business

Up until now video in Second Life has been run through land media settings, and the few Heads-Up-Display (HUD) video services that existed depended on the tool's creators accepting and streaming your content personally. That may be about to change, as one inventor has found a new way to handle video in the virtual world. The only barrier he's running into at this point comes from Linden Lab itself.

Unmitigated Gall gave a demo yesterday of a potentially revolutionary new video service in Second Life called the "SLiPOD". A simple antenna (the cone in the picture on the right) is pulled out of your inventory, no other setup required, and the service becomes available for all everyone on the server without affecting the media settings of the land. Each video is just an item in your inventory, and as long as you're on a server (or "sim") that has an antenna somewhere on it, you can attach the video to your Heads-Up Display and watch streaming video without affecting anyone around you.

Creation of new videos will be handled automatically in a YouTube-like web interface. (The website mySLiPOD.com is currently under construction, but Gall tells me: "It will be up It should be accepting uploads by tonight. That's my official statement. Come hell or high water.") Users can upload a video and have the video object delivered to themselves automatically in-world. That video can then be handed out or sold in-world just like any other commodity. While a relatively straightforward concept, this has broad implications. Trading media in the virtual world becomes a much more tangible thing at this point, and could spawn an entire industry on its own.

Those few who know about it are very excited about the technology. "For those wanting to get content to individuals, including musicians, product developers, and video distributors, this is great. I don't have to take up my media stream or have it impact the performance of my island," JenzZa Misfit told me today, "but for some who have a primary focus on wanting people to come to view the content they present with the land stream it may be a threat."

Overall it's a potentially game-changing idea, but one that Unmitigated Gall may not have Linden Lab's support for. When he was testing it in the Beta grid, he told Dan Linden about it. Dan Linden told him it wouldn't work and he shouldn't base business plans on bugs in the system. This was, of course, before he saw that it did indeed work, wasn't based on bugs, and operated within the Terms Of Service. At this point, according to Gall, the Linden proposed that Linden Lab simply publish Gall's trade secrets on how this is done so that the company could more directly support it.

That was enough for Gall to run the demo for us now, even before the website was finished construction. He's feeling threatened by the casual proposal of open-sourcing his intellectual property without his permission for "support reasons". The hope is that if he can get the service into wide enough use public support will help mitigate the risk as it has in the past for others.

The potential for Linden Lab to take SLiPOD's design and simply implement their own version has prescendent: the creation of the Lindex was based on Gaming Open Market's (GOM) design, which eventually had to fold as a result. Businesses with remarkable products in virtual worlds need to think ahead on how to best maintain their edge not just over other competing businesses, but over the virtual world itself.

After an impressive presentation at the Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 convention in San Jose, Christian Renaud, Cisco Technology Center's Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments, has made a daring proposal about mirror meetings.

"For the remainder of the year, don't fly. Neither will I. Instead, we will use the amazing array of tools at our disposal, from Telepresence to WebEx to avatar-mediated communications, to approximate the magic of physical proximity."

If he suddenly has to go back on his pledge, this Cisco enthusiast for Virtual Worlds vows to pay $1000 to support the work of the Nature Conservancy to help offset carbon emissions. Christian is one of a number of business leaders using virtual worlds who is confidently making the claim that they can reduce air travel and substitute real-life meetings with virtual communication, and add much other value besides.

Hamlet Au, famous blogger about Virtual Worlds who was formerly embedded in Second Life, says he is off to London for another Virtual Worlds meeting, and comments, "I never traveled the real world as much, until I started working in a virtual one." While it seems counterintuitive at one level, the furious conferencing and deal-making around virtuality and the future 3-D web need face-to-face meetings where anonymous avatars can meet each other and come to trust each other at a higher meat-world level. After they've had a chance to do so, *that* is when they may start to save on airfare.

While nearly everyone at the keynote speech at Virtual Worlds '07 raised their hand when asked if they had an avatar, many business people almost pride themselves on not getting too immersed, having characters that never change their clothes, or were customized and prepared for them by other people, and going AFK in a world and tabbing out of it to work in other applications. They might drop into a seminar, but aren't going to fly around a dance club feeling ridiculous. Or will they?

