Socially|Mundane

This is why Second Life should be taken far more seriously than it is already. International Business Machines, also known as IBM has embraced Second Life with a death-grip. At first, when IBM set-up a private estate, hardly anyone noticed.

Then that private estate eventually turned into a private continent with several, a dozen or more private estates all interconnected with each other, many of those sims being private access for IBM employees and approved persons-only.

Then IBM actually created employee guidelines regarding Second Life, how to 'dress' and act while in-world. There even was an employee strike against IBM within Second Life - and the strike, by most accounts, was taken very seriously.

Then, IBM began hosting private estates on their own hardware, behind their own firewall, yet those regions still were connected to the main grid. And up to now, all onlookers more or less took it as simple scientific experimentation. What exactly can be done with Second Life3 and is it really a viable solution for business needs?

Well, that question has officially been answered.

Eric Krangel of Silicon Alley Insider sez:
"The push to integrate Lotus Sametime with Second Life is the latest move in IBM's full-throttle embrace of virtual worlds. The company has been working closely with Second Life parent company Linden Lab to develop a set of protocols that allow avatars to move between virtual worlds, and became the first company to host private Second Life regions for internal use."

So what does this mean?

Think about it. IBM is not some dinky little start up. They are a huge world-wide, international company. Sure, they have the bucks to throw down a hole to 'tinker' with the likes of 'toy' software such as Second Life technology. Sure, the whole private regions behind firewalls on their own hardware was likely to the end of teleporting "between system grids" and the research thereof.

But, to build "Second Life Grid™" technology directly into Lotus Notes?

Okay, this is a holy fuck moment. This is huge. This is likely history happening before our very eyes and you are not only here to witness it, you are, in a small way, part of it. The fact that such a monumnetal company as IBM shows such interest in dinky little niche software for cult members with no lives... and actually builds some of that technology into staple software of the business world...

Second Life technology is on it's way to full legitimization.
Mark my words.

Oh, wait - my words are already marked. Right here, right now, where you are reading them.

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