Webpage to 3D space provider ExitReality has soft launched today via a cross promotion with CKE Restaurants (Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s) that will see the product promoted to millions via the Carl’s Jr website and through a MySpace advertising campaign. I originally sat down and spoke to the ExitReality team (the company has its HQ in London, but the dev team and CEO are in Australia) for TechCrunch back in April. At the time they explained that the product dynamically creates 3D spaces for social networking pages (no need to install anything on the site or for site owners to be signed up, the visitor only needs a plugin), but they held back on some of the other details. Here’s what they didn’t tell me the first time ExitReality can turn ANY webpage dynamically into a 3D space, meaning the product is not limited to social networks any rich media content, such as video or music, can be dragged into a space, and all items can be copied Their platform is built on open standards including Collada, VRML and others The open platform means that existing 3D objects built on the same standards can be easily included in any 3D space, including most objects from Google 3D/ SketchUp They have also incorporated a “virtual space search engine” that means anyone with their plugin can enter any 3D space on the web built on open standards. They already have over 3,000 spaces indexed, including some really incredible builds, instantly providing landmark content → Read More
EA-Land, the service previously known as The Sims Online will shut August 1, despite a much hyped revamp announced late February. The Sims Online was generally regarded to be a failure for EA, with the company unable to turn the success of The Sims franchise into an online hit. The service wasn’t helped by a complete lack of customizable features (outside of the usual Sims customization tools) and EA charged for access. The new (but now never to be launched) EA-Land was to be EA’s second shot of success, and promised Second Life style customization and land ownership, with a free client and free to use service. EA didn’t provide a full explanation for the shutdown, only saying that “The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena.” Paying users of the Sims Online are being offered a $15 gift voucher and three months premium access to Pogo. The Sims Online/ EA-Land joins the TechCrunch Deadpool. → Read More
HiPiHi, China’s answer to Second Life has opened its doors to the public with a beta test that includes free features. We first wrote about HiPiHi in August 2007 when the company called for the establishment of virtual world standards and interoperability. German’s are famed for their ability to clone sites, but the Chinese aren’t far behind; HiPiHi looks and feels like Second Life, at least in the demonstration video (in Mandarin above). HiPiHi is available in Chinese and English, and name registration supports both character sets. The service is free to use and register, and like Second Life users can rent land and create their own items. According to the Second Life Herald, HiPiHi is working with Intel and IBM towards building the platform architecture so that it “is more open, highly scalable and truly inter-operable, in order to lay the groundwork for the mainstreaming of virtual worlds.” PC only, and although the service is available in English, the download page isn’t. document.write(”); http://documents.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=2465964&access_key=key-29usjyrz8l35kzo3gi43&page=&version=1 Read this doc on Scribd: Lets HiPiHi final var scribd_doc = new scribd.Document(2465964, ‘key-29usjyrz8l35kzo3gi43′); scribd_doc.write(‘embedded_flash_2465964_17ce85′); → Read More
EA is relaunching The Sims Online as a free service with a new name and new features, including UGC, commerce and land ownership. EA-Land is the new, free Sims Online (TSO). The 12 different cities from TSO are being moved to EA-Land and the game area is being expanded to be “100 times bigger than the previous size of any city.” Existing TSO users will be able to purchase land in EA-Land before the new (reincarnated) world is open to the public with paying TSO users becoming “EA-Land subscribers” in a similar fashion to the way Linden Lab charges for land in Second Life. Users of EA-Land will have the ability to upload custom content and (more importantly) buy these customizations from other players. Sounding a lot like Second Life? It gets better: We heard from the community that the economy was broken in TSO. That was true, too many users were billionaires, and the goal of the game was mostly about extracting money from Maxis. I can now say with satisfaction that we have fixed the economy on EA-Land. This took many features, from establishing a real estate market, where users can easily buy or sell lots to one another, and a dynamic object pricing market where the prices of objects purchased from maxis is based on supply and demand, enabling stores and entrepreneurs to earn a living. We also enabled users to buy simoleans directly from Maxis. While there is no need for users to do so in the game (we give subscribers simoleans every week), it can help new users build their dream house faster with a simple paypal transaction secured by us. There is one significant difference though to Second Life: EA-Land won’t become the wild west as EA will be “approving all of the content [so] this user content is safe to be viewed by everyone.” Second Life fans will point out that TSO/ EA-Land has a lot of difference to Second Life in terms of capabilities, and that is true. And yet really basic 2D service such as Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel have millions of users compared to Second Life’s 100-200,000 regular users over a 60 day period. As much as I hate the name, free is a great selling point and EA-Land has the potential of catering to users who want something more from their online words than the basic services, without → Read More
