Caleb Booker

A Practical Use Of Virtual Worlds You Can Explore

Before I get into the details here I just want to apologize to those who follow my weekly news roundups and other blog posts - work at Clever Zebra is crazy busy and just getting busier. Combine this with a daughter just out of school for the summer and a world of family fun to be had (work is work, but that’s never an excuse to forget you’re a dad!) I just haven’t found much time to blog.

Today is no different but I just had to show you this (click image for full-size):

Many will remember the fly-through of a furnace that Mellanium created three years ago (see below). Now, with the addition of avatars using NORTEL’s web.alive, you can truly explore the structure of this most complicated machinery “hands-on”. You can even do things you couldn’t do in real life, like hop into the furnace to see how everything works.

For engineers, this is quite the boon. Assembling one of these things is no easy task, so being able to really work through it in 3D makes the job that much easier and clears up a lot of misunderstandings.

If you’re curious, visit http://furnace.projectchainsaw.com

June 29th, 2009 | Category: new media | Leave a comment

Business in Virtual Worlds - May 25 to June 7 2009

For the first time since last August, I missed a week on the news roundup. I didn’t even realize it until mid-week. Please accept my apologies!

Clever Zebra has been busier than ever (our work on OpenVCE being only one part) and until I’m 100% satisfied that everything is running better than anyone could possibly wish for and far ahead of schedule I’ll be just a blur in everyone’s peripheral vision.

Having said that, I did make a commitment to myself to keep this going lest I lose touch with what’s going on out there. Thus, a two-week edition!

Wait, did I really just use the word “lest” in a sentence?

Anyhow, I continue to operate under time constriction and now there’s two weeks of material to cover, so I probably missed something worth reading. If I did, please contact me or leave a comment!

Important links:

Archive page of past weeks of Business in Virtual Worlds News
Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Blip.fm, or in Second Life as Onder Skall
Suggest stories at info [at] calebbooker.com

Disclaimer: As with everything on my blog, the opinions expressed here are mine and do not reflect on Clever Zebra, the vBusiness Expo, my friends, my family, my blip channel, any of the other “Jack of All Strange” stuff that I do, etc etc etc… k here we go:

Events

Study: Webinars Rule Digital Events Landscape
Things are coming along here…

ThinkBalm Leads Visualization Tours
Proof-of-concept tours regarding the enterprise case for entering virtual spaces. Hey Erica, funny we should end up touching base this week. This looks good! (A more in-depth look appears on the Linden Lab blog.)

Want to Hold a Virtual Event of Your Own?
Clever Zebra offers event support and white-label services for anyone interested in a branded gathering in a virtual space. Everything from venue setup and hosting to VIP orientation to speaker coordination.

Training and Education

Survey: Travel, Training Budgets Fall
Which, of course, is only good news for companies like ours.

Teachers Enroll in Second Life Webcasts
Pretty interesting stuff: “Called A Virtual World for Professional Learning, the session is the final in a series of webcasts and learning resources made available to teachers across Canada, by the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) and the award-winning Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) program, from Toronto’s York University.”

Case Study: CIGNA’s vielife Makes People Healthier in Real Life
Educating the world on the evils of high fat diets.

Students Prefer Real Classroom to Virtual World
Maybe obvious but worth mentioning.

Government and Military

Philippines Department of Tourism Creates Virtual Island on Second Life
Let’s just make it official: if you are a Tourism Department, you are required to have a virtual world presence.

Worlds.com v. NCsoft Lawsuit On Shaky Ground?
… well that’s the end of them then.

‘Virtual Life’: EU’s three year, 3.3 million euro 3D virtual world project
That’s a pretty big project, and one that has some extremely unique notions of how a virtual world should work. It seems to be flying under most people’s radars from the look of things. (WARNING: some NSFW and possibly offensive images.) Discover more about the project on the official site: FP7 VirtualLife.

Army To Build Virtual Support Group for Amputees
Great application for the technology, reaching exactly the group that needs it most.

Gaming

GameGround Secures $4.1M in Funding
The scheme? High-score distribution to various web 2.0 profiles.

