It’s been a crazy week! Monday morning, bright and early SLT we had the ribbon cutting for virtual Palomar West. An excellent crowd joined us for the event, including some rather notable members of the SL press! Mat beat me to the punch about linking the Massively article, but I wanted to share some of the others I’ve found as well:

The Grid Live: Combining a slew of wonderful pictures with a quick description of the build and his experience, Stone Culdesac writes about his experience at Palomar West.

Cisco Newsroom: Announcing the opening of the sim at the HIMSS Conference, this site has some great facts about the future of the build, and details on the amazing technological additions to the hospital.

Your2ndPlace: Evansmom Goodspeed is not only a fun person to talk to, she’s also an excellent writer! Check out her scope of the project at this popular Second Life blogging community.

New World Notes: Last but not least, a late entry, for I am blind. The formerly embedded but still journalist Hamlet Au explains how Lauren is evil to him. Poor guy.

Thanks to everyone that attended throughout the day for making it a fun and education experience!

As Lauren has been blogging, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Southern California’s Palomar Pomerado Healthcare district and our longtime friends at Cisco to bring a virtual preview of one of the world’s most cutting-edge hospitals to Second Life. Massively, among others, picked up the news, praising the build for its clean look and lifelike medical demos.

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Join Millions of Us for a Second Life ribbon cutting for Virtual Palomar West: Hospital of the Future, a previsualization of Palomar West: Hospital of the Future. The virtual hospital – a simulation of a real world hospital campus due to open in 2011 in Southern California - gives visitors the opportunity to tour the facilities years before its doors actually open. Enjoy an immersive experience combining video, scripting, and architectural innovation.

Event Information
Palomar West, Second Life
Monday, February 25th, 2008
8 - 8:30 AM PST (SLT)

Contact me, Lyra Millionsofus in Second Life for event access.

Reuben worked on Presidents’ Day, poor thing, by giving a talk at the Worlds in Motion track of SF GDC on the convergence of virtual worlds with entertainment. Gamasutra’s Christopher Woodard wrote it up…

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With the announcement of the strike’s end, I’m sure that many of my fellow TV addicts are bouncing happily in their seats today - if only metaphorically. Several of my online friends have family members who were directly involved in this strike, and there is clear jubilation in the various news feeds I’m reading with folks excited to be getting back to work. While I’ve enjoyed catching up on some streamed show seasons via Netflix over the last couple of weeks (hence the picture that I swiped from time.com’s site - I hope they’re getting paid for those streams), it is wonderful to hear that our non-reality shows are returning with new episodes.

I am most personally excited to be getting Gossip Girl back! More than a few of us MoU folks share a love for this “guilty pleasure”, and I was pleased to see from this TV Guide listing of when shows will start to shoot/air that S, B & the gang will be on the air sometime in late-spring.

The sad fact is that some shows simply cannot make the return after the strike, and have flat out stated as much. While I don’t claim to have firsthand knowledge (and thus might be proved wrong later) it looks like Bionic Woman and Journeyman will not be making it back to the tube. Another sci-fi favorite whose future is still to be determined is the new Terminator series - which would be awful, since the show has really be shaping up to something special.

So, here are some well-wishes to our cherished writers. We’re glad to have you back!

What we mean is that we have teamed up with World Wrestling Entertainment once again to bring a taste of their next pay-per-view experience into Habbo Hotel. For the next week, Habbos are competing to build their own Habboized versions of the infamous WWE No Way Out Elimination Chamber of doom inside Habbo Hotel. The room design contest merges the two activities Habbos love the most: building stuff and role-playing in it!

Inspired by the last campaign where Habbos virtually Royal Rumbled in their creatively decked out Royal Rumble themed rooms (a nice viral by-product of the campaign proper) we couldn’t help but be amused by the spectacle and generate an entire campaign based on their enthusiasm. So this time, we are calling all Habbos to don their creative caps and build the most badass Elimination Chamber they can put together in the next few days using their wit, imagination, and whatever “furni” (Habbo furniture) they have at their disposal. There are 2 rules to guide them:

1.) They must have the initials “NWO” displayed somewhere in their rooms

2.) They must have their rooms on the designated guest floor of the Hotel named “[WWE] Habbo No Way Out.”

To see what develops, stay tuned! I’ll be posting some designs soon.

The winning design picked by WWE at the end of the week will win a replica Championship Belt inscribed with a personal message from WWE. Top 5 designs picked by the Habbo community will receive a virtual trophy personalized by a WWE Superstar, a pocket full of gold to spend on their favorite Habbo virtual merchandise, and most importantly, Habbo infamy as the coolest designer of death cages.

As a side competition, we are also giving away prizes for Habbos who submit screenshots of their designed rooms filled to capacity with their fellow Habbo friends. I will post pics of the Habbo No Way Out flash mobs shortly. For now, check out the cool Habbo No Way Out group page and sweet banner ad below.

Habbo No Way Out group page with over 4K fans!

Awesome!

Questions?

Contact - Eliana Sur

eliana(at)millionsofus(dot)com

When I was a kid, a lot of my summers were spent up in northern Minnesota where my godfather had built his house. He had three children, all of whom were close friends of mine. The daughter was a young horsewoman, four years my senior; she basically taught me how to ride horses and was the older sister I could never have, being the oldest daughter in my own family. The other two were boys, and with my two little brothers the five of us would get into all sorts of trouble together. I accredit my tomboyish youth to all of them, gladly.

My best memories involving them were of playing the game “Kick the Can“, which is best done at night. To sum it up, it’s like hide and seek; your mission is to distract “it” from the can as much as possible, especially when s/he has already captured your fellow players. When you kick the can, they have to chase the it and those captured can run into hiding again. We used coffee cans, since they wouldn’t hurt your foot and were actually fairly aerodynamic. This made it that much harder to find them after they sailed over the huge backyard and into the thick woods behind the house. Eventually we incorporated laser tag into our game, but that’s more amusing than relevant.

I’ve been in Second Life in one form or another for years - nearly 5 to be precise - and I’ve been privileged enough to be a part of the birth of Nexus Prime, survived (and was assimilated by) an invading army of WW2Oers, helped conceptualize and launch Burning Life, and a co-owner in one of the grid’s most popular couture companies. After all this time, one could imagine that pretty little would faze me.

Right now, I feel right now like I’m “it” and my coworkers are very talented and experienced kick the can players. Over the next few weeks I intend to get myself some night vision goggles and start figuring out where they are, what they’re up to, and maybe even find some new games to play.

I’m the new community manager for Millions of Us! Feel free to say hi to me in-world, talk to me about any wild ideas you might have, and especially to share your stories. I have a feeling that my fifth year here is going to be the best yet!

Here’s a great video by Vlad Bjornson over at Shiny Life that explains how to get video working inside Second Life. It even gets into how to scale your media texture so that you don’t kill your frame rate by using the auto-scaling option.

The contest that proves life is even sweeter the second time around.

The votes are in, and we have a winner.
Dive into the SPLENDA® Pool Experience, a sweet swimming pool filled with fluffy SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener and featuring fun new animations, submitted by Shava Suntzu. Congratulations, Shava!

We’re hard at work bringing The SPLENDA® Pool Experience to life. Check out the original submission to see what you can look forward to, then come back March 18 to experience it for real.

Thanks to all the entrants and voters who imagined new ways to make life sweeter and played a part in making it happen.

CNN’s Miles O’Brien dressed up an avatar and checked out Second Life musicians Space Junky.
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