Quick summary:

A guy buys a Playstation 3. He then plays with the internal workings of the machine in order to get it to do even more stuff than it could before. Sony sues him for it… an action that, frankly, is hard to morally justify even if you can show paperwork that makes it legal to do so. Anonymous attacks Sony websites and starts harassing Sony executives.

In case you missed it: Sony is suing him for modifying a product that he owns. He didn’t “license” or “lease” or “rent” that product. He owns it. Apparently, that doesn’t mean what it used to, because even though he owns that product he isn’t allowed to do with it as he pleases. That’s like a food manufacturer suing you for distributing a unique recipe, or an auto part manufacturer suing you for using car parts in a different brand car.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Ars Technica recently covered the story with a focus on how people have been able to get information on these executives. To me, this focus is completely uninteresting. Detectives have been able to get personal information on other people since before electricity was discovered, and always will.

Others have focused on the specific actions of Anonymous, and whether “they” went “too far”. That’s a fun philosophical debate if you really want to kill a few hours, but doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens next.

That’s the key: what happens next?

This latest round of attacks by “Anonymous”, the general banner for “whatever random people got ticked off enough to target Sony executives for being a bunch of jackasses”, is becoming par for the course. You can’t stop it. Anonymous isn’t an organization. It’s just the phenomena of a bunch of people acting out. They don’t know each other, they don’t “keep in touch”, and there is no leader. YOU are Anonymous.

So, if a corporation tries to hurt random people, the members of that corporation can expect backlash. This is the world we live in.

While I’m not crazy about “mob mentality” or “mob rule”, I understand why it’s starting to happen. After Enron demonstrated to the world that corporate executives are above the law even when they seriously harm people, the notion of random people being sued for doing things that hurt people only in the vaguest and most esoteric sense is more than the average Netizen is ready to handle. People who do real harm are immune to punishment, and people who do largely theorhetical harm are lynched by the system.

Since there is no government mechanism for maintaining the balance, mob rule rises.

I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I do know that we’ll see more and more of this. It will go a bit further every time. Executives responsible for random smack-downs on the public can expect more and more backlash.

For those of us that have nothing to do with this conflict on either side, expect to be caught in the crossfire. You will be able to do less on the Internet tomorrow than you can today in order to keep executives safe from being held accountable by Anonymous. Corporate services you wanted to use will go down occasionally due to Anonymous attacks. The trend will continue.

The solution? Maybe more transparency in the corporate structure, more accountability… or maybe a completely new model under which to build a business. Ah, but this is my stop folks… I’m not really the “ingenious solutions” guy, just the “understanding what the hell is going on” guy.

Laura P Thomas, Social Media Strategist, Dell

Events are a great way to create word of mouth marketing, but taking them to a worldwide audience is expensive. Using immersive virtual world technologies you can expand your local event to a global audience without breaking the budget.

Today at 2pm Pacific Virtual Worlds Keynote will be host to Laura Pevehouse Thomas, strategist for social media at Dell. Profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine, she’s worked in and around the Dell family for nine years, primarily in the areas of corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, branding and online communication.

Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.

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Ernie C Young, Head Coach, SalesTeam East LLC

Want to know how to leverage Second Life to get new clients? Today’s guest is sales guru Ernie Young presenting: “Moving From Contact to Client in Second Life – Finding a Sales Process to Gain and Keep Customers for Life”. If you’ve ever had an interest in getting new clients, do not miss this rare opportunity to hear a true expert speak on the topic!

Today at 2pm Pacific Virtual Worlds Keynote will be host to the Head Coach of SalesTeam East, Ernie Young. He started his selling career by opening his own business at 12 years old and operating it door to door throughout his teenage years before leaving for college. Over the past 35 years, Mr. Young accumulated vast experience and accomplishment in professional sales, sales training, and management. He has consistently led his sales teams to record-setting company performances in both large and small business organizations, and has been repeatedly awarded recognition for his personal career sales performance and for the sales levels achieved by the sales professionals under his management.

His teaching of and adherence to the “3 Factors of Sales Success” formula typifies his ability to clearly impart an understanding of selling as both an art and a science. Mr. Young is certified by Integrity Systems, Inc. as a sales coach, trainer, and facilitator. SalesTeam East LLC is licensed by SalesTeam USA to deliver sales training programs utilizing its tool kits, including SalesMap©.

Before his long career in professional sales, Mr. Young served 10 years on active duty as a U.S. Naval Officer after which he continued to serve for 10 more years on a part time basis in the U.S. Naval Reserve. During his military career, he developed seasoned management skills, managing and training organizations of hundreds of military personnel. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Management from the U.S. Naval Academy and the rank of Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve.

