3pointD.com

Second Life resident Bolliver OddFellow, speaking on a panel at the Second Life Community Convention this morning, announced the merger 3pointD flagged a few days ago: It turns out Bolliver’s Infinite Vision Media is teaming up with SL resident Hiro Pendragon’s Out of Bounds Software, as well as teaming up with Lichtenstein Creative Media to form a joint venture called Infinity Squared. (more…)

Hot on the heels of Adidas Reebok comes a rumor that Toyota automobile line Scion is about to launch a project in the virtual world of Second Life. This one apparently comes courtesy of Reuben Steiger’s Millions of Us, according to one SL resident. I haven’t seen Reuben this morning to ask him about it, but he’s on the last panel before lunch at the Second Life Community Convention today so expect more news by noontime. The move would make sense for Scion, which aims at a younger set and already has a “build your own” feature on its Web site. As far as I know, this would be the first real-world auto model to come into SL. No word yet on who created the virtual version of the car, or which models will be involved, but chances are it was Francis Chung, currently SL’s hottest carmaker, whose Dominus Shadow fetched a pretty penny at auction to benefit the American Cancer Society recently.

Word at the Second Life Community Convention is that virtual world services company Rivers Run Red is about to bring yet another big-name brand into the virtual world of Second Life. This time it’s sneaker maker Adidas Reebok (the two companies merged a year ago), which will come to Second Life with plans to get closer to consumers by leveraging the community and feedback capabilities of the virtual world. (more…)

I’m not sure if this is an example of the real world going virtual, the virtual world going real, or something in between or some combination of the two. In any case, it looks like you can now go window shopping in a new way at the Ralph Lauren store in Manhattan — meaning you can browse and purchase Ralph Lauren goods via a touchscreen interface and credit card reader built into the window of the store. The window was reblogged by SharkRide from a FutureLab post, which says it was apparently developed in-house at Ralph Lauren. The future of shopping? Or just a good way to avoid long lines? Couple this with a bodyscanner that produces an avatar that can try on the clothes, and you’ve really got something.

If things are a bit slow around 3pointD on Wednesday, it’s because I’ll be on my way to San Francisco for the second annual Second Life Community Convention, which should prove to be a hoot, if last year’s event was any indication. This year’s will feature a number of announcements that could help spice things up, we hear (see below).

I’ll be chatting on a panel of journalists who cover virtual worlds, headed by New World Notes’s Wagner James Au, who’s probably been doing it longer than anyone. We’ll try to make a SecondCast out of the conference on Sunday, as well, despite the fact that Lordfly and I will be the only cast members in attendance, everyone else being kept away by work, money or gall-bladders. (Feel better, Torrid!) (more…)

Just a quick post to flag a replica of the Eiffel Tower in the virtual world of Second Life, which I came across while browsing SL resident Kryptonia Paperdoll’s Flickr stream. Makes for some nice screenshots, and possibly a good place for a romantic moment, of an evening, as the upper deck comes complete with champagne bottles and loving poses you can strike with your paramour while you gaze out at a sunset and a few streets with Paris-like builds scattered around. What I like about the build itself is its scale. You can see me hanging in space there just to the left of the tower. Like the real thing, the SL tower is proportioned to impress — though relative to SL, of course. It’s not the breathtaking icon that the is the real thing, nor is it even a scale model, but it seemed a nice quiet spot in the viritual world. The tower’s upper deck can be found at New Paris (127, 118, 71) [<– SL link], or click in the SLurlPane at the top of the right column here, while the link lasts.

It’s true: the aliens have invaded. They’re only in North Carolina, so no need to worry. Plus, they’ve come for a good cause: to teach us all about microeconomics, and to give us a little college credit in the process. The iCampus at the University of North Carolina at Greenberg has developed a video game (launching this fall, according to a press release) called Econ 201 that’s designed to teach students about microeconomics by “following an alien species that must learn how to survive after crash-landing on a futuristic, post- apocalyptic earth.” Now that’s my kind of learning. (more…)

Sounding for all the world like it’s a mature industry going through a shake-out, 3pointD hears there may be a merger in the works between two of the many virtual world services companies that have sprung up to create a virtual world presence for real world clients in 3D online environments like Second Life, There.com and others. We can’t say who it is, of course, but in this case it’s not as if Nokia were merging with Verizon, say. We still hear that everyone in the space has more work than they can handle, so it doesn’t look like an attempt to wrest economies of scale out of the deal, just a combination that should make both parties stronger, as they’d seem to complement each other well. Look for an announcement at the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco this coming weekend — if 3pointD’s sources are to be believed, that is.

