Second Life resiste...

Amplify’d from economico.sapo.pt

Como Second Life e Habbo Hotel resistem às redes sociais

Apesar do sucesso de comunidades virtuais como a do Facebook, os mundos virtuais a 3D continuam a facturar. Saiba quem os visita e os seus segredos de sobrevivência na Internet.

Haverá espaço para os mundos virtuais da Second Life e Habbo Hotel numa altura em que as redes sociais como o Facebook dominam a Internet? Tudo indica que sim. O aumento do número de utilizadores bem como as receitas geradas por estas plataformas levam a crer que o negócio é viável e que a divulgação feita através de redes sociais - como o Facebook e o Twitter - são hoje uma mais-valia. Read more at economico.sapo.pt

 

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Serious (elearning) game

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Serious game - Making of

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Is Second Life already second-best for education?

Amplify’d from www.metaversejournal.com

Why Second Life is already second-best for education

The announcement by Linden Lab in the past 24 hours that their discounting of pricing for educators and non-profits would cease in January 2011, has engendered the expected level of outrage. And rightly so, given the critical mass of educators that have generated significant outcomes for Second Life. In fact, it could be argued that it’s only the good news stories generated by the non-profits that have helped offset some of the negative aspects inflated by parts of the mainstream media and others. The comments section below the announcement is well worth a read: even taking out the initial emotion, the overwhelming attitude is that it’s time to downsize or move on. Of course, the migration to OpenSim grids is already well underway, for a range of reasons.

Based on those discussions and my own observations, here’s the key reasons I’ll not be working in Second Life for my education project (and most likely using either Unity3D, OpenSim or both):

Content creation: Although SL provides some great scripting options, the learning curve is significant and there’s minimal support for defacto design and modelling platforms. This leads to the need to either hire an SL builder or give up a significant chunk of time to learn a scripting language that’s not transferable elsewhere (except in some respects to OpenSim).

Structured learning: There is minimal ability in SL to guide avatars through particular experiences. Heads-up displays can work to some extent, but the scene-by-scene capability of Unity3D is head and shoulders above.

Reliability: ignoring historical challenges, the fact remains that down-time in SL is totally at the mercy of Linden Lab. A standalone OpenSim grid or a Unity3D installation aren’t as susceptible.

Client: SL being still being a standalone client makes it a bigger challenge to use for education that a web-based client. That may change in the medium-term but it’s a deal-breaker for purposes where dedicated PCs aren’t an option.

Ease of use: One of the key weaknesses of SL is it’s ease of use, particularly for new users. It’s something that has improved and will continue to improve. Although competitors aren’t markedly better, they certainly aren’t worse.

I want to make an important point: Second Life deserves to continue to grow and I’m still confident it will, albeit with a very different focus to what it has now. The decision on education pricing fits the wider business model as it now stands. Even that is fine, if it’s based on confidence of a new market and unshakeable faith that the current shortcomings of SL will be overcome soon enough. On the face of it, that market isn’t apparent and the improvements still seem a while away.

Update: Linden Lab have made a follow-up statement with a rather interesting take on things. Read more at www.metaversejournal.com

 

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How to choose an OpenSim hosting company

Here's something everyone interested in 3D eLearning should read.

Amplify’d from www.hypergridbusiness.com

How to choose an OpenSim hosting company

If you’re looking to join a supportive, warm environment that helps you develop as an artist or builder, or as a safe, secure place to run your shop, I’ve got nothing for you. That’s because what’s nice and friendly to one person is cloying and overbearing to another. The best thing to do here is to check out some grids, and see what works for you.

If you want a place where content is kept under lock and key, choose a grid that has hypergrid turned off, and doesn’t allow people to export their regions or inventories (these are known as OAR and IAR files). InWorldz and SpotOn3D are good at this. Open Neuland has hypergrid turned off, as well, as does 3rd Rock Grid.

If you want a place that’s open to hypergrid commerce, both Alpha Towne and GermanGrid have embraced multi-grid currencies (G$ and OMC, respectively) and welcome hypergrid shoppers, giving you a potential customer base that’s as big as the whole OpenSim metaverse. Keep in mind that those shoppers can then take your products to their home grids or private mini-grids and do whatever they want with them.

Accounts on all these grids are free, though SpotOn3D charges a small fee if you want building rights. There’s nothing stopping you from creating an account on these grids — or teleporting in with an existing avatar if the grid is hypergrid-enabled — hanging out, meeting people, getting a feel for the place.

