Designing Digitally, Inc. is proud to announce the development of an innovative interactive whiteboard for Second Life and OpenSim. This board is one of the only boards that will allow users to do all of the following:

1. Easily change the video media (all-in-one) with a click of a button

2. Easily drag and drop PowerPoint screens on to the board with the board automatically arranging the items in the appropriate fashion

3. The ability to rez objects on the whiteboard such as pointers, boxes, circles, text, etc.

4. The ability to FREE DRAW on the white board in Second Life. This was a task that we were previously unable to do within Second Life. After extensive R&D we were able to develop a free draw tool that will allow users to freely draw on top of a video and/or PowerPoint slides. You can see pictures of the fully developed whiteboard below. This whiteboard is in beta stage and is only available for our current clients. We will be releasing it for the use to the general public in the future. Please contact us to learn more about our innovative developments.

We have been MIA in the blog world due to the overwhelming internal work at Designing Digitally, Inc. throughout this month. As some of you know it has been years since we have created our web site and so half our team has been focused on preparing for our 2010 launch while the other half are developing client projects. Finally, we have a project that we can discuss with you and allow you to watch the development come alive once again!We are proud to announce that we are starting another University development within the virtual world of Second Life. We will be blogging our experience during the development and are excited to get started on this build right away.There will be formal classes within this virtual University along with the simulations and serious games created to help direct the students throughout the science and math concepts the University deems important. Keep watching our blog to see this blank slate below mold into a virtual University.

We are happy to announce that we broke ground on another virtual world project today. The space will be architecturally designed as a beautiful mansion in the south Hamptons. This space will be the virtual headquarters for the client and focused on training upper management at their corporation. This client will use the virtual space to deliver distance meetings, online collaboration, and online branch meetings. Surrounding this headquarters will consist of serious game based learning tools that will allow users to interact with the space while succeeding in company assessments. We are proud to break ground on this space and will keep posting to show you the progress throughout the development. Below is a picture of the new virtual word sim and our team preparing to start the build.

Note: Sean (far left avatar) was asked to reset his avatar after this picture was taken.

He should not be taller than Andrew as he is officially the shortest person in our office. LOL!

We are at it again! We have broke ground on a very large OpenSim private server grid development. This development will be for teachers to conduct online lectures with their virtual classes. We are building this tool outside of Second Life so that we can have full control over the system. The virtual world will have a learning management system tied into it which will allow teachers to track the students progress throughout the classes, and allow them to take their tests within this virtual world. We are building this custom virtual world to help support the large audience (around 800 concurrent users by 2010) that will be on these grid servers. We look forward to building this very large simulator (roughly around 6 sims connected) for our client. Be on the look out for new blog posts from our team to see the project come alive!

Designing Digitally is proud to announce our acceptance into the Second Life Gold Solution Providers program with Linden Lab. Of the more than 250 organizations and companies in Second Life, Designing Digitally has been selected as one of the top 31 to be apart of this program. As a member of the Gold Solution Providers we will be in direct contact with Linden Lab, along side the other development teams, in bringing all users an even better Second Life. This short list of developers will help push the creation and evolution of islands in Second Life to the next level and we are very pleased to be a big part of this exciting virtual community.

Designing Digitally has just completed a task almost unheard of in the Second Life community. A fully customized island with 6 buildings AND a 2 minute 30 second machinima video promoting the island, in 2 weeks! The video itself was actually completed in about 6 days. From the development of the storyboard, to the recording of the audio and videos to the final approval of the finished video. Our client had a tight deadline to get this island done for a presentation and our talented team was able to step up to the plate and put in the extra hours each day to get the job done. More info on the completed island will come soon. For now, please enjoy the video:

Contact us today to learn how we can create your island and machinima video!

Our Second Life development project just added the bottom bun.

As we get close to finishing one:

We are in the meat of one:

And we just received the announcement that our latest island is ready!

We have seen this a couple times in our past and my team has really done well to balance all projects. The toughest thing to achieve is the proper balance between all team members working on each project, to ensure they all are developed within each time frame. Our "top bun" project is almost complete. Our "meat" project needs finished as quickly as possible because that project also corresponds with a web development project that connects this new island with the company web page. Finally our "bottom bun" project needs to be complete before that last week in April (did I mention that project also has a video with it which we will be scripting, creating audio for and developing, which ALSO needs done on the same deadline as the Second Life island!?).

Have no fear, ALL project will meet their deadlines!

Nick

One of the best things about developing in Second Life is the complete freedom. You can develop an island in any way, shape or form. For our latest project we are developing an island for a hospital, so for this we wanted a very relaxed and easy to use island for all visitors...and most of all we wanted simple. Well, simple to users doesn't always mean simple for the designer. We have just finished getting trees wrapped around the entire island and it looks great! It really helps close in the island and creates a very comfortable earthy environment. So whats next...? More trees! As you look out your window into the woods you'll probably notice that from a distance you can't see through the woods to the other side. This concept can be a little difficult to achieve in Second Life sometimes because the trees don't really "grow" and you don't have all the clutter (dead trees, weeds, small branches) close to the ground. So to fix this - you add more trees! With already a few hundred trees in place it wont take much more, but we want to create the closest illusion of the real thing as best we can.

As you can see from the above snapshot our team is moving right along! We have a process for each of our new islands that we follow. Of course this process can change from time to time depending on a few factors such as, location (single region or private island), time constraints, number of buildings/structures and even time of the year. On this project we are following our top secret process to a tee! We started by completing the overall layout of the island, placement of the buildings, walkways, etc. We have also started rough development of two of the major buildings and some of the bridges and other key points of the island. I’ve said too much! (but stay tuned I will give you more next week :) )

Every business's goal is to raise capital, create large profit margins, and also to make an impact on the current moment in time. From our experience in digital media we have found that one of the prominant ways of doing this is by establishing yourself into online social networks. Online social networks allow for users to keep in touch with what is happening in your business without directly visiting your blog, or contacting you to find out what's new. What we have found from our experience is that by integrating your organization with online social networks you have a cost effective way to market you and your company. By using these online social networks you have a stronger chance of pulling new clients, serving current clients with free communication, and even creating profits through the use of these online social networks. This trend in social connections is here to stay and is a very cost effective way to promote your organization. Some of the more popular Social networks are: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. However, you can find an entire list of social network on the Wikipedia website by clicking here. Not only can you use social networks such as the ones stated above, but using a virtual world to create a social network is being adopted by companies each and every day. By using a virtual world you can build a community around what activities and subjects your organization focuses on. You will be amazed at the amount of people that are interested in learning more about your field, company, and future ambitions. There are many different virtual worlds out there, but only a few are climbing to the top of the hill when it comes to company integration. The list includes but is not limited to: Activeworlds , Second Life , Project Wonderland , There, Twinity , and many more. So get out there and socialize as you will be surprised to see who you will run into and how they will correlate with your business in the future. Did I mention your boss will love you as you are saving  your organization money by creating free social marketing?

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