Intel Sunflowers in the Second Life World

I just wanted to mention this event for a couple of reasons. One, that Intel are supporting a great initiative, the Conservation International Foundation, with this virtual fundraising. And reason number two, Intel had the good sense to pick Nexeus Fatale to provide the tunes for the opening and closing events.

Now, I missed the opening event, but the closing event is 6pm PST on April 13th. In the meantime, you can head over to the Intel Island and plant a sunflower. Intel are donating $1 (up to $10,000) for every sunflower planted, and there are also some great freebies both for SL and RL. According to Nexeus’ blog, the first day sounds like it was a roaring success with over 400 sunflowers planted in just two hours.

This seems like it has been a really engaging promotion, with multiple levels of engagement with the residents, and I applaud all involved. It would seem a good model for events, knowing how well residents get behind great causes. The night of the No 7 Breast Cancer Care event is definitely one of my highlights in SL so far, and raising over L$39,000 in a couple of hours far exceeded my expectations.

Defeat of the SL Gremlins

Just a quick post to say we have defeated the gremlins that were affecting the vendor for the new No 7 Spring skin, and normal service is now resumed. Thank you to those of you affected, for your patience with us, and for letting us know.

Hopefully, more of you will now get to enjoy it, and Breast Cancer Care get to benefit from the proceeds!

New No 7 skin launches for Spring

Our latest skin is now available in the No 7 salon in SL. As with Christmas, it mirrors the look that is now available at Boots stores on the high street, as well as on boots.com.

And if you’re reading any of the glossy women’s mags in the next few days, you’ll also spot Keeley Hawes wearing in No 7’s latest advert. Exclusively to the blog, you can see me wearing it in the SL Botanical Gardens.

This is the look you can see Lisa Eldridge working on both in the real world and in SL in the machinima we made when we launched in SL. It’s a look that has translated really well and, as  with the Christmas look, proceeds from the sale of this skin will all go to Breast Cancer Care.

Targeting the mature woman in a virtual world

I was actually quite delighted to see this headline from TMC today, as it would seem we are in the same danger of obsessing about youth in the virtual world as in the real world. At the recent Lexis digital conference, practically every conversation about virtual worlds and social networking seemed to focus on the “young”. Whatever your definition of young is, it means there’s a whole load of folk who are not necessarily being actively engaged or targeted.

Whilst WomenEtcetera isn’t a virtual world in the Second Life sense, it is a virtual space for women, in their words over 50. It combines great content with member stories and blogs, a space to give voice to this generation.

Which must leave the 40 somethings a little confused, as too old for the young group, and too young for this one!

Hello Kitty – the latest onslaught in virtual worlds for kids

It’s Friday, so it seems appropriate to have a pink and fluffy moment with the news that Hello Kitty is launching its own MMORPG.

World of Warcraft it’s not, although if you’ve ever got in the way of a group of young girls trying to get to the latest Hello Kitty items, then it might feel that way! This is still in a closed beta stage, but there is quite a lot of info and imagery on the website which, unsurprisingly, is very cute and very pink.

I like the quote “this game is not just about fighting monsters”. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that any part of Hello Kitty is about fighting monsters. Perhaps I have missed the point somewhere along the line in the Hello Kitty story. Too busy buying the Hello Kitty sushi bar on my last trip to Tokyo, I obviously missed the Hello Kitty Slaying the Vengeful Dragon set.

No doubt this will have a huge following, but with the range of kids virtual worlds exploding, there must come a point of diminishing returns for the brands, but no sign of it yet.

OnOff Brings London Fashion Week to Second Life

It’s London’s turn to be the epicentre of fashion this week, with all the creativity, madness and late starts that involves. Should you either not have a ticket, or are tired of all the crowds, dashing back and forward across London etc, then you could see some of it from the comfort of your own armchair.

OnOff, in it’s own words, bridges the gap between on and off schedule designers, so a mixing of the well-established and cutting edge new talent. This year they have a virtual version of their event in Second Life, with a virtual version of the exhibition in London now up and running in SL.

You can enjoy videos from the catwalk shows, and pick up a goodie bag of a limited edition t-shirt. All this, without the jockeying for position, or craning your neck if you’re not in the coveted front row. They also promise we will be able to make the fashion identity of our dreams, or nightmares.

Perhaps they’ve not spent much time in SL, but all of that is quite possible already, you only have to hang around a bit to spot both extremes!

What a lot of us will look forward to is when OnOff includes a real version of a virtual fashion show, given all the many talented designers working in SL, several of whom should be poised for real world success. If artists can do it, as I wrote about yesterday, then why not the fashion designers?

Virtual art building up real life following, and cash

From Market Watch today, there’s a great piece on the impact virtual world art is having in the real world art market. One of the things that kept me in Second Life was the great artistry and creativity on show, not just in some of the amazing builds but also the work on show in the variety of virtual galleries.

