Banana also wrote that Dedric Mauriac did an outstanding software development job on the EnergyWise demo.  I know the 3D demo was easy to use and brought to life this very cool concept. Go Cisco!

Cisco Live 09 Update

Cisco EnergyWise Office

Tawni CiscoSystems  just dropped this info to Banana on their TechChat series.  Cisco does a great job with their TechChat series.  If you want to see it, please join them in Second Life.

Cisco EnergyWise – Improve Your Green Practices with Cisco EnergyWise
Date = April 14
Time = 8am SLT
Location = Bandwidth Stage, Cisco Systems Sim 4, Second Life

Meta Magic Studio will be there providing support.

Meta Magic Studio has two private sims in Second Life® versus having land on the Mainland. Los Arboles is what Linden Lab® calls a Full Region which means it is their highest performing sim offering.  We use this sim to demonstrate various builds concepts and some tongue in check salutes to the metaverse. Meta Magic Studio is defined as Openspace Region which in intended just to be a landscape sim with limited scripts and prims.

We have completely revamped Los Arboles for 2009, please stop by any time to visit.

Today, Jan 27, 2009, Cisco® opened its Sustainability Center demonstrating its new EnergyWise Technology and their Networked Sustainability Network in Second Life®. This center is located at Cisco Systems Sim 2 and demonstrates Green technologies and products. The center was developed by Meta Magic Studio.

Virtually all large enterprises are conscious of the image they project, and corporate responsibility is an important part of that image. Green technologies represent an opportunity for corporations that extends beyond brand reputation and can affect overall profitability.

We at Meta Magic Studio are very proud of this development that began with a meeting at Cisco on January 6th. In less than one week, we were able to come up with a “Earth and Technology” concept for the look and feel of the outer building that was “outside of the box” thinking while maintaining consistence with established Cisco branding and the Cisco Virtual Campus look. We built a working concept within one week in order to get approvals from Cisco, then we began the true work of building an interactive pavilion.

Concept

Main Message Kiosk

Inside of the pavilion there is the following

• Main Message Kiosk
• Four interactive kiosks that provide notecards, web urls, and pdf urls
• One “EngeryWise” Business Calculator kiosk featuring a power point presentation with supporting web url
• Two video on demand kiosks featuring a message from Chairman and CEO John Chambers and a technical data sheet video
• Upstairs video vault area
• “Carbon Free” flight animations – for fun!

Outside of the pavilion, extensive work was done in creating a “natural park” feeling with information signage on green trends. This area includes both audio and visual recreations of birds and butterflies which enhance the virtual experience.

All of this effort by Meta Magic Studio was completed within 21 days of getting the job.

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Just a reminder that on Feb 3rd, Cisco will be holding another Tech Chat at 12:00 PST in Second Life at the Bandwidth Stage. Afterwards there is a “birthday” celebration of Cisco’s second year in Second Life. It is a little late, but hey, I am always up for virtual cake — it helps with my virtual diet.

On the 27th of January, Cisco will be opening its Sustainability Center in Second Life.

We have exciting news to share with you about how you can reduce energy costs and Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions using your network as a platform for change. We can all reduce travel and daily commutes by collaborating in virtual environments, but there’s so much more we can do in this networked world.

Source: Cisco http://blogs.cisco.com/virtualworlds/comments/green_it_efforts/

Location: Visit the Sustainability Center in world via this SLurl.

In the next few days, we will post some comments on this very exciting development that we are working on for Cisco’s Virtual Campus.

Key results are:

• User hours increased by 61% over 2007, highlighting the tremendous growth rate in user engagement that Second Life maintained throughout 2008.
• User hours increased steadily each quarter, culminating in a record-setting 112 million user hours in Q4.
• Peak concurrent users were up 31% over 2007
• Land owned by Residents increased 82% over 2007
• Exchange Volume increased 33% over 2007
• User-to-user transactions in Q4 increased 54% over Q4 of 2007

Banana asked that I drop a quick blog entry on one of the ways that I have been using Second Life for our clients that makes beach clothing. They are getting ready for the 2009 product line photo shoot and wanted to be very precise in the types of photos they need.

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

So when I saw the “Tahiti” concept build done, I took a few hundred photos (yes that many!) of the type of pictures and feelings that the client could choose from.

