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A Short Introduction To Second Life

In preparation for a panel on social media and virtual worlds at the Media Relations Summit in Washington DC, Giff Constable, who heads up the software development team at the Electric Sheep Company, has put together a terrific introduction to Second Life.

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Architecture for Humanity and Second Life

The thing that excites me the most about immersive environments like Second Life, is the ability to fast prototype, test, and refine objects in the virtual world before building them in the real world.  This concept became the backbone of the virtual aloft project for Starwood Hotels.

Treehugger.com reports that recently a group of tweleve architects were invited by Architecture for Humanity to develop a series of prototype homes to be used by the residents of Biloxi, Mississippi, a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina.  One of the entries, created by Marlon Blackwell, was not only built in the real world, but also developed in Second Life.

Brands In Second Life - A Video Introduction

Second Life?

If you're one of the many people who've been hearing the words "Second Life" a lot lately, but don't yet have a good handle on what it is - be sure to read Philip Rosedale's description of Second Life in Forbes Magazine. (Rosedale's the CEO and Founder of Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life)

You can read the article here.

STA Travel Comes To Second Life

For the last few months, my colleagues at ElectricArtists and the Electric Sheep Company have been hard at work developing a virtual worlds strategy for the student travel company, STA Travel.

Set to officially launch next week, STA Travel's presence in Second Life is our most ambitious virtual words project to date.   

There are a lot of terrific features of the STA Travel presence in Second Life, but one of my favorites is an incredibly innovative system that the team developed to provide students with free virtual dorm rooms that they can customize with their own objects and then use for private meetings and get-togethers. 

What's cool about the dorms is that they were designed to accommodate an unlimited amount of users even though there's only 20 rooms available. The system was developed so that if you leave your dorm room empty for more than 10 minutes, the room resets itself and becomes available to someone else to customize and use. But what happens is that the system saves each person's unique layout exactly as they left it. So when you come back to use your room again, all you have to do is click a button on the wall and then choose your layout from the menu.

You can read more about the dorm rooms and the other cool features of the STA project on a weblog for the project that the team launched today.

The STA Travel project is something that I've been extremely excited about since we began working on the account a few months ago.  Virtual worlds are fast becoming an important aspect of college life, with numerous universities including MIT, Harvard and the University of Houston setting up virtual campuses.  What's missing for a lot of these students is a "soft landing" into Second Life when they enter for the first time.  STA Travel's mission is to help students not only get orientated in SL but also to assist them in discovering all of the amazing things that Second Life has to offer students. To this end, a series of live weekly events and tours are being produced by STA Travel along with many of the universities.

From me, Second Life and STA Travel are a perfect match. The team at STA recognized that virtual worlds and its applications will increasingly be taught in the University system. They approached our colleagues at Electric Sheep who then, in turn, reached out to us. Together we begin developing thoughts on how STA could support the creativity of the student and collegiate market in Second Life.   

It's been a terrific project to see come together. And I encourage you to learn more about the project by checking out the Virtual STA Travel blog.  Also, Cory Edo, who lead the development team at Electric Sheep, has a terrific blog post about the project today as well.

Chevy's Missed Opportunity

This week GM and Chevy received some terrific buzz when they premiered their three new mini-car concepts — the Chevrolet Beat, Groove and Trax — at the New York Auto Show. 

Reaching out to the web community for feedback, GM  set up a website (www.vote4chevrolet.com) for people to vote on the car that they think Chevy should put into production. 

But it occurred to me that even with all the great buzz this week, GM missed a terrific marketing opportunity.

What I would have done was to announce that beginning this week you now can test drive the Beat, Groove, and Trax exclusively in Second Life.

While I don't think that Second Life is the perfect environment for every brand (and I agree with a lot of the criticism that has been written lately about brands in Second Life) I do think that Second Life would have been a fantastic place for GM and Chevy to extend their buzz building campaign for the the Beat, Groove, and Trax. 

As they saying goes - "It's one thing to let someone see something. But it's a completely different experience when you them touch and play with it."

Mapings The Brands in Second Life

K Zero maps where the brands are in Second Life.  Kick on the image above to expand.