Tateru's Monday Reality Mix

Tateru Nino's weekly take on mixed reality...

Who would launch a perfume in a virtual world without scent? Well, the Calvin Klein company would, and indeed has. Does the whole idea stink?  We'll take a good sniff of (or at) this, along with real estate network Coldwell Banker, the City of Manchester, art in Neufreistadt, the Second Life Congressional Oracle, and our regular dose of metrics. Join us after the fold.

Mixed Reality Fragrance

"ck IN2U speaks the language of a generation connected by technology - the aptly named technosexuals, a term that Calvin Klein has trademarked," says Lori Singer, VP of Global Marketing, Calvin Klein Fragrances. "They are the first generation to be defined more by their means of communication rather than fashion or music."

Or scent, one might think. Calvin Klein's Ann Gottlieb can be relied on to mix an interesting and distinctive scent. Few people in the industry have her keen senses, instinct, and commitment to quality. Gottlieb can align a scent with a demographic - CK marketing, on the other hand seems to have fallen short.

Perhaps they really do understand their target demographic of marketing and brand-shy young cynics - however, their launch doesn't seem to betray a lot of understanding of the people in Second Life as a whole. CK's marketing seems to exalt and focus on those for whom haste is more important than communication - or perhaps the target market are just the shallow ones.

The product's Second Life site in Avalon is in keeping with the overall design ethos of the region. It's not actually very easy to locate, unless you read the press release carefully and are willing to hunt around a bit.

CK's Second Life launch consists of three key items: Media and imagery, a little scripted swag, and a mysterious photographic competition in which you can win a million Linden dollars, if only you could find out how to enter. So far, none of the interested Second Life photographers that I have spoken to have been able to locate any entry details.

The media and imagery are strong on message, and relatively pedestrian - nothing much to catch the attention of the young, connected crowd that CK seeks.

That leaves us with the scripted swag. What do we get? A gesture for an avatar to stand arms-folded. Three couples-poseballs that appear to be artifical CK billboard style poses, maybe for the competition - with no details available, there's no telling.

The last item is a spray bottle that attaches to your hand, whence you can click on it and select a victim. A cloud of particles moves from you to them, though in any place with more than a couple people, it's hard to tell who the source and the target are. Caution, when using the default avatar stand animations, the particle stream tends to look more like you are urinating towards your target.

Consider me underwhelmed. The whole thing is neither cool nor hip, though I think a lot of sass and sarcasm will probably penetrate the blogosphere pretty quickly - and perhaps that's just what CK are looking for.

Mixed Reality Television

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation seeks to combine traditional television and radio, with the Web and Second Life.

Following on the heels of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School on Esperance, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), that beloved and stable icon of cross-media Australian Culture, has dropped into Second Life with a decent splash.

If cramming the sim full of eager and interested Australians is anything to go by, ABC Island is off to a great start. Certainly the sandbox building competitions have proven to be very popular this week, and the assorted streaming media stations are getting steady attendance in most hours of the Australian day.

Since the launch of the Web, and digital television services, the ABC has been working hard on cross-media initiatives, always looking for ways to bring more value to new media from old, and to old media from new. It is early days for their Second Life operation, but I fully expect that the ABC will not disappoint.

Mixed Reality Traffic 

The Lost Gardens of Apollo provide a relaxing environment for quiet talks, or romantic get-togethers.

Each week we build an aggregate mixed-reality metric from the traffic figures of several notable sites, and match it to figures for a selection of "native" content.*  Here's our new mixed reality site lineup:

• The L word: 157.03 (up 9.73)
• Circuit City: 36.07 (down 4.97)
• Sears: 32.46 (up 3.04)
• The Weather Channel: 24.36 (down 7.52)
• AOL Pointe: 22.21 (down 19.84)
• Nissan: 5.46 (down 0.43)
• Thomson training: 5.26 (down 0.20)
• Sony BMG: 3.72 (down 0.59)
• The Pond: 1.65 (down 0.34)
• Magnatune: 1.53 (down 0.25)