The colorfully redesigned we make money not art links to an interesting experiment that was conducted recently at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in San Jose. SIMVeillance brings passers-by on the plaza in front of the San Jose Museum of Art, where the festival was held, into the 3D virtual environment of The Sims 2 video game. (more…)

Tony Walsh over at Clickable Culture flags a post on the new official blog of Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, that talks about the way LL reports the number of SL “residents,” i.e., people who are members of the service. This number has generated no small amount of contention in the past, and it turns out that much of the criticism has been well placed. “The number that is currently on our home page is a time-weighted average between “total number of signups ever” and “total number of logged in users over the last 60 days”,” writes LL employee Sally Linden. The problem has been that LL failed until now to indicate how the number was calculated anywhere on their Web site or within their world. Fortunately, the two numbers are being unwound. Starting sometime this week, LL plans to publish them separately on their Web site. As of last Friday, total signups ever stood at 493,563, and total log-ins over the last 60 days stood at 225,028. (I’m assuming this latter number is for unique log-ins, though Sally doesn’t make that clear.) (more…)

Graphic novelist Warren Ellis (author of, among many, many others, the very cool Fell, for those who haven’t seen it before, which is illustrated by the outstanding Ben Templesmith and pictured above) has finally knuckled under to temptation and set up shop in the virtual world of Second Life. “After six or seven months of just peering at it occasionally (and finding out where the good music is streamed into SL), I’ve decided to make a little side project out of moving around SL and looking for the seeds of the future, if any, in it,” he writes over at his blog. Drop in over at Rogal (174, 120, 124) [<–SL link] and convince him to write an SL-centric book. We can’t wait.

After 3pointD quotes Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes as saying he would soon enter the virtual world of Second Life under his own name, reader Ordinal Malaprop commented that “There’s already a resident called Nick Rhodes, though. (There’s already a whole sim called Nick Rhodes too.) I wonder how that’s going to play out?” We hear that Linden Lab is now contemplating new naming schemes for residents (not as a result of Nick’s presence, to be sure), but the issue raises a host of interesting questions. (more…)

Sparkle Dale models the TELUS Motorola i833 ‘Baby Phat’ Edition

During a recent flight around the Second Life mainland I had spied a strong candidate for an upcoming Virtual Suburbia review, an exquisite modern structure articulated in a delicate monochrome palette, embellished with soft lighting and shadows, and punctuated with purple and green colored glass that looked pleasantly fresh and yet oddly familiar to me. I soon found out why.

Although the land was off-limits to visitors, some alt-zooming found signage identifying the build with TELUS, Canada’s second largest telecommunications company and the name that happens to be printed on my monthly phone bill. There was obviously a larger story here than just a captivating work of virtual architecture. At first glance it seemed to represent the first major Canadian corporation and the first major Telco to appear in Second Life. (more…)

3pointD is still trying to find time to get Glitchy Links into the main thread here instead of just letting them sit on the sidebar, but in the meantime we’ve gone ahead and recruited our first proper contributor! Second Life resident Chip Poutine is the author of the Virtual Suburbia blog, where he covers “the product and practice of architecture in the online world of Second Life.” And covers it well, I might add. Chip’s insights into SL builds and builders have been fascinating me for some time now, and his tone seems well suited to the more analytical moments of 3pointD.com. (more…)

Virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red is busy these days. Having recently announced they’d be bringing hit pop band Duran Duran to the virtual world of Second Life, the news is now that they’re bringing the metaverse back home, so to speak, by working with publisher Penguin to create a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, to be distributed in Second Life, a world largely inspired by the book. Virtual copies of a portion of the book should be available starting next week. (more…)

Remember the blonde-haired male avatar you were dancing with at that goth club in Second Life a couple of weeks ago, the one with a recent rez date who seemed like he might still be getting his legs in SL? It just might have been Nick Rhodes, keyboardist and songwriter for the platinum-selling new wave band Duran Duran. I just got off the phone with Rhodes, talking to him about the futuristic utopia the band is now working on creating in Second Life, and I was pleasantly surprised to find he really does seem to “get it” where the virtual world is concerned, and is actually quite excited about the possibilities SL holds as a way to communicate and interact with fans.

