A good friend of mine, Bill Nissim, recently published his latest article on virtual worlds. You may have seen his previous article here and here, which was about my very own SLQuery.com search platform. Bill has graciously allowed me to reprint his latest article in full, here on the Virtual Searches blog.

I’ll be attending the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in New York next week. So, if you’re there during that time, look me up. You can reach me via the contact form on our Tretiak Media site. I’ll be checking email periodically.

I had a nice interview recently with a freelance writer interested in search and Second Life. The article was published in a well known online marketing periodical at www.marketingprofs.com. The first half is a brief overview of search engine history, but the second half is a complete interview with me. Kind of fun to see my alter ego in print like that.

SLQuery.com and Tretiak Media are starting to get a lot of exposure these days. Here is the first of many articles to come over the next month or so.

A Marketing First

Tretiak Media, LLC, in collaboration with the Social Research Foundation (SRF) have created the First Opinions PanelTM HUD for the Second Life environment.

First Opinions will be the first representative standing panel in Second Life with over 1000 members profiled for over 33 demographic attributes. It is designed to provide Fortune 500 companies with resident insight and feedback on new products, services and policies. They are looking for virtual residents who spend at least one hour a week inside Second Life and are willing to provide Real Life information such as age, income, geographic location, and education levels as well as Second Life information such as length of residency, land ownership, purchase patterns, and virtual business activities.

Andrew Mallon, Executive Director of the Social Research Foundation, says “The key question is: How does a company find real value in a virtual environment?” To be studied are the advantages with virtual focus groups over live ones, web- and mail-based surveys. “One obvious answer” says Mallon, “is we can observe peer group interaction, something you cannot do in a web- or mail-based survey.”

Tretiak Media designed and developed the First Opinions Panel HUD (heads up display) for exclusive use within the Second Life environment. This allows all elements of the survey process to be completed inside the virtual world from sign up to completion. Tretiak Media will also manage the capturing and maintenance of data for SRF during the sign up process.

Patrick Ward (aka Damek Tretiak), President and CEO of Tretiak Media, LLC, says “We’re extremely excited to be a part of this growing effort to understand Second Life and it’s residents. Our collaboration with SRF provides us with additional opportunities to explore the integration of Real Life and Second Life information. We believe these surveys can foster a much needed understanding of how to build and maintain value inside a virtual world.”

Technical Specifications

Key features of the HUD include:

• Simple and automatic sign-up for the First Opinions Panel
• Clean, fast loading design
• Randomly created private chat channels for capturing text-based information
• Dynamic question builders with multiple question types and choices
• Ability to move backwards and forward throughout the entire survey
• Conditional logic to allow for sections within the survey such as Yes/No answers and intermissions
• Secure and stable data collection

The HUD will be available via First Opinion Panel kiosks throughout the Second Life grid.

About The Social Research Foundation

The Social Research Foundation (http://www.socialresearchfoundation.org) was incorporated in the Fall of 2003 with the initial purpose to research online educational solutions for vulnerable groups in society, e.g. children/youth, immigrants, seniors. Their first project was Investingame, the first comprehensive, web-based interactive instruction on stock market investing basics.

About Tretiak Media

Tretiak Media, LLC (http://tretiakmedia.com/) integrates Real Life with Second Life to create immersive, interactive, and elegant user experiences. Our team consists of proven leaders and professionals in the fields of marketing, design, development, networking, and publishing. As a result, our global consulting engagements include Fortune 500 companies and have spanned the globe from North and South America to Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Our own Dalian Hansen (aka Song Li) was featured on Hamlet Au’s New World Notes blog. Song Li’s exhibit “Japan in Pink. Japan in Gray.” was highlighted by Tateru Nino. It is a very thoughtful story about both the photography and the artist. Link to New World Notes Article.

I think I want a Get a First Life t-shirt in-world! I had to laugh at this: getafirstlife.com. But don’t hate the guy for poking fun at all the hype. He get’s what it’s all about and I think he’s on target with some of his blog statements. .

In the chat section of the slquery.com site I provide a simple iframe link back to the second life friends online page. You can find this information when inviting friends to chat with you from inside Second Life via the infoStations. However, some recent changes to the SL site prevented the iframe from working anymore.

I searched all over for a solution and finally found the information I needed. So, I thought I’d share it here with anyone interested. This is also how most of the other SL "Friends Online" widgets and products provide this information. Note that you still must be logged into the secondlife.com website to see your personal friends online list.

The correct URL is now: /community/friends-inner.php.

For the curious, the old URL: /community/friends-iframe.php.

Over the weekend I updated the slquery.com site with some fantastic new graphics that Dalian Hansen put together for me. We tweaked the site to better express the services that we’re providing as well as give it a stronger, more professional look.

I believe we’ve succeeded! I’m quite pleased with the the way it turned out. The organization of available products and services is more easily defined and the new graphics give the site a fresh look. More updates are coming…

Also note that I’ve changed the blog address to blog.slquery.com as it has the advantage of being better associated with the site itself. Most of what I’ll write about concerns this site and what we’re doing to further information gathering and retrieval within SL, so it made more sense to use this address. The previous address will still be available for archival purposes though.

I’m very proud to announce the latest round of updates to the slquery.com product line. This is a big update and comes with some exciting new features on our previous products, plus the introduction of a new search billboard called the SLQ infoStation.

SLQuery.com is continuing to expand and gain more exposure, so expect more enhancements and performance improvements in the coming months. You may also notice the new kiosks and posters that are being placed throughout the grid. This a new campaign we’re unveiling to gain even more interest in SLQ products and services.

Introducing the SLQ infoStation

New to this release is the SLQ infoStation, a free public kiosk for Second Life that links to a web-based instant message system. Jump into chat or invite your friends from either RL or SL.

Plus, it includes all the power of the SLQ infoHUD unplugged. You can walk right up to an infoStation and search for items, news, blog entries, the web, amazon.com and more! View images for items submitted to the site or see what the latest SL news is directly from slquery.com.

This version also comes with a direct link to search the Second Life Library 2.0 via a focused search against all the Info Island projects.

SLQ infoBox v2.4 Release Notes

The infoBox (previously infoKit) has been updated with some significant performance improvments. A new buffer system has been developed to manage memory issues and speed up transfers to the site.

This release also introduces the new notecard module, which let’s you add entries to the site by simply filling out a notecard. You can now include descriptions, tags, and image keys when uploading to the site.

A new cloaking feature has been added to the infoBox, which let’s you make the box completely invisible. In addition, the box prims are changed to a phantom state so that you can walk through the box without worrying about tripping over invisible prims.

Finally, a new progress bar has been added, which shows you how far along in the process the box is during uploads to the site.

Unfortunately, there is no upgrade path to the v2.4 series. Future updates will include the option to use an upgrade disc. But due to some of the changes in this release you will need to transfer your items to the new boxes manually.

SLQ infoHUD v2.4 Release Notes

The infoHUD has had quite a few performance improvements added to it along with some bug fixes.

• Removed the word “teleport” from item results
• When opening a teleport map, the HUD will now move out of the way automatically
• Fixed flight script not setting correctly on rez
• Image now closes when main HUD window closes
• Image now clears and closes when clicking on a new item
• When an in-world texture image is available, the “more…” button now shows an image icon
• Changed the teleport icon to a lightning bolt, which better describes it’s purpose
• Adjusted the positioning of instructional text
• Other minor bug fixes and texture adjustments

Please note that our in-world update server recently crashed and so you will not be able to automatically update the infoHUD from previous versions.

This is a great release and is starting to show the power of the SLQ engine, so I’m excited to see how far it will go.