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IBM’s Next Big Thing in Second Life

Published by damek May 7th, 2007 in General, Second Life and Tretiak Media. 1 Comment

IBM Benelux Island

I am very proud to announce our latest project! Dalian and I have been working on the latest IBM Island here in Second Life called IBM Benelux, which will be a combination R&D Lab and communications center for IBM’s BeNeLux division (that’s Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemberg). We tried to make the island fit well with the innovative nature of IBM while at the same time taking advantage of the SL environment. Take a ride in our pneumatic tube system, view the videos, ride the jetskis, plunge the depths with our submarines, or soar through the skies in the official BeNeLux Hover Car. There are lots of spaces for meetings, lectures, and an upcoming client center where IBM hopes to host client exhibits.

I’ll post more once we open to the public and begin to work with the IBM BeNeLux division on the next phase of the project. Kudos to Dalian Hansen for his excellent skills in developing the virtual architecture of the Island.

Virtual World Transition: What SL Business Model Works Best? by Bill Nissim

Published by damek March 31st, 2007 in General, virtual worlds and business. 2 Comments

A good friend of mine, Bill Nissim, recently published his latest article on virtual worlds. You may have seen his previous article here and here, which was about my very own SLQuery.com search platform. Bill has graciously allowed me to reprint his latest article in full, here on the Virtual Searches blog. Thanks Bill!

Many successful companies have made the transition from the Real World (RL) to a three-dimensional realm called Second Life (SL) – a virtual world steeped in commercialism. The rationale behind these “transitions” is vast and ranges from attracting press coverage to brand engagement with potential clients. Whatever the desired outcome and whether by design or happenstance, millions of dollars are spent daily in Linden Lab’s environment.

Continue reading ‘Virtual World Transition: What SL Business Model Works Best? by Bill Nissim’

Virtual Worlds 2007

Published by damek March 24th, 2007 in General, Second Life and virtual worlds. 0 Comments

Virtual Worlds 2007

I’ll be attending the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in New York next week. So, if you’re there during that time, look me up. You can reach me via the contact form on our Tretiak Media site. I’ll be checking email periodically.

How to find a name for a subculture

Published by damek March 22nd, 2007 in Second Life, Society and Subculture. 1 Comment

Haven’t blogged in, well…let’s just say forever. So to start things off again, I offer this little nugget of wisdom. :-D

A friend of mine in Second Life, Deeep Witte, recently sent me a hilarious, but true, analysis of buzzword phraseology.

How to find a name for a subculture

Why Second Life? As Lori Singer, Calvin Klein Fragrances’ VP of Global Marketing, puts it in the release, “ck IN2U speaks the language of a generation connected by technology — the aptly named technosexuals.” Unfortunately, she also goes on to note that Calvin Klein has trademarked that word — not an indication that the company is completely in step with the generation it’s trying to reach.

Find a 5-6 letter greek word (http://phobialist.com/) remove phobia and add sexuals and then just find 50-60 people and tag them as being that. Then run to a large ignoramus company and sell them the concept. Some more groups that you can uniquely identify in SL:

  • narcosexuals: people “connected” by their usage of drugs.
  • agorasexuals: people who “connected” in wide open / crowded space.
  • aerosexuals: people “connected” by air. this group is very desirable in outerspace ;-)
  • barosexuals: people “connected” by gravity. also called obesosexuals or just fat people.
  • chronosexuals: people “connected” by time. these are your basic prostitutes in SL.
  • monosexuals: people “connected” by themselves.
  • theosexuals: people who had sex with Lindens…

In the next few months you will find a ton of useless products being launched in SL targeted to these new connected generation of people. I warned you guys: you can still trademark these words. If you become the next SL millionaire then please remember this humble centosexual (person “connected” by new ideas)…

Deeeep Witte

New Blog Address

Published by damek January 17th, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

I’ve decided to change my blog address to blog.slquery.com for all future posts regarding the SLQuery project. This new address has the advantage of being better associated with the SLQ site itself. Most of what I’ll write about concerns slquery.com and what we’re doing to further information gathering and retrieval within SL, so it made more sense to use the new address. The previous address will still be available for archival purposes though.

Please subscribe to the RSS feeds available at blog.slquery.com if you are subscribing. Thank you!

New Look for SLQuery.com

Published by damek January 17th, 2007 in SLQuery.com. 0 Comments

SLQuery.comOver the weekend I updated the slquery.com site with some fantastic new graphics that Dalian Hansen put together for me. We tweaked the site to better express the services that we’re providing as well as give it a stronger, more professional look.

I believe we’ve succeeded! I’m quite pleased with the the way it turned out. The organization of available products and services is more easily defined and the new graphics give the site a fresh look. More updates are coming…

Also note that I’ve changed the blog address to blog.slquery.com as it has the advantage of being better associated with the site itself. Most of what I’ll write about concerns this site and what we’re doing to further information gathering and retrieval within SL, so it made more sense to use this address. The previous address will still be available for archival purposes though.

SLQuery.com Version 2.4 is Ready!

Published by damek January 7th, 2007 in SLQuery.com and Second Life. 0 Comments

I’m very proud to announce the latest round of updates to the slquery.com product line. This is a big update and comes with some exciting new features on our previous products, plus the introduction of a new search billboard called the SLQ infoStation.

SLQuery.com is continuing to expand and gain more exposure, so expect more enhancements and performance improvements in the coming months. You may also notice the new kiosks and posters that are being placed throughout the grid. This a new campaign we’re unveiling to gain even more interest in SLQ products and services.

