A few snippets to be going on with..

I've been struggling over this weekend to capture all the bits I want to blog about - and have not yet pulled it all together into a coherent view. So in the meantime, I thought I would do a bit of name-dropping for new islands spotted on the map. But first, the news that SL has now logged its 4 Millionth resident - although the less forgiving might say that the 25 or so people who actually use SL have jointly logged their 4 millionth "alt".

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Anyway- enough of such nonsense...
Maybe the biggest newcomer to mention is Sony Ericsson, whose island has just appeared to the South-West of Channel4 Radio (which itself has yet to open its doors). I'm guessing that it will be another Rivers Run Red build, given its proximity to other islands they are constructing in the area.

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Next up is Baustelle. I mention this one because the satellite view shows a very nice map of Western Europe, though not in sufficient detail to make out my house! :-) "Baustelle" is German for "building site" according to Babelfish - so this could be almost anything. It does have an interesting logo plastered across it - but it isn't one I recognise. Here it is:

Let me know if you recognise it.

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Then there's Red Bull's new island. They already sponsor Drop Zone, an environment built by RRR for Talpa Digital, a Dutch digital media company. They opened on Feb 9th (though no-one thought to tell me about it!). Red Bull plan to use DropZone as an "opportunity to introduce their athletes in a live chat with their fans and to stream extreme sport events." However, it is clear that they also plan to have their own slice of this virtual world.

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Finally, we have DNB Media - another Dutch company - who have set up their own island. Unfortunately my grasp of Dutch is marginal, bordering on the non-existent. So I can't tell you much about them. The island is fully built, but I can't access it without becoming a group member. I refer to my earlier statement - without a knowledge of Dutch, how do I do that?!

Babelfish gave me a tolerable translation of what DNB Media are about: "DNBmedia support entrepreneurs and marketeers at developing and implementation of their Second life strategy." And here's a list of services they can offer:
* Consultancy
* Design
* 3D Modelling
* Motion Design
* Motion capturing
* LSL scripting