IBM is continuing its foray into Second Life by announcing it has launched a new service within the virtual world which offers developers places within the world where they can train and gather information. The company has dubbed it Codestation.
"We see this as a new platform. Three-D environments are like interacting with people in reality. They provide a way to bring developers in who may not be in the same location. We can do training and let them interact with each other in ways they haven't been able to do until recently," said Kathy Mandelstein, director of worldwide development and Rational programs for IBM.
The key object on the island is a labyrinth in which developers are empowered to program robots that can then solve the maze and compete in races as a way to help them learn code within the Second Life environment.
Also on their island, a code library is include which has objects that can be associated with the displayed code. From there developers are able to download and interact with the code. IBM has also invited developers to writer code for the obects on the island.
IBM has plans to host training and technical presentations in a pavilion on the island created for that specfic purpose. All of this goes along with IBM's purpose of being a service company.
This is a great idea. It offers the type of meeting place and interaction that caters to the way IBM does business. If I operated in this specific area of interest, I would definitely check it out. Now the problem seems to be getting more people interested in visiting the world, as growth has slowed down after a big burst last year.
Second Life is a virtual, 3-D world that has around 5 million people signed up to use it, but about 200,000 people that use it consistently. Most of the world is created by the users with tools offered by Linden Labs, it's parent company and creator.
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