3pointD.com

The Virtual Economy Research Network flags a report from a Swedish newspaper (in Swedish, of course) to the effect that Sweden will establish an official “embassy” in the virtual world of Second Life. “the facility will not deal with passports or visa applications like a normal embassy, but rather acts as a marketing outpost for Sweden designed to reach the digital generation. The idea is being developed at Swedish Institute instead of the Ministry of foreign affairs,” VERN reports. And why not? If it works for CBS, it could well work for Sweden.

Google announced yesterday that it would hold a 3D building competition for university students, in which students in the U.S. and Canada are asked to model their university campus in 3D using SketchUp. Entries are due by June 1, and the top 50 team members receive an all-expense-paid trip to the Googleplex to participate in a three-day workshop with Google’s modeling experts. This is pretty cool, as far as it goes — it just doesn’t go very far. It seems to me this is just about the most boring way possible to promote the use of SketchUp and Google Earth for cool 3D modeling stuff. What do you think? (more…)

An anonymous beta tester of AOL’s new service in the virtual world of Second Life, known as AOL Pointe, just forwarded me the image above, which appears to be the AOL Pointe build, perhaps still under construction. Kind of hard to tell from that angle just where everything’s at, but the build looks nice and colorful, and I dig the textures on the ground. Plus: Is that a skateboard rail I see? Cool. After the jump: a teleport map that indicates the build will be pretty elaborate. Centrifuge? (more…)

The Smokin’ Aces promotion that NBC Universal has been running in the virtual world of Second Life this week under its new VirtualNBC initiative sounds like it’s been a great success — or at least has made NBC pretty happy. Produced by the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), the promotion takes the form of an in-world game in which players compete to assassinate each other, and to bump off the big target, Buddy Israel. The game resembles an online game called The Ship, which works largely the same way. NBC has signed up more than 1,000 players since it went live January 17, 3pointD hears, and players have really gotten into the game, finding creative ways to kill each other and even hacking the scripted objects that make up the game. After all, there’s a L$1 million bounty at stake, to be awarded today. The movie opens tonight, and Smokin’ Aces director Joe Carnahan will do a live Q&A in Second Life at 10:00am SL time (1:00pm Eastern) in the Orientation Room at the Smokin’ Aces »Nomad Hotel«. (more…)