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Japan’s Sanwa Supply Co., launched a site today where visitors can shop for computer supplies and peripherals using the immersive 3Di OpenViewer from 3Di that came in the form of a browser plug-in, instead of a standalone application like the Second Life, Hippo, or Meerkat browsers. The breakthrough is thatRead More →

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A Web-based viewer for OpenSim and Second Life is a Holy Grail for business users: it would make it easier for employees, customers and business partners to access virtual platforms. That would make for easier meetings, easier conferences, easier product demonstrations, easier training seminars, virtual tours, showrooms — all theRead More →

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Ever more frequently, companies looking to save money are moving meetings and training into virtual environments such as Second Life, OpenSim, Forterra, and Qwac. In some cases, the company fully controls the environment, creating avatars and user names for their employees. In other environments, it’s all up to the employees. Read More →

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In recent years, companies have begun using virtual worlds such as Second Life, OpenSim, Forterra and Qwaq to hold virtual meetings — and employees have begun using avatars, or cartoonish animated online characters, to represent themselves in these meetings. Some companies and employees pick avatars that reflect their real identitiesRead More →

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Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc. is not only a meeting and events company – it is also a travel agency. So it might be strange that president Dan Parks is promoting a way to hold meetings and conferences that requires no travel at all. It wasn’t always this way. When ParksRead More →

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Though virtual events enable organizers to avoid travel and facilities expenses, in many respects they are no different from real world events in their marketing, according to the Event Marketing Institute. While many people think that virtual events are easy and don’t cost any money — and that only tech-savvyRead More →

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Whenever I interview a Wall Street executive, or a technology expert, I have to ask for a photograph.  I often joke that we already have a lot of headshots of guys in suits — what I really want to see is some variety. Maybe a photograph of them on aRead More →

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Boston students may be able to attend a virtual high school in September 2010, if Roxbury Institute of Technology‘s plans for a charter high school are approved by the Massachusetts Department of Education. The school will combine a virtual environment, based on the Sun Wonderland virtual platform, and a real-worldRead More →

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ReactionGrid has joined a very short list of OpenSim grids offering online shopping, with an e-commerce site open to all OpenSim users, not just ReactionGrid members. Two other grids have online commerce platforms, but their products are only available to grid members (though grid membership is free). The largest isRead More →

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[Update: You can browse all hypergrid-enabled public OpenSim grids with Hyperica, the directory of hypergrid destinations. Directory indexes more than 100 shopping and freebie store locations. Updated hypergrid travel directions here.] New OpenSim grids pop up all the time — and old ones change their hypergrid coordinates. It doesn’t helpRead More →

(Photo by Elsie esq. via Flickr.)

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I occasionally get announcements or news from new grids running on the OpenSim platform, but they require the creation of a new avatar to visit. I don’t personally have anything against these kinds of grids, but there isn’t usually an interesting business story there. Semi-public grids — grids which don’tRead More →

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Analyst firm ThinkBalm has created a virtual reception room for Web site visitors, using the 3DXplorer virtual worlds platform. ThinkBalm is  an independent industry analyst firm focused on work-related use of the immersive Internet — so the new three-dimensional, immersive environment was a good fit for the company’s mission. TheRead More →

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Companies looking to have a virtual world running behind a firewall now have another option – today, Altadyn Corp. released its  3DXplorer enterprise platform. A web-based version of the product, hosted on Altadyn’s servers, has been available for about a year. The company claims SAP, Orange, Bayer, and Glaxo-Smith-Kline asRead More →

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InWorld Solutions has premiered the world’s first virtual behavioral therapy product, based on Forterra’s Olive virtual worlds platform, Forterra announced today. Olive — or On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment — is a proprietary platform that competes with Linden Lab’s yet-to-be-released Nebraska server and the OpenSim open source virtual world platform. TheRead More →

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A California chapter of the American Society for Training & Development won the society’s national “Sharing Our Success” award for its use of Second Life for a virtual training simulcast, the society announced Aug. 5. The Mount Diablo chapter of the ASTD — located in northern California –was able toRead More →

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Now that you have your own virtual world (go back and read Virtuation 101 if you don’t), you might be finding yourself standing in a barren landscape — or on a little pimple of an island in the middle of an empty ocean. What’s next? DO IT YOURSELF The basicRead More →