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To join us in Second Life:

1. Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
2. Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
3. Click here to be teleported to our studio before 2pm Pacific.

1. Interface Cleanup: The old interface was a disaster. There’s no other way to say it. For new users it was like being threatened with the edge of a broken bottle, daring them to try to figure that nonsense out. This is much better. Well, not perfect, but better than a broken bottle in the face.
2. Current Location Easily Accessible: Just like in your web browser, your location in Second Life is now at the top of your screen. Copy/paste it into a document, send it to a friend, or paste locations up there that you want to visit. Now if they could find a way to make them shorter and more memorable…
3. Places To Explore: The worst part about entering Second Life for the first time, apart from the interface, has been the complete lack of direction for finding something interesting to do. While some will inevitably whine about the “preferential treatment” these destinations are getting, this was a critical change.
4. Improved Avatar Customization: Its still way to complex for new users, but they’ve made it much easier than it was before.
5. You can buy a house!: In the real world you can just buy a house and furnish it, and now you can in Second Life too. Thank goodness. Before you had to buy some land, make sure it was big enough for what you needed (which, as a new user, you have no real clue about), then find somewhere that sells houses, and figure out the build tools to deploy it correctly. Forget all that now: just go buy a house. *whew*
6. Webpages On Walls: A game-changing feature. Watch YouTube or run other Flash-based applications on your wall, no problem. Even bigger: users can just click the surface to automatically zoom in on it properly. Genius!

I’m usually loathe to give the Linden Lab crew too much credit for development of new features as it all seemingly comes at a glacier’s pace, but this was a huge leap forward for them. New users might actually get through an entire orientation without smashing their keyboards in frustration! Well done guys.

Now don’t stop here; keep it up!

Video Resources

A general overview of the Second Life 2.0 interface.

Web content on walls parts 1 and 2
(called “Shared Media” because they just can’t help but make up new terminology for you to learn… aren’t you grateful… )

You can buy a house. (“Linden Homes”)

The full set of in-depth tutorials covering every little thing in the new interface.

Virtual Worlds Keynote
Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces

To embed this video on your own blog, right-click on the video for the embed code or click here for social networking options.

What I really enjoyed about this presentation was the specifics on how this experience impacted sales. In addition to information on how salespeople became better prepared before the expo, we saw some actual conversion numbers on people visiting the virtual exhibits and following up with the company in question.

Please join us next week (Monday, March 1 at 2pm Pacific) when our guest will be Anders Grondstedt, President of The Gronstedt Group, as he tells us how Schneider Electric and IBM have found a strategic planning solution in Second Life.

Clear a half-hour of your schedule at 4pm SLT and join us in Second Life (SLurl) as our guest Jonena Relth, President of TBD Consulting, gives a 15 minute presentation entitled: “Why We Sold Our Real Building and Went Totally Virtual”. We’ll be recording and broadcasting live through Treet.tv.

If tough economic times have driven your business to look for new cost-cutting measures, or if you’re at risk of losing highly skilled employees due to a long commute, do not miss this! Extending well beyond virtual environments, Jonena will cover how her company has combined a variety of Web 2.0 technologies and old-fashioned spreadsheets to get the job done right.

After the presentation we’ll be holding a Q&A that will not be recorded, so be sure to arrive on time to secure your seat!

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To join us in Second Life, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Go to SecondLife.com, create an account, and install the software.
2. Log in through the Second Life software using your user name.
3. Click here to be teleported to our studio before 4pm Pacific.

1. Whiteboard - Being able to sit in a room with a bunch of other people and talk online is great, but being able to pop notes up about what people are saying and draw quick sketches (without having to learn to build please…) would be a game-changer for many people.
2. PA System – Just being able to designate certain people as temporarily “holding the mic” would make large meetings much more feasible. Having no session controls over voice has caused a number of calamities and driven more than one client to other applications.
3. Separate the 2nd Floor – This means establishing separate audio channels on top of one another; say, one for the 1st floor and one for the 2nd. People want a lobby downstairs and an office upstairs, and they want their conversations to be private in both places. The lack of functionality here means some strangely stretched out designs.
4. Real Names – Face it: the naming convention was a cute idea in the beginning, but it just seems idiotic to corporate users. Let us use our own names over our heads.
5. File Transfer Between Avatars – People have files. They want to share those files between each other. PDFs, PPTs, and VCFs are the most commonly requested that I hear about. Let us pass files to each other without breaking immersion and fiddling with email. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, just a simple drag/drop http transfer call would do. Integrate a little of the existing browser code with a spot on the option wheel for “Send File” and you’re good.

I just had to spend three minutes removing “this is huge”, “obviously”, “why isn’t this already done?”, and “please!” from the entries… cut the blog entry’s length in half.

