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2.5 million SL users by 2010? Maybe.

September 19, 2007 by 2 Comments

Veteran aussie SL developer Gary Hayes (Gary Hazlitt) has postulated that there may be as many as 2.5 million simultaneous SL users by mid-2010. Guessing at numbers that far into the future is always going to be crystal-ball gazing but instinctively 2.5 million doesn’t seem out of the bounds of possibility – particulary with improvements in scaleability that should occur in coming months and years.

Such numbers would equate to around a couple of hundred thousand aussies in SL – that’s quite a critical mass.

One note: the 80 000 concurrency experienced last weekend was probably a glitch.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Third-party SL viewers continue to grow

September 17, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Since the open-sourcing of the browser code, the innovation that’s occurred in that area has been substantial. A recent browser iteration I noticed was one that blocks eyesores.

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I’ve been a bit conservative and just used the stock standard LL browsers but I’m interested to hear about any third-party browsers you’ve used and why.

Filed Under: General News, Open Source, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

More than just the jitters? Australian business in Second Life

September 16, 2007 by 3 Comments

One of the most commonly reported aspects of SL is its relationship with RL business. A year ago, the reporting was predominantly rose-shaded and that continued up until recently when some US business reduced or ceased their SL presence. The mood change in the mainstream media was noticeable and to a large extent its continued. Even in the SL blogosphere there’s arguably a more sceptical tone adopted in relation to corporate presences – there were always sceptics but there’s now a wider acceptance of the pitfalls of doing business in SL. That said, corporations continue to set up shop – Peugeot are a recent example.

In an Australian context, Telstra and the ABC’s launches remain the largest to date with a few smaller presences either established or under way. Is it just our relatively small population that explains the state of play or a fundamental case of ‘wait and see’?

Filed Under: Business, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Weekend Whimsy

September 14, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Each Friday we provide a sampling of content generated by SL users and posted on services like YouTube:

1. Virtual Live Band – Harmony

2. Burning Longcat

3. Welcome to OneClimate Island

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Tube2SL to launch – more in-world cinema

September 11, 2007 by Leave a Comment

A new virtual cinema is about to launch. Tube2SL offers a website that interfaces with its SL cinemas:

“The Tube2SL website will enable its members to upload their very own film productions for showing on huge virtual screens in the Tube2SL Virtual Cinema Complex located in the virtual world of Second Life. Our aim is to provide an interactive and fun platform for amateur film makers to promote and receive feedback on their work, enter contests, meet new contacts, learn and share new skills. We for see the Tube2SL project as a precursor to the future of on-line public digital media broadcasting.”

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The launch is scheduled for September 30th, 1pm-6pm SLT (7am-11am on the 31st AEST), with the background being:

“The launch has been planned to coincide with the Tube2SL YouTube Short Film Producer 2007 awards ceremony that is to be held at the Tube2SL Virtual Cinema Complex in Second Life. We have been running the contest throughout this summer via the Tube2SL YouTube Channel, with each entry being shown daily in the Tube2SL Virtual Cinema Complex. There is no fee to enter the Tube2SL Virtual Cinema Complex, allowing both our members and everyday Second Life residents the ability to watch and vote for their favourite movies in a realistic 3D virtual cinema environment.

The official contest award ceremony will commence on Saturday the 30th of September at 1pm (Second Life Time), with Mr Murcus Parker-Rhodes announcing the contest winners before handing out trophies and prizes. Mr Marcus Parker-Rhodes is an accomplished British animator and former assistant to Terry Gilliam during the making of Monty Pythons Flying Circus.

Events are planned throughout the day including live performances by the Second Life and real life renowned Beatles tribute duo, Bill and Pam Havercamp. Entries to the contest have been many and varied, consisting of machinima, animation and real life productions. The contest prize fund totals 40,000 Linden Dollars (approximately $150 USD).”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

VastPark gives glimpse of ‘Worlds Collide’

September 8, 2007 by 3 Comments

VastPark, the virtual world creation platform we’ve covered previously, today released some screen shots from their upcoming platform upgrade “Worlds Collide’:

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Looks promising wouldn’t you say?

