awarded by the Judging panel for October for the IMAGINE challenge.

The Honourable Mention prize of $L500 for EMOTION is awarded to:
‘In Uterus/Pregnant First Record’ by SILENE CHRISTEN

The Honourable mention prize of $L500 for HARMONY is awarded to:
‘Living in Syn’ by MAYA PARIS

The Honourable Mention prize of $L500 for IMMERSION & APPLICATION, is awarded to:
‘Come Go With Me’ by ALIZARIN GOLDFLAKE

The Honourable Mention Prize of $L500 for HIDDEN WONDER, is awarded to:
Beauty/Beast by FEATHERS BOA

Next we move to the newly established People’s Choice Award which carries a prize of $L500. It was very very very hard for people selecting to only choose one single work. It was extremely close, and almost impossible to seperate, but in the end, by a nose…. the award goes to:
Drill by GINGER GRUT

Next we move to the 2nd overall prive for the IMAGINE Challenge. There were an incredible array of remarkable entries, and it was very difficult for the judges to seperate. After long consultation, the 2nd prize ($L1,250) was awarded to:
Holophrasis by SNUBNOSE GENOPEAK

Failing by a whisker to defend his win from the September round!

Next is the prize for Best Non-Scripted Entry ($L1,250). There were a number of very interesting pieces, but the one that caught the judges eye the most and to whom this prize is awarded is:
Concentric Shells by ICHIKO MILES

Now, we go to the 2nd Prize for the FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE (L$1,250). There were 11 submissions for this challenge for October, and a number of fascinating ideas. Again a close battle among the top 4 entries…… after much deliberation, 2nd Prize was awarded to:
Art Gallery by DUSTY CANNING

Can everyone please set land to midnight, and CAM to look at the front area and balloons from a distance.

Now for one of the overall winner prizes. Again,as mentioned, very little seperated them the art… as all of you can see…. so many deserving of honour, but in the end, the judges decided that winner for the October Round of the UWA 3D IMAGINE Challenge (L$5,000) is :
Willow by BRYN OH

Willow has a secret, that I hope all of you managed to find 🙂

The final prize for the day, is the winner of the FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE (L$5,000) for October. Now we had the fireworks for the winner of IMAGINE, but we are going to go party at the location of the winner after the announcement, as quadrapop Lane will reveal a special TP panel to take us there where there will be music and dance with our wonderful DJ, Briana Spires (and I ask all of you to please look after her for me). And so, the winner of the FLAGSHIP CHALENGE for October is:
Artstractions Gallery by NYX BREEN

With that the official parts of today have come to a conclusion. We already ahve 15 artworks submitted for November, please do start submitting your works for the November round, and letting your friends know about the competition.

quad can you please reveal the TP panel, winners please find quad, and have your photo taken with your artworks & buildings. Everyone please join us for the party 🙂

Swine Flu (H1N1) and business continuity: Forterra’s solution

h1n1-forterra1It’s fairly well recognised now that virtual environments provide a powerful collaboration solution for business -it’s just widespread adoption that’s yet to occur as real-world ROI cases are still fairly sparse. Forterra Systems are a virtual worlds provider we’ve covered a few times before, and their focus is very much business and government.

With the recent concern over the 2009 H1N1 Flu Virus (colloquially known as ‘Swine Flu’, there’s been quite a bit of focus on the impact of a true pandemic on the population as a whole. Businesses are obviously concerned about their ability to maintain operations in an environment where a significant proportion of their staff may be out of action and the rest are concerned about going the same way. Within that context, Forterrra have repackaged their OLIVE platform as RemoteOperations. Being the cynic I am, I initially assumed this was smart marketing and not a lot else, so I touched base with Forterra’s VP of Marketing, Chris Badger:

Lowell: Is this version of your software different in any way i.e. is this an evolution of your offering or a pitch of your current offering’s usefulness for continuity of operations?

Chris: RemoteOperations is a new use case or application for our software. There are no new features we are introducing with this announcement. However one of the details in the announcement is that Forterra is now offering both hosted and SaaS options for organizations. We are providing these options to help both small and medium sized businesses who don’t have any or much IT staff to manage this technology themselves. In addition our SaaS offering is packaged as a monthly user subscription so its a very affordable way for any organization to start using a business oriented virtual world in a pilot or test. The SaaS offering is going through a beta program now so we can refine the offering based on the customer feedback. However we can accept other interested parties into the beta program if they want to participate. We will do a formal announcement about the SaaS offering early next year.

Lowell: Do you have any entities on board as pilot sites for that purpose at this stage?

