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Investors in virtual companies listed on the Second Life Capital Exchange lost most of their money, according to a new research report. The report, which covered the time period between May 2007 and December 2009, showed that investors bought US$145,000 worth of shares in initial public offerings of virtual companies.Read More →

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I work with a number of clients who exhibit at a virtual trade show for the first time.  They find that once they complete their first virtual trade show, that each successive show is simpler.  However, for the very first one, they’re often in need of some guidance.  Here’s ourRead More →

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Until recently, it has not really been possible for residents of virtual worlds to use their real life name. While Second Lifeâ„¢ has had its Custom Name Program for some time, residents have understandably balked at having to pay Linden Research, Inc. a fee of $1,000 (plus $500 per annum)Read More →

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OpenSim grid hit a new peak this month, with 13,564 regions on the top 40 grids, a 9 percent increase from last month’s 12,425 regions — a gain of 1,139 regions. Meanwhile, total registered users on these grids grew 8 percent from 129,797 in mid October to 140,053 today. OSGridRead More →

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MissionV – 3D Immersive Technology in the classroom for the support of exceptionally able and twice exceptional students What if you were told of an amazing untapped, sustainable national resource that has been discovered yet is not being exploited? I’m pretty sure your interest would be piqued, particularly in the currentRead More →

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The Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable, a group of educators working in Second Life, is expanding to a new grid on the OpenSim platform. The group — originally called the Second Life Education Roundtable — began looking for expansion locations earlier this fall after Second Life announced the shut down ofRead More →

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I spent the last few days reading Virtual Justice by Greg Lastowka. Lastowka outlined some legal issues that arise in virtual environments. Who owns what? What rights — if any — do you have when buying or creating digital content? It is important reading for anyone involved in virtual digitalRead More →

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Ever since Crista Lopes, professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine invented the hypergrid in 2009, people have been debating whether grids should be on or off the hypergrid. On the one hand, the hypergrid is very cool. You can teleport from one grid to another, hopping aroundRead More →

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The majority of OpenSim grid residents said that their grids were “excellent” overall, with community and support getting the highest marks across the grids. Technology and content of the grids scored slightly lower, however, with the majority of users rating these two factors “pretty good” or “just okay.” In addition,Read More →

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Exactly how many people can a region in OpenSim support? How many people could meet for business meetings or presentations in an OpenSim region? Allow me to illustrate with this piece of string and a tape measure. There are unfortunately many variables to consider, so much so that it isRead More →

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Press Release: “Create Once, Experience Everywhere” 3D/VR Format Unveiled for Immersive Education Cross-platform Open File Format Enables “Create Once, Experience Everywhere” 3D/VR Content for OpenSim, Open Wonderland, Open Cobalt and other platforms BOSTON, MA – November 09, 2010 – The Immersive Education Initiative today unveiled iED 3D/VRâ„¢, the open andRead More →

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According to a white paper released yesterday by by U.K.-based virtual worlds and chatbot solutions provider Daden Limited, chatbots are increasingly becoming smarter, more connected and more emotional and, as a result, more useful to companies and organizations that use them to provide customer service on websites and in virtualRead More →

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OpenSim users overwhelmingly said that they would “absolutely” recommend the platform to others. Out of 114 people who responded to our survey this week and answered this question, 84 percent said they would “absolutely recommend” it, with only 1 percent saying they would “absolutely not recommend” the platform. Of theRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company New Voice offers full OpenSim regions for just $9.90 per month. So what do you actually get for this amount of money? A region in Second Life, after all, costs $300 — not to mention a $1,000 setup fee. There are no setup fees with New Voice.Read More →

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The power of first impressions is either ignored or overlooked. Perhaps the poor state of design in Second Life is due to myopia—no one can see his or her own face objectively. A stroll around the Aloft group in Nonprofit Commons is a lesson in visual frustration. (Because the 30Read More →

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Press Release: UBM Studios Creates Revolutionary Virtual Event Directory Listing, Proprietary Technology Becomes the Virtual Event Center Launched First with the ACS Virtual Conference & Career Fair Chicago, IL – UBM Studios, a leader in virtual events and virtual business solutions, today announced its new proprietary virtual event Directory Listing.Read More →