Actual measurement and analysis of the effectiveness of communication and the level of work productivity in virtual worlds have not really been attempted -- yet. One IBM analyst told me that he did not believe IBM should leave its ingrained telephone culture, where people spontaneously pick up the phone to talk to their colleagues even in the same building. Other IBM staffers swear by the sense of proximity they get from meeting their colleagues from around the world in a close, interactive space.

The obstacles of lag and the learning curve, as well as the disruptiveness of private IMs are at one end of the spectrum of considerations about business use of virtual worlds. At the other end are the amazingly accelerated and intuitive communications even with typing; the quick, interactive prototyping; the storage of data accessible by a group asynchronously;, and serendipity -- spontaneous connections and ideas coming together constantly. It will likely take some time and study to harness the best parts of virtual worlds and walk around the annoyances -- or fly!

Two back-to-back workshops today at the Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 Convention in San Jose illustrated the potential for business in two different kinds of worlds: those with closed economies, with no or minimal or potential user-made content, and those with open economies with extensive freedoms for user-made content. The panelists at "Virtual Goods: the Next Big Business Model" (Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online; Timo Soininen, CEO, Habbo; David Fleck, CEO, GoPets, Kyra E. Reppen, Senior VP and General Manager of NeoPets and Susan Wu, Charles River Ventures, moderator) gave us the main key for success: sell pets even for the pets, and make halos scarce (one reportedly sold for US $6,000 on E-bay). The closed economies can not only ensure uniformity of content and safety for this child and teen market; they make it possible for complete game-god control to preserve value (the E-bay sale took place without Gaia's knowledge and in violation of the TOS).

More realistically, the percentage of revenue for these companies selling virtual goods ranges from 65-85 percent; the question is whether they will open up enough as they scale to enable more user-created and developer studio designed content to enable the industry to grow. GoPets envisions the offering of a Worldbuilders Kit in 2008 to provide opportunities for entrepreneurs; the far-seeing CEO Eric Bethke of GoPets is drafting a kind of Bill of Rights for customers to give them rights to their intellectual property. Advertisers are able to work with these game companies to do product placement, and they seemed keenly aware of the sensitivities of their customers to over-advertising -- the "TIVO effect" that is driving so many people to ignore TV advertising, even as they begin to move away from television all together to the web. With tens of millions of young people joining these games, the audiences begin to look substantial, although possibly skittish about branding; yet to sustain the continued development and maintenance of them, advertisers' support is needed -- as even users concede, sometimes looking for branding as a kind of imprimatur of "cool"..

At the panel "Virtual Currency/Virtual Business = Big Business (Guntram Graef, Co-Founder, Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd., John Bates, Evangelist, Entropia Universe, John Zdanowski, CFO, Linden Lab, Peter Phillips, Technical Director, Millions of US, and Edward Castronova, Associate Professor, Indiana University, moderator), it was clear that the subscription numbers of these user-generated virtual worlds are far less, but the volume of transactions in the world not only for the world-makers but the various businesses operating inworld are in real dollars. Still, the economies *are* synthentic and strict controls exist. Restraints on the Linden currency, for example, include a determined policy of Linden Lab to keep printing five percent or so of the money supply to ensure the stabilization of the rate at about L$270 per US dollar. When the economy suffers a profound shock, like the sudden banning of casino gambling this summer, driven largely by credit card processors who put pressure on LL to shut down gambling in compliance with new legislation banning of Internet gambling in the US, 40 percent of the volume of user-to-user transactions were lost in a single day. Yet the exchange rate only dropped a point, and the Lindens simply stopped printing and selling Lindens, and within 3 weeks they absorbed the overhang and were able to make it up due to continuing growth.