To hear that a number of these works are now being transferred to canvas within the real world is exciting. ArtNews gives its front cover over to an avatar portrait, with content looking at high tech and new media art forms. All of this in the context of a new show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where “Design and the Elastic Mind” opens this month, covering all sorts of representations of modernity and the future.

You only have to look at the wide variety of photos in the various Flickr Second Life groups to very quickly get an idea of the breadth of possibilities, and range of interests, that Second Life offers the creative community.  Looking just now, there are over 1200 different Second Life groups on Flickr, covering every kind of image. My favourites are the sepia images, which look incredible, and I particularly like the work of Albane Ewing.

The artistic side of Second Life is not necessarily something we hear lots about in the media, and yet it’s one of the areas that deserves wider recognition. I hope this is the start of wider coverage for the many talented artists pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the virtual world as well as the real world

Not out of the Trough of Disillusionment yet

Late last year, there was a good chart issued by Gartner, which was the Hype Cycle covering virtual worlds, for which we can pretty much read Second Life from the media’s perspective.

In spite of the fact that No 7 launched on Second Life just as the media slid into the Trough of Disillusionment, I took some comfort from the fact that the Slope of Enlightenment was not far off. Apparently, we all hoped too soon.

Virtual World News carries an interview with Steve Prentice of Gartner, who says we, and they were being a little optimistic, and that the curve really applies to the path of the technology and its adoption, rather than pervading attitudes.

 Steve also talks about the purpose people are trying to find in virtual worlds and that for adults, it is perhaps more difficult to pin down what fun means. I like his point, however hackneyed, that the reasons kids virtual worlds might have taken off to such a degree is that kids know how to have fun, and also that they are happy to have their activity directed, or restricted if you will.

Given that we are working towards Gartner’s prediction that by 2011 8 out of 10 internet users will be involved in a virtual world, it would seem that we still have some way to go in 3 years. I guess though we only have to look back 3 years to see how the adoption has spread, and think back to 3 years development of the web, say from 1996 to 1999.

I’ve done two media interviews on how Second Life fits into No 7’s overall strategy recently, and I get a sense of continuing interest from the media, without the overall hysteria and adoration that was prevalent in a lot of early 2007 coverage. Like those brands now looking and entering virtual worlds, it’s a considered balancing of pros and cons. Of course, there will always be a search for sensational headlines, good or bad, but with time comes balance.

So, we’ll keep looking for small glimmers of light that we are finally moving back upwards out of the trough, even if it’s not over yet.

Using virtual worlds for collaborative working

There’s a very good piece on CIO.com today, about companies working with virtual worlds as tools for employees, rather than for external customers, and this seems to be a growing trend. We heard from Diageo on this at the Virtual Worlds Forum, and IBM have made massive investment in this area, and now others are following their example.

Some of the concerns raised are of course valid, and ones that need to be overcome before this can be taken seriously within many businesses. First you have to get over the “virtual worlds are all games” barrier, but with more business examples building up by the day, then there will be a growing weight of evidence that they are much more than games, in many cases completely divorced from games.

Technology has been an issue, but this is changing every day.  With the developments at Multiverse and, I guess, any response and improvement from Linden, then the technology can only continue to improve. You only have to look how far things have come in four years, two years, even in the last year.

Audio is a bigger issues for businesses than it’s perhaps been for SL users. I’ve never been a fan of voice in SL, partly because of having to work out if I’ve got the capability and right bits of kit for it (other than ears and a mouth of course), but also because that would be my voice and I’m not sure that I’m ready to reveal that much real life personality into my virtual life. But if I was running a business version of my virtual life, then I can see it would be essential, and as normal as breathing.

At the Lexis conference yesterday, Justin Bovington from Rivers Run Red said that 65% of their enquiries in the last year have been about business to employee applications, so I can imagine this becoming a growing part of many of our working lives. Forrester Research released a report on this early this year, which will perhaps begin to move it up the agenda in a wider range of businesses around the world.

Multiverse launches Virtual Times Square

I was at a digital event organised by Lexis today, and very excited to see the Virtual Times Square from Multiverse. Although slightly dizzy, as the camera work owed a lot to Cloverfield and other proponents of handheld, fast turning cameras!

It’s not just interesting as a build in its own right, but also as an indicator of one of the possible future routes for virtual worlds. Justin from Rivers Run Red spoke about it being the next step, the evolution in immersive spaces. It would also seem to have the capability to get over one of the drawbacks of Second Life, namely how many people can gather in one place at the same time without it all falling apart.

Not to mention the seamless integration of other media from many different sources, giving it the dazzling array of other images and video content going on at the same time.

So what does it mean for Second Life? Who knows? I don’t even know what it means for virtual worlds. But I do know it looked incredibly exciting, not to mention very true to life. All the madness of Times Square was there (although they seemed to have missed the Charmin toilet complex, which is pretty special but not always there).

So, we’ll be watching this space, working to understand what it could mean and how, or if, it could, and should, fit into No 7’s digital strategy. But next time I’m hungry for a NYC fix, and not got the airfare, I know where I’m heading!

Image courtesy of Multiverse.