Linden Lab has announced that virtual banking within Second Life is to be banned effective January 22 after receiving multiple complaints by Second Life residents scammed by bank operators. Banking and associated services have become popular in Second Life over the last two years, with many offering ponzi style interest schemes that usually sounded too good to be true. Ginko Financial was the best known failure amongst Second Life banks, owing 200 million Linden ($750,000) to depositors when it declared itself insolvent in August 2007. In a post on the Second Life blog, Ken Linden said that as well as not being able to provide protection to Second Life users with these banks running, their legality under law is also questionable. The decision is unlikely to affect virtual stock exchanges but may affect groups such as Second Life credit card provider Metacard, who also previously offered bank services as well. Second Life banks are experiencing a run on their funds as customers seek to get their money before the ban comes in place. Companies such as JT Financial have been inundated by customers wanting to know what is going on. Screen shot of the JT Financial crisis meeting below. Banking joins bestiality and gambling on the banned in Second Life list. CrunchBase Information Second Life Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
The Electric Sheep Company, regarded by many to be the leading Second Life development company, has parted company with one third of its workforce (22 people). The Electric Sheep Company is best known recently for its work in creating the CSI:NY build in Second Life. The company offers its own Second Life browser “OnRez”, and provides services to companies looking to establish a presence in Second Life. While the CSI:NY Second Life experiment has generally be regarded as a success by most, Electric Sheep Company was caught when some of the ridiculously high number of expected signups through the cross promotion did not materialize, causing much of the CSI:NY build to be closed down shortly after launching. Adding to this, according to Massively was the decision by AOL Pointe and Pontiac to cease operations in Second Life, both of who were Electric Sheep Company clients. It would be easy to suggest that Electric Sheep Company’s failure here may be indicative of a broader downturn in Second Life; however, the more likely scenario is simply that this is a company that added too many staff in the expectation of ongoing and future work that didn’t happen, and they would be far from the first startup to be caught in this situation. Compound this with a highly competitive market and unfortunately for 22 people at the Electric Sheep Company, Christmas this year wont involve dreams of electric sheep. Update: via the first commenter, Virtual World News has more, including an interview with the Electric Sheep Company where they state they’ll be moving into other virtual platforms including Metaplace, Multiverse and Icarus. → Read More
Eastern European nation Estonia has opened an official embassy in Second Life. Estonia for those not aware of the country is a former Soviet Republic that this year is celebrating 90th anniversary of its initial independence, before it was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. It’s bordered by Russia to its East and Latvia to the South, and became a member of the European Union in 2004, the same year it became an American ally by joining NATO. Estonia established an embassy in Second Life on the basis that Second Life was as progressive as its own society. The goals of the embassy are to promote Estonia among small groups of professional individuals by hosting discussions and lectures with people who not be able to travel to Estonia, and perhaps more interestingly, to act as a conduit for information to countries where Estonia has no representation (literally a virtual embassy). The embassy itself is an interesting build that’s hard to describe in words. The post-modernist architecture hosts a variety of levels that includes art work and meeting spaces. During my time at the embassy I was impressed to note that it was manned by a “Estonia Republic” representative. I didn’t ask for a visa or particular information about Estonia, but I’m sure that I could have. The embassy can be visited here (SLURL). In related news, those keen on the environment can participate in a virtual Bali conference, the current major conference being held to discuss the post Kyoto environmental treaty. The space is hosted by the Nature Publishing Group and includes speakers such as Tara LaForce of Imperial College in London, Simon Buckle of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and George Monbiot, British enviro-nazi and enemy of Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame. Those interested can TP directly to the NPG island here (SLURL) The news zone, where a traditional Estonian “Eesti hagija” dog welcomes you to the Embassy The architecture is hard to place Estonian Artwork → Read More