Asked about inflation and depression of wages with this dictator-like money-printing policy, which wouldn't be fiscally sound in healthy real-life economies, John Zdanowski said that in the long run, a stable currency was better for everyone and made doing business more predictable; deflation was not good for anyone. The ability to adjust rates of emission when crises occured was something Guntram Graef of ACS said was particularly welcome. When an audience member asked Graef if his assets reported by Business Week at a million $US were all trapped inworld and not able to be expatriated to real life, Graef confidently pointed out that ACS' some 500 islands were a fraction of the more than 12,000 now open on the SL grid, and that in the very unlikely event that ACS were forced to sell their holdings, the Lindens could stabilize the land market by simply rolling out less sims on the auction for a few weeks and sop up the excess without incident.

I queried Zdanowski (Zee Linden) if he would have to conceive of closing the LindEx when Linden Lab open-sources the server code within the next year, as a possible surge of many third-party servers would lead some other companies to make their own currencies or merely charge costs in real-life currencies (a possibility contemplated on the wiki for the Open Grid Architecture). He said a plan to make some kind of "SSL Token" that would be "limited, valued, and secured" was being considered, and that history showed the countries tended to cooperate to make common currencies. He sees his job as mainly how to make the LindEx and the virtual economy sustained and able to survive in a complex regulatory environment, as the Linden dollar that enables microtransactions is a very important part of the Second Life experience. Zee conceded that probably the next wave of regulatory activity could be related to banks and stock exchanges in SL, although LL has no intention of becoming involved in regulation. He said he has hired an attorney familiar with the prosecuting of Internet crimes to in a sense play the role of "Eliot Spitzer" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer]. Quite a few Europeans peppered Zee with questions about the VAT tax; which he explained LL had absorbed for its customers but now could no longer justify, although an additional month's grace period for enforcement was being added, along with new account features to provide detailed invoices in PDF form required for VAT reporting.

Edward Castronova commented that in this Metaverse, "We already have to worry about government and virtual world relations," which he felt was a common theme running through the conference. "Those who went ahead are doing the mine-sweeping," he said. While some companies might want to make a safe bet on a safe pet, depending on their profile and their brand, others will be attracted to the high-stakes game of Second Life and other worlds with compelling user-to-user real-money-trade economy that helps integrate virtuality with reality for an increasing number of VW inhabitants.

Just how much are the companies represented at Virtual Worlds Fall 2007 willing to gamble now on virtual worlds? At the first VW 2007 conference in the spring, the volume of deals was estimated at $5 million -- later this was revised to $7.5 million with more contracts following as a result of connections made at the meeting. Now the figure estimated conservatively for VW Fall was $20 million, a mixture of investment directly in worlds themselves, in metaversal development agencies, and tools to make the worlds. Part of the reason is that in this "Age of the Avatar," as Reuben Steiger of MOU dubbed it, when asked from the podium by by Chris Sherman, Executive Director of Virtual Worlds Management/Show Initiative, LLC (the convention organizer), nearly every one of the some 800 people in the hall for the keynote speech said they had an avatar, even though roughly half were coming to seriously look at the virtual world industry for the first time.

On the Virtual Worlds Podcast this week we mentioned the rolling restart that updated a part of the Linden Scripting Language, the code that makes much of Second Life work. The update removed a feature, or fixed a bug, depending on your perspective. Chaos broke out accross the grid.

Lear Cale was building a ferris wheel whose occupants started spinning in their seats. Homer Horwitz had a series of multi-pose chairs that now had avatars embedded in the arm rests. Nack Barnes had an entire product line that couldn't be released, and a bar that nobody could sit in anymore. Charltina Christensen was planning a giant event across two sims (a wedding) when suddenly every single bit of furniture broke. A massive amount of content was ruined, and businesses were in jeopardy.

I contacted Soft Linden, the technician responsible for resolving the issue, to find out more. They declined to comment, and I was referred to the company JIRA; a central database for bug fix and new feature requests. The bug fix request to put things back the way they were is still there, and tells quite the story. Officially closed now, it garnered 93 votes and over 50 comments from desperate business owners pleading Linden Lab to roll back the clock. Dellybean North wrote: "Please, PLEASE restore this! You've just torpedoed a 20000L product my partner and I released a couple of weeks ago!"

