Beta Technologies

The City and Spectacle: a vision of pre-earthquake Lisbon project, a virtual recreation of the city of Lisbon before the 1755 earthquake, using Second Life® technology, is a pioneer project in Portugal promoted by the Centro de História de Arte e Investigação Artística da Universidade de Évora (CHAIA), Beta Technologies, and King’s Visualisation Lab (KVL), King’s College London.

Virtual recreation of historical cities is an emergent area in historical research, allowing an innovative approach to the study and representation of cultural heritage. Currently, virtual worlds replace the classic instruments of 3D modelling, allowing users to interact in a common environment where model building is easy. These characteristics foster coordination between researchers when confirming historical hypotheses, allowing the object of study to be dynamically changed. The application of the virtual language to historical research thus translates into a laboratory model that enables and expands the traditional context of historical research. This new approach allows testing, in an interactive three-dimensional representation, of a long research path in city history, and provides, to an audience simultaneously specialised and enlarged, an immersive experience in a lost urban reality.

Participants in this workshop include Bernard Frischer, Director of the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory, University of Virginia and scientific coordinator of the pioneer project Rome Reborn, a virtual recreation of Classic Rome; Richard Beacham, Director of King’s Visualisation Lab, King’s College London, an institution focused on application of the virtual language to historical research; Drew Baker, researcher and one of the founders of this institution; Ana Cristina Leite, Director of Lisbon’s City Museum (under confirmation); António Filipe Pimentel, Director of the Portuguese National Museum of Ancient Art; Alexandra Gago da Câmara, researcher of CHAIA; Cristina Gouveia, representantive of the company YDreams – specialists in interactive technologies; Helena Murteira, researcher of CHAIA; José Sarmento de Matos, specialist in Lisbon studies and scientific coordinator of the Cultural Itineraries of the Tourism Association of Lisbon; Luís Sequeira, representantive of the company Beta Technologies – Architects of the Virtual World; Paulo Rodrigues, researcher of CHAIA; and Vítor Cóias, Director of GECoRPA – Group of companies providing conservation and restoration of architecture heritage

For more informations, please contact Paulo Rodrigues via e-mail virtualcities.chaia@gmail.com.

View complete programme

Above the Fold, organisers of the Spring 2010 Conference: Leadership in Business, which was scheduled for April 27-29, 2010, and to be held at Beta Technologies’ auditorium, just announced that the conference sadly has to be postponed mostly due to health issues of the organisers.

For a list of speakers and the new schedules, please take a look at the “Event Calendar” option on Above the Fold’s blog.

Namssor Daguerre’s Second Skin Labs is one of the oldest brands in Second Life, having sold their first realistic, professional-looking skins as early as March 2004, and being in business since then.

In late 2005, Namssor developed an unique selection method that allowed buyers to select among millions of possible combinations of skin details, so that they could create their personal style.

Now Namssor is opening up a new shop on the Beta Business Park. Designed by Beta Technologies’ Creative Director, Moon Adamant, the new shop is a modern structure, combining architectural prowess with a functional design, taking into account that avatars shop differently than human beings.

Today was held the Grand Opening for Namssor’s new shop, an event organised by the Beta Business Park’s management team.

Beta Business Park will give entrepreneurs a chance to show their environmentally friendly wares in Second Life when it hosts the green business portion of the Copenhagen Expo, which runs in conjunction with the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Copenhagen Expo, lead by Peter Lundquist (Paolo Rousselot in SL) will feature live streaming of events from Copenhagen with question and answer sessions organized by OneClimate.net, and exhibits in several locations around Second Life. The U.N. conference runs Dec. 7-14,with the goal of trying to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic climate changes.

Applications for climate-friendly business exhibitors at are being taken through Dec. 1. But space is limited. The expo will be open from Dec. 7-18.

(reposted from the Beta Business Park official website)

The Portuguese National Post Service, CTT — Correios de Portugal, have launched their virtual presence in Second Life® today. Their region, dubbed World in Touch, is CTT’s latest project using a vast variety of technological innovations in order to keep in touch with their clients.

