Sunday 4 February 2007

Schipol and IBM Codestation

I had intended to write a witty yet erudite piece concerning the work currently being carried out by those stalwarts of SL at OpenSecondLife.org - and maybe one day I will. But Nic at KZero alerted me to the existence of Frankfurt City island - and ever eager to take up a challenge, I set out to find out more.

Well, my efforts on Frankfurt were in vain - but I did spot the island of Schipol to the NW. I popped over and found an odd mix of buildings - there was an impressively rendered church/cathedral (piccies below), a spacious modern house and an office bunker thing (half built) than can best be described as "Dilbert-World in waiting". I have no idea what the plan is for this place, but my suspicion is that it will ultimately just be a place to buy/rent land - and the current building works are experiments by builders with time on their hands. If you know better, please comment.


I also popped by yet another IBM site - IBM Codestation. This is a single island, entirely detached from the main IBM cluster, deep in the Developer Archipelago, and still in the throes of development itself. There are 2 main components, a labyrinth- into which you can unleash robots (pick up a HUD and have a play) - and a meeting pavillion. I took some piccies of the maze and pavillion - but the latter is still, basically, grey and has a way to go before it is ready. (I have no idea why I'm not blocked from entering - but thanks, IBM, I appreciate it)

But for the straight poop - let's see what Big Blue themselves have to say about Codestation:


Oh... and while we're vaguely on a Dutch riff here... you might also want to check out BNN, "Holland's only public broadcaster to target young adults (13-19 and 20-34 year-olds)" are building an island - about half completed as far as I can tell - but worth checking in any case.

Or maybe you wanna wait until it launches officially... :-)

2 comments:

katmandelstein said...

Aleister,

Thanks for stopping by IBM Codestation! We haven't officially launched it yet, so appreciate the preview in your blog ; - ) We will reach out and invite you back for the official opening. Did you get a chance to create a robot and race it through the Labyrinth? We chose the location in the Developer Archipelago to be where developers naturally hang out since this new Island is being developed for our development tools and IBM developerWorks.

Thanks,
Kathy Mandelstein
Director of WW Developer Programs, IBM

Timbo said...

Kathy - and anyone else who gets this far into the blog:

Yes, I did have a go with the robot (cute little guy he is too), but unfortunately had very little time to spare to run him around the labyrinth :(

I will be dropping by in the coming days and weeks to see the island unfold - and to get more time with my robo-chum!