And no, I’m not going to the Jira and there’s no possible way I’m asking my clients to go in there. The Jira is a nice bug tracker, but that is not how an enterprise-level piece of software gets designed.

Ok… I’m stepping off the soapbox…

Last week I put some notes down about what I wanted in a virtual world largely as a thought exercise to help me collect ideas as I worked on a project for Clever Zebra. Interesting pingback links and comments came in, but one stood out (thanks Claus):

I agree with everything except the need for 1,000 or 10,000 concurrent users, in one shared space. The benefit of a virtual environment is the interaction with other people. You can interact with 30,40 people, even 100 will stretch it. 1,000 or 10,000 is a broadcasting event. Unless you break it down again into 30-40 smaller groups.

This is a common objection to the concept of allowing more than 50 avatars to share a space. Many bright people from both academic and technology circles argue that the need for many concurrent users to share a single 3D space is unnecessary and irrelevant.

At the moment virtual worlds just aren’t built that way: get too many people in the same room and the whole thing chokes. Many of the world’s brightest people consider this issue to be very low-priority.

They’re dead wrong.

I have all sorts of arguments, but let’s put my nerdyness on hold for a second and ask a simple question: which of these two clubs would you rather hang out in?

vs.

Go with your gut here, because that’s what using a 3D space is all about: your gut reaction.

If the issue is settled for you then get to work filing bug reports with your favorite 3D platform that they aren’t supporting nearly enough people in a given place, and that until they do everything else they accomplish is irrelevant. If you’re an Auditory-Digital thinker and the issue is still far too vague for you, read on.

The facetious, in-your-face argument:

If the whole point of using a 3D virtual space is its similarity to being in a physical space, ask yourself this question: in the real world, are conference centers important to business? Are large rooms important? What about auditoriums and theaters? How about trade show floors?

A lack of concurrency forces us to slice all of these things up into small classroom-sized rooms. This is unacceptable. Period.

Take every one of your arguments in favor of small “multiple-venue solutions” or the fact that you can’t chat with more than a few people at a time and apply them to eliminating REAL-WORLD large venues. Do they still hold water? No, of course not. They don’t apply in the virtual world either.

The perception of value argument:

Which of these two speakers at the UN is saying things the world considers important to think about?

vs.

Note: you could tell without even knowing who was on stage, couldn’t you? Shared presence matters on an instinctive level.

Seeing lots of avatars manned by real people adds a huge perception of value, but it isn’t just a visual phenomenon. Audio comes into play here as well.

One of the most important features of a recent trade show we ran (using four separate servers at once to support a mere 200 people at a time) was the chatter in between the booths. That background hum was something that you can’t fake with a looping crowd sound-effect. The real thing makes a difference.

That sense that something big is happening right here, right now, is huge. It beats the hell out of even a live video broadcast.

The rebooting server argument:

Which server is less likely to crash: one that can support 1000 users, or one that can only handle 50 at a time? I mean, all things being equal, a high-capacity machine can handle one or two extra avatars joining a meeting or sneaking into a lecture much more safely, can’t it?

The “on paper” vs. “in practice” argument:

Bottom line: nobody should be rationalizing what should be important. They should just look around and figure out what seems to be important, based on observation of how things are done in the real world.

This is a chronic problem in both academia and technology circles. People discover a new way to sound clever and stop paying attention to what people are actually inclined to do. This results in user-punishing interfaces, the necessity for hour-long orientations, and the Zune. Check yourself guys.

The “stop saying that’s impossible” argument:

Ok, last one, and then I’d better get back to work… won’t really be proof-reading this either… again…

One thing a lot of people assume is that high concurrency is impossible. The fact is, it isn’t even hard.

Take Activeworlds: you can cram a ridiculous number of people into a single room. Chat his handled gracefully, and on the client side if your computer can’t handle displaying that many avatars at once it just displays them as 2D cutouts in the distance.

A number of other platforms simply reduce the detail level on avatars that are far away. As a result the client doesn’t nag at the server for a ton of data it won’t use, and everything scales. Again, a client-side fix, easy to roll out.

Even voice can scale! Vivox is just one of many companies finding new ways of mixing audio based on proximity, allowing you to see someone in a conversation across a crowded room and walk over to them with your business partner without all sorts of technical hacks and craziness.

Ok, I’m out of time…

which is why this is so long. Usually I ramble, grab a bunch of pictures from Google Image Search to break it up, and then start cutting the text way down… but you’ll have to suffer the length this time, sorry. So, how do I wrap this up? Concluding thoughts?

Concurrency is a make-or-break for business. For games, who cares. That argument I’ll buy for a myriad of reasons. But when it comes to making these things into practical, meaningful tools, worrying about an extra team of 20 observers from the branch office not being able to fit into the venue is just stupid.

