Mobil Avenue » SL News

Media, Memes and Maps

Mobil Avenue — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:16:37 +0000

Catching up on news over the last week three pieces caught my attention. The first was Draxtor Despres video report titled Media in SL : old vs new? An indigenous media sector was already well established prior to the arrival of Reuters, AvaStar, Sky News and iCNN over the last year. Draxtor speaks with representatives of each camp on how they view each other in this 5 minute clip.

The second piece was Sir Tim Berners-Lee commentary on the social graph meme doing the rounds. Paul Miller has an excellent post which follows the conversations which have taken place since and is recommended reading. Looking forward to seeing what semSL, a project to combine the virtual world of Second Life with semantic technologies, holds in store once it goes live.

The third was Anne Eisenberg’s NYT piece on EveryScape with details of its upcoming December launch. The mapping services provider will offer virtual street tours for ten urban areas including Aspen, Boston, Cambridge and New York. Unlike other providers within this space it will also offer interior views. Harvard Square was profiled with a preview of the browser based service here.

SL Vodcast Review

Mobil Avenue — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:51:59 +0000

One development I have followed with interest is the emerging number of vodcast (video on demand casts) covering SL. Four in particular have caught my attention.

The first which launched to much fanfare back in December was The Grid Review a co-production between Edelman and the Electric Sheep Company. Anchored by SL residents moo Money and Nylon Pinkney its goal is to deliver the best SL news machinima. While holding much early promise it has stuttered out of the gates and would appear to be low in terms of priorities for its principals.

The second is the Britney Mason Show which struggled to find its way after its late December launch but has since found its groove. Episode 9 with CC Chapman and episode 10 with Uncle Seth gave a flavor for where the show niche lies. Getting people to share their stories connecting their avatars, RL and SL is a rare talent and something Britney has in abundance.

Click To Play

The third is GBC News produced by Osprey Therian which I discovered by way of the Second Life Art News. While only 2 episodes have aired the format is promising with the show being co-hosted by SL residents such as the talented Ida Amida whose SL tourist weblog Baedeker I’ve enjoyed reading since discovering it last year. Interestingly they chose to go with text to speech recognition software for audio in their first show. While understandable why they would given the ease of production here’s hoping down the line they get a sponsor or three and run with actual hosts voices as they have done in the second show.

Last but not least is SLO TV (SLObserver TV). While only one show has been posted to-date early signs are promising. It is good to see an ever increasing number of non-English feeds turning up in our feed reader and Google news alerts daily.

Becoming a RL millionaire in SL

Mobil Avenue — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:32:08 +0000

Congratulations to Anshe Chung on becoming a RL millionaire in SL. Since featuring in Rob Hof’s BusinessWeek cover story on SL back in May, Anshe has gone on to grow her SL assets into a RL one million dollar portfolio. Converting her initial investment of $9.95 into $1 million dollars over the space of 30 months is to be applauded. Wishing Anshe and all her team at Anshe Chung Studios continued good health, happiness and wealth in the future.

RL Data Visualization in SL

Mobil Avenue — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:52:40 +0000

One of the areas which has held much promise since the dawn of the Internet has been the field of data visualization. Four SL related posts caught my eye on data visualization. The first by Aimee Weber giving a sneak preview of the soon to be launched NOAA 3D weather visualization. The second by Andrew Burton sharing his hack for running presentations in SL to which Mitzpatrick Fitzsimmons posted a better alternative by way of a comment. The third by Akela Talamasca announcing Virtual Reality Networks (VRN) launch of Second Life News. The fourth was by Tao Takashi summarizing lessons learned from streaming a RL conference into SL. Each served to remind me how virtual worlds are still in their infancy and that we have only just begun to scratch the surface in exploring and re-imagining their potential.

Linden Lab mission

Mobil Avenue — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:27:54 +0000

… our mission is that we are working to create an online world having the exceptional property that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way. More specifically, since there are so many possible definitions of ‘online world’, we are trying to create a close reproduction of the actual physical world we live in – one that will be easily comprehensible and useful to us because it will so closely resemble ours.

Following on from recent SL announcements Philip Linden has started some conversations on the future of SL. The LL founder and CEO post raises more questions than answers which is not always a bad thing. Heres hoping that this marks the beginning of some much needed two-way conversations on the evolution of SL. If you have not read the post I recommend doing so and the comments which accompany it.

UPDATE : Transcript from Nov. 9th Concierge Townhall – surprised no one asked why SL does not tweak the freemium model it currently operates – free basic membership have an ad / sponsor section within their display screen while premium membership are ad / sponsor free – a new LL revenue stream completely untapped todate.

