May 9th, 2008
BreakAway Ltd. bought the license for a project, funded by Federal government in Texas and developed by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, regarding a virtual learning platform for medical training: Pulse!!
This is what Dr. Claudia L. McDonald has to say:
“Through our collaboration with TAMU-CC to develop a platform solution for teaching and training medical professionals, we realize the urgent need for medical organizations to augment their traditional training methods with game-based technology such as Pulse!!,” BreakAway CEO Doug Whatley said in a statement. “We are honored to be able to use Pulse!! technology as the starting point for delivering virtual learning tools to supplement medical training using a simulated 3D world that replicates the actual physical and emotional environment that medical professionals face whether it’s in a hospital, clinic or on the battlefield.”
This kind of tool is very interesting, despite Second Life is still too primitive, too slow, and not enough detailed to support such things… but time will come.
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By sbrunozzi -- 1 comment
May 9th, 2008
Great news from the official Linden Lab blog: the new virtual land store is open (in beta).
You can find all the informations to register and use the beta version on the blog post.
I think that the land store needed a refresh, and a better usability; I played around a little bit with this new one, and I can say it seems quite good!
Thanks Lindens!
[image source
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By sbrunozzi -- 0 comments
May 8th, 2008
What Second Life is missing is a real “virtual” democracy, in which residents can vote and be elected. It’s something that you can see on Erepublik.com, a quite new web-based game in which you, as a virtual citizen, engage in economy, politics and war.
Now EVE Online, another huge virtual world, is opening up for democracy: according to Reuters:
“Sixty-one candidates are vying for nine spots in open voting on EVE’s website. The top vote getters will become the official representatives of EVE’s player community, and flown to Reykjavik, Iceland to share their thoughts on the game at the company’s headquarters.”
Great! When will Linden show us something like this?
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By sbrunozzi -- 2 comments
May 8th, 2008
Torley Linden did what I’ve been waiting for: he better organized the video tutorials wiki page, making easier to find the video you need.
“One of the new features is that when you view the lists for “Tip of the Week” (30+ of ‘em) and “Quicktips” (75+!), columns can be sorted by category! Also, I’ll be updating the main page regularly to show highlights from my most recent videos.”
Check it out!
Tags: second life, video-tutorialShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 0 comments
May 6th, 2008
UgoTrade has a new great interview with Mitch Kapor (yes, THAT Mitch Kapor) about 3D interfaces for Second Life!
This is exciting, and Mitch says we’re gonna have them by Christmas 2009! Great!
Tags: 3D interfaces, mitch-kapor, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 1 comment
May 6th, 2008
Wagner James Au writes on Business Week about Marketing in Second Life; in his opinion, marketing is far from dead. Companies need to understand Second Life, in order to be successful.
I agree with him: Second Life has lots of potential, but suffered from a huge hype, like the Internet just before the bubble exploded.
At the moment, Second Life has almost 15 million registered users, but the real number of people actively using it is below a million. It’s not a huge market, is it? Or, better, it’s a niche market, an early-adopters market, in which you can find precious value if you dig in the right place.
Read the article, is very interesting, and let me know what is your opinion on this!
Tags: marketing, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 0 comments
May 5th, 2008
Wagner thinks that, given some approximation, Linden Lab is earning a gross of about a hundred millions a year, and pays about half of it in expenses.
Let’s take his calculations (he honestly says that he’s not an expert of the matter), and modify them according to my little and humble IT experience:
Linden Income
a) There are 14,600 islands, of which about 7,000 were sold in the last 12 months. They bring a one time sales fee of 1500$ (average), it means 10.5 M$ per year (but this figure is growing, almost doubling every year, so we can assume that for the next 12 months, it will be 14,000 times 1,200 USD = about 17 M$). Wagner says 17 M$. (too much, some island were already sold before one year ago!).
b) Monthly fees: 14,600 times 295$, it means roughly 4.3 M$ monthly, or 51.6 M$ annually.
There is also some land feed on the mainland continents (about half of that earning), so let’s say 2.1 M$ monthly, or 25.2 M$ annually.
Add the premium accounts (92,000 accounts, paying 10$ minus the L$, makes about 400,000 $ per month, or 4.8 M$ per year), add commissions from currency transactions, roughly 1.5 M$ a year.
Total is 51.6 + 25.2 + 4.8 + 1.5 = 83.1 M$ / year.
Total earnings is 93.6 M$/year. Wagner says 96 M$/year.
Linden Expenses
250 employees = 250 times $110,000 = -27.5 M$
Offices (San Francisco, Mountain View, Seattle, Boston, and Dover in UK) cost about 1/3 of salaries (it’s an european average), so let’s say -9 M$/year. Total up till now is -36,5 M$/year, while Wagner is at -30 M$/year.
The grid is about 5,000 servers (Wagner forgot a thousand), you have to consider:
buying and deploying 1,800 of them this year = 1,000 USD times 1,800 = -1.8 M$.
powering, running, fixing 5,000 servers, and mantaining the grid: 2,500 $ times 5,000 = -12.5 M$.
bandwidth for 50,000 concurrent users on average, streaming 40 megs of data per hour = 50,000 * 40Mbyte/hour * 24 * 365 = 17.52 Tbyte/year. You need 50,000 * 40 Mbyte/hour / 3600 = 555 Mbyte/sec, or 4 Gbit/sec of bandwidth for that.
That bandwidth could cost another -2 M$/year.
Publicity, legal, insurance? It’s ok to set it at -5 M$, as Wagner’s extimate.
Total expenses is -36.5 -1.8 -12.5 -2 -5 = -53.3 M$/year. Wagner is at -50 M$.
Income, minus expenses: 93.6 M$ - 53.3 M$ = roughly 40 M$/year. Not bad.
Also, my extimate is very close to Wagner’s. We’re not expert, and if we say 40 M$ or 50 M$ it means we could be both right, or close to truth.
What do you say? Do you think they earn a lot more, or less? What we forgot?
Tags: linden lab, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 2 comments
May 5th, 2008
In an interview available on the Guardian website, Philip Rosedale explains what he thinks about the future of Second Life:
“… I think that it’ll become more pervasive, especially if we open it up and standardize it. I’m not necessarily saying that this one company will control all those servers. No. We’re working on systems where you can have the servers outside of our company. But, yeah, it will become the Web. I believe that what we’re working on right now will become a more common way of using the Internet to retrieve information essentially…”
I really hope that Second Life will evolve into a standardized protocol, which can be used by different virtual worlds… worldwide. It’s like having, or not having, a common HTML for the web. We NEED it. Period.
Tags: philip-rosedale, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 0 comments
May 5th, 2008
According to Reuters, Lego is preparing a great move into the Virtual Worlds, launching a “Lego Universe”, with a pay subscription service.
[image source]
Lego Universe is designed by NetDevil (Colorado, USA), and will give users the ability to interact with classic Lego bricks, and probably with Mindstorms too.
Lego Universe will allow people to order physical versions of their online creations, which will foster Lego adoption and usage worldwide.
I’ve always loved playing with Lego, and I think this is a smart move… we’ll see how Lego Universe will compare to Second Life, and other virtual worlds.
Tags: lego, lego universe, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 0 comments
May 3rd, 2008
If you have doubt, questions, or are a bit confused about LAND, watch out Linden Lab’s Land video tutorials, which include: basics, land use, region and parcel prim limits, selling and buying parcels, land options, parcel access controls, property lines and land owners, joining and subdividing parcels, terraforming.
Let me know if you find them useful!
Tags: linden lab, second lifeShare This
By sbrunozzi -- 1 comment
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