Secondlife

I went to a summit on Second Life and virtual worlds in Hursley today, hosted by Kevin Aires, Jack Mason, and Roo Reynolds - it’s becoming obvious that there’s a big buzz about Second Life both inside and outside IBM - a primary bit of evidence being IBM’s recent announcement of a $10m investment in virtual worlds such as Second Life. For obvious reasons, I can’t relate everything that was discussed. However, the discussion did get me thinking about Second Life in a slightly different way from before: as a basis for social networking applications, rather than as a basis for any application: an example of the former being The Greater IBM Connection, an IBM alumni community. In this respect, it seems to be more analogous to, say, LinkedIn, than another application platform (Windows, the web, etc.). This scope seems realistic - as I’ve stated before, meetings and conferences seem to be the best application of Second Life that’s been demonstrated so far. The consumer impact of Second Life is still TBD.

Second Life is an idea I want to like. It’s not a game, and it’s not just for playing around either (despite the slightly frivolous avatars and other trivialities imported from actual games). Some of my colleagues from IBM in various R&D; labs around the world - such as the Emerging Technologies Lab here in Hursley - have been doing an admirable job of promoting Second Life as a genuine business tool (articles on Slashdot, the BBC), and I think it’s great that IBM is looking at using something so bright and fresh.

James has just given me a brief tour of Second Life. Once again I had problems - cracking graphics and a crashing client - but I was a bit more impressed than last time - having a guide to show me the good stuff and get the hang of the controls helped. I also met one or two of the other IBMers using Second Life. It’s clear that there’s still a lot more to explore. I’ve decided that I should attend one of the virtual IBM events - this seems to be one of the best uses of Second Life I’ve heard of so far.

I’ve finally given in and taken my first tentative steps into Second Life (it’s legit once it has an Economist article; or something…). My first impressions are so-so; it’s obvious that there’s a lot to explore and do that I’ve only just scratched the surface of (see Andy Piper’s blog for a lot more posts on Second Life; including how IBM are getting involved). But the system obviously needs some work - the client crashed twice within the space of two hours, once bringing down Windows. The movement is pretty jerky, despite turning the detail down to minimum, and the graphics flickery, almost unusably so. I’ve already been forced to upgrade the client once (~25MB download). It’s possible my T43 just isn’t up to the job (dodgy graphics drivers?), but I don’t have anything more powerful or different to try it on.