RL Meet-up in London?

6pm GMT (10am SLT) onwards, Sunday 19th October ‘08? Should be a grin.

It’s the night before Virtual Worlds London at the QEII Conference Centre and I wondered if anyone fancied joining us for a social in The Greyhound, Kensington, London?

RL London will be filling up with folks from all over Europe, and I thought it might be cool to have a get together in the RL Greyhound, the bridge between realities in Kensington, to have a drink and say hello.

Situated in Second Life, opposite Northcliffe House (the SL and RL Daily Mail building in Derry Street where I work in both worlds) it’s as much part of the virtual furniture of London as the real one is of Kensington Square. Run by the same staff (oi, oi, Kwame) in both worlds it often hosts real world and virtual world cross-over events and entertains real and virtual workers and locals from the Kensington area.

So, regardless, perfect place for a pre-conference meet-up of virtual friends and work-mates from 6, including in-world press, musicians, developers and ‘mirror-world’ Kensington staff from the sims at sllondonestates.com

All are welcome. The Greyhound staff will be streaming the evening to and from the virtual pub. Come meet some of the people who work in the local area (in both worlds), look at how the 2 cross, meet other people who’ll be attending Virtual Worlds London, and help break the reality barrier :-) It’s just around the corner from High Street Kensington tube station.

Join us in RL, or join us in SL. See ya there :-)

RL: 1, Kensington Square, London, W8 5EP: Review - Map
SL: Kensington Square, Kensington W8 London. SLURL: Kensington W8 London/225/64/22

Up For Virtual Worlds London?

Early Registration ends this coming Friday, 19 September 2008, for Virtual Worlds London. Go sort it now, ya save ya'self 400 notes.

Billed as "the leading European event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies within virtual worlds". Virtual Worlds London is the 5th such world event by Virtual Worlds News, and takes place at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre (a cheery '70s abomination right across the street from Westminster Abbey) from the 20th to the 21st of October.

In my capacity as a business alt, I'll be propping up the bar and checking out a good cross section of the keynotes and presentations on both days (probably blogging it etc. as I go). If you do go, drop me a line or a twitter when you get there and we'll do booze and RL. An evening meet-up in The Greyhound in Kensington (that strange SL/RL crossing point of metaversal paradox in the centre of the city) is invariably a must :-)

50 Virtual Worlds

A Film by Gary Hayes © Personalizemedia 2008, which is going to be in every damn Power Point I do at work for the next 6 months.

Over 50 virtual worlds are featured including Second Life, HiPiHi, Kaneva, Twinity, ActiveWorlds, and LagunaBeach MTV. There.com, Habbo, Google Lively, FootballSuperstars, Weblin, AmazingWorlds, CyWorld, Whyville, Gaia Online, RocketOn, Club Penguin, YoVille, Webkinz, BarbieGirls, Prototerra, IMVU, Spore, vSide, Tale in the Desert, SpineWorld, Stardoll, The Manor, There.com, ExitReality, Vastpark, Qwaq, PS3Home, GoSupermodel, Grockit, Croquet, Metaplace, Coke Studios, Dreamville, Dubit, Mokitown, Moove, Muse, The Palace, Playdo, Sora City, Voodoo Chat, TowerChat, Traveler and Virtual Ibiz. Amazingly, this doesn't even touch on some of the big MMOs like the epic-sized World of Warcraft etc.

Top work that beautifully highlights the scope of the virtual metaverse and in many ways, the user-base that's out there.

Looking Lively

Could Googles new VW Lively be the start of something actually worth-while? Wishful thinking has had me mulling a Google metaverse for a while.

Okay, it's slow and clunky and looks like (well, IS) a glorified chat room, but, add some user input using the likes of Google SketchUp, put those SketchUp buildings into their actual corporate locations in Google Earth, throw in the voice ap from Google Talk, drag in Google Docs and a bit more 'HTML on a prim', stir with the new Google supported Oauth stuff etc. and you got something REALLY usable and browser based. Relatively accessible and you can put it on any blog, website or page with 2 secs cutting and pasting, giving you instantly themed chat based virtual content for almost occasion no matter how niche or specialist.

I had a AV, dressed and up and running, in 10 mins. I'll be mooching about with it all morning, just got a Quick Meeting Room Environment done, give me a shout ;-)