Chris: We discovered that several of our leading customers were in fact using OLIVE as a business continuity application as one of many use cases for OLIVE. For example one of these customers is a large Italian bank who is using OLIVE for meetings, events, employee skills training, business continuity, and emergency preparedness simulations/training, ie explosion in their data center. Within our own company we have had about 10% to 20% of our own employees come down with severe colds or the flu in the last 6 weeks. No one has swine flu yet! Of course we send them home but they can still participate in project planning and status meetings using OLIVE. The point we discovered is that the business continuity application is a very real, timely solution using OLIVE that has not received much visibility within the industry.

Lowell: For the option hosted by Forterra, what sort of continuity of operations / redundancy do you have in case of a severe outbreak? How will you ensure you can keep things running yourself if it were a true pandemic.

Chris: Both our hosted and SaaS offerings are fully redundant and have fail over capabilities. When we do our formal announcement of the SaaS offering we will mention that service level agreements are provided that assure high availability and uptime.

As you likely know the experts indicate a pandemic can force a company to operate with only 60% or 50% of their staff. Our operations group is large enough and every one is cross trained so we can support our customers even if 50% of our operations staff can’t work. There is rarely much hardware support work required, which our hosting provider does and they are very large. Our own operations team can do their craft at work or at home. As we have personally experienced we can have employees staying at home with the flu but they still get a few hours of work done using OLIVE. Ultimately the service level agreement with our customers assures them of uptime and availability independent of any issues we have to deal with.

—-

It’s far from certain that the H1N1 virus will evolve to a pandemic, but what’s more certain is the need for effective remote operations solutions given the increasingly dispersed workforce for larger businesses in particular. Business continuity plans that factor in newer solutions may be considered a riskier approach, but it could also help to ensure real continuity rather than holding things together for a few days. One of the specific challenges of a pandemic is the potential length of time a business may need to run on reduced staff: this is the test for products like the one Forterra are offering. If they provide a true collaboration solution for extended situations, then expect to see even conservative businesses taking a closer look.

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

1. CNN (UK) – Virtual businesses: Going to the office in Second Life. “As travel budgets are squeezed and slashed in the recession, companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways of bringing employees together for conferences and meetings remotely. Virtual community Second Life is seeking to tap into that market by creating a new tool that allows businesses to have virtual meetings on their own computer networks. The company’s Enterprise tool will let employees’ avatars — animated alter egos — meet in virtual worlds from the privacy of a company’s own network, rather than the public networks used in standard Second Life. That extra security could encourage more companies to take up the technology.”

2. Boston Globe (USA) – To build up real business selling virtual goods, firms change tactics. “ust after Labor Day last year, Pano Anthos flew out to San Francisco to unveil his new start-up, Hangout Industries Inc., at a major technology conclave, the TechCrunch50. It was an opportunity to show off the three-dimensional virtual environment his Boston company had been working on, intended to attract young Internet users and allow them to deck out online rooms with all sorts of branded merchandise – some of which they might also decide to buy in the real world. Then, they could invite friends over to socialize. Hangout, Anthos told the crowd, would combine some of the best elements of MySpace and Facebook, the two massive social networks, and The Sims, a popular video game. After his presentation, Anthos got feedback – much of it positive – from a panel of on-stage experts that included Marissa Mayer, a senior executive at Google, and Ron Conway, one of the investors who bankrolled the search company in its earliest days.”

3. Reuters (USA) – Can Virtual Worlds Provide Support to Military Amputees? “Virtual worlds can provide military amputees with an opportunity to enhance their overall quality of life, expedite their reintegration into society, and improve their physical and mental wellness. ADL Company Inc. (ADL) and Virtual Ability, Inc. (VAI) announced today the start of a project to establish best practices and protocols for the provision of on-line peer-to-peer support services to this community, with funding from the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel
Command (USAMRMC). “For individuals with disabilities, virtual worlds are a powerful way to connect with others, to access peer support, and to participate in activities that might not otherwise be possible,” said Alice Krueger, President of Virtual Ability, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. “This project will establish the best way to adopt this technology for the unique needs of the military amputee community.”

4. New York Times (USA) – Virtual Estates Lead to Real-World Headaches. “Two avatars, Leto Yoshiro and Enchant Jacques, met in the virtual world of Second Life in 2005. They married online the same year and built a house together on an island they had brought out of the waves that covered much of that world. In real life, Leto was a film producer from Michigan, Enchant an accountant from England. In 2008, after three years together for the couple, several real-life encounters and thousands of hours logged in, Leto died of liver failure while awaiting a transplant. About six months later, the island where they had lived, along with everything on it, was erased under the terms of service that Leto had signed with Linden Lab, the company that created the platform for Second Life. It had been bought in his name in Linden dollars — on Friday, $1 bought 259 Linden — and Enchant decided she could not pay the fees to maintain it. All that remains are a few objects of which she had copies.”

