Do You Need A Second Life?

You might, if you feel incumbered by the politics of the current one! Guardian has done a nice roundup of the current state of affairs in the virtual universe, your chance to lead your life a second time.

Of course, the world's catching up. The Swedish embassy has opened its office, and Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, claim that they have a daily turnover of $600,000, and have already created 6000 full-time jobs. UK government has started taxing money earned in SL (don't you remember... nothing's more certain than death and taxes!).

But then, SL isn't the only one, and the list is growing by the day. For the moment, the two biggest contenders are Entropia Universe and SL. In a year and half, there would be hundreds of businesses cropping up in trying to seamlessly merge the two worlds... or at least, import / export from one to the other. There will be virtual world and virtual existence mashups created.

Here's a bit from Guardian.

"This week may mark a coming of age for virtual worlds - the three-dimensional spaces on the internet where people have their own avatars, or on-screen characters. Last night BBC2's The Money Programme was screened in Second Life, the best known of the dozens of virtual realities that are springing up. This week Sky News opened a replica of its studio in Second Life and IBM sponsored a ballet.

Yesterday the Swedish virtual world Entropia Universe announced that it was teaming up with CRD, an offshoot of the Beijing municipality, to build a virtual universe able to handle 7 million users at any one moment. David Liu, chief executive of CRD, claimed that virtual worlds would generate about 10,000 jobs in China."

I am going to be hanging out for extensive periods of time in SL. Let's meetup, if you are going to be there!

Nanocast!

I have been working to make this startup a reality for about eight months now. When I joined in Feb 2006, the office in Koregaon Park, Pune was a bare space without anything in place. Parsh (the COO) was losing his sleep trying to just get hold a reliable ISP, and electricians were pouring in and out, their raucous making any conversation or discussion impossible. From the bare floors in Feb, we have come a long way. With a super charged Flash team, some outstanding Java developers (and one from the original Java team), and work hours and pace that I have never before seen (no, not even in the Valley), we have finally launched the most cutting edge tool in the Web 2.0 landscape.

Check out.... Nanocast!

We think it will become the next generation tool for bloggers. Nanocast is all about "Remixing everything, everywhere" --- in other words, you grab your pics from Flickr, Photobucket, your videos from YouTube, Blip, remix them online, and then drop them either in your website, ebay, myspace or wherever you choose.

To demonstrate the power of the tool, check out the slideshow below that I created in less than 5 minutes. There are numerous gadgets in the site, so check it out...