CN Entrepreneur's Blog

Shanghai’s DeepThink shifts to OpenSim development
By: Maria Korolov

When it comes to virtual world real estate and design, DeepThink has been a big player, operating one of the largest continents in Second Life.

But in recent months, the Shanghai-based company has been refocusing on OpenSim, the open-source platform that’s rapidly becoming the standard for enterprise virtual worlds.

OpenSim is not an alternative to to Second Life — rather, it is a platform on which people can build their own Second Life-style communities, gaming worlds, or independent educational grids or company platforms.

DeepThink currently has five on-going OpenSim-related projects, said Adam Frisby, DeepThink co-director and the company’s head of research and technology.

Although the bulk of operations are in Shanghai, DeepThink Pty Ltd. is incorporated in Perth, Australia with additional staff distributed around the world, in Canada, U.S. and the UK. Frisby’s co-director, Alex Strong, is based in Canada.

The company provides hosting, virtual land rentals, software development, and virtual world design and building services.

“We generally take projects on a case-by-case basis,” Frisby told Hypergrid Business. “We’re looking for things that prove the platform and can do it reliably.”

One obstacle is that OpenSim is still in its early stages of development..

“Up until the last six months, OpenSim has been of questionable stability,,” said Frisby. “So we want to get a commitment from all the clients that they understand the limitations of the environment.”

Frisby is one of the core developers of the open source OpenSim virtual worlds platform, and has been working on that project for the last two years – since its very inception.

DeepThink gets OpenSim implementations running for clients, and also customizes the OpenSim code to fit customer needs, he said.

One project that DeepThink is working on involves virtual architecture. Another, an OpenSim-based currency system.

And virtual meetings are a hot topic, he added.

“We’re doing some event work, conferences that will be hosted on the OpenSim platform for quite a number of users,” he said.

“Training and conferences have definitely been coming into fashion in the virtual worlds.”

Training and education, for example, already has a proven track record in the virtual worlds, he said. These types of events have minimal requirements and can easy be handled with today’s technology.

There are still some limitations that have to be addressed, however, he said, such as the time it takes for end users to get settled in when they come to a virtual conference or training session.

“They want to spend half an hour customizing their avatar before getting moving,” he said.

The key to a successful training experience, he said, is that the virtual world needs to add something to the experience that can be gained through a telephone conference call, or an online produce like Webex.

For example, Wespac, one of the Australia’s largest banks, ran a training program in Second Life in 2007 and 2008, then pulled the pug in early 2009, along with some Web 2.0 projects. The reason? Lack of return on investment.

“The benefits weren’t much better than Webex,” Frisby said.

Where the benefits can be found, he said, is when the training requires a dynamic environment. For example, virtual worlds allow users to prototype how something looks in three dimensions, or to go through a virtual representation of a physical location.

One application, for example, involves users walking through an environment and trying to spot the safety problems.

There’s not much advantage in training users in how to use desktop applications, for example.

Virtual world events also give participants an opportunity to network with presenters and other guests in a way similar to what they would do in an actual conference. By comparison, networking in a telephone conference or a Web session is extremely difficult, especially between strangers.

“The ability to speak with multiple people simultaneously, that’s great,” said Frisby. “The ability to break into smaller groups.”

As a result, the virtual conference business is picking up this year.

“There are no travel fees, no productivity loss,” Frisby said. “They don’t need to worry about taking a day off of work and factoring in travel time. We’re gong to see smaller, more niche industry conferences looking at virtual worlds quite a bit.”

Bigger conferences will stay in the real world, however, until scalability problems are solved. Today, he said, it’s hard to get 50 users into a single location.

For larger gatherings, regions can be broken up into smaller areas, so that multiple servers can handle the load. And the virtual environment can be optimized to load faster, he added.

“A lot of people have experimented with it, it’s possible, but we haven’t had a client need it yet,” he said. “We’ve done tests with automated logins, but they’re not representative of real users.”

Another area under development is that of voice. Today, conference speakers can be streamed in, but if everyone in a conference wants to have a chance to speak out loud – rather than typing messages into a chat window – then OpenSim requires a third-party voice module.