While Soft Linden gave frequent updates on the progress of this fix in the comments, and was hailed by all those I interviewed for their speedy and attentive service on the issue, there was some confusion over why this was done in the first place. We know that the adjustment was to prevent sim crashes, but many felt that the particular method used was unnecessarily abrupt. This could have been done in a way that didn't disrupt content, and some who caught wind of the change ahead of time tried to warn the responsible Linden to no avail.

Instead, they debated whether the technique of placing an avatar in a specific position using this function was a "hack" or a "feature". Both Soft and Qarl Linden (who later joined the debate, although what part he played in the issue remains uncertain) assert that the use of this function in this way was a hack, while others felt that any use of a completely undocumented function could be thought of that way.

Of course, some questioned whether or not the Lindens should really be debating any of this at all. "The problem here is, that Qarl and Soft actually have the nerve to argue if this was a hack or not after there are dozens of content creators complaining that this breaks about 80% of all high quality furniture at the moment," stated Juliet Ceres in her comment.

Ultimately the issue can be blamed on a lack of communication on the impact of planned changes. The consequences were lost profit for many business owners, and an uphill battle to restore consumer confidence. Ilana Debevec lost three days of business while the problem was being worked on, and Rifkin Habsburg's new game that had just launched saw a sudden halt in sales that is only now beginning to recover. Events like these reinforce that nothing is certain when working in a beta environment like Second Life. As Ilana put it in later interview: "You can take every precaution and test you want when devloping a product, but you can't predict when you're gonna get SLcrewed."

This past week saw two brands of telephony providers announcing services to provide phonecalls from the virtual world of Second Life. The technology is, in fact, an interface to a call handling service that would connect two existing phones in the real world through a long-distance service provider. I contacted them both for details.

Big-Bit sent out a press release about a partnership with Wusic, an anonymous calling service that uses a web interface. "This service will enable users in virtual properties to make phone calls from within virtual worlds like Second Life," the press release states, although not many other details are available online as the beta hasn't yet begun. Big-Bit's Andrew Peters made himself available for interview and cleared up the details. His Facebook profile contained a Wusic logo that, when I clicked it, gave me a simple interface to type in my phone number. My phone rang, then when I picked up his phone rang in Singapore, and the long distance bill went to his Wusic account. Neither one of us ever saw each other's phone number.

The idea is to extend this concept into Second Life, where a similar interface would be used with our existing phone lines. Their rates are pretty reasonable (a few cents a minute in most cases), with the plan being to use advertising revenue to offset the costs as much as possible.

Vodafone took the approach of advertising directly to Second Life residents through The Second Life Herald. At first I thought they were providing a VOIP service (the website's "How does it work?" page is all about deciphering how the HUD works), but they just got back to me in email to clear everything up: "This is not a VOIP project - it's about reaching out to customers on Second Life and offering them a different experience."

After a little more research I discovered that this works similarly to the Big-Bit project: you dial out from Second Life, your home phone rings, you answer it, and then the other end is connected. Anyone you called can call you back, but because of the specific way they have this set up you can't make yourself available for a call from anyone you haven't already called yourself. (The exception being that users of Vodaphone's HUD can list themselves in a directory.) It's in beta right now and works free of charge until the end of November, at which point "all messages and voice calls initiated inside Second Life may be charged up to 300 L$ per minute/message." Also, all incoming calls will be paying long distance charges to Germany through their current providers.

Things have changed in the long-distance race over the last few years. Costs have come way down and the old game of price comparisons is reserved only for those looking at over fifty hours a week. Most of the marketing now it's about service and ease of use. The winner in virtual worlds will be the one who can provide the best interface for their service. Once these two companies are out of beta, we'll see very quickly who has the most practical approach.

