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Press Release: VenueGen Announces New Enterprise Collaboration Capability for Its 3D Web Conferencing Platform VenueGen Releases the First Multi-Dimensional Platform for Web Collaboration RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC– VenueGen today announced a major new release of its 3D virtual meeting and training platform, targeted at the enterprise collaboration market. The newRead More →

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Enterprise virtual world vendor added support for the Microsoft Sharepoint service, the company announced today. Teleplace is one of the leading providers of enterprise-grade, behind-the-firewall, fully immersive virtual collaborative environments. It counts “hundreds” of corporations as customers – some of them big names, including Chevron, BP, Lockheed, Intel, and Fidelity.Read More →

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Earlier this year, Linden Lab released Second Life Viewer 2 which, though it had a large number of usability problems, also offered one huge advantage for business and education users: the ability to put a live webpage or any other media onto any in-world surface. This means that a groupRead More →

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For the past year that I’ve been attending meetings in Second Life and OpenSim, I’ve been thinking of the virtual platforms as another kind of collaboration tool. I compare it to Web-based conferences and seminars. A few days ago, however, I read a blog post by Avril Korman, where, inRead More →

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Press Release: Enterprise Human Capital Management Goes 3-D RWD Technologies, LLC and ProtonMedia forge partnership to deliver world’s first 3-D immersive workplace for human capital management BALTIMORE & LANSDALE, Pa. — RWD Technologies, LLC , a global company that develops and implements human and organizational performance solutions, and ProtonMedia, theRead More →

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Press Release: Cisco Virtual and Hybrid Events Take Top Honors with Grand Ex Award Cisco Sweeps Global Event Awards Program With Virtual Events in Two Categories and Takes Top Honors Among All Global Brands with Grand Ex Award. Chicago, IL – May 5, 2010 – Virtual Events emerged as aRead More →

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Early mainstream adoption of enterprise immersive software will most probably not take place in 2013 because of issues regarding the ease of use and the scalability of those immersive environments. That is what Erica Driver, a co-founder and principal at ThinkBalm, told me. I interviewed Erica about OpenSim and theRead More →

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Press Release: ProtonMedia Named “Cool Vendor in the High-Performance Workplace” by Leading Analyst Firm Vendors selected for the “Cool Vendor” report are Innovative, Impactful, and Intriguing LANSDALE, Pa. —ProtonMedia, the developer of the ProtoSphere virtual collaboration environment for the high-performance workplace, announced today that it has been included in theRead More →

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If you’re a business manager considering rolling out virtual workspaces, you may think that an avatar identity is nothing more than yet another user account, the login credentials for a particular piece of virtual world software. At second look, you might think that avatar identities are closer to email addresses.Read More →

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There are few things worse than making a large investment in technology only to find out a couple of years later that the rest of the world has decided to go in a different direction. Not only do you now have to put in the time and money to ripRead More →

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New Orleans law firm Jones Walker has been conducting meetings and training programs in Second Life, the company announced this month. “We created office space where we could conduct meetings, make presentations, provide training, and explore the applications of Second Life to the law firm environment,” said chief marketing officerRead More →

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Press Release: First On-Demand, Photo-realistic Virtual Meetings & Events Platform Launches at DEMO Spring 2010 March 22 /PRNewswire/ — [DEMO Spring 2010]  Today, VenueGen (www.venuegen.com) announced the official launch of its open beta at Demo 2010 in Palm Desert.  After successful pilots resulting in overwhelmingly positive reviews from beta customersRead More →

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In the last couple of weeks we’ve been traveling all over the hypergrid, here at Hypergrid Business, as preparation for the launch of our Hypergrid Worlds directory of hypergrid destinations. And we’ve been shocked — shocked! — to find that many region owners aren’t following basic design principles. We’ve beenRead More →

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When business users get together for a virtual meeting, they’re not interested in showing off the latest dance moves or hairstyles – they want to share PowerPoint presentations, work together on spreadsheets, and collaborate on documents. At least, that’s the experience of virtual world vendor Teleplace, which counts over 100Read More →

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PRESS RELEASE: Introducing the New COMDEX, the Next Generation in Virtual Events Creating a Global Connection for the Technology Sales Community Framingham, MA, March 4, 2010 – Everything Channel, a UBM company and the leader in technology sales channel media and services, today announced the re-launch of COMDEX as aRead More →

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Anders Gronstedt, president of the Gronstedt Group, presents a case study about how high-level executives make some of their biggest decisions in Second Life today at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern time at a live taping of the Virtual Worlds Keynote program. Anders Gronstedt, someone with tremendous experience bothRead More →

