Wednesday, November 28, 2007
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We are still receiving requests on how to enter the Innovation Grant Program and it is closed for this time. The three innovations presented below are now in the making. We will announce a new round of the Innovation Grant Program in early Februray so keep working on great ideas and do come back and join us then!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
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First of all, thanks for all the submissions to the Grant Program! It was really interesting and great fun to go through them. We (Electrolux, Gronstedt Group and Millions of Us) have agreed upon selecting the following entrances and put them forward through to the Grant Program:
DJ Doubledown Tandino with the Product branding / Framing HUD
Hilary Mason with the InfoFez
Jean-Claude Roblique with the Landmark cabin
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
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Only two days are remaining to enter your submissions to the Electrolux Grant Program!
Friday, October 19, 2007
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Congratulations Doubledown Tandino!
Yesterday we celebrated the winners of the first phase of our award competition in the Innovision Hub. Watch the video from the last meeting when we kicked it off
here.
The 30 some entries ranged from the funny (like XXX Pinklady’s "Griefware: A device built and scripted for the soul purpose of making others lives miserable in SL") to actual innovations (like Marisa Naheed’s "InvenTidy: A device used to automatically sort inventory by name which also removes duplicate items")
The $100,000 Linden prize went to Doubledown Tandino for his word "Metapparatus - An all encompassing tool used in a virtual world to make interactions and processes easier." The other 30 participants in the word-creating exercise will earn $1,000 Lindens each as well. In his acceptance speech, Doubledown told us that "Metapparatus" is a term that he’s already using with his friends.
More info on the Innovation Grant Program coming soon!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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Join us at Innovision Hub at 21 CET / noon SL to find out who is the winner of our Invent-a-word competition! We will also be introducing our Innovation Grant Program. More info on that (and the winner of course) will be posted here after the event.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
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Submissions are flowing in to our first Second Life contest. You have until Sunday October 14th to enter your submission at our Innovision Hub (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Future/88/142/56) in-world. The challenge is to come up with a word for the things that make your virtual lives easier and more enjoyable. Some entrants have submitted more than just creative words - hold those ideas for the next competition that we’re kicking off on October 18th at noon SLT!
This is just a sample of some of the many entries you can read on our interactive wall in the Innovision Hub:
- InvenTidy (A device toautomatically sort inventory by name)
- Slgadgitrons
- Digiphernalia
- Duo-hickey
- Metapparatus
- Tranniescanner(a device that calculates the odds a female avatar is a male in RL)
- Digibuddy
- Transtalker (a multipurpose communication device)
The winner that we appoint, wins $100,000 Lindens!
Thursday, October 04, 2007
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Our giant light bulb hovering over a cardboard box was filled to capacity yesterday, during our grand opening! See the entire slide show at Flickr.
Moderator and DJ, Daphne Molinari, introduced Deva Bade, aka Carola Lundell, who gave the backdrop to Electrolux’ Second Life presence, recapping an ambitious research program of Second Life innovation. Read more about it in our report.
We also got to meet the design gurus for a panel discussion about the challenges of gadget making and the process of innovation in Second Life. The meeting turned to a fast and furious chat conversation about how to provide customer service of new innovations and how to integrate web sites and email into Second Life.
We acknowledged some of Second Life's leading gadget designers and innovators with our first "Innovision Awards." Ten winners each received a beautiful statuette to store away in their inventories. The award winners were:
Saeya Nyanda - creator of the PhotoSphere photography tool - The PhotoSphere is a modular, extensible studio photography tool that uses only 10 prims and provides almost 300 degrees of camera freedom. It includes a HUD to help control the add-on background texture packs and built in light spheres.
Shep Korvin - creator of the original Lucky Chair and various other viral marketing tools in Second Life - Shep's original viral marketing creation the "Lucky Chair" is now fairly ubiquitous in Second Life and has even seen emergent behavior form when bands of people created Lucky Chair Strike Force groups to round up content housed in Lucky Chairs. He's since developed an in-world auction sales system, and "MobVend"
which lowers the price for goods the more avatars in a defined radius.
MSo Lambert - creator of the Subscribe-o-Matic group information distribution tool - Subscribe-o-matic is a group update system which circumvents the flaws in the Linden provided group system. Subscribe-o-matic automatically generates an RSS feed for announcements and prevents the hated group IM chatter which no one can turn off.