To Rhodes, Second Life has as much potential to revolutionize the music and entertainment industry as MTV did when it first came on the scene. And that avatar at the goth club? Rhodes reports that he’s been exploring SL quite a bit lately: “I’ve not actually had a whole day to sit there and do it [but] I’ve been to some clubs and danced with a few goths, looked at what people have created so far. The detail is what really impressed more than anything. For example, we came from a long way out and flew into one beautiful garden, and we went so close in, macro close, that we went inside of a flower — and there was a bee in there, and it was collecting pollen. Now that’s my kind of place.” (more…)

I had a great time at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival, where I was on a panel on “the secret sex lives of computer games” and did a presentation about the Second Life Herald with Herald founder Peter Ludlow. (In fact, it was right after SXSW that I first posted some early thoughts about the 3pointD world on my old blog, and this one was launched two weeks later.) I very much want to make it back next year, preferably running a couple of panels of my own this time. The organizers are in the process of selecting panels and panelists, and what’s nice is that they’re letting the community have a say this year in a kind of Hot Panel or Not competition. You can dial over to the 2007 SXSW Interactive Panel Proposal Picker to vote for the 10 panel ideas you find most interesting. I’ve proposed two, which you can find if you go to the “gaming / virtual worlds” section of the pull-down menu there and just look down the list for “Mark Wallace.” They’re described after the jump, but here on the front page I’d just like to make my plea that you vote early and often — if you like the ideas, that is. Voting deadline is September 8. (more…)

Second Life’s teen grid

I was browsing Cristiano Midnight’s Second Life snapshot site SnapZilla last night while we were recording SecondCast and came across the picture above, which is a screen grab of SL’s in-world user interface showing the map of the known Grid — only in this case it’s the Teen Grid, where users age 12-17 must start out before graduating to the 18-and-over Main Grid of SL proper. (If you’re under 12, you’re out of luck.) I post it here simply as an interesting insight into life on the Teen Grid, which doesn’t produce a lot of news, for various reasons (including issues of privacy). In fact, we’ve interviewed a teen Grid resident before on SecondCast, which made for an interesting show. Despite the fact that the size and population of the Teen Grid is much smaller (exact figures aren’t available from Linden Lab), the teens get up to much the same things the adults do. Although Barry Joseph of Global Kids, one of the few adults with access to a portion of the Teen Grid, has great insights into how life in the sister worlds differs in this episode of SecondCast.

For comparison, a shot of the map of the Main Grid after the jump. (more…)

3pointD has been missing London lately. So it was with no small amount of joy that we discovered that London is one of the cities featured in the especially cool Goggles: The Google Maps Flight Sim, created by London-based Flash developer Mark Caswell-Daniels (and linked in Glitchy links the other day). Goggles lets you fly a cute little cartoon plane around a Flash-based world built from Google Maps data. It looks better than the screen grab above, which is a bit juddery because it’s grabbing as the picture’s moving, but above all it’s a fun way to tour a bunch of the world’s great cities (and two more far-flung locations as well). You can speed up and slow down, bank, climb and dive (with a cute little explosion when you crash) and even fire little bubble shots from your forward-mounted bubble-gun. A massively multiplayer version of this would be outstanding. But read on for some slightly deeper thoughts on mapping technologies. (more…)

Virtual snail race, or mere hallucination?

A week or two ago, I found myself describing the greater metaversapolitan area to a friend who had never heard of things like Second Life or There.com, virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online games, and who had only passing knowledge of apps like Google Earth and the concept of mirror worlds. I told her about the little business boomlet the sector seems to be experiencing these days, and the potential such places and applications hold for not only increasing our knowledge of the real world and the ways we connect there, but for making possible new modes of being and richer ways of interacting. A great place to get your fantasy on, and you can pull down six figures there, to boot, or so the marketing goes. Regardless, I said, it was exciting to be a part of it, to see this new thing unfold before my eyes, to be reporting on it from the front lines, so to speak, and to ride along and see just where it might go — even if it’s headed for a fiery crash, as some would argue, or a more mundane sputtering thud.

