The Loss of the Teen Grid to Education

So now its official and time is moving by quickly. Second Life's Teen Grid will be shutting down at the end of this year, so if you have an island there then you will be moved to the main grid and your kids will most likely be thrown out.

Not shedding a tear

Alas I am not. The UK was always stuck with the problem that our kids mostly stay in at School until they are 18 then go straight to university. Many of the Schools we look after are 6th Form Colleges and virtual worlds gave them the possibilities to have fashion shows, art shows, all showing off their students skills. But most 6th formers are 16-19 and as such couldn't use the teen grid (well some could, some couldn't).

So we would always encourage our schools to use OpenSim. Lets be honest they things we can configure for OpenSim (Swear word filter, Timed uptime, logs of every conversation) are all now a basic minimum for kids using the internet.

Also thanks to the wonderful people at OpenSim Development Team and our own In House team I would like to announce the launch of two new packages, much reduced in price and for Education Establishments ONLY!


The Content Grid - Village/Town/City (foreign and home)
The Content Grid is a web front end that plugs into your OpenSim Virtual World. It will allow you to not only host your own world but it allows you to dynamically add islands (via the web page marketplace) when you require. And not just islands you have created yourself, you can create islands and upload them for other schools to use (either for free or charge them through our web market place).

So you could have a class studying GCSE English Literature so you enable the World War 1 English Lit. Island and allow your kids to instantly walk around the trenches of the Western Front, or you could create your own island and pack it away when your finished.

So imagine 6 classes each with their own island and you just open and close them when required, so you don't have to worry about hosting 6 islands all at once.

The Content Grid can also be configured to work within your already present VLE (we have integrated it with GLOW and Moodle) so the kids and teachers have 1 login for all systems.

Our 3 Servers are detailed below:-

Village
25Gb HD
1024RAM (burstable to 2048)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

Town
50Gb HD
2048 RAM (burstable to 4096)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

City
50Gb HD
3072 RAM (burstable to 6144)
unmetered Traffic
100Mb Bandwidth

All come with OpenSim version 0.7.x
OpenSimManager (so you log in via a web page)
ContentGrid Manager (so you can dynamiclly add and remove islands)
Branded Client Software (based upon Second Life Version 2 viewer)
Your own Domain either transferred or a Brand New Domain created for you.

Foreign and Home relates to the servers hosting location. Some schools require to host the server themselves due to security concerns with firewalls etc. Our system will still allow you to upload and download islands as per normal but everything hosted behind your own firewall (HOME). Normally we host the servers ourselves for our clients at a state of the art data centre in London, UK (Foreign).

Until the end of 2010 the prices for these packages are:-

Village £2,292.87
Town £2,402.87
City £2,512.87
Per annum.
(for a calendar monthly cost divide the above by 11). All Servers hosted by Second Places (if you wish to host the servers localily please contact us directly).


OpenSim in a BOX
This is a simple installation of OpenSim version 0.7.x with a non branded Second Life Version 2 software client and web interface for adding user, removing users, forum and log in.

Like The Content Grid it comes in the 3 flavours depending on the same specification as per the content grid hardware.
Village £600
Town £900
City £1300
Per annum.
(for a calendar monthly cost divide the above by 11).


If any of these prices are of interest, or if you need to configure your server slightly different then drop me a mail @ info@secondplaces.net

Please note these prices are for EDUCATION establishments only. All prices exclude UK VAT (which goes up at the end of the year as well).

Internet = Knowledge = Do!

A great piece from the BBC about the Web being used to download walks and the number of people doing it! The information is coming from the English Natural Trust.

800 on Average Downloads per Day!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11119563

Second Places held at stand at the Museums Association Conference in London last year. To say the event was a waste of money was an understatement. I had never come across a more "conservative" (not political) anti-change group in my existence in Virtual Worlds or digital media.

They had a whiteboard up where people could put ideas and ticks beside it to get a feeling on what the conference attendees were thinking. And the largest ticked box was "Digital is not the way forward for us!"

I was flabbergasted. The only industry in the WORLD who could not see the advantages of digital media. I was peeked and I started asking why they were different?

"It is all about feet through the door" was the most common reply. "We only get funding when we can prove the local populace use it!" was another.

I was shocked and, to be honest, quite angry. No one I spoke to thought about other ways to get money than funding grants!

We are very, very lucky in this country that most of our museums are free. Its rare in the continent, even rarer in the States. And I do admit I don't like to see tourists from outside the UK walk past the donation box with a look and a shuffle the other way. I always put in a fiver and I pay my taxes already.

I digress, and really don't want to go down the road of funding. But what this BBC story says is that here is a way for the English National Trust to say to their governance, "Hey, we got 800 people a day using this service for free, and its costing us not very much after the initial funding!". And I'm sure you could charge 10p (why 10p and not £1) no reason, just people will not care about 10p, maybe a quid is noticeable. Sell 800 a day thats £30k per year for nothing more than a map and a bit of information (they even have their own paper)!

But I can imagine the idea being brought up to the people at the museum conference. "Oh no! people need to come to our shop to pick up one for free so we know how many people take it!"

