Ok, so I missed the actual grand opening, sometimes the timings of this things dont fit well in a UK based Real Life.
However I did pop along to see what Amercan Appareil were doign with their first store.
It is a convincing looking store, and whilst I am not up on this particular set of brand values I think I see who they are aiming at.

Most interesting was this poster though, buy the same item for teh real you as in the SL store and get a 15% discount. Its not quite buy the virtual and real one as a single transaction but its very close.

The video wall mock up was interesting. I am assuming that this is a video texture, with a set of see through TV’s jumbled around to make it look like a multi tv video wall.

The inside is styled as one might expect, though the crates of “free beer” are an interesting adjustment to what you might expect in a real store.

Timeless Prototype, a long time and very influential member of Second Life and I met in Real Life today and had, as you would expect, a very interesting discussion around Second Life and around metaverse concepts.
We were both already aware of one anothers standing in the community and various contributions. Timeless is the creator both of the London Eye I blogged about recently and the famous Multi Gadget.

I will not expose any Real Life details as that’s for Timeless to choose to do.
However, we certainly are on the same wavelength, and are both totally committed to the future that we can see, feel and already experience with these metaverse concepts.
As with the ‘business’ exchanges with various key influencers in Second Life we all seem to be very experienced people, who have mentally qualified this direction as extremely significant.
Significant enough to invest our own time and money, and convince people around us to join the cause. Those of you who look up our Second Life eightbar group will notice the membership topping the hundred mark. All individuals around the world, who all have the same employer.
I came back home from our meeting, even more inspired to find that my wife was sitting reading the Saturday Times and a 2 page spread on Second Life. Also mentioned on game tommorrow my Andy Piper
Anyway, thankyou Timeless, and I hope we get to work together somewhere and ride this incredible wave.

I have recently been trying to consider, in order to explain, why there is such an effective and instant bond created when people collaborate in Second Life. Giff Constable from electric sheep
explains a particular interaction within a team and also adds “The one thing you hear over and over about Second Life is how it triggers some sort of psychological reaction in the brain that makes you feel like you are WITH somebody else, even though in reality they are thousands of miles away in front of a computer screen.”
I have a few theories. One is that currently the people who are using SL are the people who know how to communicate in this sort of way, the sense of ownership and investment being a self fulfilling virtuous circle. Which could equate to believing our own hype.
The other is that we have evolved to become more literate in electronic communication, and up to now we have been restricted by the interface. Having the experience that we all tend to have had up to now SL is such a breathe of fresh air that it opens up some things that have been squashed for so long by emails and documents. Like suddenly moving from B&W silent movies to colour surround sound and a plot we can influence.
A few of us have said also how it is changing how we look at real life, I certainly look at the architecture buildings in a new way. An adrenalin charged game entertains, enthrawls and then you need a rest. Metaverse interaction in Second Life is a continuing flow of ideas, chance meetings, humour filled interludes, discovery of other things as well as a design and tech geek environment. I can be talking cross corporation collaboration one minute and writing some code the next. This makes it more fulfilling, without a context break of changing systems, travelling to meetings, dealing with bureacracy etc.
This is not to say it is better than real life but it does allow for a more flowing approach to operating in multiple threads and modes. When you know the other people in the environment are there for the same sort of reasons you are then immediately more on one another wavelengths.

“Hugo Dalgleish” a fellow eightbar member in SL pinged to to say I should come and see his Amazon interface in Second Life. Spookily there were also some posts on New World Notes, and on the Amazon Web services blog about similar ideas.
we could be on the edge of a very exciting development.
Updated: with this bigger article on Hugo and his SL partners work at

I came back from holiday in France the other day so had missed some of the initial coverage of this build such as over at 3dpoint.com. It did not take me long to hit Second Life and see how things were progressing. Hursley Island has grown, lots of builds and lots of people. I did, as per usual though, start to explore the wider world though.
The most impressive, awe inspiring and also touching, is the very large build by many of Second Life’s leading lights for the American cancer society Second Life relay for Life 2006.
I did the entire walk, though only once so far. I bumped into many of the famous Second Lifers, Spin Martin whom I always bump into!, Cubey Terra and Timeless Prototype to name but a few.
Timeless had an excellant build for the UK/London, having been on the real London eye a few weeks ago this made it even more personal for me. Personal experience being the cornerstone of social computing.