Her reaction was interesting: “It sounds like you’re living through the 1960s of technology,” quoth she. This strikes me as pretty spot on. (more…)

Just a reminder: 3pointD will be at the Eyebeam OpenLab in Manhattan tomorrow evening, August 10, from 6-9pm, to take part in the Metaverse Roadmap pre-release party, which Electric Sheep Jerry Paffendorf has titled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Metaverse but Were Too Afraid To Ask. “The night consists of presentations and conversations about the metaverse space (video games, virtual worlds, CAD, maps, and web apps) coming out of and inspired by the Metaverse Roadmap Project,” Jerry writes on his blog, where the final liine-up of presenters can be found. I’ll be in conversation with noted Second Life resident Prokofy Neva, dicussing the convergence or collision, depending on your point of view, of real life and virtual life in terms of business, culture and political issues in places like Second Life and There.com. What are the the relative merits and pitfalls of RL businesses, people and uses increasingly entering virtual worlds? Does a line in the virtual sand need to be drawn around metaversal
spaces? Should be segregated into “virtual” and “mirror” worlds, never to meet, or can a single metaversal space possibly contain the multitudes necessary for a peaceful co-existence of the two paradigms? We’ll take a flyer at some answers to these and other questions and let the audience get involved as well. Good fun, and tasty food for metaversal thought. See you there.

Second Cast Episode #29 is out, and it’s a real snoozer! Actually, I haven’t listened to it yet (I missed the taping yet again, unfortunately), but as Johnny Ming puts it in his show notes, “The show was so riveting that Cristiano fell asleep.” The crew also interviews SL resident Tony Tigereye, owner of the Tropics Casino, discusses the recent Suzanne Vega concert in SL, and more on texture IP rights. Your challenge: stay awake through the entire thing.

Public relations agency Text 100 — who came number 9 among tech consultancies in PR Week’s top 50 last year — has opened an office in the virtual world of Second Life, a project built out by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog). “Does this mean we could become the ‘preferred virtual supplier’ to anyone holding a launch or PR event in Second Life!?” muses Text 100’s Adrianne Kern. It would seem the opportune time to open a PR agency devoted to virtual campaigns. Text 100’s office is not exactly that, but it is more evidence of how much potential (too much?) people see in in-world promotions these days. (more…)

World of SL is a new project by SL resident Tao Takashi (who’s also a contributor to 3pointD’s Flickr group) that aggregates all the SL blogs Tao can find (and there are a lot of them). Slightly amusing is the fact that the big story on World of SL today is not about SL at all but about There.com, where it looks like MTV is opening a Virtual Laguna Beach to accompany its popular TV show of the same name. Apparently, the DVD of the show’s second season contains a teaser for the TV show’s virtual world, and SL resident Twiddler Thereian picked up on it and posted the news on his own blog. (The last name Thereian in SL often denotes someone who came to Linden Lab’s virtual world from over There.) (more…)

Well, I guess the news broke while I was on jury duty, but the story I mentioned earlier today as well as last Thursday is now official: 80s new wavers Duran Duran are headed to the virtual world of Second Life in what sounds like a big way. According to a press release, the band is having its own “fantasy, luxury island” built out in SL, where they will give live concerts and media appearances “taking place alongside the band’s media, public and live engagements in the real world. . . . The band has appointed London virtual world designers Rivers Run Red to create the five Duran Duran avatars and the band’s bespoke universe. Creative Director Justin Bovington said: ‘This heralds a new era in how branded content is being developed. For the first time a major international band is using a virtual world as a branded, immersive experience. We’re working directly with the band members to ensure fans get the ultimate Duran Duran experience’.” [UPDATE: Read 3pointD’s interview with the band’s Nick Rhodes for more.] (more…)

We’ll bring you more details later today [UPDATE: here they are] (I’m blogging this from the Brooklyn courts building, where I’m on jury duty, maddeningly), but 3pointD has just got word that the “80s supergroup” we told you would be setting foot in the virtual world is none other than Duran Duran. I don’t have access to all the details while I’m here sitting in judgment on my peers, so you’ll have to wait until this afternoon before I can bring you more on just what Nick and Simon have planned, but it’s so far going by the name The Virtual World Experience, designed and created by Rivers Run Red, in association with Sony/BMG Music Entertainment. One thing that’s interesting is that the project seems to have been driven as much by the band’s interest in the virtual world as by RRR’s interest in getting the band on its client roster. Stay tuned for updates.

