Corporate Presence in SL

One of my primary interests in SL is the viability of using it for marketing purposes of RL companies. In October, I attended the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference. In a session titled Women Empowering the Next Generation of the Web, when one one panelist was asked what the future of the web was, she responded that it would more than likely be 3-D web. If there is truth to this, we need to investigate the effectiveness of marketing strategies in platforms such as SL to ensure a smooth transition into new web trends and technologies.

I ran across this article highlighting the Top 8 Corporate Sites in Second Life. Aside from the sites listed, I would also recommend The Weather Channel SL area. You can mountain bike and experience a hurricane simulator!

Activities in Second Life

A big part of the fun in SL is the ability to participate in activities that you don't normally get to do in real life. (Or maybe you do, but it's still fun to do them in SL)

A fun place I have found to explore is the Dragon Moon Resort. This is an island type atmosphere, with all kinds of things to do and little nooks to explore. (Don't forget to pick up an air tank so you can scuba dive!)

Soaking in the hot tub:


Cruising around the island on the jet ski:


Testing out the knife throwing wheel:


Riding on a whale:


Another fun area I have found is Oxblood Gear: Your Home for Subculture. This is sort of an underground playground. (Including an actual playground) Aside from a store with some great t-shirts, there is an arcade, traveling freak show, carnival game area, and spooky cemetery.

Skeeball!


Playing on the Merry-go-Round:

Locations to Visit in SL

Once you are in SL, you will quickly find that you need places to go. There are lots and lots of places you can go, but the trick is finding them. You can visit the "Popular Places" tab in the Search option, but it mainly gives you a lot of junk locations. I ended up just typing in random phrases that interested me in the Search and went to the places that seemed most interesting.

I also decided to turn to my good friend Google to help me out. I discovered a list that claimed the Top 20 Best Places to Visit in Second Life.

Also, because I am interested in learning more about the academic use of SL, I found the Top 20 Educational Locations in Second Life. (Ohio University in particular had an excellent location)

Ohio University SL Student Center:


Ohio University SL Outdoor Classroom:

I should have known...

I have said it before, and I will say it again... I am not a gamer. I have never liked first person type games (give me 2-D Mario Brothers or Tetris any day), but there was a little game I used to play...a lot. You may have heard of a little game called The Sims. I never played the online version that allowed you to interact with other people. No, I was content with building my own little neighborhoods and developing my various characters. When I was first introduced to Second Life, it reminded me of an advanced version of The Sims. This was not a good thing. I knew that once I logged onto Second Life, that an obsession would form... a time sucking obsession, and boy was I right.

As I ventured into my "Second Life", I have to admit, it was a little confusing at first. There is definitely a learning curve, but I have the feeling that people who are used to playing online multi-player games would have a smoother transition than I did. Initially, I could barely walk around without bumping into things. However, before you knew it, I was running and flying. (Although my landings were a little rough at first)

Once you get acclimated to the navigation, the real fun begins: appearance modification. Just like navigation, this seemed awkward at first. It also didn't take long to realize that the you could only do so much with the basic appearance tools they give you. Yes, you soon realize that just like in real life, you must acquire things. A bit of advice: initially you will find lots and lots of free things, which is an exciting thing. (Who doesn't love free things) However, I would stress quality over quantity. If you pick up everything you come across, you will soon have an inventory that is out of control.

So here I am. Me in my "Second Life" ready to conquer the world:

Initial Hardware Issues

Thus far, the experience I have had with Second Life has been slightly frustrating. It does seem interesting, and I do think it is a new medium that should be investigated for internet marketing purposes. It also seems to fit in with my current interests in Web 2.0, interactivity, collaboration, emerging technologies, etc.

My PC is an HP with a 2.41 GHz AMD Athlon 64 bit processor, running Windows XP Pro. I initially had 512 GB of RAM. In other words, my machine isn't the greatest, but it could certainly be a lot worse. I think as far as the average user, I may even have a slightly better machine. However, despite this, I had trouble getting Second Life to run well on my machine. I could log in, but everything was very slow and blurry. Something like a brown tree trunk had a rainbow type pixel look to it. I pretty much assumed this was a graphic card issue.

I am admittedly not a gamer, and I don't really do anything all that graphic intensive on my machine, so the graphics card issue never came up until now. A little investigating led me to find out that I have an on-board SiS 760 graphic card. A web search revealed that this card had no memory of its own but "borrowed" memory from my RAM. This I assumed didn't help matters any.

I knew I would have to upgrade my card. I went to the SL site to see what was compatible. Well, I was fairly surprised to see the long list of cards that weren't supported!

Screen shot from system requirements page at: www.secondlife.com



There is also a fair difference between the system "Requirements" (the absolute bare minimum needed to run Second Life) and the "Recommendations", as the following screen shots show:





In an attempt to make things smoother for my Second Life experience, I added an additional 1 GB of RAM. (Which I happened to find at a very reasonable price on Newegg.com if anyone is in the memory market) This helped as far as speeding things up, by visually I was still having issues.

Thankfully, someone had an extra graphics card lying around that they were kind of enough to give me, and this has made a considerable difference. The card is an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 with 128 MB of RAM. This is an average card (and certainly better than my existing card) but things are still not perfect in SL. While it has made a considerable difference as far as blurriness (I wasn't even able to read the basic instructions before or make my way around the map because things were so blurry) I still have odd colorations in my avatar and other avatars look like black shadows until I get close enough to them.

Graphic issues seen in avatar:



With all the issues I had getting SL up and running, I wonder how user friendly it is to someone who is truly a "newbie" with no gaming background. Aside from issues such as graphics cards and memory, Second Life currently does not support Windows Vista. This means anyone getting a new computer will not be able to play. (Although, I am sure a Vista friendly update is in the works)

If Second Life is to be used as a "virtual classroom" in an academic sense, I have to ask how a distance education student who is only comfortable with the "basics" of computing (internet, word processing, emailing) will fare transitioning into a virtual world? Maybe it will give some students the spark they need to advance their computing skills and dive right in to emerging technologies in communication such as this. A SL representation is certainly an exciting concept for colleges and businesses willing to investigate it, but I think it will still take time for it to be adopted as a standard in the online experience.

This is basically my first impression based on the limited experience I have had with SL. Maybe in the course of my research, I will gain new insight that will prove some of my initial opinions wrong. But isn't that the fun of exploring a new concept in technology?

Ok, off to learn how to move around without bumping into things in SL... :)