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Here is what you will need to know if you decide to have a virtual world. First, you need to decide where your virtual world will be. Do you want a private world accessible only by you? Or a public one, accessible by millions? For a one-person world, go withRead More →

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In conjunction with its two year anniversary, the folks behind OSGrid — the largest grid running the OpenSim open source virtual world platform — have added new functionality to the grid, including a social network, a general store, and an automatic region creator. SOCIAL SIGNALS The OSGrid administrators have integratedRead More →

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Linden Lab has debuted a new portal for enterprise users, which features case studies of business uses of Second Life and offers a free tour of the Second Life environment. “For those of us working with enterprise clients, the new page is a welcome relief from what came before —Read More →

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Crescendo Design, an architecture firm based in Madison, Wisconsin, is doing some innovative work in virtual worlds, using the OpenSim offspring RealXtend. “The virtual experience isn’t right for every client, but for those who are more tech-savvy and have newer computers, the virtual experience can provide an invaluable means ofRead More →

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As the virtual worlds grow and develop — and evolve into the next 3D Web — the issue of copyright is being debated again. In some ways, virtual worlds copyrights may require changes in the way we think of and use copyrights. But, in most respects, virtual worlds copyrights areRead More →

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Virtual worlds consultancy ThinkBalm announced the first ThinkBalm Innovation Community professional networking event, scheduled for August 4, to be held at the Amazon Developers Island in Second Life. Scheduled speakers include experts on virtual world use and design, including  IBM’s Christopher Bishop, Amazon’s Jeff Barr, ThnkBalm’s own Sam Driver,  AndrewRead More →

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Just as colleges and universities were among the first to embrace the World Wide Web, educational institutions are now in the forefront of those embracing innovative uses of OpenSim and other virtual worlds platforms. For example, the CSI project from the Kansas-based Greenbush Education Service Center is an interactive crime-solvingRead More →

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I’ve been talking to a few virtual world operators lately that are trumpeting their particular virtual world as the next “Web 3D standard.” They’re the biggest, or the best, or the prettiest, or the fastest, or the cheapest, or whatever — and everyone is going to leave the other worldsRead More →

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I do love OpenSim. But, as a business journalist — I try to be open minded. And, as a business owner, I’m always looking for a faster, cheaper, easier way to do things. This week, I heard from a couple of experts about another way of doing virtual worlds —Read More →

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It will take at least six months to get the Xenki OpenSim viewer ready for public use, according to the new lead developer on the open source project. Kevin Tweedy, founder and head of Philadelphia-based Extreme Reality, a virtual reality technology company, said he took the project over in March.Read More →

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Japan’s 3Di Inc. has been working hard lately on making OpenSim more appealing to business customers — at least, to business customers in Japan. This spring, they came out with a Web viewer for OpenSim worlds designed to intergrate with the firm’s back-end OpenSim-based server software, and a demo websiteRead More →

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The battle for the future of the 3D Web is about to get hot… and steamy. Utherverse CEO tells us that he’s planning to launch an all-out attack against the other virtual world platforms out there, with free hosting and a set of free building tools designed to attract businessRead More →

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The $50,000 price tag might scare off smaller customers, but IBM’s Lotus Sametime 3D product is designed to help large enterprises start holding virtual meetings. The product – released at the end of June — includes integration with corporate directories, with the Lotus Sametime chat service, and includes conferencing toolsRead More →

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IBM officially released its Lotus Sametime 3D collaboration product this week. The product is based on the OpenSim opensource virtual world server software, an IBM spokeswoman confirmed to Hypergrid Business today. This is the first serious use of the OpenSim platform as part of an established and popular enterprise productRead More →

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Having a held a few business meetings in OpenSim over the past few weeks, several staff trainings, I’m getting a better idea of the features I would like to see added to OpenSim. I’m not complaining about what we have so far: it is already making a big difference toRead More →

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[Update: You can browse all hypergrid-enabled public OpenSim grids with Hyperica, the directory of hypergrid destinations. Directory indexes more than 100 shopping and freebie store locations. Updated hypergrid travel directions here.  Full, up-to-date list of OpenSim hosting providers is here.] There are a lot of different OpenSim versions flying around,Read More →

