UK virtual worlds journalist and best-selling author, Tim Guest (also known as Errol Mysterio in Second Life) passed away last week at the untimely age of 34. Only recently married late last year, his wife found him dead of apparent heart-failure late last week.

Guest's work in UK journalism and with metaverse development group, Rivers Run Red, straddled the period of mainstream awareness of virtual environments in general and of Second Life particularly. Guest's book Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds was widely acclaimed as a full and frank view of the realities and the potentials of Second Life and other virtual environments, and his treatment of virtual environment topics in his journalistic career demystified the subject for many ordinary people.

While we didn't know Guest personally, the industry will suffer from the loss of Guest's informed commentary and popularization of the medium.

[via Sky News]

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UK virtual worlds writer, Tim Guest, dead at 34 originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Rivers Run Red announced a new extension for their Immersive Workspaces enterprise-class virtual environment collaboration solution. Immersive Planograms is a 2D/3D planning solution giving brands the ability to plan and design effective product displays and store layouts using virtual world technology. With Immersive Planograms, Rivers Run Red presents brands and retailers with a persistent 3D environment they can easily design and manage through a web control system.

Corporate blurb aside, Immersive Planograms is actually a very cool concept that is implemented in a very clever way. Essentially a Web-based schematic can be manipulated to reflect a store layout or a warehouse floor-plan or a variety of other designs, and the manipulations of the 2D schematic are reflected in the virtual environment.

Knowing the Second Life environment as well as we do, we were actually pretty impressed with the simplicity and sheer ease of integration between the Web-control and the virtual environment.

Continue reading Immersive Workspaces expands with Immersive Planograms

Immersive Workspaces expands with Immersive Planograms originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Not all that long ago, if you wanted a piece of Second Life Linden Lab would be just about the last organization to deal with you. Linden Lab was all about the platform. If you wanted help setting up shop, or a marketing presence, to the Lab you were no different from any other customer.

Those days, apparently, are over. Linden Lab has partnered with Rivers Run Red, and is now in the business of marketing and selling solutions. While a jump in new sales and marketing staff (like European Marketing Director, Clare Rees) are now old news, Linden Lab has a new hire from Washington DC.

That's Scott Sechser, former Operations Manager at the White House. That's the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

Continue reading Linden Lab sets sights on government

Linden Lab sets sights on government originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Back in August, we talked about what we felt was an inevitability. A Second Life grid devoted to corporations and business collaboration, online 3D meetings and so forth. We figured that the agent-domain system that allows inter-grid teleportation would be a supporting factor in this effort. Also, earlier this week that the growing-yet-eternally-saturated Second Life economy would cause Linden Lab to announce a new revenue stream some day soon.

That day is today. All these things, it seems, may have now come to pass.

Rivers Run Red and Linden Lab (after a bit of a shaky time with their initial announcements for Immersive Workspaces 1.0), have launched Immersive Workspaces 2.0. The clean, sanitized, and focused leveraging of Second Life for your corporate collaboration needs.

Continue reading Linden Lab and Rivers Run Red launch Immersive Workspaces 2.0

Linden Lab and Rivers Run Red launch Immersive Workspaces 2.0 originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

3Di, a Tokyo-based member of the NGI group who maintain a fairly solid Second Life presence, have announced the launch of an enterprise virtual worlds product based on the BSD-licensed Opensim, Second Life simulator workalike.

3Di Opensim (the base 3Di technology) is a reworked and extended version of Opensim, and as an enterprise solution is packaged with additional tools and support under the name 3Di Opensim Standard. 3Di maintain a separate project developing further extensions and enhancements for 3Di Opensim.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading 3Di launches enterprise Opensim product

3Di launches enterprise Opensim product originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon is still making irregular postings to the official Second Life blog. It's all heady and exciting stuff, to be sure. Growth, focus on improvement of the new user experience, simplified registration, and so on.

Yet something seems to be missing. What's missing is anything that excites you if you're already a Second Life user. There's plenty here to entice those who aren't already users, but if you're already one, there doesn't seem to be anything much in them for you to get excited about. Put together with some other pieces, however, it certainly creates an interesting picture about future direction for Second Life.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Kingdon's Second Life updates: What's missing?

Kingdon's Second Life updates: What's missing? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Remember back in August where we predicted that a corporate/enterprise version of the Second Life grid was more or less inevitable? Well, that appears to have functionally come to pass, though the details are still hazy.

Rivers Run Red has partnered up with Linden Lab to provide a product called Immersive Workspaces to (what appears to be primarily) the global enterprise corporate market. Immersive Workspaces is a fusion of Second Life grid technology along with a blend of Second Life objects, web-sites and web-services, all apparently very tightly integrated.

As a part of the partnership, each company may either individually or jointly sell and market each other's products, and Linden Lab has an exclusive license to Rivers Run Red's Immersive Workspaces product. For its part, Rivers Run Red will provide "product and content development services to Linden Lab's clients and developer community". Right now, the only known customers of Immersive Workspaces appear to be Unilever and Diageo.

	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Continue reading Rivers Run Red with Linden Lab: A Second Life for the enterprise

Rivers Run Red with Linden Lab: A Second Life for the enterprise originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vodafone makes it easier to contact Second Life from the outside originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Cinemassively: Remembrance Day in Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Remembrance Day to be celebrated in Second Life

Remembrance Day to be celebrated in Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.