I asked Banana for some waves and long beaches and he was able to give it to me in less than one hour. Then using windlight and working with draw distance and environmental settings, I was able to do sunset and sunrise pictures very quickly.

As you can see from these samples, the “mood” and setting is easily demonstrated. And very cost effective. It would takes us days to story board out all of the different shots, now we can do it in less than one day! A huge savings in time and money for the client and best of all, a fast way to get input.

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

We are now looking at combining real life models and Second Life scenes — stay tuned!

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

Meta Magic Studio staff

The next two days will be review days of sim builds that Meta Magic Studio has (hopefully) developed to customer satisfaction. One of them is a final check off phase, where basically we turn over the “keys.” The second project is in next to last phase review which means the client goes through the sim to give us our final punch list. And the third one is in a middle phase, where we begin the actual work of content layout.

The first two projects are under strict NDA and are not even built under the “Banana Stein” creator name, nor with any Meta Magic Studio bragging rights. Such is life. Now I am very proud of my builds, but sometimes clients want “their” name as the project creator, so for a (hefty) fee, we will accommodate them. (We charge 2x more than standard fee for such a set-up.)

The third project – which has my name all over it – is exciting, but I wish it would be moving faster. But sometimes the clients do not move as fast as we would like.

So keep your fingers crossed for luck for us!

Concept build - Meta Magic Studio

Over on Meta Magic Studio sim, you can see a prototype build we did of a “Tahiti” style resort for a client. It will be up for a few weeks as they do some testing.  (SLURL)

Also I am beginning a new project pn Friday with a small client as we begin testing a concept of providing virtual classrooms to small work forces. They want to see if 3D virtual spaces work better than their current 2D web approach (Web Ex). I see lots of potential in this project.

Mike (Mirror Twin) reminds me to say if anyone has any projects or concepts, just to drop us a note card in world.

Meta Magic Studio Blimp

We have received a few emails wondering what Meta Magic Studio has been up to lately. Some are even worried that we have gone away on vacation! Ha!

As usual, we are under NDA with our clients, so there is not much to say at this time. But we are happy to say that we are busy with two new clients developing their Second Life community presence. We also continue working with a number of companies and not-for-profits in building their web 2.0 networks.

Plus we continue our long term relationship with Cisco Systems and are currently working on their AXP Pavilion and other updates to their four public sims in Second Life.  Cisco also has an extensive plan for their very successful tech chat series with presenations starting again in September and planned through May 2009.  Dannette Veale recently posted a blog entry on this subject.

Our team remains very busy. Mike and Jen have been putting in major hours with new clients while Dot keeps us organized. As for me, I am spending about 50% of my time in Second Life, 20% on OpenSim, Multiverse and Google Lively, while the rest of the time is spent with other web 2.0 projects for our clients.

From a long term perspective, we remain bullish on the Second Life grid despite the doom predictions. We are also beginning to work with OpenSim projects with an eye on the universal avatar and universal permissions systems.

On a personal note, I am not that “excited” by Google’s Lively. It remains a poor example of community 3D space, but since it is Google, we are not writing it off.  We are supporting a couple of efforts at this time.

All the best

Guy “Banana” Schilling

Meta Magic Studio - Second Life - August 2008

Meta Magic Studio has owned the sim Los Arboles since December 2006. The sim is intended as a demonstration sim where we show case build examples including office spaces, amphitheater, theater, gathering spaces plus some other unique concepts that demonstrate prim usage and texture development.

The Los Arboles sim is a “standard” simulator offering from Linden Lab which they classify as a private region (island). From Linden Lab:

Private regions (Islands) are a great solution for large projects, community development and permanent event spaces. Private regions can be grouped, or joined together to create a contiguous space, so you can add to your land mass as your community and projects grow.

Linden Lab also offers Openspaces sim.

Openspaces (light use regions) are also available so you can add ocean or open park land. For more information, check out our Information on Openspaces knowledge base article.

While both sims are same in size (aprox 65K sq meters), their performance and prim allotment are vastly different.

At Meta Magic Studio, we wanted to easily demonstrate this to our customers, so we decided to purchase an Openspace sim and have it placed next to Los Arboles. We have called it Meta Magic Studio – heck, marketing is important!

The build here is more tongue-in-check than Los Arboles. We have textured the land with our logos and made purple trees.

Meta Magic Studio - Second Life