Even when that is sorted out, is this a relevant way to reach an audience? Ultimately they're selling two things: anonymity and cheap long distance. From a practical perspective, however, is this enabling anyone to do more from Second Life than they could without logging in? Will people want to use in-world phone systems and begin to positively associate with the brand, or will this be yet another ignored gimmick?

Wise Metaverse (a virtual world company owned by Arbitrage Wise) has purchased SLReports for L$2.6 million, or about US$10,000. In addition to SL Reports, he also owns the banking company JT Financial, and FindALancer.com, an outsourcing website.

Arbitrage Wise's motivation for the acquisition is both to diversify and to incorporate the website into a larger virtual world advertizing scheme. Through JT Financial he's managed to place ATM machines around Second Life which all have the ability to carry automated advertizing. Now, with the addition of SLReports and large in-world groups, they'll be able to offer a more well-rounded package.

Arbitrage's accomplishments deserve further scrutiny. Be sure to check in with Metaversed for more about one of the virtual world's more impressive entrepreneurs.

The Virtual Venture Competition, run by McKinsey & Company, that we wrote about last month, is starting to see some action. The islands are finished, free jetskis are being handed out, and learning centers are now available for starting your virtual world business.

While the end prize seems a little lame ($20,00 in training), the main attraction is the funding qualified candidates receive. If you can impress the judges with your idea, they'll fund your business for you. Since they want to keep the competition fair, they are actually requiring that nobody inject personal capitol at all.

If you have a hot idea but never had the cash to fund it, this might be your big opportunity.

When objects that have been paid for fail to materialize that's bad. When a customer then complains, but the business is unable to refund them due to profiles also being down, that's worse. One thing leads to another, with the end result being a lot of very unhappy people blaming the business owner and trashing her reputation. That is at least the case with Myth Dibou who posted a typical exchange with an dissatisfied customer on the Second Citizen forums recenty.

Im not certain whether it would be possible, but it seems one possible solution to such issues, which are very common in a virtual world where updates happen frequently, and much of the testing of said updates is doen live, would be the ability to throw a switch and simply turn off sales of items in your store. Sure you'd lose sales, but I'd imagine it would be a lot less hassle than repeated conversations like the one linked above.

Tomorrow's highly anticipated Geek Meet where IBM, Intel and Sun discuss networking and the grid isn't the only event you'll want to catch this week. Mark your calendars for the next few days, it's shaping up to be a busy week!

June 14-17 - iCommons Summit

Once a year, about 300 people from over 50 countries come together to celebrate and strategise around a free Internet for all.

Leaders of the Creative Commons, free software, open education and access to knowledge communities talk about their vision for the future and discuss strategies for building a free global culture that is rich - both in terms of economic viability and geographic diversity.

Expect streaming video of the keynote addresses, recorded video streams of keynote and parallel session addresses, live dj / live music concerts and mixers before and after key addresses, information displays, art exhibits, free tee-shirts and information note cards and greeters who will answer questions and hand out welcome packs.

There will be presentations from Magnatune - the music company with the tagline, "We are not evil"; Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons; Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia; Yochai Benkler, the author of The Wealth of Networks and Cory Ondrejka the chief technology officer of Linden Lab and developer of Second Life.

You can go to this event in-world at the USC Annenberg Public Diplomacy Island (click here for SLURL).

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June 15 - 11AM - Discussion on "The Next Killer App"

The Int. Council of The Paley Center for Media, formerly The Museum of Television and Radio, held in association with the Media and Entertainment and IT/TC Governors of the World Economic Forum, will be hosted at Sun Microsystems, Google and Yahoo. The event will bring together approximately 100 senior executives from across the worlds leading media, entertainment, and technology companies to discuss convergence and the new platforms that are shaping the future of the industry.

While this is traditionally a closed door event, Sun will be hosting the Whats Next? session led by Greg Papadopoulos, CTO and EVP of R&D, which will also be shown Second Life Pavilion. Greg will be joined by industry experts, including Vinton Cerf of Google, Philip Rosedale of Linden Labs, Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo, and Daniel Scheinman of Cisco. The group will discuss the next killer application and explore the innovative culture of Silicon Valley and how new technologies are nurtured and developed into new business ecosystems.