EA Confirms BattleForge Sales Forced Freemium Move
Bottom line: the MMO and games market is becoming very saturated, but microtransaction models can save the day.

Other gaming quick hits:

Nerds Only

Shaspa grid is a home to a virtual home
A very unique virtual world server that operates with the simplicity of a home appliance.

Newbs Only

Kossacks in Second Life
Kind of a “Second Life for Newbs” from the Daily Kos.

Second Life lecture - another lesson for antiquated law firms
A short and funny “ORLY?”

Sociological Oddities

Adult Content Changes in Summary
A final summary of the changes in Second Life’s handling of adult content that we’re soooooo interested in. Now, we could have just said: “if you don’t like sex, avoid entering brothels” and be done with it ages ago… but that would have involved people taking responsibility for themselves and nobody wants that…

Linden Lab versus the griefers
A weather report on griefer activity.

The Dares + Free Realms = New Guinness World Record
For whatever reason the Guinness people seem to think this is the first concert given simultaneously in the real world and the virtual one. Whaaaaaat??? (Clearly the Guinness people just needed some press here…)

College Plans Virtual Graduation for Online Students
Isn’t this cute?

Did I miss an important story? Got feedback? Leave a comment below, or email me at
info [at] calebbooker.com

June 7th, 2009 | Tags: business, conflict, content, customer service, economics, hype, new media, news, numbers, press, virtual worlds | Category: business, conflict, content, customer service, economics, hype, new media, news, numbers, press, virtual worlds | Leave a comment

Image Issues With Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are weird places. This can be a problem.

Only now are we leaving behind the notion that virtual worlds are purely for games, but in truth we still don’t have everyone convinced of that. For the executive that was forced into getting an email address a few years ago and still hates having it, this all looks like a lot of fantasy nonsense. You can’t blame them.

For instance, I recently got an invitation to check out the RolePlay Market (Slurl), which is a neat mall selling all manner of unusual decor and fashion, from gothic to sci fi to pirates. It’s a pretty wild place and a good example of virtual world phenomena: the virtual goods mall.

I love it but, at the same time, its the kind of place I’m not going to be bringing executives to. Here are a couple of random images to give you a sense of it:

Imagine spending weeks badgering your company’s decision makers to at least look into virtual worlds, and the first thing they see is a bunch of demons and cat people running around castles being chased by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Think you’ll get approval for your project?

In part this is why an office desk and workspace in your virtual world is important: it gives people something they can instantly relate to. It allows them to begin to imagine having small meetings in spaces like these, and from there you can take them further.

That first experience of the virtual world needs to be handled with care. When you bring your stakeholders in, make sure you plan exactly where they’ll be going, what they’ll be seeing, and how long its all going to take. Dress your avatar according to the company dress code. Plan a follow-up tour to places where similar companies are doing things like what you’re proposing.

It’s a question of focus. Think of virtual worlds like a city: would you bring visitors directly to the costume store? Eventually they may really need to find a costume store, but that’s not really the point.

A good rule of thumb is to watch how much work your stakeholders have put into customizing their avatars. If they’ve spent $50 USD on shopping for clothes for their avatars, they’ve gone native. You can risk sending them shopping for cat ears.

Until then, be ever-mindful that you have an uphill battle with virtual worlds. Giving them a new image in people’s minds won’t happen without some careful planning.

May 29th, 2009 | Tags: virtual worlds | Category: new media, virtual worlds | Comments (2)

Best Practices Combine at “project Z gallery”

While the notion of art galleries in virtual spaces isn’t anything new, I felt that there was something different about the project Z gallery in Second Life. In a real sense this gallery represents a large collection of best practices meeting in one place.

Rather than spell it all out, I’ll simply encourage you to go see the place for yourself and pay special attention to the following:

The types of art selected.
The way the art is hung in the space.
The amount of open space you have.
How the layout is arranged.
How textures and shape were used in the architecture.

Far better to go and see for yourself than have me pontificate. It’s quite the learning experience, and besides, the exhibit itself is quite good.

May 27th, 2009 | Tags: art | Category: art | Leave a comment