Cubey Terra was helping people base jump from the eiffel tower

The whole build has lots of interesting architectural points, experiences and generally has a more Epcot than Epcot feel to it.
My photo blog for the walk can be found here with the slurls to the individual element, but get a pedometer and talk the walk, donate as you see fit.

UPDATE : As Eric Rice has reported the relay raised $31,520.76 USD

Cnet has a post saying that MLB.com were suprised at the extent of the positive reaction they got to the homerun derby in Second Life.
I did get taking to someone from MLB.com at the home run derby event in the foyer. The reason was simply we had the same game surname. Potato being one of the less common Second Life choices.
This is another example of a strange trigger for interaction. So we have choice of surname ‘cousins’ we obviously have a whole set of mandelbrots in eightbar, location of virtual land next to other influential land being more important than a catchy URL, newbie greeting and helping because other people helped me when I arrived and being at the same ‘webpage’/3d build at the same time, to simply liking someones work enough to tell them. All very intersting extra things that drive interaction in the metaverse.
Anyway hi to Justin Potato from Epredator Potato.

I am currently having a late night session sitting here in a baseball stadium with quite a crowd. There are all sort here Lindens (including Phillip). Cory Edo and Satchmo Prototype and the rest of the Electric Sheep Company. The ubiquitous Spin Martin is in the same section as I am. FlipperPa Peregrine, who happened to be around in London during Wimbledon. Busy at work on the Second Life Community Convention
A few people from mlb.com, including a virtual cousin in Justin Potato (Me being epredator potato) are also present.
Algernon Spackler even managed to get in late.
We all gathered in the shop at the start, looking at the great merchandise. Getting our free foam hands to wave.
So far my L$1000 is well spent. As with all these events its the crowd that make it. Avatar wise we were all fairly well sorted. I dropped my usual predator look to help with any lag.
I am not sure I managed to follow the event, thats just a cultural thing.
They had cute little big headed representation of the players, a live updating scoreboard, three screen to watch the live stream and a well crafted live event. It was low lag, all very entertaining, good conversation, a sense of spirit. Everything a live event should be. As lindens improve the platform you can see how the events will easily get more and more crowded.

More pictures here

Over at Terranova there is a good article on trademarks in a virtual world. This is something that I have a keen interest in. in particular given the work we have been looking at for Wimbledon. Doing a proof of concept, but as an individual who hapens to work at IBM, partnering with the AELTC at Wimbledon, I was very aware of the risks to the brand values of including trademarks and player likenesses in a Second Life Demo.
Equally in a metaverse environment such as second life, it is not just the fact the logo placement is there, its the fact other people can see you interact with that placement through your avatar. People can sit on things, dance on things etc.
Trademarks guardians therefore have much more to worry about than just ‘being’, they have to worry about people ‘doing’ things with them.

Hank Hoodoo from the electric sheep company sent me an IM that I got this morning in Second Life, saying the baseball stadium for tonights MLB.com HomeRun Derby 2006 was open for a look around. I had wrriten about this before but at the time I could only look it it from afar.
So I popped along and took a tour. All this is linked to the work on Wimbledon Tennis this year that I have been demonstrating to customers and fellow IBMers, on the potential of Second Life and general metaverse technology in several areas. One key are is the ability to represent a brand and an experience in a much more immersive and sociable way. Event are attended by othre people, interested people. The more events I attend the more I learn how they can be run and the benefits and risks that they bring. This is aside from the other trends around avatar based marketing, social computing and education.
The baseball stadium has been built by people who specialize in this sort of building. Designers and programmers working together. Some people focus on structure others on textures, others on code.
On approach this is very impressive. It has a very authentic feel as a ‘real’ place

The foyer is a shop for branded goods, some team medallions, free foam hands and some nice baseball caps, as you would expect

The approach is suitably stadium like

The internal of the stadium is a baseball diamond representation. I am assuming this will allow avat or object positioning to indicate which base a player is on.
The event will be video cast on the giant screen. There is also a scoreboard on the side of the screen. I am not sure if this will be scripted or manually changed. I am assuming there is some sort of data feed from the event.

The seating areas look a little sparse, but this is due to ensuring that there is a low lag environment. As Second Life scales up these seat numbers will increase.
One approach to event scaling is simply to clone the build on multiple servers, this could even be done automatically as sims filled up. It certainly the on demand approach we would take if we had control over our own servers for such events.

I am looking forward to attending the event. I am not a huge baseball fan, but I appreciate it enough, and want to see how it goes with my metahporical rather than virtual research hat on.
Good luck to the team doing it.