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Last week I attended two conferences simultaneously, one in Cancun, Mexico (MPI Meet Different) and the other in Santa Clara, Ca. (Virtual Edge Summit)  Such is the life of a virtual traveler!  While I certainly missed the face-to-face interaction at both events, the experience of navigating two conferences at theRead More →

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Press Release: ThinkBalm’s “The Distillery” — an immersive technology selection experience Source: ThinkBalm What do whiskey and enterprise immersive software have in common? Not much, unless you’re on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life (or, shortly, the ThinkBalm region of ReactionGrid). We are excited to announce that construction on The DistilleryRead More →

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The very aspects of virtual world that make them appealing to some enterprise users, such as the collaboration tools, also make them risky from a compliance perspective. These risks include the communication risks of the wrong information getting to the wrong people, inappropriate workplace behavior, and lack of archiving tools.Read More →

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Today, online events producer Caleb Booker debuts a new video series devoted to, and filmed entirely inside, virtual worlds. The program, “Virtual Worlds Keynote,” is filmed in Second Life in front of a live studio audience. Well, virtually live. The first guest is Jonena Relth, president of TBD Consulting Inc.,Read More →

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A growing number of companies are instituting virtual workforces allowing the employees to be closer to their customers and working in a remote environment. These remote employees work distantly from the members of their team and may rarely have in person contact. As a manager you soon learn you can setRead More →

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Press Release: 3Di, Inc. LAUNCHES FREE “3Di IMMERSIVE SEMINAR ” PUBLIC BETA SERVICE 3Di, Inc. Opens Online Seminar Service Using Avatars And 3D Virtual Worlds Free For Beta Testers 3Di, Inc., which offers 3D Internet solutions, announces the public beta release of “3Di Immersive Seminar,” a next-generation online seminar serviceRead More →

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Press Release: ThinkBalm Publishes Enterprise Immersive Software Selection Guide Today, industry analyst firm ThinkBalm published “The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide.” This report is a use case-based guide designed to aid business decision makers in the enterprise immersive software selection process. The report covers nineteen vendors and presents “if/then” scenarios,Read More →

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Second Life is being held back by an “elite group” of users, according to Forrester Research, Inc. analyst Tom Grant. There is an ” Iron Law of Oligarchy,” Grant wrote this week. “Over time, a subset of customers emerge who participate regularly in user group meetings, discussion forums, the commentsRead More →

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Training company Immercio Ltd. is launching a full-service corporate training and meeting facility this month for small and medium-sized businesses on January 17. The facility has two locations – in Second Life, and on the OpenSim-based Reaction Grid – comes with pre-configured buildings and presentation rooms, as well as round-the-clockRead More →

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As OpenSim-based social grids continue to grow, Second Life content designers are understandably worried about the free content floating around these grids — content which may have been ripped off from Second Life. Part of this is accidental. Users copy their bought-and-paid-for inventories from Second Life to their OpenSim regions,Read More →

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A Virtual Immersive Environment is Not a Parallel Universe, It is an Alternative Reality. While it is possible to make a 3D virtual immersive environment (VIE) look exactly (or pretty darn close) to your actual office building or training room or college campus…what’s the point? The real power of aRead More →

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One year ago (nearly to this day), Cisco Systems announced the cancellation of their annual “Global Sales Meeting” – in a statement, Cisco CEO John Chambers was quoted: In almost all instances for business critical activities, we will be utilizing Web 2.0 collaboration technologies, such as TelePresence and WebEx, toRead More →

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On Thursday, I experienced a wonderful example of effective training in Second Life.  During the weekly Train For Success meetup, Mark Jankowski of Virtual Training Partners conducted a portion of his negotiations training course and gave a tour of his training grounds.  It was impressive not due to fascinatingly complexRead More →

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In Virtual Events Year In Review: 2009, I summarized key trends that I witnessed in the virtual events industry this year. The trends for 2009 included global adoption, emergence of new industries (as virtual event show hosts), emergence of hybrid (virtual/physical) events, the shift to ongoing communities and the shiftRead More →

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Coming into this year, I considered 2009 a taking-off point for the virtual events industry.  Sure, virtual events and virtual tradeshows have been around for some time, but I felt 2009 would see enormous growth (in both event volume and in the breadth of industries entering the mix), as virtualRead More →

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Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc. is not only a meeting and events company – it is also a travel agency. So it might be strange that president Dan Parks is promoting a way to hold meetings and conferences that requires no travel at all. It wasn’t always this way. When ParksRead More →

(Photo by Elsie esq. via Flickr.)