5. New Scientist (USA) – How your brain sees virtual you. “As players who stay up all night fighting imaginary warriors demonstrate, slipping into the skin of an avatar, and inhabiting a virtual world can be riveting stuff. But to what extent does your brain regard your virtual self as you? Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.”

6. VentureBeat (USA) – Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating. “Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a virtual economy at work of real people buying and selling goods. Instead of churning out new apps like many of its competitors, the company has focused its existing ones — including seven on Facebook like SuperPoke, Top Friends and FunSpace, with about 27 million users between them. Slide introduced a virtual currency into its SuperPoke! Pets application, where you can raise and care for a virtual pet. You can earn gold through the game or you can purchase 10 pieces of Slide Gold for $1.”

7. Massively (USA) – Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon. “Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab’s CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it’s been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

8. Kotaku (USA) – Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony. “GameSpot reports that a man has sued Sony, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment of America, contending the company violates the Americans with Disabilities Act for not making its virtual worlds more easily navigable by the visually impaired.”

9. Data Center Knowledge (USA) – Virtual Goods and the Cost of Infrastructure. “In an economy built atop virtual goods, how do you manage capacity and sort out whether the business model is able to pay for the infrastructure required to power it? That’s an important questionas as virtual item purchases become a key revenue stream for fast-growing social networking platforms like Facebook. Managed hosting specialist GNi, which offers an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hosting platform for online games, offers a window into the evolving infrastructure requirements of virtual economies. In the U.S., popular understanding of online gaming has been shaped by the popularity of World of Warcraft and other virtual worlds that generate through monthly subscription fees. That approach is increasingly yielding to a “free-to-play” business model.”

10. TechCrunch Europe (Germany) – 20 years on, explore the Berlin Wall in Twinity’s virtual Berlin. “With only days away from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, how best to mark the occasion? Rebuild it or at least a virtual two kilometer stretch. That’s the approach being taken by Metaversum, the Berlin-based company behind virtual world Twinity, who have constructed a replica section of the wall in-world. Visitors to Twinity’s virtual Berlin will be able to travel back to 1989 to explore a two km-long, true-to-scale section of the Berlin Wall, from the Reichstag, past the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, ending with a realistic replica of Checkpoint Charlie. Along with the wall itself, visitors can also access various multimedia content, including video and audio guides at seven key points describing the building of the wall, important dates in its history, witness accounts and, of course, the climatic events of 1989. The exhibition is a collaboration between Metaversum, the Berlin Senate and media partner Berlin.de.”

Weekend Whimsy

1. Halloween in Second Life® on Info Island (Community Virtual Library)

2. [Second Life- Burning Life 2009] Hahaha-SNSD

3. Aion Halloween – Koala Vlog

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

warcraft_deadspider 1. The announcement of Second Life Enterprise has certainly sparked some discussion. There’s some interesting debate here and some barely amusing coverage here – surely the ‘flying penises’ anecdote has been flogged to death a few dozen times by now?

Finally, here’s a great example of how the standalone offering is already being used (although it could just as easily have been done on the main Second Life grid).

2. World of Warcraft continues its work on extracting as much money out of players as possible. fatfoogoo argues it’s the next step toward microtransactions in the MMO. I’ve already had one guild member fork out US $10 for Lil’ K.T.

3. UK-based Second Life resident Tyche Shepherd does some amazing work crunching data over at her Grid Survey site. On the SL Universe forums a few weeks back, she posted some interesting information about the level of private ownership of mainlaind sims in Second Life. 70% is privately owned, the rest by Linden Lab.

4. Lost amongst the clamour around Second Life Enterprise, Linden Lab have released Q3 economy statistics. More than a billion hours have now been clocked up in-world by Second Life residents and Australia continues to be a significant player in terms of user-to-user transactions and hours spent. All the details here.

Playing with trains

A mother was working in the kitchen, listening to her five-year-old son playing with his new electric train set in the living room.

She heard the train stop and her son saying, ‘All of You b*****ds who want off, get off now, ‘cos we’re in a hurry! And all of you b*****ds who are getting on, get on now, ‘cos we’re going down the tracks’.

The horrified mother went in and told her son, ‘We don’t use that kind of language in this house. Now I want you to go to your room and stay there for TWO HOURS. When you come out, you may play with your train, but I want you to use nice language.’

Two hours later, the son came out of the bedroom and resumed playing with his train. Soon the train stopped and the mother heard her son say,

‘All passengers who are disembarking the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you.
We thank you for travelling with us today and hope your trip was a pleasant one.’

She hears the little boy continue,

‘For those of you just boarding, we ask you to stow all of your hand luggage under your seat. Remember, there is no smoking on the train. We hope you will have a pleasant and relaxing journey with us today.’

As the mother began to smile, the child added……….

‘For those of you who are pissed off about the TWO HOUR delay, please see the fat controller in the kitchen.

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