Finally a comment with some insight.

RRR has a lot of feel good “immersive” crap. But at the end of the day, much of it is useless.

I work for a growing company and their immersive business solution is a joke.

Have you seen what it takes to run SecondLife these days? The hardware requirements are going up every release, albeit unofficially, watch as each release makes your brand new top of the line video card seem out of date, with NO improvements to the graphics; which haven’t changed other than windlight, which was botched in the end. Now consider that everyone involved would have to upgrade their machines to participate, including telecommuters. Who’s going to pay? Oh yes, the company, if you try to force your workers to buy new computers with their own money to participate in meetings, expect major problems and potential discrimination lawsuits. Then for company machines, most companies go through OEMs like Dell, HP, etc. All of which overcharge for systems that are considered “gaming rigs.” So now you have to not only pay for this immersive experience (and pay Linden Labs money for sims) but you have to upgrade your hardware to make use of this. Then the other issue: Infrastructure. SL uses a LOT of bandwidth, hell, even on my cable connection, other people in the house get angry whenever I start to play SL as suddenly video sites like youtube start loading slower. Granted this is only initially, but there’s always a very heavy stream of data being sent to the client, then imagine 5-10 users on a LAN, not to mention the connection. The company I work for uses business grade DSL, cable, or T1 lines depending on the location. It’s enough for our needs, though we’d like to have T1 lines at all of our locations for growth, the cost of that isnt practical, and is seen as a waste that can be better utilized growing the profit-rearing departments. IT departments, unless the company specializes in technology, are seen as loss centers, so smart companies tend to limit IT, otherwise, all the earnings would go into beefing up an infrastructure that isnt necessary to do business.

Suddenly, this immersive business platform cuts out many players and leaves the few with OC3/OC12 and up lines that can bankroll this kind of project. Chances are, they’ll get bored with it after a while and realize it’s just a more complicated way to communicate, and when there is a need for budget cuts, this will get shot down first.

Why? Because the technology has existed already for a long time. Cisco offers solutions, and hell, anyone with a projector, webcam, and a small dedicated machine with the right software can do the same things for much less, with less complications and less resources.

Linden Labs is going to go the way Be Inc. went. Except Be Inc. created a product that had value initially. BeOS was a good OS by design and had potential back in the mid to late 90′s, but after apple refused to use their code for the next generation Mac OS (technologies from NeXT were used instead to make OSX) They decided that web tv technology was the future.

Linden labs is doing the same thing to their customer base: created a decent product that not many were successful in marketing, creates a good hype engine, then failed to improve on it, and saw bigger money by sucking up to corporations, all while abusing and ignoring their current customers.

In the end, most companies will ignore linden labs, make a showing to show that they are tech-savvy, then write the expenses off for tax reasons and move on to use real, mature technologies. All while Linden Lab is left all alone with the ball, and millions in expenses. It’s inevitable, LL doesn’t even have a foot to shoot now. There’s a reason why this is now the Alphaville herald rather than the SLH.

tl;dr version:

Linden lab is not good at business and most business doesn’t need or want Linden Labs and their technology. It can be had for cheaper.

Just sit back and play a fiddle while it blows up in their faces.

1 – A tabloid news company that publishes staged stories about pedophilia in Second Life
http://riversrunred.com/immersive-brandspaces/sky-news/

2 – Prim shoes that have been around since late 2006 (my first n00B pair btw)
http://riversrunred.com/immersive-brandspaces/adidas/

3 – The biggest noobie club festival since the creation of man erhm avatar kind
http://riversrunred.com/immersive-brandspaces/intel-guardian/

4 – A virtual cell phone that lets you text your friends from in-world while you’re busy yiffing away in the sex sims
http://riversrunred.com/immersive-brandspaces/vodafone/

5 – Virtual models of office chairs where /your avatar/ can judge the comfort and functionality of each
http://riversrunred.com/immersive-brandspaces/herman-miller/

Made me laugh my ass off!

Oh Snap!

We need more from old Snappy over there. Keep em coming! You’re like a new sensation! No kidding! Don’t let us down! Bring it on!

WE
WANT
MORE!

I’m a properly chastened CEO or CFO of a corporation who not only had to cut jobs, trim costs, and try to keep my company afloat, but had to give up my corporate jet, my summer house in the Hamptons, and my mistress. And some guys comes up to me…

Underling: Hey boss, gotta idea. Let’s rent a couple of islands in this place called Second Life and we can use that for our meetings.

Me: (Thinks and then smiles). You mean someplace in the Caribbean? Good idea, maybe we can use it as our domicile and not pay corporate taxes. Plus maybe we can write it off as an expense! I can see how you survived the job cuts!

Underling: No boss, it’s a virtual place. You know, a place online. On some servers owned by a company based in San Francisco. We’d be buying these virtual islands from them. And then all we have to do is pay a fee every month to maintain them. The coolest thing is that then we can meet online as avatars, you know we can show up as all sort of shapes and sizes, like for example a giant rabbit or a dominatrix.

Me: (Frowns). What? Why buying virtual islands and then paying maintenance fees? From some company in San Francisco I’ve never heard of???? And to do what? There must be an advantage to doing this, right? Is it better than our video conferencing equipment?

Underling: No

Me: (Frown deepens). Can I show Powerpoint slides? Or be certain that proprietary confidential information is secure?

Underling: Uh… no.

Me: (Looking at underling harshly} So what the hell am I paying for?

Underling: Well, boss, it’s kinda cool.

Me: (Looks thoughtfully) You know, I was wrong. I apologize. You’re fired.

No good reason???

How about MAKING MONEY? You know, the whole fucking purpose of running their business.

This is why only business people should attempt to write business articles. Business people understand money flow.

2010 will be better. Why? Because 2010 is when the economy will begin to move back up towards the positive again and the money will begin to flow. If you are not willing to stick it out through the tough times then by all means I encourage you to leave now and save us all of your nastiness and parting shots.

What really needs to happen is Linden Lab split into 2 divisions. One for this meeting room thing and one entertainment division run by entertainment business people. The entertainment side can carry the ideological theoreticians as they futilely try to create a business from a space devoid of customers. Until the board conducts the next dead wood removal exercise that is.

alyx could learn some good stuff from someone like you.
hell EVERYONE could learn some good stuff from you!
doa dont go anywheres the smegma-verse NEEDS YOU!
doa youve found your calling & youre doing it RIGHT! (unlike alyx)

Cheers!