Massively^™

While the announcement of the Google Lively public beta may have taken many by surprise, apparently it did not take Linden Lab unawares -- their Second Life messages were already lined up and ready to go.

Indeed considering that information about Lively's launch was available to a number of people who were close to Linden Lab, either as partners or ex-staffers, it seems silly to suggest that Linden Lab might not have known Lively's public beta launch date, unless those contacts were aflame with considerable, searing resentment.

Wheezing, clanking and dripping oil from dark and unnameable apertures, one of Linden Lab's most neglected subsystems -- the marketing machine -- arose from it's years-long slumber and went about it's ponderous, mechanical business.

There's a certain amount of background anticipation among Second Life users about the "very important announcement" that Linden Lab tipped to be a part of former chairman Mitch Kapor's speech on the morning of 7 July. At least among those users who are aware of it, which seems to be very few. The ripples of that anticipation, however, have spread far wider.

'Blizzard has bought Linden Lab,' I hear for the ninth time today, and it's early yet. Another item in my mailbox from a user tells me that they are sure that Electronic Arts has snapped up the virtual world operator. Two more pitch IBM as a potential purchaser, and five insist that an IPO announcement will come on the day.

What's interesting is that of all the material people are certain enough to send on to me, they all relate to a sale or an IPO, essentially taking the business out of the hands of its current owners, and it all seems to be presented with an astonished, yet hopeful air.

Technically it isn't supposed to be news until Noon (US Eastern) today, when it is to be announced at the big virtual worlds conference in New York City, but Reuters accidentally jumped the gun and seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of Linden Lab's and IBM's big joint announcement.

The plan, essentially, is for IBM to hold Second Life grid servers on their private corporate network, back behind the firewall, but (we gather) with enough network access to allow those servers to communicate with the central services on the Second Life grid.

This would give IBM a virtual world intranet of sorts; regions that are actively locked away from the rest of the world, but giving their employees the freedom to move between internal simulators and those that are part of the main public grid seamlessly.

Metaverse development company Multiverse has announced a partnership with Vivox, the voice service provider for virtual worlds and MMOs of many stripes. Being able to provide integrated voice chat, 3D positional audio, presence, speaking indicators, and management tools right out of the box will be a definite selling point for developers who are interested in using Multiverse's platform to create their virtual worlds.

Vivox is keeping influential company -- other partners include Wizards of the Coast, IBM, metaverse developers Electric Sheep Company, and EVE Online's CCP Games. With strong strategic alliances like these, they're quickly rising to the top of voice provider solutions for the industry. Let's hope their grasp doesn't exceed their reach.

[Via Business Wire]

Ex-Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tokyo-based virtual worlds service firm NGI/3DI, Toshitaka Jiku, has been newly appointed as CTO of Chinese virtual world developer/operator, HiPiHi. Jiku brings quite a bit of experience and education to the table from his time with NGI, and is expected to help HiPiHi position itself and scale to the global market.

As you may recall, HiPiHi has already partnered with IBM to collaborate on both massively scalable architecture and long-term interoperability, and seems to have also gained significant buy-in from US chip giant Intel. HiPiHi is on the move, and has their eye on the world stage. It will be interesting to see if this China-based virtual world can pick up broad international appeal.

Circuit City originally opened in Second Life as a part of the IBM subcontinent. The build there was comparatively modest and not heavily trafficked, but it was successful enough for Circuit City to make a much larger commitment to the virtual world, in the form of four sims, forming an extra-large island, with the help and expertise of IBM.

The island features an orientation area (though a registration portal is still in the works), and some helpful signage. A Circuit City HUD enables you to summon assistance from a staff member, and has a built-in flight assister as a bonus. What might really grab your attention though are prizes!

Two hospitals opened up in Second Life today. Except only one actually did any opening. IBM's Virtual Health Center actually isn't open to the public. Rumors of its opening seem to be greatly exaggerated, and are largely confined to the press-release and coverage by folks who didn't actually try to visit it. We've asked IBM what's up with that, and we're waiting for an answer - so we can't even show you a picture of the place.

So, the more interesting hospital (ie: the one we could actually look at) comes to us courtesy of Cisco, Palomar Pomerado Health, and metaverse developers Millions-of-us. The design of the hospital is exceptionally modern, and the Second Life version of the hospital is - essentially - a model of the physical campus that will be built (by the year 2011) in San Diego, California, all packed with top-of-the-line, medical-grade Cisco technology.