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[Update: You can browse all hypergrid-enabled public OpenSim grids with Hyperica, the directory of hypergrid destinations. Directory indexes more than 100 shopping and freebie store locations. Updated hypergrid travel directions here.  Full, up-to-date list of OpenSim hosting providers is here.] There are plenty of virtual worlds out there, floating, isolatedRead More →

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An unknown hacker took down more than a hundred OpenSim regions this weekend, as well as over a hundred thousand websites. This is bad news for some OpenSim hosting companies who relied on low-cost virtual shared servers to host their regions. Chris Greenwell, for example, lost 41 regions total, includingRead More →

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The easiest way to predict the future of user interface design is to look at the purest market for applications: the gaming sector. Nobody is forced to play games. People choose the games that they enjoy the most. At first, there was the menu interface. Remember those? Probably not. TheyRead More →

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Update: Full, up-to-date list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. The choice of OpenSim hosts is still very limited, due to the fact that the OpenSim platform has only become stable — and grids hyperlinked — in the last couple of months. In theory, anyone can host their own OpenSimRead More →

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When I show people around OpenSim, the first question they ask is: “So this is like Second Life? Only worse?” Which is a valid question. Any particular OpenSim world — like, say, OSGrid, or OpenLife, or ReactionGrid or WorldSimTerra — is small and puny in comparison to SecondLife’s grid. ImagineRead More →

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These last couple of weeks have been problematic for many of us using OpenSim. The OSGrid, in particular, has had more than its share of downtime as a result of ongoing software upgrades, and links between regions break frequently because of incompatible software versions. So in planning the location ofRead More →

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ReactionGrid, headquartered in Fort Pierce, Florida has been working in virtual worlds for years. The founders – Robin and Kyle Gomboy – produced three-dimensional models of aircraft and chip parts for Florida manufacturers as part of their work on automating production facilities. “We thought that if we put it intoRead More →

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This week, ReactionGrid has released its $8,950 Banbury virtual world server, for those who want to physically own their own virtual universe. But for customers willing to let their virtual worlds be managed by someone else, there are also inexpensive hosted options. Today, ReactionGrid runs one public grid, and aRead More →

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More than a dozen entrepreneurs got together Thursday night — or Friday morning, depending on their time zone — in OSGrid’s Business Center to discuss entrepreneurship on the emerging 3D Internet, or the hypergrid. Those attending included “Richardus Raymaker,” Jim Siler (“Omar Abdelrahim”), “Vette Chrome”, “RetroDan Dezno”, “Zauber Paracelsus”, “SimRead More →

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One of the biggest obstacles to enterprise adoption of the OpenSim virtual worlds platform has been the lack of a decent behind-the-firewall solution. There are some hosting companies running OpenSim projects, but if you wanted to install it and run it yourself, you would need to invest serious time andRead More →

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I missed the first Internet investment boom. I was covering wars in Central Asia, but that’s no excuse. I could have invented Yahoo! — it started with a guy in his dorm room with a list of favorite links. I could have done that. Or eBay — a guy whoRead More →

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So you have decided that your company needs a virtual world platform. (Maybe you read our earlier article, “Do you need a virtual world?“) Here is how to select the rigtht platform. Do you expect to have more than 50 visitors at any one time? Most immersive virtual words haveRead More →

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Grid A horizontal map composed of one or more regions, similar to the way that a chessboard is made up of individual squares. A grid is normally identified by a URL and a port number, for example, the OSGrid is located at osgrid.org:8002. Hypergrid All grids that are linked toRead More →

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When business users first log into a virtual world like Second Life or OpenSim they usually have two questions: can they use their real names for their avatars? And can their avatars look like them? The answer to the first question is simple. In OpenSim, users can choose any namesRead More →

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The company is in Singapore. The owners are in Thailand, Moscow, and Shanghai. What’s the most convenient location for the annual corporate meeting? Hint: it’s got dragons, a spaceport, and a red light district. You might think – China. But the company actually picked a place much cheaper to travelRead More →

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Unlike Second Life, the open source virtual world platform OpenSim does not have a built-in currency system. To users, this is a significant lack of functionality – but developers see it as a feature. The reason? OpenSim is not a clone of the Second Life game – that multi-user virtualRead More →