Developed by Beta Technologies, CTT’s virtual presence includes a virtual mobile phone from CTT’s daughter company, Phone-IX, a mobile operator in Portugal. The virtual mbile phone will allow two-way text messaging with users in Second Life and real life; it also includes some useful tools as “applets” installed on the virtual phone.

The region “World In Touch” is bilingual (Portuguese and English) and will allow visitors to get a glimpse of CTT’s products and services, spread across six different areas — “The World of CTT”, “World of Philately”, “World of Ecology”, “World of Citizenship”, “Imagination World” and “World of Fun”.

The visitors will land on a central spot, “The World Starts Here” where they are greeted by a message welcoming them, and from where they are able to move to any of the other spots.The  ”World of CTT” features a two-storey building with promotions of CTT products, information about CTT’s services, a visual calculator for parcel costs around the world, and the ability to get a Phone-IX Virtual Mobile Phone HUD.

The “World of Citizenship” completes the information on several panels and will feature information and notices on CTT’s many events. This area will also be open to third-party entities wishing to promote in-world events about citizenship, social issues, or non-profit initiatives.

The “World of Philately” is a building with two floors; on the ground floor, visitors can see and buy (in the real world) stamp collections or philatelic books (another collectable item). These can be browsed inside Second Life and the physical items delivered anywhere in the world — one of the first in-world eCommerce solutions for real items being sold inside Second Life, with L$, and delivered, free of charge, anywhere in the real word.

The “World of Ecology” has two parts. One is a 3D representation of the only cork stamp in the world, which was issued by CTT in November 2007. This representation will allow visitors to “walk inside” the elements depicted on the original stamp. The other part is a labyrinth with a leisure area.

The “World of Imagination” is designed to be a space for simulating, creating, and sharing concepts and innovative solutions, directly or indirectly related to stamps and the postal service, as well as do exhibitions and host contests.

The last area is “World of Fun”, which features an auditorium and some meeting rooms.

CTT/World in Touch also has a companion site, http://worldintouch.sl/. Second Life users can take snapshots inside Second Life and send them by email, using the built-in functions for that, to images@worldintouch.sl. This will allow SL snapshots to be embedded into a postcard or a stamp — a real stamp — which will be printed out and delivered to the users’ home. (Stamps will only be valid for Portugal).

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Beta Technologies provided most of the buildings, and all application development for this project, but the island is staffed independently.

Official press release in Portuguese and English.

World in Touch also has a Facebook page.

Video above created by Halden Beaumont for CTT.

Today, Beta Business Park becomes a Metanomics event partner! This means you can enjoy and participate in the weekly Metanomics broadcast from the comfort of the B2P Auditorium. We’ll be connected to the other locations and the main studio by chatbridge.

Join us at 12pm today and every Wednesday!

Since November 6th, 2009, Beta Business Park has become the first business-oriented Community Gateway, listed on the login page for new residents, and thus allowing any new user with the intention to enter Second Life® to relate to communities of professional and business users to have their own area to start, with trained helpers to orient them through their first steps in Second Life.

Beta Technologies understands the difficulty for business users to get their first impression in Second Life and find groups of people with the same mindset. With the announcement of Linden Lab’s major product for corporate users, Second Life Enterprise, it is expected that business, still neglecting the possibilities of working in a virtual world and taking advantage of it, will start to take a new look at what Second Life can offer. Exploration and experimentation will very likely be their first reaction.

We are aware that the first impression in this virtual world counts. Being able to immediately connect to users with similar expectation is crucial for entrepreneurs, business owners, or corporate executives to make a valid evaluation of the virtual world and understanding it as quickly as possible. The Second Life experience can be daunting at first for anyone who comes fully unprepared for it. By introducing the Beta Business Park, Beta Technologies has created a whole community addressing the requirements of any business user (no matter what the size of their company actually is), and targeted the experience of Second Life towards those requirements.