Companies looking to enable voice conversations on their grids can use a custom voice solution, he said. Meanwhile, OpenSim has been experimenting with open source voice products, with limited success.

“I think this will be one of those things that will be solved this year,” he said.

The payment situation is another one in which companies will need to deploy their own payment method if they want to collect money within their virtual world.

Most of the commercial virtual worlds, like Second Life, have currency platforms build in. Second Life, for example, has a virtual currency that is freely tradable with the US dollar.

However, unlike Second Life, OpenSim is not a stand-alone world. Instead, it is a platform for building virtual worlds. And, much like website owners want to have a choice of payment platforms – credit cards, PayPal, Google Checkout, or any of a number of others – so, too, virtual world operators may prefer to use a payment system popular in a particular country, or within a particular industry.

“So the core [OpenSim software] shipment will probably never contain e-commerce functions,” said Frisby.

Instead, third party vendors such as PayPal might step in to provide payments, or entirely new companies may arise.

“I would much prefer to have an established company,” Frisby said, adding that it’s more likely that a new startup will take on this market.

Meanwhile, grid operators that don’t want to go to the trouble of enabling a third-party payment solution can simply send their users to a Webpage to make the payment, Frisby said.

For example, conference attendees may be required to register for a conference on a web form and make the payment before they receive their login instructions for the conference.

Even shopping cart systems can be built inside OpenSim today, with existing tools, Frisby said.

For shopping however, more is needed besides the payment system – users have to be able to access the world more easily than today.

OpenSim -- like the SecondLife platform that it evolved from -- is not an easy system to master.

Sure, setting up an account takes second, with a few minutes to download the software. (Here's how.)

But once you arrive inside, it may feel as though you've just landed in a new city, in a foreign country -- one where you don't know the language.

Oh, and you're wearing really bad clothes.

Many people wander around a little bit, look at some things, get bored, and go home.

It's easy to miss the business potential of something that looks like a read bad, boring video game -- one which has no point and no destination.

Over the last couple of days, I've been showing business people around OpenSim.

Both had the same problems -- where to go, who to talk to about how this all works, and, most importantly, what to wear.

I'm going to have to change my approach a little bit. Instead of telling people to download the software and then join me in OpenSim, I'm going to do a little more to make it easier.

If you want to come visit, please email me at maria@korolov.com. I'll set up an account in your name, and outfit you with a basic set of belongings -- clothing, gestures, and facial expressions. Then we'll set up a time for a tour and I'll take you and maybe just two or three other people into the OpenSim Grid. I'll show you my house and office and meeting center. And my duck pond. And I'll take you the Stargate that connects to the other worlds -- other grids in the hypergrid, as the geeks say. I like to think of it as trans-dimensional travel.

I'll show you a couple of educational facilities. A community gathering place and live music venue. And the central control and conference room of the OpenSim Grid.

If you're interested in exploring further, I can then introduce you to some of the people who make the grid work -- including developers who are building the software platform on which it is based, and people who are hosting regions of the grid. They'll be happy to set you up with a small plot of land to experiment with, or with your own server, if you decide you want your own region -- or an entirely new grid, connected to ours by a Stargate.

Development land on the OpenSim Grid is free -- as long as you're willing to put up with the occasional outages as the land owners upgrade and modify the software that runs the world. Eventually, their work will make the OpenSim universe a more stable place, more scalable, and more rich and detailed.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a stable, business-ready environment, I recommend picking a host that runs a slightly older version of the basic software, one that has been tested and proven stable.

Or you could join a small special interest group, whether in Second Life or OpenSim, or make plans to attend occasional events such as conferences or training session -- even social events like live music performances. This will give you an opportunity to keep an eye on the technology as it develops, and improve your own skills in navigating this world.

I, for example, am organizing an OpenSim business discussion group, aimed primarily at people already running real life businesses -- but also open to virtual entrepreneurs as well as OpenSim service providers.

Stay in touch.

I got a lot of responses to last week's post about Second Life – more than to any other article. People emailed me and twittered me, asking for more information and advice on getting started.