Introducing the SLQ infoStation

New to this release is the SLQ infoStation, a free public kiosk for Second Life that links to a web-based instant message system. Jump into chat or invite your friends from either RL or SL.

Plus, it includes all the power of the SLQ infoHUD unplugged. You can walk right up to an infoStation and search for items, news, blog entries, the web, amazon.com and more! View images for items submitted to the site or see what the latest SL news is directly from slquery.com.

This version also comes with a direct link to search the Second Life Library 2.0 via a focused search against all the Info Island projects.

SLQ infoBox v2.4 Release Notes

The infoBox (previously infoKit) has been updated with some significant performance improvments. A new buffer system has been developed to manage memory issues and speed up transfers to the site.

This release also introduces the new notecard module, which let’s you add entries to the site by simply filling out a notecard. You can now include descriptions, tags, and image keys when uploading to the site.

A new cloaking feature has been added to the infoBox, which let’s you make the box completely invisible. In addition, the box prims are changed to a phantom state so that you can walk through the box without worrying about tripping over invisible prims.

Finally, a new progress bar has been added, which shows you how far along in the process the box is during uploads to the site.

Unfortunately, there is no upgrade path to the v2.4 series. Future updates will include the option to use an upgrade disc. But due to some of the changes in this release you will need to transfer your items to the new boxes manually.

SLQ infoHUD v2.4 Release Notes

The infoHUD has had quite a few performance improvements added to it along with some bug fixes.

  • Removed the word “teleport” from item results
  • When opening a teleport map, the HUD will now move out of the way automatically
  • Fixed flight script not setting correctly on rez
  • Image now closes when main HUD window closes
  • Image now clears and closes when clicking on a new item
  • When an in-world texture image is available, the “more…” button now shows an image icon
  • Changed the teleport icon to a lightning bolt, which better describes it’s purpose
  • Adjusted the positioning of instructional text
  • Other minor bug fixes and texture adjustments

Please note that our in-world update server recently crashed and so you will not be able to automatically update the infoHUD from previous versions.

This is a great release and is starting to show the power of the SLQ engine, so I’m excited to see how far it will go.

QQ, the SLQuery Bear

Published by damek December 15th, 2006 in General and SLQuery.com. 0 Comments

QQ, the SLQuery bearA few days ago, Dalian Hansen introduced our very own bear named QQ. In the same tradition as the various collectible Linden Bears, QQ is free to share and trade.

And QQ has become quite popular! Within a few days of his release, QQ has been downloaded over 30 times. Not bad for a little bear that hasn’t had any PR. I didn’t realize there were that many collectors out there, but I’m glad they like him.

You can get QQ at SLExchange, SLBoutique, or at my new Headquarters in Second Life. The HQ is still under development, but I expect to make a formal announcement of it soon.

So thanks, QQ, for spreading the word about SLQuery.com. :-)

500 Members and growing!

Published by damek December 13th, 2006 in SLQuery.com. 0 Comments

I’m proud to announce that the slquery.com site has just reached past the 500 registered member mark. Many of these are from the apez.biz site run by Cenji Neutra. He has graciously provided a steady stream of new members and products from his site to both help the SLQ system get up and running as well as provide him with additional search features for his own clients.

The site seems to be growing at a rate of about 6 new members a day right now. Not necessarily turbo speed, but it’s still growth. I’ll be interested to see how well it does in the coming months as I roll out the new infoStations and updates to the infoHUD and infoKits.

A few other statistics you may be interested in:

  • Kits Distributed: 1,268
  • Active Items: 8,054
  • Active boxes: 71
  • Active news entries: 142
  • ACtive blog entries: 39

So, it’s slow growth, but we’re growing nonetheless. I think the site needs some more aggressive PR and an active advertisting campaign to really see the growth I’m looking for. Up till now, though, I’ve been concentrating on building out the site and seeing what kind of interest there was in it.

An interesting and important trend of great interest to me though, is that the site is becoming more than just a search engine. It’s transforming into an information platform for other in-world projects. An external database for SL.

For instance, Abbey Zenith of the Second Life Library 2.0 and Info Island has entered over 480 items into the database through the new notecard enabled infoKits. These items are part of the larger library search system we’re putting together so that anyone in SL can search the various info islands to find out where that information is located.

Another example concerns my partnership with SL Business Magazine. I’ve included the ability to retrieve their latest issues and free gifts directly from the infoHUDs and the upcoming infoStations. Together, we’re building out a networked set of kiosks, HUDs, and information stations that will enable anyone within SL to gather relevant business data and news from anywhere within the grid.

I’m seeing the SLQ system evolving more and more into this platform for distributed information. Search will always be a part of the site, but I think some of the more interesting projects will be related to the distribution networks that get built as a result of the research and development put into the slquery.com site to begin with.

Stay tuned, I’m sure this is just the beginning for SLQ.

Update to SLQ Web Tab Profiles

Published by damek December 11th, 2006 in General, SLQuery.com and Second Life. 0 Comments

I’ve updated the web tab profiles available through slquery.com so that they now include navigational buttons such as back, forward, home, and refresh.

In addition, clicking on images for items now shows correctly sized within the web tab browser.

And finally, clicking on an item’s more information link also shows correctly sized within the web tab browser.

I’m confident these changes will make using the SLQ profiles much nicer in the long run.

Enjoy! Damek

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