H&R Block in second life

I had a very difficult time finding any interesting second life sites and a nearly impossible time finding serious people to chat with. I found the second life search engine difficult to browse so fell back on google to help find a popular site that could help me with my homework assignment. I was thrilled to come across a May 2007 article from Computerworld.com of "The top 8 corporate websites in second life". Their list included:

8. Best Buy Geek Squad
7. H&R Block
6. Cisco Systems
5. Reuters
4. Dell
3. Sun Microsystems
2. Pontiac
1. IBM

Of the list, Pontiac was the most interesting since it sold a physical product and has been around for decades as part of the slow to react US auto industry. They had an eye-popping video on YouTube that showed all the investments they made- dealerships, race tracks, dance clubs, jayz concerts:



....and to my shocking amazement, Pontiac had taken their site off second life. Reuters as well had left second life along with Reebok, Adidas, and AOL. I then turned to the computer companies and for the most part found them to be barren ghost towns. I entered several times at varying hours of the day and never saw more than 1 lost soul at a time in Dell or Sun. IBM seems to get more traffic but they their site is a "sandbox" for people to play in rather than something promoting the company. The couple of people I ran into were either busy destroying model cities with a giant dragon or bragging about how they turned themselves into boxes.


Finally, I strolled over to H&R Block and that is where I received my biggest surprise. The H&R block website wrote as late as 2008 that you could enter second life and get tax advice just like in real life. The island was completely intact but there was no trace of any buildings or roads. They had removed everything but had not been very public about it and still left the island accessible to visitors. It was on the island that I made a friend who gave me a better understanding of the current state of second life. Nulflux Negulesco is a self-described "creator" on second life. He creates HUD's (Heads up displays) and sells them to people for ~$18 US. He creates HUD's and then tries to sell them to people that he is passing. He initially offered me a HUD that sent millions of objects flying out in all directions like a plague, but I declined. He mentioned that he sells about 2 HUD's every day of the month as supplementary income and makes alot more doing freelancing design for avatars. He seriously tries to sell his products online and forecasts that if he can hit 1% of the avatar market, he'll sell 160,000 HUD's and make $3million US.
Nulflux even built an active stargate and some funny signs. He was very friendly had quite a bit of insite to second life. He had been online for about 2 years and was using H&R blocks site for free since he could test out his HUD's and not have to worry about paying Linden or being bothered. He does not see a market for real life products on second life. He said "Real life companies are failing here cause nobody wants real life products" and "those who will succeed are those who have the will and creativity to make new things and contribute to the virtual world." Nulflux converted his Linden dollars immediately to US currency and rarely spent his own money on the program. The only thing he bought was a translator. I had already found a free translator from "Simbolic" and we both agreed that verbal language communication is improved by second life.

My Opinion of Second Life

In 2005/2006, lots of large corporations were jumping on the Second Life bandwagon and generating publicity with their new portal. Most recently, Secondlife.com was listed as one of the 5 worst websites of the year by Time Magazine along with eHarmony.com and MySpace.com.

In 2007, Wired Magazine said in How Madison Avenue is wasting millions on a deserted Second Life that "Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn't much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden's in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex." This is highlighted by the CNET live virtual interview of avatar Anshe Chung, the first person to make $1million US on Second Life, when she was bombarded by flying penises.

I experienced all of this in my searching through Second Life. Many sites toughted as highly popular (Dell, the CDC, Imperial College London) were ghost towns. Some of those that were ranked the best (Pontiac, Reuters, H&R Block) had completely abandoned Second Life.

There are supposed millions of avatars in existance, however, it seems like very few were ever used on a regular basis and there are so many small sites open all during the day that it is very easy to never see anyone. The few sites I came across that were populated frequently were people who already knew each other and were holding "mature" conversations.

The graphics were almost untolerable too. All too often, I ran into invisible walls that were still loading. The viewable distance made exploring difficult since you could only see a few body lengths ahead.

Although, I do not see this as a viable means to sell real products; the training benefits seem achievable. There are several medical and language training programs that seem much more enlightening that reading a textbook.

For me and my avatar (Freddy Philly), the highlights were hang gliding on the Bora Bora site and finding a free Unibanco Segway and beer at the Brasil SP Jardins site(Unibanco is a large Brasilian bank where my sister-in-law works). I also picked up a "tucano" t-shirt from the PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira) which is a large political party. No site owners were ever present in these sites but a bunch of avatars gathered for social chatting and playing with the toys.

NOAA in Second Life

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hosts a Second Life site to "promote scientific discussion regarding the climate and allows visitors to experience parts of the environment they would not normally have access to in the real world".