First of all, I have to warn people – there's still a little bit of a VHS-Betamax thing going on, with a variety of technologies battling it out for survival.

If you're a business looking to set up your own virtual world, to use to train employees, to hold conferences, to do simulations for clients, to help the public understand better what you do, then you currently have two main choices.

One is to rent land from Linden Labs, owner and operator of Second Life. In the past, this was very problematic, as Second Life was rife with sex and gambling and role-playing weirdos of all kinds. More than one event has been disrupted by flying penises. Yes, you read that right.

Today though, a business can rent a private island, restrict access to just invited guests, or kick evildoers off their property. Better yet, a company can get the software from Linden Labs to run their own private world, behind their corporate firewalls.

As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I recently attended several training events and conferences in Second Life, and the experience was fantastic – much better than attending a similar event via teleconference. And much cheaper than attending in real life. So all good.

I was able to walk up to presenters and ask questions after their speeches, and meet the other attendees – and have actually stayed in touch with people I met this way.

Second Life gives you plenty of opportunities for the kind of social chit chat that helps cement a relationship. For example, I was able to ask one of the speakers, a developer from IBM, why he was wearing a Star Trek shirt, and whether he wears them in real life as well (he does – it seems that the fabled IBM dress code is no more).

The big downside to Second Life is that it is a closed system. Linden Labs owns the software, sets all the rules – much like AOL and Compuserve did in the days before Netscape came long.

At their conference, the IBMers talked a lot about OpenSim, a public, open-source alternative. You can download the software and run it on your own servers and voila – you are the god of your own virtual reality. Unfortunately, their project was behind IBM's firewall and closed to the public – I thought.

That turned out not to be the case. In fact, there is a version of OpenSim, called OpenSim Grid, that's run out in the public for anyone to enjoy.

While wandering around in there, I met Chris Greenwell. Greenwell runs Toronto-based KoolKam Industries Inc., a video technology company, and has recently branched into OpenSim development projects.

He's got one environment, for example, running on his laptop. He is able to use this laptop to generate four regions – each over 65,000 square meters in size. In normal terms, each region is a square of land about one sixth of a mile by one sixth mile.

In order to keep the region up and running, you have to have your computer always connected to the Internet, of course – or rent space on someone else's server to host it.

I found one service company that currently hosts OpenSim deployments – Sim-OnDemand (at http://sim.ec29.com) – which uses the Amazon S3 server to actually run the environment, and they charge based on how much processing power you need.

It was hard to tell from their prices how much it would actually cost in practice, but I can tell you what Greenwell gets with his laptop. On his almost-one-mile-square land area, he has variable terrain including hills and lakes and streams. There are buildings, and vegetation which sways in the wind.

Disclaimer: he's letting me use half of one of his four regions to play with the building tools in OpenSim. So far this weekend, I've put up a house, planted trees, and put in a business conference venue with a big-screen display for powerpoint charts and seating for twenty.

I don't know if I'll be able to have twenty people come at any one time, however – so far, Greenwell has never had more than ten people at a time in one of his regions.

So, for a laptop-based virtual world, the verdict is: good for small business gatherings, not good for big conferences.

Another downside to OpenSim is that it's a project still very much under development. The payment system is still under development, though there's a work-around solution that takes PayPal payments. Voice chat, which works reasonably well in Second Life, is due any day now.

When I interviewed Greenwell for this article, we talked on the phone, though when he showed me around OpenSim, we talked by typing messages in the virtual platform.

OpenSim has many of the same things you can get in SecondLife – land, buildings, furniture, clothes and avatar shapes. You can pick them up from a store, or you can build your own – the tools are right in the two most popular browsers for it – Linden Lab's Second Life browser, and my favorite, the Hippo browser.

Both work pretty much the same way, with almost identical interfaces.

Since I switch between Second Life and OpenSim, I use my Second Life browser for Second Life, and my Hippo browser for OpenSim.

Although IBM has been successfully able to teleport a person from Second Life to OpenSim, it's not a path that other people can yet follow. When you switch worlds right now, you have a build a new avatar from scratch.

Would you like to visit my house and office in OpenSim?