Filed Under: Alternatives, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Weekend Whimsy

September 7, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Each Friday we provide a sampling of content generated by SL users and posted on services like YouTube. This week we feature the work of one person who has taken an aussie SL bent to his work:

1. Second Life Song

2. Still Call Australia Home

3. HELP! I’m being griefed

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

SecondLifeGrid.net launches – Linden Lab chases business a little harder

September 5, 2007 by 2 Comments

Linden Lab have announced the launch of SecondLifeGrid.net, dedicated to businesses and other organisations wanting to find out about the opportunities Second Life may present. Notice I said opportunities and not threats. I spent five minutes looking around the site and couldn’t see any information alluding to the challenges and threats of doing business in SL, though to be fair there are lots of links to external resources which will contain some of the downside.

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The intro blurb pretty much sums up the pitch Linden Lab are putting to business:

“The Second Life Grid is a full-featured service platform of revolutionary technologies that support the globally renowned virtual world experience, Second Life. The Grid offers a comprehensive system of infrastructure, consumer features, tools, and services that allows any organization to provide its own unique immersive experience in the world’s largest interconnected virtual world.”

The formalisation of support programs for groups of non-English speaking new users is a welcome addition. A lot of other services already provided such as the ability for a company to offer their own registration and orientation portals, have been brought across to the new site.

In retrospect, this is an obvious thing for Linden Lab to have done and it’ll be interesting to see the impact it has on conversion rates for business – you’d think a more integrated approach for business would remove one of the barriers to jumping into the SL experience.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

CSIRO launch seminar series on ABC Island

September 3, 2007 by 1 Comment

The ABC Island Ampitheatre has started playing host to CSIRO scientists. Each week in September there’ll be a seminar. Tonight’s featured Dr Peter Clifton, a researcher in Obesity and Diabetes at CSIRO and co-author of the CSIRO Total Well Being Diet Book. He presented on “Anti-Aging; The Prospect of Human Life Extension”.

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More than 40 people attended so you can expect next week’s will be popular as well. To find out details of upcoming events, join the ‘ABC Friends’ group in-world.

Filed Under: Australian News, Education, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

SL music discussion list launches

September 2, 2007 by 2 Comments

Jesse Linden has announced the formation of an email discussion list devoted to music development in SL. Promotion of events is off limits but it will provide a useful forum for discussing ways to improve music options in-world. Linden Lab describe their aims in the welcome email received when joining:

“Second Life has amazing potential for musicians looking to reach a global audience. Music performances in Second Life are a growing phenomenon, creating exciting social events where artists can not only perform live but also interact directly with fans.

Resident musicians, venue owners, buillders, scripters, audiences, and promoters are all working together to make this community happen. Linden Lab recognizes all this innovative work, and we want to do all that we can to help it thrive and continue to grow. We’ve started assembling a team of Lindens who will work together and with Residents to ultimately provide better tools and policies for the music community of Second Life.

This mailing list is open to anyone who is interested in sharing their ideas with Lindens as well as each other on how to better support the Second Life music community. What are some best practices that are currently working well for the music community? What are the biggest challenges? What would you like to see Linden Lab provide to better support this community? These are the types of discussions we’d love to see!

One rule: please don’t use this mailing list to announce specific music events. Information about such events can already be found on the Second Life events calendar. We’d like to keep traffic on this mailing list focused on discussions about ideas for improving the music community.

As we at Linden Lab get a better focus on specific tools and policies we think could best help this community, we’ll share them on this mailing list. Your ideas, feedback, and insights will be invaluable to us as we work to determine what we should focus on. Lindens will be reading and participating in the discussion as much as possible.

Please introduce yourself to the list, let us know a bit about your interests and area of expertise, and thank you for helping us learn more about how to make music truly ROCK in Second Life.”

Subscribe to the list here.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: ,

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