Toluu

Business Communicators of Second Life®

Exploring the potential of Second Life for business communications, information dissemination and innovation.

7 Days Magic Bakery Integrated Marketing Campaign Begins in Second LifeOctober 7 2008

Roll up for the magical mystery tour. Got everything you need; satisfaction guaranteed.

7 Days Magic Bakery feels a bit magical, mixing the ambiance of a Pixar movie with a playground of the immersive kind.

The consensus is the 7 Days Bakery build is a winner – and I must say I agree. The sim, textures and colors are visually beautiful, rendered in Maya and imported into SL (for some very good interoperability reasons).  The overall feel is a touch Willy Wonka with a lot French country village crossed with a place I want to live.  I’ll let others fill you in on the build critique – I’m focused a bit more on the behind-the-scenes.

Involve3D won the 7 Days business, upstaging its competitors, by emphasizing Involve’s ability to enhance the brand, build upon social networking, create entertainment value and interaction while adhering to “low branding,” according to Involve CEO, Drew Stein.   They’ve done a good job fulfilling the promise s

Sheraton Hotels Installs MS Surface Tables as Virtual ConciergeAugust 24 2008

Sheraton has installed Microsoft Surface Virtual Concierge 30-inch tables in the lobbies of five locations: Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco.  Applications include CityTips with attractions, eateries, shopping, maps, and transportation; a digital jukebox; and SheratonSnapshots, a library of photos of Sheraton resorts.

Full article here.

August 23, 2008

Near London/Something Virtually InterestingJune 18 2008

As a much-needed antidote to the avalanche of kid virtual world launches, Near London launched to private beta yesterday.

What is new and rather interesting about Near London is that the U.K. company Near,™ will be launching a series of these virtual worlds, specifically geared as a platform for business, each world meticulously detailing an actual city the businesses already operate in. 

The virtual cities are social networks, of course, but if executed well, with virtually limitless opportunities to replicate and augment concerts, events, shopping and meet ups - all within the virtual environment of actual world-class cities.  Built upon the Qube Q plug-in based game engine, the client is essentially universal because Q can interface with any server backend. This means users can jump from virtual city to virtual city seamlessly.

Blogger Arrests WorldwideJune 17 2008

Blogger Arrest Worldwide: World Information Access, 2008 report.

The average prison time for bloggers is 15 months.  The longest time in prison is 8 years.

The WIA Briefing Booklet from the University of Washington is available as a PDF here.

June 17, 2008

Immersive Media a Weapon Against News Fatigue According to AP StudyJune 9 2008

Now for an unpopular viewpoint of mainstream media: it would be wise for communicators of all stripes to take a good look at mainstream media for insight into the most important new media tools you should be using.  Why?  Because #1) communicators (most especially PR people) are quite dependant on mainstream media and should be cognizant of the motivations and formats it is now applying and;  #2) if mainstream media is doing it, it is a sure sign their audience behaviors have changed – so by extension your audiences have changed.

Case in point,The AP presented at the World Editor’s Forum in Sweden last week an ethnographic/anthropological study they commissioned during 2007 called “A New Model for News, Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption”(pdf).   In it, they find that young adults (any heavy Internet user, in fact) suffer from “news fatigue” because of a constant barrage of headlines and news snippets.  Although they actually long for in-dep