This event is being held at the Sun Pavilion (167, 157).

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NCI Classes:
June 16 - 5PM - Starting a Business in Second Life

You've developed some Second Life content creation skills and are ready to test your metal in the metaverse marketplace. How do you begin?

This class will teach you the basics of starting and running a business in Second Life. What's already out there? How do you find your niche? How do you attract potential customers? How, exactly, do you sell stuff in Second Life anyway?

Learn all this and more as you get started on the path to Second Life Business success.

Time: 5:00 to 6:30 pm
Location: NCI Disturbing World Classroom (Disturbing World)

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June 17 - 7PM - Advanced Land Ownership
Learn how to buy and sell land with Shippou Oud, an experienced SL land dealer. This class covers pricing, terraforming, mainland versus islands, land auctions, "rare" land, and how to maximize the value of a plot of land for sale. Learn what to look for and what to avoid!

It is strongly suggested you attend NCI's Basic Land Ownership class (or equivalent) before taking this class.

Time: 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Duration: 1 hour
Location: NCI Disturbing World Classroom (Disturbing World)

A new site for data miners and virtual world enthusiasts has just launched. MMOGData.com is an ever-growing catalog of all types of virtual worlds that tracks revenue models, subscribers, genres, ads, and more. The specific criteria are sure to change over time as this has just launched.

This comes just as 57 Miles and I were discussing doing the very same thing at Metaversed, but it looks like Vortal (aka Phil White) beat us to the punch. Vortal comes to us from his online gaming services company PSFEI, whose website keeps locking up my browser so use a bit of caution there...

Something that's heard over and over again in Second Life when talking to companies and businesses about their virtual world operations is a desire for far, far better visitor statistics to be made available. For right now, Linden Lab, makers of the 3D Metaverse, don't provide much in the way of stats, but Mechanized Life, a company working with various web api's to create mashups and integration apps for Second Life, hope to fill that need in the near future.

I was fortunate enough to get a sneek preview of a very early beta for advanced reporting on Mech Life's RSS Sensor app. The new system was able to tell me details about who visited on what days of the week, visits by age, visits by payment status and the top visiting avatars to a region.

Though Alidar Moxie, who runs Mech Life says there is much work to do on the product as of yet, and pricing has yet to be finalized, it looks promising, and I can see a whole stack of companies subscribing to such service. More on this as it develops.

At 1pm SLT/PST today, the Second Life Business Bureau will launch Business Bureau Isle, its first purpose built Island housing SLBB approved member businesses. The idea behind the opening, says SLBB CEO OliveEue Sholokhov, is to provide Second Life residents with a place they can shop in the knowledge that the firm they're doing business with "upholding a standard of ethics".

The SLBB, which was founded by OliveEue just three months ago when the purchase of a pair of shoes went sour, but already has 129 members including the likes of Cisco systems, who's Christian Renaud actually has a seat on the board, is not without it's detractors. Discussions such as this one in the Second Life community forums demonstrate a certain amount of distrust of a group proclaiming to watch over business in the virtual world. After all, who will guard the guardians?

I asked OliveEue, whom I met in the company of her Second Life husband Tr0n Rich at their new offices in Business Bureau Isle, if she planned to stay in her role as CEO, or if there was some kind of democratic process in place to alternate leadership of the institution. There is not. Though she also tells me that there has been no opposition to her indefinite stewardship of the organization. She acknowledges that the present system will probably not last forever.

It's clear that OliveEue and Tr0n, who are both disabled and working in Second Life full time, are genuine, and earnest in their pursuit of better business standards and accountability in the virtual world. There is clearly a perceived need among virtual businesses to define what constitutes best practice, as well as protect themselves.