It will take 15 to 30 minutes for you to set yourself up. You will need a high speed Internet connection, and a computer able to display graphics.

Step One:

Create a free OpenSim account. This part takes a few seconds, and only requires that you have an email address:

http://osgrid.org/index.php?page=create&btn=4

I used my real name for the signup, so you'll know who I am if you meet me here.

Step Two:

Download the OpenSim browser. Again, I recommend Hippo. You can download it here:

http://osgrid.org/index.php?&page=smodul&id=7&btn=7

Step Three:

Run the Hippo browser, and sign in with your name and password.

Then go to Caladan by clicking on the Map button in the lower left, and typing “Caladan” into the search box. The map of the Caladan region will come up – the Trombly Ltd. offices are in the top right hand-corner. Click anywhere in there and hit “Teleport.”

You don't have to teleport – you can also walk or fly from your starting point to my location. That's because when people set up regions in OpenSim, they can place them in an unused space on the map.

You don't have to have a region on a map, however. Your region can float off all by itself, unconnected to anybody else.

Or you could start a brand new map. There are a few of those. They call them grids.

Greenwell promised me that you can teleport between grids as well, using a portal. I imagined something like the StarGate, that takes you between worlds. Unfortunately, the portal he took me to wasn't working. And it didn't look like a StarGate – yet. Greenwell tells me that a new look is in the works.

There's something else in the works, too.

According to Greenwell, there's a project called Modrex that will significantly expand OpenSim's graphical capabilities. Instead of the cartoony graphics we get now, which are based on building shapes out of cubes and spheres, it's based on a mesh framework, like the most recent video games.

The results are hyper-realistic. Greenwell showed me a demo video of what it looks like, and I was blown away.

One application of this is that you and a friend will be able to meet in OpenSim, sit behind a computer together, and use it as you would your desktop in your office. I can already see the implications for training staff on using new software, for editing people's articles while they literally stand there and watch what you do, and for tech support.

With my staff located in China, in India, in the Philippines, and in the US, this could be extremely useful.

Greenwell says that the technology is due out this summer. I'm guessing that it will take a little longer than that to get all the kinks out and get it ready for business use.

Meanwhile, I'll continue experimenting with OpenSim. I know I'll be on the bleeding edge of new technology, but as a young, fast company, that's where we want to be, anyway.

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Maria Korolov Trombly is founder and president of Hong Kong-based Trombly Ltd., which runs editorial news bureaus around Asia. Trombly Ltd.'s BrainTrust Editorial division provides corporate communication services such as press releases and white papers. And the China Speakers Bureau is the largest speakers' agency in Greater China, representing over 300 speakers and experts on topics such as economics and business, culture, and technology.

According to most predictions – including mine – the next generation of the Internet will be three-dimensional, fully immersive, a multi-media smorgasbord for the senses.

And, according to those same people – and me – we already have a sneak preview of that Internet in the form of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and virtual reality platforms like Second Life and IBM's OpenSim.

Entrepreneurs always want to get ahead of the new technology. Who doesn't want to be the Yahoo, Google, or Amazon of this new world?

Unfortunately, it's never obvious at the beginning what exactly it is that the new world is going to need, and who is going to be doing it and how. Oh, and whether it will ever make any money.

So far, the two areas of virtual worlds that are making money are gaming and sex – just as was the case with the early Internet.

A few companies have attempted – and mostly failed – to use this platform for e-commerce or for events. We're still missing the Amazons, the Googles. Mostly, that's because we haven't yet had the Netscapes yet. We have separate, isolated little islands of virtual reality – Second Life over here, IBM's OpenSim over there, World of Warcraft way way over there – without any way to move between them.

China is one of the top places for virtual worlds. It has the users used to working in a three-dimensional online environment. It has armies of programmers used to working with life-like physics engines. It has a government mandate to improve the country's technology infrastructure and education.

Is this enough? Can China create the next generation of the Internet? The next World Wide Web – the 3D Web?

So far, China has not had a great deal of success in setting world standards, as the 3G rollout has shown.

Major legal obstacles include a lag in intellectual property laws, restrictions on content, and prohibitions against alternative currencies.