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Everyone wants to go green these days, including meeting planners. And while there are many ways to green a meeting, one of the greenest approaches to meetings is to not meet in person. This is a way to have most of the functionality of a face-to-face meeting, while saving enormousRead More →

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Here at Hypergrid Business, we’re in the process of launching a virtual events directory (now that the vendor directory is up and working). And the question comes up — what times do we list events under? The Second Life events directory shows everything as SLT time — which is theRead More →

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A new book by Coventry University professor Maggi Savin-Baden offers practical advice to educators interested in virtual worlds. According to Coventry University, professor Savin-Baden is one of the UK’s leading academics on the subject and has used virtual technology extensively as a teaching resource. Some recent developments in Second Life,Read More →

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Now that we’ve got our new vendor directory ready to launch (see the test page here and give us your opinions!) we’re taking a second look at what exactly customers are looking for when they’re deciding on an OpenSim hosting platform or design vendor. With the recent changes at LindenRead More →

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Press Release: Second Life “gold” solution provider Snowcrash digital joins the SpotOn3D OpenSim grid Snowcrash Digital is a gold certified Second Life® solution provider, most known as the developers of Second Life’s leading audio solution “Hermes Audio Technology” and the “Hermes Engage” range of educational tools. Since 2006, Snowcrash Digital hasRead More →

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One of the joys of social games like FarmVille is getting to visit your friends. In a virtual world like Second Life, this is also a major attraction — your friends’ regions on the map, you can walk or teleport over. Second Life, however, can’t scale. If millions people suddenlyRead More →

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The following is a script you can place on any object to turn it into a hypergrid teleportation portal. If you put it on something that looks like a giant blue swirly circle, everyone will know that it’s a hypergate. But you can also use it to create teleport buttonsRead More →

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OpenSim’s ScienceSim grid is expanding its land grant program, with an offer of super-powered regions of up to a million primitive objects and 1,000 simultaneous avatars per region. ScienSim and Intel have long been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with OpenSim, with experimental regions holding more than 200,000Read More →

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Press Release: INXPO and George P. Johnson Renew Global Strategic Partnership Deal signals event marketers’ drive to blend Web and physical events CHICAGO, and AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — INXPO and the #1 ranked event marketing agency George P. Johnson (GPJ) today announced a renewal of their strategic partnership, driven byRead More →

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Press Release: SITEFORUM integrates Ustream to deliver live broadcasting for communities and virtual events Erfurt, Germany – SITEFORUM chose Ustream, the leading live interactive broadcast platform, to be implemented into the SITEFORUM standard software due to flexibility, frequency and security. SITEFORUM, with its focus on online communities and virtual events,Read More →

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I have lost track of the number of times over the last few weeks that I have been somewhere in the OpenSim grid and heard someone say “This is like Second Life in the early days – I love it.”  This resonates for me – and I have been thinkingRead More →

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Virtual immersive environments can provide more effective training programs in less time, and for less cost, according t0 a report released today by ProtonMedia, a firm that provides enterprise-focused virtual environments. “We’ve put together a new white paper for life sciences trainers to help them better understand how they canRead More →

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Press Release: ON24 Announces GlobalSpec Virtual Events Production Partnership SAN FRANCISCO, CA–  GlobalSpec (www.globalspec.com), the leading specialized search engine, information resource, e-publishing and online events company for the engineering, industrial and technical communities, announced today that the company is hosting a wide variety of virtual events through 2011 with ON24,Read More →

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Press Release: PayPal Unveils New Payment Solution for Digital Goods Industry Leaders Facebook and FT.com Using PayPal to Simplify Micropayments for Digital Content SAN FRANCISCO–INNOVATE 2010 — PayPal today announced the upcoming availability of PayPal for digital goods, a new in-context, frictionless payment solution that lets consumers pay for digitalRead More →

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I occasionally hear frustration from OpenSim vendors and their early-adopter customers that mainstream users aren’t getting OpenSim, that they aren’t aware of the benefits OpenSim offers compared, to, say, Second Life or other virtual world platforms — or compared to Web-based conferencing or face-to-face meetings. Many formed their opinion ofRead More →

