Life2Life - ECS-Powered Amazon Store Within Second Life

Earlier today I logged in to Second Life and was greated with an IM (instant message) and a teleport invitation from a woman by the name of Tabatha Hegel. She indicated that she knew of my interest in Amazon interfaces within Second Life, and that she had something cool to show me. I accepted her invitation and was transported to her new store, Life2Life:

There are three sections to the store and she showed me each of them. First, there are some magazines for sale on the table. Each magazine is linked to the corresponding detail page on Amazon -- touching the magazine will open up a browser on the page. Here's the table:

As you can see,the magazine covers are fully detailed and as life-like as can be:

Next, there's a 3D display of some popular books:

The books are arranged horizontally and vertically based on sales rank or other factors. You can actually walk through the collection and look at the pop-up titles. You can't see the titles in the screen shot, so you'll have to trust me on this one.

Finally, there's a book search tool! Staying true to the Second Life communication model, you simply "speak" a search command using the keyboard, and the search happens. The results are displayed organized by how well they match the search term (that's me standing there):

Behind the scenes there's a whole lot of web services action taking place. The search requests go from Second Life to some custom scripts which in turn make calls to ECS and return data in a form suitable for processing within Second Life.

This code was built by Tabatha and her development partner, Hugo Dalgleish (all names in this post are Second life names). At this point the store is a prototype and a proof of concept, and they would love to get visitors and feedback. If you've got Second Life running, you should visit Life2Life now and check it out for yourself.

Here's a picture of Tabatha; perhaps she'll be at the store when you visit:

I'm sure that some of this seems either crazy or way too futuristic to be real. I am pretty sure that I'm not crazy, but I just might be an emissary from the future. If you are skeptical, please feel free to log in, IM me, and I will be happy to give you a tour. Don't forget that web pages were the crazy and futuristic new thing just 10 or 12 years ago.

-- Jeffronius;

PS - I've written this post using my cyber-space identity, since the entire conversation took place in cyberspace. No real names were exchanged.

Comments

[rikomatic]

Well it's only a matter of time before you walk into the Amazon store in Second Life and all the shelves rearrange based on your preferences, creating a custom store just for you. There might be new movies from your favorite genres sitting right there at eye level when you go to the DVD section, and new books from your favorite authors in the bookstore.

That of course already happens in the 2D web.

What is different in virtual space is that the experience can be more immersive, and shared with other people. I can imagine going into a store with a friend and chatting with them about their favorite authors as we peruse our shared custom generated store. And then buying a book together to talk about later.

That would highlight the strengths of virtual spaces like Second Life: 3D graphics, player interactivity, and hooks into the real world. That's the killer app.