We’ve just barely been able to scrape this technology together into something that isn’t a toy in the last few years, but the true explosion of virtual worlds is held back by the inability to do anything large-scale. Delivery of virtual crowds will be the true dawn of the virtual world.

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!

• 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:

Top Stories

New partnerships and collaborations:

• Jay-Z’s Rocawear Comes to WeeWorld
• Dassault, Shanghai World Expo Ink Partnership

Report: VC Funding, Number of VC Execs Decline
Some data about 2008… well, it looks like data. I suspect I smell another hand-wringing “omg where iz teh hype” moment.

Shanda Q1 Earnings Spike, Even as ARPU Drops
More “seduction via numbers”. $162M in Q1 of 09.

$68M Invested in 13 Virtual Worlds-Related Companies in Q1 2009
More “seduction via numbers”.

Study: Reliance on Immersive Technologies On Rise
More “seduction via numbers”, this time with a super-sexy graph:

8D Taps Language Learners, Bots, Microtransactions
Nice overview of a language learning business founded last year.

Wipro launches “Innovation Centre” on Second Life
“[...] a replica of the actual lab that is situated at Wipro campus”

Perfect World Hit With Patent Infringement Lawsuit
They’re claiming that Perfect World “borrows too heavily from IQ’s patented process of creating a facial composite.”

Virtual world healthcare has real world benefits, Toronto researchers find
Another health care industry foray into virtual spaces.

The Future of Healthcare: 3 questions for Dave Taylor of Imperial College London
I’m at risk of over-posting about Imperial College London but it’s a good read.

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:

• CoinStar To Offer Prepaid Game Cards
• CyKash Announces Prepaid Multi Game Card
• Scoreloop Games Now Live On App Store
• Virtual Fairground Brings ClubGalactik.com on the Field
• GMG Partners With Redbana For Virtual Currency Cards

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

Who is conspicuously missing from virtual worlds?

(Answer in the comments!)

I *almost* linked one of those philosophical “trends in virtual worlds” articles this week telling is “what it all means”, but then my senses returned to me just in time. Close call!

• 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:

Top Stories

New partnerships and collaborations:

• FlowPlay Platform To Provide Virtual World For FanHub, More On The Way
• Acclaim Partners Exclusively With Peanut Labs

Exploring the Next Dimension of Customer Service: Three Questions for Steve Kinge at Nortel
An interesting demo of how customer contact might be enhanced using a virtual environment. The article is an interview, the video is the demo itself… but please forgive the gameshow host style voice-over…

WB.com Goes 3D With ExitReality
Good score by ExitReality. They’re very promising, and just need to do something to make the experience a little bit smoother to take it to the next level.

Microsoft Touting Success As Reaction Grid Server
Microsoft is saying they can take an OpenSim server and run it at 200% capacity for concurrent avatars. Hmm… maybe I should take another look…

Eco Gamers: Manage Energy in a Virtual World with Shaspa
While I believe I’ve linked to this energy-management software before, I just wanted to link another article to point out that the past two weeks have shown quite a bit more press about it. There’s good buzz!

Calling All Evangelists
In every company there’s one person willing to bring the big ideas forward. This is the visionary, the thought-leader that wants to bring the latest technology and business practices to their stakeholders. We call these people Corporate Evangelists. Ever think this could be you?

Events

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

Brainband Builds Emergency Management Course Using Virtual Reality
Well, “virtual reality” in this case being Second Life, but six of one / half-dozen of the other…

Memorial University is Nationally Recognized in Canada for Excellence in Innovation using Second Life
Oh Canada!

SELEX Systems Integration Looks to Expand Innovative Training Solutions using Virtual World Technology from Forterra Systems and Ambient Performance
Catchy headline. Good news for military training. This should secure Forterra’s existing reputation of being at the forefront for this application.

Salford students clean up kitchens… in Second Life
Salford’s environmental health students get a little training in a virtual kitchen.

Government and Military

Real world laws intrude on virtual world behavior
A general overview of the Standford event on legal issues in virtual spaces.

Gaming

Metaplace Heads To Open Beta
Make your own game today!

Turbine May Bring LotRO To Xbox 360 With Microtransaction Support
A major MMO on a console. About time!

Nerds Only

Simulate Star Clusters with Second Life Mod
New ways to study the N-body problem. Yes I know I’m excited too.

Newbs Only

Are Media Companies Missing The Virtual World Mark?
Hey, they’re only NOW starting to embrace the WEB.

Sociological Oddities

Could Sadville break the internet with nakedness?
Alright look. All anybody can write about for the past solid month is LL’s new policy on adult content. I’ve had enough of it, all right? It’s not that important! Alright? Alright… let’s call this the end of it then.

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