By adding an Orientation Area, with the purpose to get new business users quickly up to date with Second Life’s interface, aided by helpful professionals on stand by to provide additional information, the Beta Business Park is able to provide a whole range of services from the very first day a user logs in to Second Life — starting with helping them out, joining a community of business users, provide training materials (but also regularly held workshops), point them to the many events related to working in Second Life and exploring the potential of the virtual world to further business relationships and enlarging a network of contacts, add social events where engaging in discussion can be part of the experience, and even provide land facilities, initial content for your own first virtual presence, and access to a plethora of services ranging from leasing auditoriums for your own events and meetings to creating promotional materials. The companion website, with a free registration, adds documentation, a clipping service, access to transcripts and videos from past business-related events, and the ability to make further contacts.

Now, the possibility to join this business community starts on the very first day a new user registers with Linden Lab for access to Second Life. Just create your avatar and select the Beta Business Park from the list of Community Gateways.

We look forward to meet you in-world!

Beta Technologies is pleased to announce their new blogs, for each of the Beta Technologies’ members, which are aggregated at http://blogs.betatechnologies.info/.

The individual blogs are:

• The Armchair Traveller by Moon Adamant
• Business and Technologies in Second Life by Gwyneth Llewelyn
• Jeff Bush‘s blog

Conference highlights entrepreneurs, trainers, pathfinders and new products

Amanda Van Nuys (known in Second Life® as Amanda Linden) and Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer) will be among the featured presenters at the Leadership in Business fall conference, Oct. 27-29 at the Beta Business Park (www.betabusinesspark.com) in the virtual world of Second Life.

Amanda Van Nuys is the executive director of enterprise marketing at Linden Lab®, owner of Second Life. Her role is head of marketing for everything non-consumer, which encompasses government, education, nonprofit, and the developer community.

Doug Thompson is the CEO of Remedy Communications and a driving force behind Metanomics (www.metanomics.net), a popular weekly panel discussion about virtual worlds that attracts some of the best minds, bridges real and virtual worlds, and tackles some of the trickiest problems facing entrepreneurs.

The virtual conference will showcase a wide range of knowledge and experience in the non-profit, governmental, educational, and private sectors. It focuses on entering and expanding a virtual world presence, as well as critical real world business and leadership skills.

The lineup also includes:

Gwyneth Llewelyn, now Beta Technology’s CTO (www.betatechnologies.info), has been a manager in several other high-tech firms. She has experience in international business, contracts, billing, finance, marketing, and promotion. She will be speaking on e-commerce solutions in Second Life.

Garrett Glaser (Garret Nirvana), president of Glaser Media (glasermedia.com) and a former CNBC reporter, will discuss dealing with the media and getting your message out in the virtual and physical worlds.

Neil Canham (Richard Mieklejohn) will explore the uses of immersive technologies in collaboration and teams and will be previewing the new product his company, Flying Island (www.flyingisland.co.uk), is launching to facilitate them.

Paul D’Ambrosio (Nicolo Anthony) will focus on the efforts of the Fenimore Art Museum (www.fenimoreartmuseum.org) in Cooperstown, N.Y., to establish itself in Second Life over the past two years. D’Ambrosio, the vice president and chief curator, will describe how a mid-size art museum in a rural area navigated virtual world issues.

The conference will also include music/mixers and expo displays by all the presenters and the B2P tenants. The full conference schedule is available on the B2P Web site: www.betabusinesspark.com

About Beta Business Park (B2P)

Beta Business Park (betabusinesspark.com), a project of Beta Technologies (betatechologies.info), is a community of businesses and the people who own, operate, and work at them. This business-to-people community offers a different way to use Second Life. B2P provides a coherent territory dedicated to businesses and their clients, allowing easy connections between people, as well as convenient shared costs of common facilities.

King’s College London has released the final report on the Theatron 3 project, which has been mostly developed by Beta Technologies for King’s Visualisation Lab. The report should prove invaluable for researchers and educators willing to engage in long-term projects in Second Life, and it is considered to be very objective, addressing the advantages and some of the barriers to institutional use of Second Life as a research tool.