Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

SmallWorlds is a virtual world currently in beta. It runs entirely in your browser, so you don't need to install a client program. (It's based on Adobe Flex technology I believe, so you just need Flash.)

It is not made of worlds or islands, but is a collection of rooms. When you sign up for free, you get your own room that you can decorate. On the image you see me and my cat pet shopping for some furniture.

What is cool is how they integrate for exampe YouTube video's: you can have a TV player set, and watch with other avatars to YouTube video. The place is also packed with all kind of games to play, and I think they are working on an API set to include your own games in there. Now, would it not be cool to play trivia quizzes in this virtual world with questions that come from this site? :-) Just dreaming out loud.
Anyway, looked promising...

Labels: Second Life, smallworlds, virtual worlds

I've been planning to revisit Second Life ever since I got my more powerful computer. A couple of weeks ago I tried, but of course had forgotten my password. And the online retrieval didn't work, and just referred me to make a US based support call. Right. Not going to happen.

Today the password reset did work, so I made my reappearance on Second Life after about 6 months of inactivity. One striking change: you now have to agree to an empty terms and conditions. (See screenshot). I took the risk and was back in. There have been a few improvements in the time I was away. The most remarkable and high on my wish list: they have voice communication now! But Second Life is still a very lonely place unless you make appointments or have events. I teleported to about 10-15 places and found myself all alone on every single one of them. And I can't say the performance is much better than on my older computer, in spite of having a QuadCore processor and 4 GB of RAM memory now. Buildings still reveal themselves very slowly.
The IBM islands have also changed, and there are much more of them. Even a dedicated one to the Benelux region. On one of the IBM islands there is a cool water slide, try it out! And the SOA group (that's acronym talk for Service Oriented Architecture) even made a kind of learning experience / game.

Second Life is still the biggest virtual environment, but not the only one. I've been in ActiveWorlds also lately. For a comparison of different virtual platforms, please visit :

http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/

Labels: Second Life, virtual worlds

Told you so: the first intranet experiments for virtual worlds are showing up. Both IBM and Sun are building a corporate kind of Second Life, or metaverse. The principle is the same, but it is within the well protected walls of your own organisation, and within complete control. Time will tell if there is a market for this.

You can read about IBM's and Sun's experiments in this GigaOM article by James Wagner.

Labels: metaverse, Second Life, virtual worlds