I had the opportunity today to catch up with Chris Collins, the “Technical Assistant to the CEO” at Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. A Commerce graduate from the University of Western Australia he started in tech, then like many locals (Vibe Capital, Mig33) headed off overseas. After working on his own startup 3 years ago in the Valley he fell in love with Second Life and landed a job as a Business Analyst with Linden Lab. More recently he took up the Technical Assistant to the CEO role, an interesting position in that it’s essentially an executive in training position. Collins shadows Linden Lab CEO Phillip Rosedale at all meetings and functions, and is also directly responsible for Lindex Exchange, the Linden Dollar to US Dollar currency service for Second Life. At the end of the position (6-9mths) he will then take up an executive role with Linden Lab. The following from my notes of the interview, the answers may be paraphrased at times but the core answers are per my notes. I’d hoped to record it but the initial Skype call was unusable. DR: There’s been a lot of talk about open source in virtual worlds, with talk of everything from virtual world interoperability, open standards and web based browsing. What’s Linden Lab doing to open up its doors? CC: Firstly we’ve opened up our client. As a direct result of this we are seeing new and innovative ways of connecting to Second Life. There are already a number of browser based clients in development, and more recently we saw a custom browser built specifically for the CSI:NY program. We’ve also started to provide API’s that hook into Second Life; registration is one area that provides Second Life registration capabilities to other sites, for example Telstra in Australia now provides registration from its Bigpond/ SL page. DR: What about the Second Life world itself? Obviously the sale of server space is the bread and butter of Linden Lab’s business model; will you consider opening this up as well in future? CC: Eventually we want to open up everything, every aspect of Second Life, but it’s a massive undertaking and it’s not something we can do overnight. DR: Talking of servers, there has been rumors that we might start seeing Second Life game servers in other countries, specifically there was a rumor that Telstra in Australia would be → Read More
Linden Lab released the WindLight First Look Second Life client Wednesday, the first serious release of Second Life that incorporates the technology Linden Lab acquired when it took over Windward Mark Interactive in May. We noted at the time of the acquisition that the technology would bring “better clouds and wind” to Second Life, but this was in retrospect an understatement. Having tested the new client, it not only brings photo realistic clouds to Second Life, it also introduces realistic water, and more importantly far improved shadow and time related graphical representations. One of the most common criticisms of Second Life is that the in-world 3D rendering is poor; I’ve been supportive of the concept of the Second Life metaverse in the past, but I’ve always thought we were seeing the 1.0 version of a virtual world without having yet seen the 2.0 version, or the really amazing universally accepted virtual world that will gain much wider acceptance. Windlight takes Second Life to about 1.8. The same user generated buildings are still there, but suddenly they have been improved by their environmental surroundings. Water ripples with the reflection of surrounding buildings while a sunset casts realistic shadows and lighting on the buildings below. The client is rated “first look” which translates to Alpha release, so it’s far from perfect. Testing on a MacPro resulted in regular crashes, although it was stable on a Macbook Pro. Second Life fans and observers can download the client here. The photos below don’t capture the full effect, you need to download the client and fly around for that, but they do demonstrate some of the visual improvements with the new client. Daytime: Sunset Sunrise CrunchBase Information Second Life Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Rumors about a massive valuation of Second Life have been floating around Silicon Valley for months. The original rumors said the company raised a new round of financing at a valuation of somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. When I asked the company about it over the summer they said, on the record, that they had not raised new money, but declined to comment further. Another rumor speculated that one of the shareholders of Second Life had sold part of their stake in the company to a hedge fund or other private equity investor. This rumor had legs – and we were able to confirm that Catamount Ventures, one of the first investors in Second Life (their original investment was in 2000) did in fact sell part of their stake. Jed Smith, the Catamount Managing Director who sits on the board of Second Life’s parent company, Linden Labs, confirmed today that they did sell part of their holdings – 10% – to a third party eight months ago. But he would not comment on the price of the sale. A source with knowledge of the company has said it was well above half a billion, but declined to name a specific price. CrunchBase Information Second Life Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Linden Lab’s Second Life has seen its fair share of controversies in the past; an FBI investigation led to a shut down of inworld casinos, some media reports suggested that Second Life may be being used as a training area for terrorists, and in July there was suggestion that Bestiality may be driven out of the metaverse by a crackdown under a new TOS that banned “Broadly Offensive” behaviour. UK authorities may soon be entering Second Life as part of a crack down on virtual pedophilia following the above report being shown on Sky News. The report investigates an area in Second Life called “Wonderland” where users dressed as children offer virtual prostitution in a space designed to mimic a kids playground. Someone recently said to me at a conference that Second Life’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: pure uncensored freedom; they are completely right. No self respecting person could argue that the staging of virtual pedophilia is anything but sick and should have no place within Second Life, and yet libertarian governance has been the key driver of the Second Life success story . The whole thing is yet another tarnish on a space where some really great things are happening, a space that is slowly finding a much wider acceptance in the broader community. The quicker Linden Lab cracks down on these sickos, the better for the many Second Life fans out there who preach the Second Life gospel where ever they go. CrunchBase Information Second