The Viewer 2 Beta is finally here, and with it comes a whole host of amazing improvements and new features. There’s so much to be excited about that it’s impossible (and unnecessary!) to pick a favorite. But — if I really had to pick — I’d choose Shared Media, since I’m the Product Manager for Shared Media. So, let me tell you about it.

Shared Media Brings the Web Into Second Life

Second Life Shared Media, a new Viewer 2 capability, makes sharing standard Web-based media in Second Life easy and seamless. It enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Basically, Shared Media brings the Internet inworld.

For the more technically inclined, what this means is that you can now put media textures on any prim in Second Life. More specifically, the viewer uses WebKit to create a fully interactive, dynamic texture from a Web URL. This even includes support for Web-browser plug-ins, like the Adobe Flash Player. And, you can place dozens of them on the same region. (We still don’t know what the upper limits are. I’m sure that you’ll let us know.)

A World of New Experiences and Businesses Possible

By seamlessly integrating the Web into Second Life, Shared Media unleashes a new wave of creativity and new business opportunities. Imagine the richness of a SL store with interactive signs and displays. Think about Flash-based games, theaters, and innovative Web-based services appearing inworld. Display your Twitter feed on the front of your house! (Okay, don’t.) Build a HUD to read your email inworld. Interact with walls that encourage graffiti or use your signature to sign guest books. Educators and their students can now interact in even more immersive classrooms. For the enterprise community, online collaboration tools (such as Google Docs, EtherPad, Webex, and Acrobat Web Connect) combine with the power of Second Life to make working inworld much easier and more powerful.

You’re in Control of Shared Media

Viewer 2 introduces a new UI for controlling Shared Media. Shared Media authors have the option to offer a 2D menu bar (similar to a browser-like URL bar) that will appear in front of a Shared Media object when any Resident mouses over it. Also, a new Nearby Media control will enable Residents to more easily control what media is allowed to play.

Web Skills Will Drive New Inworld Building Techniques

There are also new Second Life build features for Shared Media: assigning URLs to objects and faces, controlling auto-play, auto-scale, size settings, etc. With Shared Media, SL building now extends well beyond SL into the vast and varied skill set of Web development. Suddenly, skills like PHP, SQL, ActionScript, Apache and FMS can be used to create compelling inworld content. Flash and Flash Media Server (FMS) become particularly useful tools for creating animated, interactive Shared Media that can be kept in sync. Flash media server hosting services, such as Influxis, offer low-cost hosting.

Synchronicity is Content- and Context-Specific

Behind the scenes, Shared Media is different. Second Life always stays synchronized for all Residents. That is, the simulation takes place on our servers, and each person’s viewer renders their perspective on that simulation — everyone is looking at the same thing. Shared Media, on the other hand, can look different to different people — sometimes. Everyone’s instance of the Shared Media is always presenting the same URL. However, not everything will stay in perfect sync unless the content is specially designed to do that. For example, a simple Web browsing session will keep the pages synchronized, but not the position of the scroll bars. We may both be looking at the same Web page on the same inworld object, but I might be looking at the top portion, while you might be viewing what’s below the fold.

Consider a URL that doesn’t always serve the exact same page, perhaps a Web page that displays a random background color each time it loads. If an inworld object’s surface displayed that page, I might see a green background while you might see a blue one. Even more striking: if an inworld object’s surface was pointed at a site with user login like Gmail, you and I could both log into it, and we’d be looking at our own inboxes, not at each other’s.

What’s really cool is that sites that are specifically designed for synchronous collaboration, like EtherPad, for instance, will stay in perfect sync. So if it’s the intention, it is possible to design content that uses a back-end server to stay perfectly synchronized in all cases.

In short, synchronicity is content- and context-specific, making possible a world of new applications and interactions.

A Frank Lloyd Wright Museum has been in operation in Second Life for six months [SLURL]. Now, though, it’s officially working in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation under the new name of the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum, incorporating in the U.S., and seeking official non-profit status.
Four months ago the Foundation approached the Museum and expressed a desire to work together. While other real-world organizations have approached virtual counterparts and sought to compete or simply shut them down through legal proceedings, the Foundation has taken a tack of cooperation in order to build out the virtual presence of Wright with passionate people already doing the work.