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I occasionally get announcements or news from new grids running on the OpenSim platform, but they require the creation of a new avatar to visit. I don’t personally have anything against these kinds of grids, but there isn’t usually an interesting business story there. Semi-public grids — grids which don’tRead More →

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The battle for the future of the 3D Web is about to get hot… and steamy. Utherverse CEO tells us that he’s planning to launch an all-out attack against the other virtual world platforms out there, with free hosting and a set of free building tools designed to attract businessRead More →

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The $50,000 price tag might scare off smaller customers, but IBM’s Lotus Sametime 3D product is designed to help large enterprises start holding virtual meetings. The product – released at the end of June — includes integration with corporate directories, with the Lotus Sametime chat service, and includes conferencing toolsRead More →

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When you first open up an OpenSim browser – Hippo, for example — it seems pretty straightforward. Logging in is a snap, just type your name and password. But once you log in, it’s a different story. You start out as some faceless person in ugly clothes, although it canRead More →

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My first time in OpenSim was on May 22, 2009, when my internship program put me in contact with my new boss. She suggested that I download Hippo so that we could meet at the company’s virtual offices and discuss my internship. I was studying in Madrid and she wasRead More →

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IBM officially released its Lotus Sametime 3D collaboration product this week. The product is based on the OpenSim opensource virtual world server software, an IBM spokeswoman confirmed to Hypergrid Business today. This is the first serious use of the OpenSim platform as part of an established and popular enterprise productRead More →

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Having a held a few business meetings in OpenSim over the past few weeks, several staff trainings, I’m getting a better idea of the features I would like to see added to OpenSim. I’m not complaining about what we have so far: it is already making a big difference toRead More →

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[Update: You can browse all hypergrid-enabled public OpenSim grids with Hyperica, the directory of hypergrid destinations. Directory indexes more than 100 shopping and freebie store locations. Updated hypergrid travel directions here.  Full, up-to-date list of OpenSim hosting providers is here.] There are a lot of different OpenSim versions flying around,Read More →

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When I show people around OpenSim, the first question they ask is: “So this is like Second Life? Only worse?” Which is a valid question. Any particular OpenSim world — like, say, OSGrid, or OpenLife, or ReactionGrid or WorldSimTerra — is small and puny in comparison to SecondLife’s grid. ImagineRead More →

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These last couple of weeks have been problematic for many of us using OpenSim. The OSGrid, in particular, has had more than its share of downtime as a result of ongoing software upgrades, and links between regions break frequently because of incompatible software versions. So in planning the location ofRead More →

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This week, ReactionGrid has released its $8,950 Banbury virtual world server, for those who want to physically own their own virtual universe. But for customers willing to let their virtual worlds be managed by someone else, there are also inexpensive hosted options. Today, ReactionGrid runs one public grid, and aRead More →

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I missed the first Internet investment boom. I was covering wars in Central Asia, but that’s no excuse. I could have invented Yahoo! — it started with a guy in his dorm room with a list of favorite links. I could have done that. Or eBay — a guy whoRead More →

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So you have decided that your company needs a virtual world platform. (Maybe you read our earlier article, “Do you need a virtual world?“) Here is how to select the rigtht platform. Do you expect to have more than 50 visitors at any one time? Most immersive virtual words haveRead More →

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The company is in Singapore. The owners are in Thailand, Moscow, and Shanghai. What’s the most convenient location for the annual corporate meeting? Hint: it’s got dragons, a spaceport, and a red light district. You might think – China. But the company actually picked a place much cheaper to travelRead More →

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[Update: You can browse all hypergrid-enabled public OpenSim grids with Hyperica, the directory of hypergrid destinations. Directory indexes more than 100 shopping and freebie store locations. Updated hypergrid travel directions here.] What is the hypergrid? And why should business care? Because it’s starting to look as if this is theRead More →

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Mike Joyce – that’s Michael R. Joyce on imdb.com – is a Hollywood producer. You may have heard of him from such projects as “Battlestar Galactica” and “Jewel of the Nile.” “The kind of work I did was line producing,” he said. “I did whole shows right from scratch. IRead More →

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Virtual worlds can be difficult to access, with most of the popular ones — such as Second Life and games like World of Warcraft — requiring the installation of special software. The new OpenSim-based virtual worlds are no exception, requiring that users install software and then struggle to  figure outRead More →