Life Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday. The episode will see Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far. CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games. The second option consists of a game called “Murder by Zuiker,” a unique murder plot which can be solved by users finding clues. The 100 people who come closest to solving the murder will win virtual gifts. The big tie-in gives new users the ability to become CSI investigators, complete with field kit and tools, and are given a chance to interview suspects and to solve the murder featured in the actual CSI:NY episode. The episode itself will apparently end in a cliff-hanger with the solution not revealed until February. The CSI:NY episode also sees the launch of the Electric Sheep Company’s OnRez Second Life client, the first major independent Second Life client launched since Linden Lab moved to provide open access to their virtual world in January. Some reports suggest that Second Life could see one million new user signups following the CSI:NY episode going to air, however it will be more interesting to see how many of the new users will stick around. → Read More
Christian Renaud, Chief Architect of Networked Virtual Environments for the Cisco Technology Center will be launching a new virtual worlds tracking organization called the Metaverse Market Index (MMI) at Virtual Worlds Fall next week. MMI will be established as a not-for-profit organization that will define and track metrics across multiple virtual worlds. The problem is simple; there is little or no reliable and comparable data about user engagement and economic activity in virtual worlds, which makes it difficult for businesses to select the worlds in which they should invest their time and money. MMI is founded by Nick Wilson of Metaversed.com and Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University, and will team with advisors and sponsors from industry and academia to construct a database of statistics on each platform’s user activity, economy, and technology. MMI is hoping that their work will foster informed investment in online worlds, “while also allowing developers to identify opportunities for rapid convergence toward common technologies that will allow portability across platforms.” Data gathering will focus on three main areas: User Engagement will measure key indicators of how successfully businesses can reach customers and business partners, Economy will be a set of measures intended to capture economic activity in each world, and Technology will be focused on developing a list of key technological attributes of virtual worlds with an eye towards allowing developers to identify standards and interoperability opportunities. MMI first step is to incorporate and work with advisors towards identifying key statistics. January 2008 will see tools development based on the initial key statistical areas, followed later by publication of the standards and data gathering. It’s an interesting setup, and an inclusive way of building a solid foundation of usable data for businesses currently dealing with/ in virtual worlds, of those looking to do so. The setup is not unlike the Motion Picture Association of America, in that the enabling body is virtual world and corporate agnostic and in theory will undertake its activities for the good of all involved. I’ll be watching with interest the data they start publishing next year. → Read More
Intel has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Havok , a provider of software and services used by digital media creators in game development. Havok’s 3D software powers online worlds including Linden Lab’s Second Life, as well as a variety of console games on Xbox, Wii and PlayStation. According to Intel, the acquisition will enable developers in the digital animation and game communities to take advantage of Intel’s innovation and technology leadership in the creation of digital media. Well known games using the Havok platform include BioShock,” “Stranglehold,” “Halo 2,” “Half Life 2,” “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” “Crackdown,” “Lost Planet: Extreme Condition,” “MotorStorm” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. (via Metaversed) → Read More
Things are changing in Second Life. The period of glee abandon in which companies joined Second Life, built giant edifices to their offline brands which no one visited, then ran away has passed. We are now seeing those who survived and new players in Linden Lab’s online world build something new, something perhaps more sustainable and in tune to user needs. On the surface it appears that Second Life is repeating the internet development cycle, but at an accelerated rate. The scandals and useless attempts at bringing offline brands to Second Life parallel the first web boom. After the crash of 2000, many fled the web, whilst a core few remained and over time, along with new players, started to build interfaces that were useful. Second Life today is like 2001-2002, the dawn on a new age; Second Life 2.0. A rather late comer to Second Life is Nick Wilson. Wilson was best known as a SEO blogger writing for several years at Threadwatch. After selling the site he cast his direction towards Second Life, launching the Metaversed Blog, a chronicle of the ups and downs of doing business in Second Life. Wilson has officially announced the Metanomics Conference in conjunction with Cornell University, a series of events that will explore business and policy in the “metaverse” of virtual worlds over several months. I asked Wilson whether we were indeed witnessing a change: The corporations in SecondLife are just ignoring the backlash, and are getting on with it. We lost a few in the initial rush, but those still standing, are standing strong, and leading the way for others. Breaking the trail if you will. Less about showy press splashes, and more about finding really useful ways to use virtual environments to collaborate with colleagues long distance, engage customers and experiment with the platform. Interestingly Wilson sees those remaining in and now joining Second Life as looking towards longer term goals: None of these companies really expects to be pulling profit out of virtual ventures right now. but they all see the potential, and firms like Sun, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Amazon are in it for the long haul. Wilson says that Metanomics is about bridging the gap between those comfortable in Second Life, and those wary of it: One of the things that I want to do, is use video, podcasts, web to bring this stuff to people in formats → Read More