3pointD has jury duty today (grrr…) but readers may want to dial over to the Second Life Herald in my absence to read the profile of SL resident Chance Takashi I posted there last night. Chance was the high bidder in an auction to benefit the American Cancer Society as part of the Second Life Relay for Life held recently in the virtual world. Chance’s bid of L$11,525 — just under US$40 — earns her a glowing profile in the Herald. Fortunately, it’s one that’s well deserved.

Read more at the Herald, and check into Chance’s SL Musings as well. It was actually a pleasure to meet Chance, and I got to have fun with the profile in good Herald fashion, while at the same time exploring some interesting aspects of identity in virtual worlds: While any number of people are one sex in the real world and another in the virtual, Chance, it seems, switches freely back and forth between male and female avatars, further clouding the issue. She’s caused so much consternation among those she regularly meets on the Grid that there’s a bet on about it, so Chance wouldn’t reveal her actual sex. It was interesting to see this gender-switching among (possible) gender-switching with Chance, and get to hear her thoughts on the issue. Plus she’s charming in general, and a great builder of steampunk gadgetry. And (for a gender-disconnected avatar) cute!

Justin Bovington of branding and virtual world services company Rivers Run Red sends news that his firm is presenting a Second Life screening of the Second Lives series of short documentary films produced for the UK’s Channel 4. The four three-minute films will be shown at noon Pacific time on Monday, August 7, in Rivers’ Avalon sim — which makes their showing in SL simultaneous with their airing in the UK. Plus which, the SL screening will feature a Q&A with the filmmakers immediately following. Should make for interesting viewing, and a nice use of the virtual world for media delivery and to add value to traditional media outlets. And according to Bovington, the filmmakers have spent a lot of time on the pieces, and definitely “get it” where SL is concerned.

Steve Rubel jumped the gun on this news so I’ll feel free to blog it too: Starwood Hotels is building out a version of their new Aloft hotel brand in the virtual world of Second Life as a way to attract future customers and presumably get some feedback about the brand’s features before it hits the physical world. (It is not meant to be a functional hotel in SL, I’m told.) The SL project is being constructed by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), who are also blogging the process along with Aloft execs. (more…)

Mall of the Bluffs and cloverleaf interchange near Omaha NE, re-created in Sim City 4

Stefan Geens at the always outstanding Ogle Earth blog links to an emergent gameplay phenomenon I hadn’t heard of before: people using urban simulation/god-game Sim City 4 to build re-creations of real cities in all their mundane beauty, based largely on information from Google Earth and similar sources. Their development is chronicled in forum postings known as City Journals in the lingo of the fanbase. The re-creation of the Omaha NE area Stefan links to is chronicled in this thread on fan forum site Simtropolis, which also provides a place for players to swap assets and mods, and trade advice on developing their virtual urban areas. (more…)

The virtual world of Second Life has seen a number of promotional initiatives in recent months designed to pump up the profile of various musical acts, films, fashion retailers and other performers and artists. But the performers who’ve visited the virtual world so far don’t hold a candle to an act that 3pointD hears is on its way to SL. There’s apparently a musical supergroup of the highest water [UPDATE: Duran Duran, no less!] that’s been running around the Grid in the guise of otherwise unremarkable avatars lately, and have been impressed enough by their experience that they’ve decided to launch in SL big time. No details of the project have yet emerged, but it sounds like a long-term commitment on the part of the group, who were platinum sellers at the height of their popularity in the 1980s — and who remain fairly popular today. Look for more news shortly.

SLBoutique is a shopping site for all things Second Life. Started by SL resident FlipperPA Peregrine in early 2005, the site has steadily grown since then, with residents listing items for sale, and SLB’s in-world operation delivering them automatically to purchasers (similar to other SL shopping sites like SLExchange and SecondServer). Yesterday, SLB saw a resident list the 100,000th item on the site, which marks some kind of retail milestone for both SL and SLB, and is probably a good indication that SLB is the largest such site going. (more…)