Is Metaversed a member? Yes. Am I entirely happy with it? No. Having said that, the SLBB is a young organization with much growing and defining to do in order to reach any kind of meaningful level of trust amongst the larger population in Second Life, and apart from issues of leadership, that I feel need to be addressed sooner rather than later, I'm more for than against. I can see that there are all kinds of potential for mismanagement, misrepresentation and abuse of power from such an organization, but that's the same in real life,and indeed with any group online or off that sets itself up as a watchdog for industry. What excites me, and compels me to work from within rather than throw rocks from without, is the honesty and candor I see in it's founders. The genuine desire to do something good, something right for both business and consumer, and the potential for us all to benefit from closer ties within the business community.

The opening of Business Bureau Isle is at 1pm SLT/PST today, and the whole day is full of activities. It will be today's Things To Do, so look out for meet up details being posted later in the day!

One of the big promises of virtual worlds is the ability to bring people from all over the real world together, with a genuine feeling of presence and advanced interaction and comunication. In practice, it's all just a little precarious, at least in the often unstable realm of Second Life. This hasn't stopped SL Conferencing, owned by GANC trumpeting its arrival in the virtual world and promising professional grade conferencing services to companies though.

The services, offered on the two SIM GANC conferencing setup in Second Life include streaming of audio conferencing into Second Life, orientation and training for employees, meeting consultants and bridge operators. How they'll handle SIM crashes and restarts is anyone's guess at this point.

Robert Bloomfield, professor of management at Cornell University's Johnson School imagines a 3D platform, similar to Second Life where business educators have access to virtual world building tools that can be used to create business oriented "serious games". Students from around the real world will be able to learn about finance and business by doing it for (almost) real, in a purpose built Metaverse. The project is called "Virtual Worlds for Study" and promises to "integrate carefully" aspects of World of Warcraft and Second Life.

Metaversed has been consulting on this project, so I've been fortunate enough to learn a lot about it and watch the idea grow almost from seed to where it stands now, a bigger seed! Robert has released the first paper for the "Worlds for Study" project and is seeking to enlist the aid of other educators and interested parties in developing the idea via the projects wiki site. He thinks of the open process in which he hopes to take the fledgling idea from paper to Metaverse as "Startup 2.0", borrowing from the web2.0 ethos of open communication and collaboration in order to get the idea funded and built.

Because collaboration is so essential to defining the goals of WFS, it simply isn’t possible to follow the traditional (and highly private) process for most business startups. The platform will quickly fail if it simply imposes its conceptions upon the instructors, researchers and textbook authors who will provide and use content. These parties must collaborate with game developers to determine how a platform would support their needs, how serious games could be made both fun and insightful, and so on. Populating the platform with content will require strong collaborations between game developers and experts in the particular content areas to be taught. Only through a very public process will it be possible to determine the goals of the venture, and the key players who will ultimately bring the venture to success.

So why not build it as a group of islands in Second Life? Well, that's not been thrown out just yet, but it does hinge on Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, making good on their promise to open source the server code. (The client code has been open source for some months now...). Second Life is not as obvious a choice as you may think though. There are several open source metaversal projects in development, such as Ogoglio by Transmutable, and all manner of commercial platforms that could be adapted to the project.

In light or recent financial and entrepreneurial projects in virtual worlds, it would seem a good fit for business schools to want to teach in them. Giving educators purpose built tools to develop "serious games" in virtual spaces would seem an obvious step, and Robert Bloomfield is confident that his project will be funded late this year or in the spring of 2008.

Although not officially launched yet, McKinsey, a large management consultancy, have opened a competition aimed at young virtual entrepreneurs in the 3D world of Second Life this week. The prize is in the form of training and career councelling, which I can't say rings my bell, but then I'm too old anyway, you have to be under 32yrs...

The news comes from German Second Life blogger Sebastian Kupers who was kind enough to email Metaversed earlier today. You can read about the build in German at Sebastians blog linked above.

Mark Wallace of 3pointD says "I actually think this sounds like a great project; it should attract young people who aren’t necessarily SL residents already, and it’s a nice vote of confidence that SL is a place with real lessons to be learned." and I'd have to agree in general, though I think only a truckload of cabbage would make a less sexy prize for young entrepreneurs...