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One of the most confusing parts of moving to OpenSim is figuring out how the commerce system works. Not as confusing, maybe, than than figuring out how to run the server software, learning how to hypergrid, picking a home grid, or finding a hosting provider, but up there. There areRead More →

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Much has been discussed and written about virtual environments achieving levels of immersion and interactivity that rival (and some believe exceed) face-to-face meetings. Much has also been written about increasing the retention of information shared in world. But to many, the whys and hows surrounding this remain a mystery. PerhapsRead More →

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Press Release: Advanced 3D Heralds New Teaching Dimension ‘Virtual world’ technology has the potential to transform education and learning, an international conference at the University of Ulster’s Magee campus heard today. It is a young but rapidly evolving sector but already every university in the UK uses it in someRead More →

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Like the World Wide Web that preceded it, the new 3D Web has its own vocabulary. We try to make it easier to keep up. [anchor id=”avatar”]avatar A representation of a user, usually as a three dimensional cartoon character. Avatars can be realistic, based on actual photos of the user,Read More →

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Press Release: Thousands of B2B Marketing and Sales Pros Will Connect at the Marketing Cloud Virtual Conference this October 28 Fully Interactive Online Conference Features Live Presentations, Expo and Discussions on B2B Marketing and Sales Best Practices SAN MATEO, Calif. — The Marketing Cloud, a collection of cloud-based marketing servicesRead More →

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The  OnLand business park opened today in the Blue Mars virtual world as a place for traditional companies to market their goods in high-fidelity three dimensional form to their clients. The OnLand park is targeting business-to-business sales in which 3D models are important, such as manufacturing. This is a departureRead More →

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Blue Mars is currently testing a cloud-based streaming service, which will soon allow users to log into the high-end, graphics-rich immersive world via a simple browser interface. “We’re running it now, with cloud servers in LA,” said Jim Sink, CEO of Avatar Reality, the parent company of Blue Mars. TheRead More →

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My local farmers market had a “Vote 4 Your Favorite Booth” contest.  While the contest was active, I noticed that the fruit vendors were much more engaging and the amount of free samples increased dramatically.  The fruit stands had become more customer-friendly as a result of the competition.  This wasRead More →

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Both the G$ and OMC multi-grid currencies reported strong growth over the last two months. Since we last took a look at their numbers in mid-August, the OMC currency — backed by Austrian Linden exchange operator Virwox — has grown from 14 to 20 grids, and now reports 382,537 OMCRead More →

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Virtual events are undoubtedly effective… but can they also be fun? Over the last several years, many companies, squeezed by tough economic conditions, have looked for alternatives to in-person events. At the same time, virtual event providers have responded with a hundred rational arguments regarding why meeting online is betterRead More →

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Teesside University is piloting a quarter million pound (US $400,000) citizenship education project in OpenSim this year. The project, which will eventually involve as many as 900 high students in the UK, will be officially launched in January. The entire project is scheduled to run for 18 months and isRead More →

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The Immersive Education Initiative, a Boston-based non-profit coalition, announced today that it will offer free land, and free migration services, for educators working in Second Life’s Teen Grid. The Initiative currently provides thousands of OpenSim regions to members around the world through its Education Grid project,  Aaron Walsh, founding directorRead More →

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The world’s forty largest public OpenSim grids gained 1,605  regions over the past 30 days, and added 10,530 new users. This brings the total region counts on these grids to 12,425, an 15 percent increase over last month’s total of 10,820 regions. The 15 percent monthly growth rate is alsoRead More →

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According to our first reader survey, the majority of the readers of Hypergrid Business are interested in open source virtual platforms like OpenSim and social virtual worlds like Second Life. Less than a quarter were interested in Web-based virtual worls like Venuegen, enterprise virtual worlds like ProtoSphere, and 2D virtualRead More →

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Just a day after Second Life launched its mesh beta, OpenSim already has experimental mesh in the latest test release, and people have begun trying the technology out on OSGrid’s experimental Danger Grid. According to OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey, the OpenSim implementation of mesh leverages the work done byRead More →

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This month, the Youth for Christ charity celebrates its second year in Second Life. But the big party will be held in OpenSim, the charity’s new home. The reason? The Second Life Teen Grid, where the YFC has been offering support and mentoring programs for at-risk youth, is closing atRead More →