I frequently use the NOAA website in summer to check ocean temperature, tide charts and wave swells so was excited to see the NOAA Second Life site listed in the showcase hotspots. The site has been around since April of 2006 and is a non-profit learning center that seemed to have ~5 visitors at any given moment actually trying to play in the exhibits. Some of the exhibits were more useful than others. For example, you could experience a tsunami and go see the undersea earthquake causing a giant wave. Here are pictures of me in a "Canadian Yacht" as the simulation begins and as the wave is about to crush me.



Another useful feature was the real-time weather map of the United States. You enter a warehouse that has a map of the US on the floor and rain clouds above the places it is raining. Today, the northeast was getting lots of precipitation while Texas was nice and sunny.


Some of the less interesting parts of the site are riding a weather balloon off to space, watching a glacier melt, exploring the ocean floor, and trying to use the earth simulator sphere that is very complicated. I asked at least one visitor each day for the last week about these items and no one could get the sphere to operate and no one was able to ride the weather plane into a hurricane.



The website seemed very complicated if you didn't know what to expect or didn't have someone to guide you. I never saw anyone from NOAA on the site (probably cause they do it at work from 9-5) but luckily they put lots of links to YouTube videos that explained some of the island. In general, the people who frequented the site were friendly and wanted to learn more about NOAA and partake in the virtual recreation of climatic phenomenon. Dallas Beorn complimented me on my virtual Segway and he gave me a yacht with Canadian flags. They all seemed like Second Life newbies like myself since they wondered around most of the time and didn't huddle together with other like in most popular site. Unfortunately, I doubt they would return to the site anytime soon since they had exhausted the entertainment value.

Smart Grid Essay

The following picture from the California Independent System Operator (ISO) explains quite a bit to me about the current state of our nation's power production and consumption- our system is terribly antiquated and inefficient. (The California ISO is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation charged with operating the majority of California’s high-voltage wholesale power grid. http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html) The plot represents the power supply and demand in California over the last 24 hrs. The undulating red curve signifies power consumption and begins to rise at 6am as everyone wakes up, settles in as everyone is working, peaks as we return home, and plummets as we go to sleep. Power usage today varied from 20GW to 30.5GW throughout the day. The green line represents the supply of power available and the fluctuations are the result of power supplies (mostly hydrocarbon based) turned on or off in anticipation of demand. As you can see, the supply far surpasses the demand and is for grid stability.

A smart grid is a set of digitized sensors and controls that aim to minimize this inefficiency in a system whose architecture as not changed much in over 100years. The improvements to the existing system come in two forms: more reliable supply and steadier demand. The grid would have many sensors and allow for two way flow of electricity so it would be more resilient to disturbances and not need so much power generating reserves. If a power surge is occurring as too many all turn on their TV's, the grid will automatically adjust and redistribute power instead of allowing brownouts/blackouts. The data could be collected better too and distributed to power generators so they better plan their generating. It will even allow individual generators like solar panels on a house or hybrid car batteries contribute to the grid when demand peaks. This all sounds great but there are some major privacy concerns to be worked out- ie who will have their power reduced when the grid needs to redistribute?

The other aspect is demand control and will gain more public attention. It is placing transmitters on appliances throughout houses that then send the data to record and store it. The expected benefits are that people will have a better understanding of their electric bills and therefore actively attempt to cut back. They will know what sources are most consuming and what time of day is best to consume. The smart grid monitors would allow electric prices to be updated every few minutes. Households can see the real time price and plan their consumption accordingly. It will provide incentives for everyone to both reduce overall consumption and distribute more evenly over the course of the day to gain better energy prices.

Several pilot projects are currently underway to determine the feasibility. The real problems, however, appear to be social as the technology already exists in scattered forms. Utilities will certain push back and privacy concerns will be generated.

Two large companies have recently partnered to supply smart grid technology to the US- GE and Google- where GE would supply the hardware and power expertise and Google would supply the software. President Obama actively champions the smart grid and GE even bought Superbowl advertising space this year in order to promote the technology (they own NBC which broadcasted it).




To further promote it, they have setup an interactive website to explore the benefits of smart grid technology: http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/landing_page

Included in the website, there is a really neat application that allows for 3D holograms (Augmented Reality) to magically appear on your computer screen. The instructions are on the GE site and this video shows an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK59Beq0Sew&eurl=http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/preview/

Blog Topic- Smart grids

My chosen topic for this project will be smart grid technology. I work for a large mulitnational engineering firm this company has been actively advertising the benefits of a smart grid. I'll use this blog to better understand the technology and see how it can be applied around me.

From what I know right now, smart grids are supposed to provide info to its electrical consumers so they can make better decisions on how to conserve energy and when to use it (ie informate the users.) Im not sure this will be useful for my wife and I since we live in a relatively small apartment in Houston and only turned on the air conditioning 3 times in 2008.

The first thing I do when learning about an unfamiliar topic is browse wikipedia. Let's see whats there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid

Begining of a new era

I never imagined I would ever be blogging, but here I am writing as part of MIS homework. Let's see how involved i become.