Tateru's Overall Mixed Reality Index: 28.97 (down 2.13)

Here are our ten native sites and businesses:

• The Shelter: 653.70 (up 39.32)
• NCI: 365.49 (down 23.70)
• The Shelter (Swinside): 93.01 (up 72.12)
• Isle of Lesbos: 82.99 (down 0.73)
• Lost Gardens of Apollo: 58.77 (up 4.30)
• TOP/Tech: 32.30 (up 1.72)
• Svarga: 22.11 (down 0.53)
• Rave Island: 18.12 (down 9.79)
• Dominus Motor Company: 16.44 (down 6.5)
• Home Depoz: 4.41 (down 0.86)

Tateru's Native Reality Index: 134.73 (up 7.54)

The L-Word remains on top due to its class schedule, but expect that to change, as they are cutting their education program at the end of the month. AOL Pointe failed to excite with events this last week, thus dropping, while live music outlet The Shelter (Swinside) shot up, riding the popularity of its live music schedule.

The NCI dropped a little again this week, as it continues a program to distribute visitor load to multiple locations to ease simulator performance.

Mixed Reality Shorts

Neufreistadt's art museum is exhibiting a variety of contemporary works.

• The Museum of Contemporary Art in Neufreistadt is holding a contemporary art exhibition until mid-may. So far, I've found all of Neufreistadt's art exhibits to be worth the visit. If contemporary art is your thing, take the time to pop over there and check it out.
• The Online Machinima Film Festival (and what better place is there for machinima than online, face it) held a cocktail-party style of gathering in Second Life on the 24th of March, and is planning to hold their awards ceremony in Second Life as well. They're looking for Second Lifers to get involved. Keep an eye on their website as the competition draws towards a close at the end of April.
• Now, at last, I've found a good reason to wish for a PC that can handle audio streams, and the Second Life voice client. The City of Manchester is making their foray into Second Life. I've fond memories of a couple of lads from Manchester, and I could listen to the accent for hours.
• Real Estate brokers Coldwell Banker are establishing an office and dealing in Second Life property, but apparently with actual employees. Coldwell's Paul Young seems to feel that an unreal-estate agency with a team of employees will both perform better and be more successful than the lone-baron operations that are prevalent in Second Life. Coldwell's entry into the space seems to have caused a little more nervousness among those in the land business than the last two corporate real-estate networks to establish themselves.
• Enter the Congressional Oracle. Created by Kiwini Oe on SL Capitol Hill, Second Lifers who live in the USA can give their zip-code to the Oracle who can tell them the name, party, and congressional district of their representative, including contact and website information. A cool tool, indeed.
• Sony promotes the European launch of the playstation 3 with avatars modelled from characters in a launch promotion video in Second Life to 'sell the product'. Our own Hamlet muses on the promotion and on Sony's motivations here.
• The region of Amsterdam owned by Stroker Serpentine went up for auction with eBay this week at a base price of US$20,000. The auction closed today, with one nedstede2769 (eBay id) picking up the region for US$50,000.

Got a mixed reality tip for Tateru?  E-mail her at [email protected].

*A Note on Mixed Reality Traffic Metrics: They are derived by monitoring Linden Traffic over the course of a week, averaging those figures and dividing by the parcel size, to remove some of the problems where the Linden metrics tend to prejudice increasingly towards larger parcels. Where sites have multiple parcels, the most favorable figure is used. Sites with multiple sims are not able to be properly calculated. Figures primarily indicate ordered rankings that roughly reflect holding or retention efficiency per square metre.

The selected entries are broadly representative of the sustained retention of a site, per square metre, or efficiency of interest.  Hamlet asked me to include more native sites to match up with the mixed reality sites that we track, for comparison's sake; a bit tricky to pull off. Nevertheless, we've selected by feel, theme or genre as best we could. Some are businesses, but I can't say as I'm interested in endorsing them as such - after all, I've got no personal experience of them - but they fit our comparison criteria, and were selected largely at random.