The Brooks Group Hills Golf Course is now officially open! Come join us and play a round of golf on the fully customized 9 hole golf course. We start you off easy with the first couple holes, but wait until you make the turn at #4 then you’ll get a real challenge!

Try to be the high scores and don’t forget to check out the clubhouse where you can find videos and audio files from The Brooks Group!

For those of you with Second Life, join us in-world at the link below!

Join us In-World!

If you don’t have Second Life, sign up, its free! You can use the link above to get to the island and you can also find links to sign up for Second Life on that page.

Just for all of you out there that are eager to see the island but just can’t get Second Life, check out our portfolio page that contains snapshots of this island as well as our previous work.

http://www.designingdigitally.com/portfolio/index.php?imgdir=Second%20Life%20-%20The%20Brooks%20Group

Great news everyone! Here at Designing Digitally Inc. we have solved the biggest issue we have faced with many of our VE clients. One of the biggest problems is security. Many corporations do not want to open ports for security reasons in order to connect with the worlds currently made out there. Most educational institutions have liability issues due to students having access to other people in world and they cannot determine who exactly is behind that avatar.

Therefore our talented crew has been diligently working on a VE that will allow our clients to install the server side software on their internal server allowing them to keep the entire VE inside their firewalled network. This revolution will allow for private corporate and educational meetings without having to deal with the issues inside Second Life, and Activeworlds. It also gives full control to the client for the system by having it installed directly into their network. Did I mention it is cross platform?

 On the left you will find the server and on the right you find our client connected to the server! See below:

  For more information contact us today!

Every once in awhile we see blog posts and newspaper clippings talking about Second Life in a negative fashion. Granted, SL does have it’s flaws that we endure every once in awhile. But honestly this virtual environment can be used to have distant meetings, digital conferences, collaboration for educational or institutional purposes, social networking, interactive instruction / training, gaming simulations & experiences, and much more! Now we all have heard about the mass amount of X-rated in the realm of SL, however isn’t this material all over the web? I can’t help but accidentally type in a major websites address to land on an XXX website. So for those out there that have so much resistance to the web being in a 3d realm please understand that the children that are about to be born will grow up using these new forms of social networking only pushing us closer to this type of standardization of interactions.

With all that said I wanted to share with you an article we found today regarding the A-list companies coming back to Second Life as they have learned that just like any other marketing initiative there has to be planning and integration into the existing marketing efforts for Second Life to successfully work. I have to say that we have worked with many organizations and find that the ones that understand how important having integration of the current marketing efforts in collaboration with this new initiative will lead to a great success. But for those that have the “field of dreams” mentality that if you build it they will come you will find yourself with a digital ghost town.

Article:

http://www.suntimes.com/technology/guy/1241998,CST-FIN-ecol26.article

I want all of you out there that are interested in this new form of marketing to know that we are here through each step of the way to ensure that your strategy will provide you with the outcomes you desire. For more information contact us today!

We have started the mock-up of the development of the Creative Computing Campus. Our very creative artists are building a high tech computing campus! This campus will be used by a non disclosed college to teach game development within their Interactive Media department.  Stay tuned as our artist working on this project is very talented! We will keep you posted with pictures throughout the build.

If you are interested in having a high tech campus contact us today!

We are proud to announce that our president Andrew Hughes is teaching students of Sycamore High School on the basics of Second Life. We are still trying to figure out when he sleeps. We now think he might sleep with his eyes open during our 9:00 Monday morning meeting. But who doesn’t have a case of the Monday’s?

Anyways using Second Life as a learning tool is a great asset for the kids because of the wide array of skill sets that can be developed using Second Life, including 3D modeling, programming, and graphic design, among many others. The goal of the students from Sycamore High School is to develop a science lab and replicate mixing certain chemicals to obtain scientific reactions. These students are doing this as their capstone project to graduate from Sycamore High School in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Below is a picture of Andrew and a few of the students in Second Life.

We are proud to announce that we are developing ANOTHER, yes ANOTHER second life island full sim build start! We started this development today, and it will consist of educational space for a computer science, and gaming development school located in the USA. We wish not to disclose who the client is at this time, but we are very excited to make this ultra futuristic design. Be on the look out for more pictures since we are allowed to blog this build!

 Sneak Preview after day 1:

As you may know we finished up ABCi, and are almost finished with the golf course. However, we have some more exciting news to announce. We started a new full island design today for a non-disclosed client. This island will have a headquarters building, training area, auditorium, and many other items I cannot disclose! We will give you a sneak peak only until we start branding the development. Stay tuned!!!

Here is a top secret screen shot… shhhh!

This weekend our team was asked by a private University in Ohio to install the Open Sim to be used internally in classrooms as a testing server to see if they can integrate Virtual Environments into their classrooms. This setup went very successful and is now being used today as the pilot test for professors. We are excited to offer this service as a professional development tool for corporations, or for educational institutions that are afraid to open ports to use Second Life. This way the server software is installed on a local machine allowing them to collaborate without leaving the internal network. So security issues have been solved by having our firm setup your VE in your network! For more information contact us today!

We are proud to announce that Andrew our President will be presenting at the University of Findlay on October 29th regarding Second Life and social networking with Web 2.0 technologies! He will be presenting during the day to the University and to the City of Findlay’s Chamber of Commerce. This venue will be held in the Universities Auditorium at 5:00 EST on Wednesday October 29th! We wish him luck on his presentation and hope he knocks their socks off!

American Century University (formerly Century University) and Designing Digitally Inc. are pleased to announce the grand opening of a new Second Life Island and Campus. American Century University (ACU) believes that live discussions, debate and presentation are integral to a quality university education. The real world does not exist in a vacuum of isolation and ACU doesn’t believe the world of education should either. ACU and Second Life have created a learning environment that conforms and enhances the major learning styles of audio, visual and kinesthetic learning. So, online students who want and or need a scheduled time to attend classes with live fellow students and instructors now have a place to call home.Things moved very quickly for ACU starting with the creation of their island by Linden Labs. The fast pace continued once our team started development. With the addition of a new member to the Designing Digitally Inc. team we were able to split the island and assign tasks for different requested items. The ACU online campus boasts classrooms, board rooms, lounges and a library nicely placed in a small island community atmosphere. Students can attend live classes or pick up recorded videos of what they missed. Being able to work together on separate sections the Designing Digitally team was able take a blank island an turn it into a metropolitan city with all the requested buildings in under 3 weeks.

Visit American Century University at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/OnlineVU/136/81/22/?title=OnlineVU

To see screen shots of the design click here.

Preview: