Location #1: Kasba

It’s official — our first major launch as a company is underway. Here’s the press release .

We will be pulling back the curtains on this in a matter of hours, but here’s a little advance peak of what it looks like. Here’s what I think make’s this so cool:

1. This is the first time a major US. label has done something big in Second Life
2. If you’re like me, you remember when music videos existed. Now they’ve been replaced by reality TV on MTV.
3. Myspace.com has 79 million users who are spending a huge amount of time online sharing and discussing music.
4. This project basically takes a record album and turns it into a socially-enabled music video — it becomes an album you can live in.
5. Once you’re “in” the album, listening to the songs which are only available here before the official release on June 14th, you can invite friends to come hang out with you and listen as well
6. The entire build changes (like theatrical set changes) to match the mood of various songs. You have to hang out a little while to see this, but it’s definitely worth it.

Huge kudos go out to the team to Warner Brothers Records as well as to Aimee Weber and Green Fate for their creative vision and scripting magic.

I will drop a Slurl as soon as we open the build later today or tomorrow.

This was officially my first podcast ever and it was a lot of fun. It happened on May 4th, the day we launched Millions of Us and the clamor in the background was the kickoff party for the Metaverse Roadmap — we cover a lot of ground including the motivation for starting Millions of Us as well as the New Globe Project . Also the philosopy of “All the World’s a Stage” and how that Shakespearean philosophy encapsulates what Second Life and other virtual worlds are all about and how that translates to the ways in which marketing will be conducted by smart companies in the future.

Have a listen here!

Taken on Friday at the Metaverse Roadmap Summit. I’d be hardpressed to recall the context of the conversation that led to the Tentacle demonstration, but I think it had something to do with the power of social networks like Myspace to help high school kids escape the stigma of nerdiness.¬† In other words, they could create profiles (or avatars, in virtual worlds) that kids in neighboring towns would find attractive and that would mask the fact that they had tentacles growing out of their heads.

Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, maker of Puzzle Pirates, also commented that the final hurdle in their hiring process is the physical check for a tentacle. HR professionals, take note!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/141081944/

This was a really great way to launch.

Kid in Brazil with 185 IQ can go in SL and because of the familiarity of a 3d interface and the presence of other people to help, can get up and running in a way that you can’t on the web.

Memory Palace — things are more memorable when the occur in a visual environment that can be associated with it. You can describe the objects in your kitchen much easier than the last 5 files that you edited.

Virtual Work — the type of decentralized teams that collaborate to work in Second Life are a forward indicator of the type of work that will occur in the future.

Rebuilding Real Locales: Dublin in Second Life with Live Performances. This will occur in both Second Life and Google Earth. The power of the live music scene in Second Life — 10 clubs showing live music nightly in Second Life — just like a live show in the Real World except the show can have people from around the world.

Because of the broad range of ways to express identity in SL, people are almost more accountable to their identity and appearance because there are no excuses.

Berkman Center at Harvard has opened SL headquarters.

Simulation case studies. UC Davis is simulating fire drills at hospitals because its impossible to test in the real world.

The power of Charity and Giving for good causes in Seconde Life — Hurricane Katrina relief and the American Cancer Society.

Questions:

Currency — is it a zero sum game? Is currency injected into the system?

Computation — who pays for computation? Landowners.

Contiguity: Privacy vs. Social Interaction

What is the Impact with Increased Corporate Interest in SL?: Broadly, SL is simply a capabilities platform.

For the metaverse to be interesting, it must be physical and that has a hard cost attached to it. Today, we do this by adding machines, but I can see it moving to a model where people host their own machines.