I think this is a good thing, Second Life and Linden Lab has seen phenomenal growth over the past few years, and few could disagree that SL has become the leading Virtual World and the one that all others are measured against. As Virtual Worlds are in their infancy SL has been at the leading edge regards the technology, and whilst there is still some way to go, it is now of a size and popularity that stability and service delivery are more important than implementing new features.

The reason I think it’s a good thing is that whilst Phillip has done a fantastic job of building this ship and getting it out of the dock, it needs someone with a different skillset to keep the ship steady in the stormy ocean that is delivering a stable service.

This does not mean that Phillip is leaving Linden Lab, just moving to be Chairman and focus on strategy and vision rather than CEO. I expect he will still be the man to be the spokesperson and do the rounds of conferences and speaking assignments too.

Anyway here is a pic..

They are currently working on a version of the Nutcraker, and are looking for people to help out as ‘dancers’, animators, musicians, etc. They have already done a number of productions apparently, and so this is not a new venture. The previous ones were both original productions, ‘Olmannhen’ and ‘Windows’.

Some links:

slballet.org
slurl

Anyway, off to look for Retail Linux news…

What I needed really was to talk to a Sun rep and probably have a poke at one. Now I could have talked to the Sun call centre and maybe arranged for a demo at the local Sun offices, though that would take a lot of messing about and incurred some sort of cost in time and resource. Or we could have gone to the web site (we did), but 2d pictures on the web with no-one to talk to was not really enough.

And so as you may have guessed, I decided to have a look in SL. I decided pop along to Sun’s island’s in SL and see what I could find out there. After a little looking round I came across the replica of the Sun Supercomputing 07 pavilion that they have (re)created in SL, it was full of models of various bit’s of Sun kit (including the x4500) and there were a good number of Sun employee’s loitering. So asking one of them who was free, what they know about the x4500, they took me over to the model of the x4500, and proceeded to answer the bunch of questions I had about it. Just like walking into a store in a mall, and asking a shop assistant about a potential purchase.

So what I hear you ask? Why is this such a big deal? What did doing this in SL give me that other methods couldn’t?

Well, its certainally felt a damn sight more ‘natural’ than browsing Sun’s website. The fact that you are in a 3d space, with people and objects and servers that you can walk round, take a closer look at and ask a helpful ‘shop assistant’ all about it. It was interactive in a way that the web could never be. The person was there who I could turn to, and ask questions as I needed, like I say it just felt natural.

Of course the experience could never compete with actually seeing one in the flesh, and talking to a real in the flesh sales rep. But it was a damn sight cheaper and much less hassle than going to a Sun shop, though I don’t think Sun have retail outlets and so it would have meant waiting for some sort of convention / show and traveling there, in this case Supercomputing ’07 was in Reno in the States, and I don’t think the client could have justified that traveling expense to ask a few questions.

So here is where I think SL fit’s in, it sits half-way between the Web and SL as a shop window for business. It has all the cost and convenience and geography shrinking aspects of the web, with the 3d’ness and natural experience of RL. It’s got to be a winner! My client benefited as I saved a bunch of travel expenses, and got some valuable information for a key project, and Sun benefited as it may have nudged me nearer a purchase (no promises though!)

In the words of Brian Potter, ‘it’s the future’!

P.S. Thanks for the nudge AK

Basically as part of their launch in SL, Canada Post claim to assembled the largest collection of RL retailers on one SL sim ever. Not sure if this can be verified, but thats the claim. I counted…

Brookstone, Lockbook Cafe, Red Canoe, The Shopping Channel, Sears, Sky Mall, Everything Olive, Toys R Us & Canada Post.

So 9 Retailers in total, which is not bad going, I am told that The Hudson’s Bay Company are also there, but I am buggered if I could find them. Canada Post, like Telus before them don’t seem to have their own island but a sim on the mainland, which I guess is a reasonable 1st step into SL. The architecture of the sim itself is OK I guess, though they have gone the route of recreating RL buildings in SL, which is not to everyone’s taste (including mine).

The concert was good, and is still going on at time of writing.

One of the few Canadian presences I have recently discovered is the Telus build. For those that don’t know Telus are a Canadian telecommunication company, providing landlines, mobiles, internet access, tv access etc. They are quite a big company in the Canadian marketplace, probably equivalent of Virgin Media here in the UK.

Regards the build, well it’s not on its own island, but on a mainland called ‘Shinda’. The builder is the well known Scope Cleaver, who its seems is building up quite a corporate portfolio.

Not exactly sure the about purpose of the build, it seems like it is just a place to show of various offers and products the company has, an in-world shop window if you like. There doesn’t appear to be many place’s for meetings, nor are there any obvious events or attempts to build a community, although I thought the Halloween decorations were a nice touch. Still its a Canadian presence, which is a good thing, who is next?

So taking the lead from AK’s post about the recent entry of ‘The Office’ into Second Life, one of Dwight’s favorite places in Second Life was listed as The Griffin Business Center, which appears to be a place people can rent for meetings etc.

There appears to be some advertising in there for ‘MODE Modeling and Designing Agency’, in the form of a poster. If you click on the poster you get a notecard from someone called Wilamina Laville asking for SL models. Now for those that are fan’s of Ugly Betty will recognize MODE as the fictional agency that Betty works at, with Wilamina being a character in the show who is one of the ‘bosses’ of said agency.

This may be nothing more than a Ugly Betty fans’ SL shrine to the show, or it could be the start of another SL – TV Show tie in. Who knows!?! There deffo seems to be a few happening recently, all from various US networks, maybe it’s a case of lots of bandwagon jumping, which is a good thing for the population of SL, even if it does leave me scratching my head on what’s in it for the TV show concerned!

Some of the issues that they have specifically said they intend to work on are things that many consider to itches that really need scratching if SL is to become more acceptable to the masses. One of the things on my list is the platform stability, the current situation where a sim can only take approx 40 users at one time is a real limiter IMHO.

This was hinted at last month in an interview with Zero Linden on Dizzy Banjo’s blog. Though I must admit I didn’t think there would be any movement on this for some time yet. I am glad to be proven wrong! Though realistically when the fruits of this collaboration will eventually filter down is anybody’a guess.

Add that to the another announcement from SL consultancy and builders Electric Sheep, that they are releasing the first non-Linden commercially backed SL viewer, calling it the OnRez viewer.

Things are really hotting up in the metaverse!

Check it out