Read it all from the great Virtual Worlds Blog HERE.

Hola! Ciao! Boas Tardes!

With roughly 60% of Residents based outside of the United States, localizing the Second Life experience is an important area of focus for us, so we’re pleased to share two pieces of good news on that front.

On Wednesday, we launched SecondLife.com in three additional languages: Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. We now have websites localized in English, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and are looking forward to continuing to grow this list.

Additionally, as you may have seen, we’ve recently signed an agreement with Gisland (actually, you may have seen it called Dragonfish or 888 – 888 Holdings is the public limited company, Dragonfish is the brand name of 888’s B2B Division, and Gisland is the operating company). This is a company with a great deal of experience in providing secure payment processing, andthis relationship will enable us to begin accepting payments from Residents outside the US in a broader range of currencies than we currently do.

Read the whole post HERE

Tomb of the Unknown in Second Life

“It is important to note that the US military does not just go to war … we also provide support for others in the form of protection & aid when it is asked for or needed, such as humanitarian aid following tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and yes… war…” These words were spoken this morning by Dahlea Milena, a Cherokee Native American and 22 year veteran of the United States Armed forces who served in Persian Gulf during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but who also served in United Nations humanitarian work. She is currently 100% disabled.

We were on Second Life’s Patriot Island, the location of the U.S. Military Veterans Center, owned by the US Military Veteran group, which emphasizes that it is not a role play group. Membership, currently about 900, is restricted to veterans and current active members of United States armed forces, and their families. “Mostly we provide a social center for US Military Veterans, family & supporters,” Dahlea said, “We also offer links to resources for Veterans information & benefits.” She also mentioned a very important way in which Second Life can serve veterans who are incapacitated, saying that for “any disabled person who may be homebound due to their circumstances … SL offers both a social networking opportunity, and the chance to do things that a disabled person can no longer do in RL.”

The Tomb of the Unknown, shown in this picture, stands at the center of Patriot Island, with a 24 hour honor guard and surrounded by the U.S. flag and flags of the various services.

Visit this site to read the rest by clicking HERE.

GfK Romania has conducted a research project on tourism web site Virtual Bucharest, using the Second Life social networking platform.

Second Life research participantsThe firm set up first focus group to explore the opinions, attitudes, motivations, expectations and lifestyle of Second Life users on the platform.

Virtual Bucharest is a three-dimensional replica of the city in the virtual world, which has already generated interest from international firms, keen to develop marketing programmes on the site – including conferences, live concerts, product launches and live competitions.

The first Second Life focus group is part of a qualitative research project to investigate the lifestyle of young people aged between 15 and 22. For the project, GfK Romania used a mix of qualitative methodologies including standard focus groups, discussions on online forums, and the virtual focus group among Second Life users, where the moderator and the respondents met in Virtual Bucharest’s conference space.

Participants were selected through a process which assessed details about their historical interaction in a group setting, and opinion leaders were chosen on this basis.

‘It is obvious that the younger generation and the opinion leaders adopt new technology very easily,’ stated Oana Mirila, Director of Qualitative Research. ‘Therefore, any company that wants to know what trend setters think, must find them where they spend time – in these social environments.’

GfK Romania, which was founded in 1992, is online at www.gfk-ro.com .

Special Thanks to Dr. Lisa Hannold, PhD, Dr. Margaret Steinman, Dr. Margaret Nosek, and Gigi Gernard of ACRM for the opportunity to show off what we could do. It was truly an honor to be of assistance to such a spectacular group of professionals. We are Looking forward to our next endeavor soon!

Highlights of the new secondlife.com from Torley on Vimeo.

Northrop, IBM Use Virtual World as Setting for Training, Employee Meetings

By SCOTT MORRISON

When American soldiers and police officers from across the U.S. want to learn how to operate Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Cutlass bomb disposal robot, they go to the military contractor’s secure Space Park installation.

But they don’t have to jump in a car or hop on a plane to get there. That’s because Space Park exists only in cyberspace, or more specifically, in the computer-generated world called Second Life.

Virtual reality “is not a fly-by-night technology. It’s not a passing fad,” says Matt Furman, a Northrop Grumman software developer who helped build Space Park, where customers can spend hours training.