Metaversed readers may remember our previous article about the job fair being held in Second Life. By all accounts it was a resounding success, giving recruiters a higher number of well-qualified prospects than expected with less hassle than a normal job fair.

What was fascinating was everybody's behavior. Applicants, most of whom were logging into Second Life for the first time, spent up to five hours perfecting their avatars before coming to the interview. The recruiters themselves dressed their avatars in business attire, which caused one applicant using a generic av to apologize for the way he was dressed.

I guess the way your avatar looks counts. I'm sure Second Life's fashionistas are pleased to see that "proven" in a public forum.

Second Life got its second major inworld financial exchange today with the opening of The Allenvest Exchange [SLUrl]. The idea of trading in stocks of native Second Life companies will most likely seem very strange to many, but for Allenvest CEO Investor Allen it's serious business and one that he's confident will outgrow, and out perform rival financial houses in the virtual world.

Allen, who in real life is a self employed asset manager, tells me that at the website, AllenvestFinancial.com, they will shortly be making tools for client management, as well as investor to investor communications available to all, and that the two big differentiating factors between the fledgling financial market and Second Life rival, World Stock Exchange are investor services in the shape of assistance when questions are asked by individuals, and reliability of the software behind both the inworld tools and those integrated with the website.

Is it a risk free investment? No. Though Allen assures me that companies are thoroughly vetted before being allowd to make ain Initial Public Offering on the exchange, it is still the responsibility of investors to research individual firms before parting with even small amounts of Linden dollars. For Second Life entrepreneurs, it could even provide the financial break needed to take a great idea to production.

Not only is it available, it's free. SLOz points us to this report entitled Business in Second Life: An introduction [pdf] by Smart Internet, a collaboration between Australian industry, government and educational institutions to research disruptive technologies with global commercial opportunity,. I've only read the first 10 pages or so, but it's already pretty interesting reading. If you're looking to get a grip on the opportunities presented by Second Life it may well be worth a read.

The report was written by Mandy Salomon, Senior Researcher in the User Environments program of the Smart Internet Cooperative Research Centre.

Linden Lab, makers of 3D virtual world Second Life, are to aquire Windward Mark Interactive, a 3D visuals company specializing in natural light effects. Windward's main products include Windlight, a lighting technology that simulates more natural light patterns in 3D environments, and Nimble, which simulates photo realistic 3D clouds.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed according to the Boston Globe, but Windmark president Asi Lang says that the team is already working on Second Life, and that residents should see a "major improvement in visual quality" within several weeks.

Windmark will join Linden Lab's Cambridge facility by the end of the year.

IBM, who already have literally thousands of employees engaged in the virtual world of Second Life, today opened a fully staffed sales center in a drive toward genuine virtual business in the Metaverse. I must admit to finding the layout kind of confusing, and though I've no doubt some were present in the crowded reception area of the sales center, I couldn't immediately get my virtual hands on an IBM employee. Ian Huges, of IBM's Innovate Quick division did post this neat video though;

I guess the structures themselves confused me a bit at first, as I ended up flying in through the roof and landing amidst a whole heap of Avatars, all with IBM tags above their names (though most of them didn't work for the company). I guess opening day can be a litte hectic, so we'll forgive the fact that nobody turned up when i called for assistance by touching one of the sales desks.

The project is quite extensive, with six individually focused areas to visit:

1. Reception
2. Sales
3. Tech support
4. Innovation center
5. Client briefing area and lastly,
6. The conference center

One key difference from many real life businesses entering the virtual world is that the IBM center is allegedly fully staffed. If someone wants to talk about hardware, software or services, a sales rep should be on hand ot help them. Many native Second Life businesses are fully staffed, but as far as I'm aware, IBM is the first big real life player to staff up a sales center 24/7.

Im going to turn up in virtual false beard and spectacles in the week and start causing a ruckus over a failed hard drive...