Tonight was another Second Life Future Salon meeting inside the virtual world. Unlike the others, I was heavily involved in this presentation; a nice practice run for what I’d like to do and incentive to get some things accomplished more quickly. And while the small crowd, comprised of some interesting people (including Make’s Phillip Torrone), was appreciative of speaker Mike Frumin‘s presentation, it seemed awefully quiet to me. I’m not sure if it was the inclusion of streaming audio into an effectively mute world, or if people are still wrapping their heads around all this technology. Maybe a little of both.

You can read more about the virtual meeting in the announcements for it over on the SLFuture Salon blog (Link 1, Link 2) and you might want to keep an eye out for a recap as well. I’m fairly certain it will include a link to a podcast.

As for the images, the top image is the “fruminator” himself during his slideshow presentation. The middle image shows the venue; not packed but a fair crowd for a Thursday evening. And the lowest one is an overview of the venue on which I’d been working.

The “protoSat” isn’t entirely complete; there are things I wanted to evaluate during this event so that I could make changes in preparation for a genuine virtual world opening. So it was a good learning experience for me which I hope will be useful going forward. I have to admit though, I think the technical side will be a cakewalk compared to some of what I’m hoping to accomplish.

Now this one got a chuckle out of me. Tony Walsh over on Clickable Culture reports (Link) on the release of a new web application from Second Life developer Linden Lab called SLurl. From Linden Lab employee Reuben Steiger’s web post regarding this new tool (Link):

SLurl solves a big problem we’ve had — how can I tell someone where I am in Second Life so that they can find me in an easy and contextualized way, just by clicking? In the past, I’d create a location that looked like this secondlife://simname/x/y/z . This worked just fine provided you had Second Life installed, but it made completely failed for people without Second Life. Hence one could only “preach to the converted”. Not any more.

This will definitely get some use. Be sure to go see the creative(!) way Tony used it to address an issue about which he often posts (hey, is that a hotlink to a Brands in Games blog image?). In the meantime, I’m going to have to go figure out how to use this so I can show my mother where on the map my virtual home is located. That way she no longer has to wander aimlessly around the website’s map (Link). I suppose this will speed her upgrade.

SLurl as viral advertising vehicle. This really could be interesting.

{Image’s sources: Linden Lab and Brands in Games}

{Update: There are a couple of comments in Reuben Steiger’s post which are worth noting. The first is that the Virtual Suburbia weblog is updating to the new SLurl system (that might be nice for a future State of Play virtual architecture competition); and SL resident Ordinal Malaprop has created the “SlurlBuilder” to make this all even easier – Link}

Virtual world branding expert Betsy Book has officially announced she’s joined the “There” crowd. This answers a question I sent her last week after hearing rumors of this development inside Second Life, a rival virtual world.

Her post over on Terra Nova announcing her new position is short, so I’m just going to lift the whole thing and repost it here (Link):

Just wanted to let the TN community know that I’ve started this week on staff at Makena Technologies (the folks who bring you There) as the new Director of Product Management. In this role I’ll be focusing on There’s in-world marketing programs, merchandising and events as well as helping to develop and implement new product features. As many of you know, I’ve been intrigued by There since its beta period. Now I’m thrilled to have the chance to gain some first-hand experience with the development of a social virtual world product and I couldn’t be happier to have this opportunity. Looking forward to great things in 2006!

This is good news I think. Few people are as intimately familiar with virtual world branding as Ms. Book, so it sounds like some big changes are in store. They could certainly use better news (see this post for some background – Link) … and Second Life could use better competition.

I decided early on not to invest my time in There. Perhaps things are finally turning around and now would be a good time to join. If nothing else I could maybe gauge first hand any impact she might have.

I caught word of this guy’s portfolio (Link) over on Core77. Not only is this an amazing online portfolio, but the case studies do an excellent job of documenting his thinking process – the kind of process many creatives go through. If you’re a designer, explore the entire site. If you’re a marketing person or brand strategist, at least check out the Wachovia and Brinker projects. He may be a student, but his observations are no less informative.

{Image Copyright © 2006 Okay Samurai Multimedia}

More and more I’m starting to hear top-level corporate officers say the same thing I figured out years ago and which I recently read in Mark Cuban’s blog entry – intangible products are “experiences”. You might want to read a couple of my earlier posts on this topic (Link 1, Link 2) before you listen to Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s CEO Steven J. Heyer discuss their new marketing programs. This guy “gets it”. Ad Age has a video clip that’s short and very much worth hearing (via their article – Link); not because anyone reading this blog is into hotels, but because you’re probably into virtual worlds, product development or branding.

Funny. After watching the trailer for PKD’s “A Scanner Darkly”, while hearing this guy talk the first thing that came to mind was Roy asking Leon, “Did you get your precious photos?” (that would be from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”, another PKD adaption, for those of you who don’t recognize the line).