FlipperPA Peregrine - creator of the SLTrivia.com system - SLTrivia is a resident created trivia question and answer system similar to the systems which are played in many RL bars. SLTrivia also supports banner advertising with engaged players who are enjoying themselves trying to answer trivia questions retrieved from an out-of-world database system.
Francis Chung - creator of the open-source Franimation AO system and the amazing Dominus Shadow - The Dominus Shadow is probably the best known car in Second Life. Styled after the classic Ford Mustang the Shadow can also turn itself into a hovercar. The Wet Ikon/Franamation animation override provides the basis for just about every animation overrider in Second Life. It was one of the first to take advantage of animation override permissions back in the very early days of Second Life.
Jorgen Friis - Created the Interactive Wall for Electrolux Innovision Hub which allows users to drop notecards which are read by the wall and stored inside the system for other users to read and share anything from word definitions to famous quotes with each other.
Keiki Lemieux - creator of the HUDDLES animation HUD - The HUDDLES system can animation not just the user of the system, but also other avatars. Additionally, it features one of the clearest and nicest looking animation activation HUDs in Second Life.
Doubledown Tandino - DJ extraordinaire - always has an innovative mix of house beats and cool jams over top - Every show's an adventure in layered sound and mashups.
Susan Steinbeck - Made a "only in Second Life" prim sculpture that changes and morphs shape as avatars touch it, and also created kiosk.net <http://kiosk.net> - the network content distribution system that vends the art gallery notecard all over Second Life.
Flea Bussy - The man who runs Grendel's Children, already known as one of the most amazing prim and texture artist in Second Life with an incredible sim sized store to house the amazing creations of Grendel's children.
After the awards ceremony, we all headed down in a crowded elevator to the bottom of the built where Daphne unveiled the Electrolux invent-a-word competition. Denizens have until October 18 to submit ideas of a word that describes appliances in Second Life that makes life easier. Just drop your word and definitions on our interactive wall in our Innovision Hub for the chance to win a cool 100,000 Linden Dollars. The winner will be announced at our next meeting, October 18, noon SLT/3.00 PM EDT/21.00 continental Europe (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Future/88/142/56)
Next, Daphne turned the Innovision Hub into a dance floor where people could rock their avatars with the hottest club tracks in all of virtual space. After all, in Second Life no one knows that you can't dance!
Taking the pulse of a changing culture is a challenging task. The attached report on Electrolux research in Second life summarizes our findings about Second Life culture. Our inquiries focused on the human element – what do people do in this space? How do they do it? We have also probed for ideas of future directions, both by trying to brainstorm needs that have not yet been met and by carefully noticing people's goals and activities. By building a careful understanding of Second Life resident traits and customs, we may begin to understand how notions of success and popularity are constructed in a virtual environment.
We surveyed three groups of Second Life residents: 1) influencers, 2) average users, and 3) power users regarding their experiences. Although their technical understanding of Second Life differed greatly, the needs and frustrations they unveiled were amazingly similar. Please read on and give us your feedback!
Today at noon SL time (21 CET) we will discuss the results with some notable SL inventores and also unveil our Invent-a-word competition. Join us at the Innovision Hub!
Friday, September 28, 2007
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Electrolux approaches residents of Second Life the same way we approach first life consumers: We listen before we act. One of the first things we noticed when talking to Second Life residents was that there’s not even a good word for “appliances” in Second Life. What do you call the things that make your virtual lives easier and enable you to socialize with other people and share content? We decided to settle it with a competition! Stay tuned for more info on when and how!
Friday, September 14, 2007
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Electrolux is proud to sponsor its first virtual digs in Second Life, the “Innovision Hub”, and this companion blog. Whether you're Little Red Riding Hood or Batman, a fish or a furry, or just an enhanced version of the real you, you're invited to teleport over to the giant light bulb hovering over a cardboard box, where we will host a series of meetings and hold contests for Second Life residents. The Innovision hub is a tribute to the innovators of the virtual and real world. It contains a gallery of some of the last century’s innovators that have made our lives more livable. Portraits of celebrity innovators like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney share space with lesser known characters like Otto Frederick Rohwedder, the inventor of sliced bread and Melitta Bentz, the genius behind the melitta filter. They all share our passion for user-friendly innovations. Mr. Jobs didn’t invent the first portable digital music player, but he invented the first truly useful player. Ms. Bentz didn’t invent coffee, but her melitta filter brought the java brew to our homes. That’s the kind of innovations Electrolux is all about, products that are thoughtfully designed to meet real user needs.