Scion, a division of Toyota that sells “trendy” cars targeted at Gen Y in the United States, was one of the earliest companies touting its wares in Second Life. In 2006, Scion became the first car maker with a Second Life presence, offering residents customizable versions of the Scion xB. Fast forward nearly 12 months and many of the great and much hyped corporate outposts in Second Life are closing up shop; Scion on the other hand is actually expanding their presence. The company has added additional islands (sims) to its Second Life HQ and the company has now officially launched the second gen Scion xD in world. The Scion xD II launch party saw several hundred Second Life residents visit over a couple of hours. It was also the first opportunity for residents to view and utilize the expanded Scion Island. So what’s so special about Scion’s Second Life presence that sees the company buck the trend? In part it’s a branding statement. Second Life is (according to some) a hip and trendy place from which to target brand wary members of Generation Y; Scion in return trades on this perception in continuing to build a position statement for the Scion Brand. Also in fairness, whilst the viewer numbers are poor compared to a traditional advertising campaign, the costs of maintaining a presence in Second Life aren’t huge, if you ignore the fact that per viewer they are exceptionally high. So does maintaining a presence in Second Life result in increasing brand exposure and car sales? I went undercover again to see whether I could find what the magic ingredient for Scion’s expanding presence in Second Life was: → Read More
China’s answer to Second Life, HiPiHi, announced at the State of Play V conference in Singapore Monday its intentions to work towards standardized 3D worlds, with an aim of eventually delivering interoperability between various platforms. HiPiHi said it would cooperate with “global leaders in the Internet and communication industry to establish a set of relevant hardware and software standards for the development of the 3D platform.” The company would then work with other 3D virtual world providers to finalize these standards with the goal of allowing users to interact and transact between different virtual worlds. HiPiHi current platform is remarkably similar to Second Life in both looks and features, with users creating the world and being able to own land and objects. Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life has recently taken some steps towards opening its platform, including open sourcing the code for the Second Life client, however the Second Life world has remained closed to 3rd party servers. Linden Lab has previously said that they have “a vision of a globally interconnected grid with clients and servers published and managed by different groups” (indeed, they called it inevitable) so it will be interesting to see whether they join HiPiHi’s initiative. (via Metaversed) → Read More
After the recent ban on gambling, Second Life residents have had reduced opportunities on where spend their hard earned (or bought) Lindens (the Second Life in-world currency). The world of share trading, regarded by some to be actually worse than gambling, has started to make its presence felt in Second Life. I went undercover (see picture) to see if good money could be made. First Impressions The World Stock Exchange (WSE) sits on its own Second Life island in a shiny multi-story edifice that just says money. The trading floor on the third floor presents an initial lobby that includes an ATM machine (players must deposit money to trade stocks), rule boards and advertising for a bank that offers 15.75% PA. Walking through the lobby players are presented with a lounge area and customer service desks. There is usually a WSE representative on hand to assist with inquiries. No In-world Trading The trading floor itself is a misnomer as players are unable to trade via the Second Life interface. Company listing boards and IPO information all lead through to the WSE website. A video viewing area is surrounded by price quote boards, although the space sorely lacks a traditional style transaction ticker. The WSE website is simple enough.. The trading room page allows players to buy or sell shares, with Limit Ordering also available. General information is provided about companies, as well as stock price history and recent trades. Can You Make Money Though? There is only one way to find out. After perusing the 30 odd listed companies I made a number of investments which I may revisit at TechCrunch in the future to report on how they went. For my opening portfolio I bought companies that sounded like they had substance. Hope Capital Limited (HCL) sounded hopeful, and as this is the holding company for the WSE you’d expect good results. Hype String (HYP) may not make string, but hype always rises, right? I expect Spontaneous Rich Investments, Inc. (SRI) to perform well. Ginko Perpetual Bonds (GPB) are all that remains of the funds from the collapsed Ginko Bank. After trading as high as L$26, today’s price of around $L0.19 makes them a steal. For good measure I rounded out my portfolio with the two IPO’s scheduled for August 20, Taft Worsley Enterprise (TWE) and Apez Corp (APZ). I have no idea what either do, but given the → Read More