NYT SL Travel Feature

Mobil Avenue — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:32:33 +0000

Having asked previously how long before a SL travel book is published Matt Gross looks like a good candidate to write it. He has featured SL as his weekend escape destination in the travel section of todays NYT. It is well put together and will spark regular readers curiosity. Good also to see Synthravels get a mention after their successful launch.

Yahoo Time Capsule

Mobil Avenue — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 10:07:24 +0000

I swung by the Yahoo Time Capsule project yesterday evening to have a look. It was the strangest feeling walking towards the capsule. Watching the user-summited digital text, audio, pictures, video and other media swirl around was hypnotic. As you can see from the snapshot there was a good crowd present. When Destroy Television turned up many of us snapped out of our trance. ESC did a great job in co-creating the experience which Jerry and Chris shared their thoughts on. I wonder what people will make of this event in 2020 when they open the capsule? Interesting times indeed.

SL support services

Mobil Avenue — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:12:33 +0000

[15:48] Robin Linden: We know that the current system isn’t scalable, and we also know that it isn’t possible any longer to offer the same support services to everyone. how we address that is still being discussed.
[15:48] Robin Linden: We have a communitiy roundtable meeting coming up next Thursday afternoon. I blogged about it recently.
[15:49] Robin Linden: There’s a discussion going on in the blog comments, and we’ll continue it at the meeting. I think, given the interest level, that I’ll schedule additional meetings to talk with people as we go.

Reading through the transcript from yesterdays Concierge Townhall event the above comment from Robin Linden registered. In advance of next Thursdays Community Roundtable Meeting I have started thinking about how Mobil Avenue might contribute towards creating a new SL support service. As Robin openly states the current system is not scalable. The post he refers to requesting ideas in advance of next weeks meeting on the SL weblog already has 192 comments. After reading through each of them I went back and read Rhiannon Chatnoir’s October 19th post titled the turning point. For those interested in joining the conversation next week I suggest you do likewise.

The Times They Are a-Changin’

Mobil Avenue — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:11:49 +0000

So, what does a million signups mean? It means that Second Life isn’t a game, or a platform, or a virtual world. It means that Second Life is one million flavours. Some of them are bitter; some of them are sweet, some are here to stay, and some are never coming back. Your vanilla or chocolate world is in there somewhere, in miniature. Like a snowstorm in a globe, if you guard it well, it will remain, but everything else around you is changing.

Embrace it.

When Tateru Nino took up residence 14 months ago the SL population numbered 42,000. Since then as informal leader of the thousand strong Mentor volunteer program Tateru has been on the frontlines helping new arrivals in the welcome area. She shares her thoughts on the influx of close to one million new residents over the interim in a these two posts.

NMK’s half day conference titled My So Called Second Life in Soho yesterday has generated quiet alot of chatter this morning. Holding the event within the spiritual home of the UK advertising industry shows that SL has jumped the shark. Alan Patrick and Roo Reynolds share their respective thoughts after the event.

Mike Butchers takeaway on the eventual merger of social software networks such as SL and MySpace may cause cardiac arrest among some longer term residents on first reading. What he is referring to is the fact that Linden Lab’s commitment to open source as outlined by Cory Ondrejka on lugradio – season 3 episode 7 – back in Jan 2006 continues apace. SL as a platform is getting ever closer which will enable a wealth of new services to be built upon it.

Coolz0r’s tour provides a visualisation of some of the RL organizations already in SL. I had a good chuckle at Gifs comment to the post. Many agencies are scrambling to setup a presence in SL after their clients have entered. The wave of new arrivals hanging out a shingle continues on a daily basis. Both old and new players such as advertising agency Centric announcing their arrival yesterday and New Marketing company Crayon launching today to name but two come in search of fame and fortune.

Tuning into the above and listening to a client in Taiwan recount how Monday’s Taipei Times piece on SL is all the buzz within business circles the immortal words of Bob seemed an entirely appropriate way to both open and close this post.

One million SL accounts

Mobil Avenue — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:47:08 +0000

Sometime between 10:10am and 11:10am SLT – when we were trying to setup our comms – the SL website counter registered its one millionth SL account. The screenshot on the right reads 1,005,088 when we noticed. It looks as if ~~Stuart Warf~~ Mystra Hyde is the winner of SLI’s first contest with the prediction of Oct 18th ~~11:00am SLT~~ 8:30am SLT. We were a day and a half late with our prediction – comment #100 of October 19th 20:00 SLT – not too bad considering it was made on Oct 10th – especially when you look at some of the other predictions at that time. Congrats ~~Stuart~~ Mystra and congrats SL!

UPDATE : Pathfinder Linden posted the precise time – 08:05am SLT – after the jump. This makes Mystra’s comment #21 on October 2nd the SLI winner.