Launched in 2003, Second Life burst onto the scene as an escapist’s three-dimensional domain where colorful avatars — digital alter egos that users create — could travel and socialize with other “residents.” But it hasn’t lived up to the early hype among consumers and marketers.

Second Life averages about one million monthly users, a small number compared with other online services like social-networking site Facebook Inc.

But Second Life is getting a renewed lease on life as a setting for trade shows, employee meetings and other corporate events for the likes of Northrop Grumman, Cigna Corp., Intel Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Linden Research Inc., the San Francisco company behind Second Life, is targeting business users with new products and services, including a feature that will let users call into virtual meetings from their cellphones. It is also testing hardware that companies can plug into their computer networks to create private virtual venues.

Such uses are a departure from Second Life’s initial corporate appeal. Initially Second Life attracted the likes of Nike Inc. and Coca-Cola Co., which saw the three-dimensional world as a digital marketing test bed.

Nissan Motor Co., for example, built a virtual vending machine that dispensed cars that avatars could test drive, or even fly. But interest began to wane, Nissan says, and it pulled out of Second Life last year. “There were a lot of things competing for our marketing dollars,” a spokesman says.

The marketers are being replaced by corporations that are using Second Life to host virtual conferences for employees or business partners.

Few have jumped in as deeply as International Business Machines Corp. Last year, IBM hosted an annual gathering of its leading thinkers in Second Life. The October event would have otherwise been scaled back because of the recession.

The three-day event, which peaked at about 250 concurrent users, helped demonstrate the promise of virtual reality to many IBMers who were still doubtful, says Neil Katz, one of IBM’s distinguished engineers.

“We turned hard skeptics into skeptics and skeptics into true believers,” he says, noting the venues have since been used for other IBM events.

After creating an avatar, Second Life allows users to gather in a virtual setting and speak using headsets or chat through text messages. Users can also share documents, watch presentations or draw on a white board.

Companies that don’t have the technical capabilities of IBM can hire a virtual conference organizer like Dan Parks, a real-life conference planner who has created Virtualis, a Second Life “island” on which he has built a giant dome, various exhibit halls, ballrooms, an outdoor entertainment center and even a yacht.

“Anything your mind can imagine, we can create in here,” Mr. Parks says. For about $7,000, he will run a two-day conference for 75 people from around the world. A similar event in real life would cost about $150,000, he says.

No one expects virtual events to supplant real life. Conference planners say virtual meetings work well when the aim is to share knowledge or train people, but they fall short when networking is the goal.

“Companies that are moving to virtual meetings need to think through why they are doing so. Saving money can’t be the only reason to do so,” says Joan Eisenstodt, a meetings and hospitality consultant at Eisenstodt Associates LLC.

The appeal of virtual events has strengthened in the recession. Event planners say a growing number of companies are using Second Life, as well as rivals ActiveWorlds Inc. and Forterra Systems Inc., to cut costs. IBM says it saved about $350,000 by hosting its October conference in Second Life.

While Linden isn’t focusing solely on the corporate market, it is taking steps to make Second Life more business friendly, says Linden CEO Mark Kingdon.

For example, the company recently created a site to introduce Second Life to business users and it is redesigning the “first hour experience” to make it easier for users to create accounts. Linden is also planning to launch a service allowing people to call into virtual meetings from their landlines or mobile phones.

Write to Scott Morrison at scott.morrison@dowjones.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A27

The Department of Defense is reaching out to military service members in a virtual world project called “Coming Home.” Tapping into the popular online community of Second Life, already used by the Army in recruiting efforts, DoD hopes to provide better support to returned veterans, especially those living in more isolated areas.

As an early adopter of cutting-edge technologies, DoD has provided plenty of inspiration for the video gaming world. In establishing a virtual community space for veterans returning from deployments, the military is borrowing from the world of video games.

Scientists at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California are part of a “curious marriage” between the Hollywood entertainment industry and the military, in the words of researcher Dr. Jacquelyn Morie. In an interview with Pentagon Web Radio, Morie said that the institute, at the request of the military, is using the virtual world of Second Life to improve training, leadership, cognitive decision making and mental health of veterans. Mental health is a particular focus of the new Coming Home project.

Read the whole story HERE.