Thursday, October 04, 2007 #

GRAND OPENING

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!

posted @ Thursday, October 04, 2007 9:33 PM | Feedback (0)

Findings on Second Life culture

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!

posted @ Thursday, October 04, 2007 12:57 AM | Feedback (0)

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