Don’t let price be a major factor for you. First of all, OpenSim prices are falling quickly. By the time you’re ready to expand your virtual domain, you might be paying a fraction of today’s rates. Second, OpenSim prices are roughly based on how much it costs to rent the server. Expect to pay $10 to $25 for a basic, low-use region, and $25 to $60 for a moderate use region. And if you want a high-performance region that looks and feels like a region in Second Life or better, expect to pay around $90 a month or more. These prices are, in general terms, consistent across the grids.

Prices can be higher in Europe, due to VAT taxes, and also higher on commercial social grids. That’s because commercial grids have additional services that they offer to help create a sense of community for the grid. These include common public areas, sandboxes, events, community organizers or marketing staff, private currency systems and shopping portals, bulletin boards and discussion areas. In addition, some grids do additional development work to add custom features to their grids to set themselves apart from other grids.

One word of caution: if you pick a closed grid that prohibits region and inventory exports, and you decide to leave at some point in the future, you might have a hard time moving your land and avatar.

Education and Non-profits

If you’re a school, university, museum, hospital, research lab or other non-profit then you will have very different considerations than a casual user.

If you’re looking to get a region on a grid where you can socialize with other educators or researchers, or share content with them, check out ReactionGrid, Cybergrid, ScienceSim, and JokaydiaGrid, as well as the new Edu-Merge grid from SpotOn3D.

ReactionGrid is the most famous. It is a PG-rated, for-profit grid that focuses specifically on the education market, and has some very vocal satisfied customers, and a great reputation for customer service.

However, you may also want to consider running a private grid. It’s not much more expensive. In fact, if you’re renting several sims, having a private server running a mini-grid may actually be cheaper than renting regions individually. Many hosting providers do not charge extra to set up a mini-grid for you, and you get a private-label grid — your own domain, grid address, avatar names, everything.

If you’re a company using OpenSim as a platform for collaboration, training, simulations, team building or other internal functions, then you’ll want to run a private grid.

If you have 16 regions or less you can do it as a mini-grid, also known as a standalone. A mini-grid runs on a single server, so it doesn’t need centralized grid management software. Many hosting providers will set up a mini-grid at no additional charge.

ReactionGrid can set up a private grid for you — either on their servers, or on your, behind-the-firewall servers. SimHost and Dreamland Metaverse also have great reputations for customer service, and some brand-name customers. If you have the budget, you can also try IBM’s Lotus Sametime 3D, which comes with corporate functionality such as integration with your staff directory.

Full list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Read more at www.hypergridbusiness.com

 

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Amplify’d from images.businessweek.com

Inside the World of Second Life

Meet seven residents of this virtual world who wheel and deal in a real economy. Some are even making good money

See more at images.businessweek.com

 

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Will a merger between Microsoft and Linden Lab change all this?

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Life After Second Life

Corporate clients interested in more secure and flexible venues for their training, conference calls, and other business needs have a new crop of virtual worlds from which to choose

Aili McConnon and Reena Jana Companies are increasingly creating customized virtual worlds and bypassing Second Life, aiming for more security against hackers and increased flexibility in terms of designing a branded environment for customers. Second Life shows no signs of fading away any time soon -- in fact, the number of corporations in the online parallel universe has risen to about 50, and the number of Second Life residents has grown nearly seven-fold to nearly 7 million in less than a year. But because Second Life is open to anyone who wants to open an account and create an avatar or digital versions of products, it is vulnerable to unplanned cyber-jacking of corporate events. Many companies want to avoid the intruders who can turn up in virtual meetings within Second Life and, among other concerns, diminish competition with other brands for consumers’ attention. Now a growing crop of software makers is targeting corporate clients who might be interested in using virtual worlds to conduct remote conferences among avatars or to launch stand-alone, online, parallel universes in which to promote their products. Here’s a sample of seven alternatives to Second Life -- complete with video clips to introduce you to the latest virtual worlds best suited for sales training, meetings, brand-promotion, and other business needs:

See more at images.businessweek.com

 

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The Microsoft LL (Second Life) Mistery

Here's how this rumor got started...

All it took was a little tweet... by a guy with less than 300 followers!



And people still doubt the 'power' of twitter? LOL

Amplify’d from twitter.com

A little birdie told me that Microsoft may have silently offered to buy Linden Lab this week. #secondlife Read more at twitter.com

 

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