Take a picture of a Silver Fox. Note: “Silver Fox” is open to interpretation by photographers. For example, a picture of “Coop” might be a picture of Coop, Gerrard Hammer’s car. Or it could be a chicken “coop,” or a Second Life resident named “Coop.” Email your Snapshots to pics@sluniverse.com with the subject line: hammerandcoopsl using the Second Life Snapshot feature. Three (3) Prizes awarded each day to “most creative,” “most MINI” and “quickest” submissions.

Attention: Please DO NOT email pictures as attachments. Send using the Second Life SNAPSHOT feature in the Second Life viewer.

Good luck!

Hammer & Coop have been all over Second Life, fighting Ninjas and getting dirty at the Bikini Car Wash. And now the fearless Gerrard Hammer & his suped-up sidekick Coop Zero7 are on the road again!

Join Hammer & Coop this Saturday as they launch the Hammer & Coop Photo Challenge, a 7-day / 7-challenge journey across the Second Life grid. After the screening of the final two Hammer & Coop episodes, Hammer will announce the first photo challenge, which will later be posted here, on the Millions of Us blog.

LOCATION:

Hammer & Coop Photo Challenge Kickoff – with a challenge each day this week!
Saturday, March 31, 2007 2 PM SLT/PST
Four Aces Gas Station, Film sim
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Film/132/159/25/

HOW:

Each day at 2 PM SLT/PST, from Saturday (3/31) until Friday (4/6), come here to the Millions of Us blog and look for that day’s challenge. Before midnight SLT, email your snapshots to pics@sluniverse.com with the subject line: hammerandcoopsl. The winners of the three prizes will be announced the next day. No nudity or alcohol in the photos please.

THE WINNERS:

Each day, REAL LIFE prizes will be given to the Most Creative (Grand Prize), as well as the Most “MINI” submission and the Quickest submission.

Say cheese!

First Question from Daniel Terdiman: What stage is the industry at?

Sibley: Very early stage — companies are making exploratory moves but its not core to their business

Chris Collins: Growth is amazing

Prentice: Same as Internet in mid 90’s but inability to move from one world to another is the major inhibitor to growth.

Joe Lazlo, Jupiter Research: PR benefit is a big driver now
Terdiman: 6 months ago the PR was a lot easier because the 1st’s were more prominent. What’s the pitch today?

Sibley: Pitch is same as always was. How do you pursue your goals using virtual worlds? Today its longer-term and that’s sobering and encouraging to pursue long-term value?

Bovington: Second Life is moving out of brand equity building and towards mass collaboration. 80% of communication is happening outside of Second Life on the web etc.

Chris Collins: Echoes Philip’s quote that companies are eager to unite people in concert with the web.

Bovington: SL is a great place to originate content.

Verbeck: Entertainment is a primary business driver.

Prentice: VW’s are great for creating colloboration and community within and across organizations.

Terdiman:  What is the ROI?

Sibley:¬† MLB example we allowed people to watch games together.¬† We’ve had events that were as high as 1200 people.

Lazlo:¬† Just like early days of web but that’snot a lot of people.

Bovington:¬† Linear scale (90 minutes) presents a scaling problem — longer term is a lot easier 6000 over a week with the BBC. We sold 27,000 pairs of Adidas shoes.

I’ll be speaking at the Wildfire Conference in London on April 24th and 25th. This is going to be super fun — lots of great speakers including Ze Frank, Jordan Weisman and Johnny Vulkan. Give a shout if you’re going to attend or want to hang out in London — reuben AT millionsofus DOT com

The first phase of any of our engagements involves what we call “Brand Translation”. During this phase, we examine a real-world brand and create an experience that is suited for Second Life, that captures the sentiments and emotions of the real world experience.

I’m really proud to announce te launch today of our project with Diageo (and Thebar.com ). Developed in partnership with our friends over at Bite Communications, this has been one of our most challenging (in a good way) and hopefully creative projects.

The big problem we started with was: “How do you translate drinking in an environment where alcohol has no effect?” We chose to focus on the social aspects of the drinking experience. The result is a virtual bar kit, available for free for any Second Life bar owner (provided you’re over 21 and located on a Mature sim without explicit content). Within the bar kit are a wide variety of Diageo’s brands including beer, wine and spirits like Tanqueray, Captain Morgan, Johnnie Walker and Guinness. All the bottles have been programmed to provide a variety of cool social networking features, including toasts and other animations. We hope everyone enjoys it and look forward to watching it be used and develop.

To launch, we’re having a Bar Crawl — please join us to celebrate.

What Thebar.com Virtual Bar Crawl — Make a Toast in Second Life!
When Wednesday, March 21st
Time 3pm-6pm Pacific Time / (6pm-9pm Eastern Time)
Where Second Life

LOCATIONS:

– ASpiRE! Isle, ASpiRE! Magazine and Modeling Agency
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ASpiRE%20Isle/144/165/26/
ASpiRE plan to have a trivia contest and great prizes.

– The Witch’s Brew
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Evalua/223/226/28

–The Blarney Stone
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dublin/80/106/26/26/
“Real world” Irish band Callaghan will be playing live at The Blarney Stone.

My sister is visiting from London: she comes a couple of times a year. We’re doing this funny thing where we sit aroun drinking coffee on a Sunday morning, each with a laptop surfing Youtube and comparing clips. Remember the Sunday NY Times? So 2006.

Anyway, she was kind enough to turn me on to the French art of Parkour. Parkour is a sport that came out of France that is also sometimes referred to as free running. Videos like this one give a good idea of what Parkour looks like in action — it really inspires me to watch it and I can’t help wondering how this relates to Alternate Reality Games, Cosplay, the Sultan’s Elephant, Apophenia and Second Life.

(FROM WIKIPEDIA)
“According to the founder David Belle, the spirit of parkour is guided in part by the notions of “escape” and “reach”, that is, the idea of using quick thinking with dexterity to get out of difficult situations, and to be able to go anywhere that one desires.”