Its time the Museum and Galleries of this world looked at digital media, not just in side their buildings, but making their buildings open to the world. Spread their knowledge world wide, allow for donations or even CHARGE for things like talks, debates anything that can bring in revenue!

There is 1.1 BILLION people on the internet, grab just 1% that is 11Million people, if just 1% of them donated a fiver for their visit that is over half a MILLION pounds!

COME ON PEOPLE, the new media gives you new opportunity, how would you love to talk to kids from Africa about your local castle, or kids from Iraq about your ideas on the reformation.

Knowledge and understanding is just not about profit, it can even stop these misunderstandings between peoples!

Peace and Profit... not a bad thing to wish for and all easy and possible with Virtual Worlds from Second Places.

Would you host an event in a Virtual World?

Buying a car from a second hand car sales man

OK not every second hand car salesman is bad, and I'm sure they sell great cars but we playing with sterotypes here. As I'm sure not every "virtual" event is not an utter failure.

Again, for safety of the internet lawyers, I'm not going to name names of the event, or hosts or company doing the hosting. I will however say it was in Second Life and it was to be a well attended event with a mix of Second Life veterns and Second Life newbies, with just a hint of business.

And of course it failed.

The sim became a juddering wreck. The company hosting the event had a wonderful build, with scripted doors, particle fireworks.. EVERYTHING you shouldn't have at an event when you have no guarentee that the other person you share your sever with is not hosting a nightclub or , and I hope not, a similar event.

For those not in the know Second Life share computer power and its dynamic. Which is great if yoru lucky. You get all the resources, however the person you share with then gets very little.

So here we have an event and its heavy resource wise already and then people arrive, and every person that arrives the island gets slower and slower, more and more unresponsive.

And of course, people leave.. Disillusioned with most of the new people will never touch virtual worlds again becuase of this first bad experience.

We "veterans" are sick of seeing events hosting in Second Life and failing. You have no agreement with Linden Lab that your event will be looked after!

Use opensim, use a company like Second Places who can use a Cloud so that you could have the power of a small super computer passing information to everyone at t1 speeds.

Every time a newbie company looking at virtual worlds goes to an event that fails.. We have to spend even more time to persuade them that the technology is great its just you wouldn't host a real life event in a building where there is constant fires and the building collaspes all the time!

We got burnt bad by Second Lifes lack of SLA 2 years ago. So please take this as words from the wise.

OpenSim is cheaper, scaleable and if your happy to pay you can get EXACTLY what you need. Its not god, it does crash, all computer stuff can. But at least you know it won't be because your sharing a CPU with a sex club who's doing discounts that night!

BETT 2010 - London

Its always a worry for small companies that spend most of your marketing budget on one event. However BETT 2010 was very successful for Second Places.

We have channeled most of our R&D into our new system, "The Content Grid (TCG)" over the past 3 months. And this was our chance to launch it. Without fanfare or ticker tape we launched on the Wednesday at a very quiet BETT (due to snow in London). But by the Saturday word of mouth had gotten out and people were entering the stand to look at TCG without us standing on the main route dragging them in.

It was exactly what I had hoped. Teachers and Principles were saying the exact same thing, "We want to work in a virtual world, we want the fun in education, the collaboration, project planning, the chance to break stuff without massive costs. But public virtual worlds was no use for UK (or euro) schools as the PC (political correctness) brigade and media would have a field day with the idea of kids and adults "sharing" a world. Where there would be no traceability, the old problem of animity and the problem of kids going where they shouldn't.

Someone one showed me a quote from Twitter where someone had posted on visiting of a public virtual grid "Just watched a class of 10 year olds being shown around an island their school had just purchased. I asked them how they liked it and was told they loved it!", next tweet was along the lines of "This shows how virtual worlds and schools can work together".

Now the last part is bang on, Schools and Students can have a whale of a time in a virtual world while learning at the same time. However the first statement is enough for every head teacher, every director of learning at a LA (local authority) to put the shutters up and use it as a way never to look at Virtual Worlds.... "Who was this person?", "Talking to kids? You have got to be kidding", etc etc etc.

I am not saying these people are not blowing a massive storm out of a coastal breeze but on the other hand, how do I know this person on Twitter (who has some silly name I can't remember) but had a picture of a middle age male was not a pedophile? By laws of probability I can be fairly sure he isn't but those in positions of responsibility know that probability now is not an excuse.

It would only take one story and that grid would have the media down on it like a tonne of bricks, making things up, seeing things that were not there. Remember Second Life? The Children being "groomed" even though you required a credit card to access, not many 10 years olds have credit cards (although may explain the credit crunch).

TCG takes away that problem. Its hosted in the school or in our own data center. Only those given access by the school can access the school grid. All our staff have been through the disclosure systems in both Scotland and England (Scotland is allot more strict). Its not a lot of money (£60) however even with that we have to give the school notice we are going to be in world and staff are on strict instructions to say nothing to anyone. The "BUSY" sign helps.

So every teacher who we spoke to, demoed and let loose in TCG knew we had by passed this problem.

Breaking another barrier between Students and Virtual Worlds.