Palomar West hospital has its own Second Life account registration portal, and a video tour. On the whole, the campus is very pretty. It's as 21st century as you could hope to see, without flying cars.

Icarus Studios, an MMO middleware developer specializing in zoneless next-gen MMO platform technology has made the shift to migrate their underlying tech away from widely used open-source SQL database, mySQL, and instead has migrated to IBM's Informix Dynamic Server.

Icarus was able to switch from mySQL to Informix rapidly and apparently fairly painlessly, with Fallen Earth - a post-apocalyptic MMORPG built in Icarus' middleware - running on the new high-performance database systems.

I came across a video today that didn't blow me away technically. The aspect ratio changes throughout, the UI is on, and it might have been edited in Windows Movie Maker. However, I couldn't take my eyes off of this video because it made a difference.

In September 2007, Second Life Insider blogged that Italian IBM workers were using Second Life to protest a proposed pay cut. Little was known about the strike at the time, except that those interested should download a strike kit and carry on peacefully on their own time. In a video released yesterday in multiple languages, they explain what went on, why they did it, and what the results were.

Read on for more details about the strike ...

It's hard to be sure how to file an article about Power Up - particularly since I can't actually play it, it's a windows only game. But, from what I can determine it seems to be a multi-player game, it's role-playing, and it's aimed at energy conservation and ecological education. There are sections available for teachers and parents as well as fun mission briefings and the promise of more to come during the year.

In some ways this game strikes me as a retrograde step: rather than using something like Active Worlds or Second Life which many regard as Web 2.0 since there are tools for content creation and sharing, we have a very focussed programme that teaches one thing and only that one thing. All the content is provided in a Web 1.0 fashion: by IBM, TryScience and the NY Hall of Science rather than allowing the users to create for themselves. However, we wish it well and will try to keep an eye on it for you.

[Via: Virtual Worlds News]

Okay, so they may not have intended to do it. The message could have been "You need IBM's expertise to take advantage of virtual worlds" or something more like famous-apparel-company's "Just do it."

That's not really how it comes across, however. A quick informal poll, where we showed the video to a bunch of people suggests that the impression people get is "Virtual worlds are for losers and failures." - which seems a little bit odd since IBM is betting heavily in the virtual world space

This is all a part of IBM's "Talking versus doing" campaign. Some of their campaign adverts seem to be more on-message than others.

The video is below the fold, courtesy of YouTube's special twinkly magic - what's the message you're getting from it?

Chinese virtual world developer HiPiHi has partnered with international information technology powerhouse IBM. The collaboration is essentially twofold, a spokesperson from HiPiHi tells us.

First, IBM is to provide hardware, services, and consultation on scalable architecture, essentially "battle-tested solutions". IBM's obviously getting into virtual worlds, and is too big and too experienced to put all of its eggs in one basket.

As reported here, today saw the meeting of minds between Second Life's Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the New Globe Theater, a meeting held and sponsored by Millions of Us, a metaverse development company (MDC), with Reuben Millionsofus as moderator. This is the mp3 and transcript of part one of the chat. I have chosen to edit out of the transcript, for the most part, verbal tics that don't contribute to the content of the chat, but these elements remain in the mp3. If you're unfamiliar with Second Life, every now and then you'll hear what sounds like a Polaroid camera going off -- this is the sound of in-world snapshots being taken of the proceedings. You will also hear typing sounds from time to time -- this is the default typing animation sound.

Part two will go up tomorrow at this time. Enjoy!

[Mp3] Download the MP3 directly

[Thanks, Celebrity!]

According to Wagner James Au at GigaOm, Benchmark Capital has joined the board of Vivox. We're not sure how much Benchmark Capital invested directly. The total was $7.8 million US dollars in Series B financing, some of which also came from Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital.

The man behind the deal was Mitch Lasky, formerly with Eletronic Arts' mobile division, now general partner at Benchmark Capital.

HiPiHi (pronounced High-pee-high, for those of you that are curious) is gearing up towards a launch by pulling in partners. P&G are already on board, and Intel are gearing up to launch the "Intel Experience Center" on 160,000 square metres of HiPiHi land on 22 November (considering that HiPiHi is in China - you can take your pick about which day 22 November actually is).

Chinese-based HiPiHi has been both criticized and praised in the media for it's uncanny resemblance to Second Life - from the feel of their website, to their avatars, stock animations, creation tools and business model.