Beyond that, China still has a love-hate relationship with its millionaires.

If I had an idea that had the potential to make me the next Bill Gates, I would want to grow my idea in the United States or another country where my achievement – and wealth – would be celebrated.

I heard a story at a recent business get-together, about someone building a new online company. The laws were vague about whether what the company was doing was strictly legal or not. The company founder happened to be at a conference which Chinese regulators also attended, and he cornered one and asked him directly whether what he was doing was legal. The answer? As long as the company stays below a certain size, there would be no problems.

This story is typical of a lot of activity in China. And it is a reason why some companies prefer to keep intellectual property and headquarters offshore, in Hong Kong, in Europe, in the U.S., and have only limited operations inside China.

The language barrier is another issue. Early tech adopters world wide speak English. An English-language launch of a new platform guarantees the largest possible international audience. A Chinese-language product launch may have an equally large user base – but it wouldn't be international.

So where do I think the next Internet is coming from? Personally, I think it will be build based on the work already done by Linden Labs' Second Life project and by IBM's OpenSim platform. I attended an IBM virtual worlds conference this week in Second Life, and the IBM team has already achieved some limited interoperability between the two platforms, with the ability to move virtual objects and virtual people from one platform to another.

It's not an easy system to learn. Second Life requires a fast computer, fast Internet connection, special software (a free download), and hours of time learning how to move around, how to get dressed, and how to talk to people in the virtual world.

There are already people making money in the new system. According to Second Life, several entrepreneurs are earning at least US$1 million per year from Second Life. Top-grossing companies include firms dealing in virtual real estate, virtual goods such as fashions and furniture, and virtual events.

And these are the pure plays. Other companies make a living in Second Life but get paid outside the system. For example, there are marketing and consulting firms who help businesses outside of Second Life set up their Second Life operations, or help them with marketing events, or conduct research. Since the payments take place outside of Second Life, it is harder to track this part of the Second Life economy.

Interested in getting involved? Go to www.secondlife.com and get the free download. Then follow the instructions to set up your account and create your virtual self. I've found that the best way to get to know what Second Life is about is to attend events. There's a calendar of everything happening in Second Life built into their software.

I'm planning to be holding one such event, a get-together for entrepreneurs in a Second Life cafe, to talk about business issues – both real and virtual. Then after the meeting, we might go and tour some part of Second Life. There are space stations in there, aquariums, zoos, amusement parts, dance clubs and shopping malls, office buildings and rolling landscapes. There are castles full of dragons, and a hobbit village, and virtual copies of some of the world's cities. Every minute, someone is building a new virtual destination in Second Life. And someone else is figuring out a way to make a profit from it.

Or email me if you want to know more about my group, at maria@tromblyltd.com.

When you first decide to start a new business, you usually get a lot of advice about the brilliance of your idea (consensus: it sucks), about how to structure a company in China (pay money to lawyers), and about the difference between cash flow and income (they're not the same).

But most people will avoid talking about the mind game that goes into starting a company. That's either because they're too polite to mention the fact that you seem insane and totally unqualified to manage a company, or because they assume that you've already got it figured out.

Occasionally, you do get people talking about staying motivated, about forcing yourself to get up in the morning and do work, even though nobody is making you, and you don't feel like it.

Motivation is important, but it is only part of the picture.

Have you heard of something called bipolar disorder? Its a clinical condition, in which people suffer giant mood swings. One day, they're super hyper, full of energy, making rash decisions like crazy people. The next, they can barely move, they're depressed, and life is not worth living.

Since entrepreneurs – especially those starting their first companies -- have so much of their self-worth tied up in their businesses, these mood swings are as common as lattes and iPhones.

In China, entrepreneurs often don't have their usual support system to rely on, either. Family and friends are far away, and entrepreneurs might be embarrassed to admit to people here that they're having problems.

Fortunately, there are solutions, even in Shanghai.

PEER TO PEER

If you prefer the peer support route, start a business mastermind group. Typically, three to seven people in non-competing businesses would get together once a week or once a month and talk about the issues they're facing in their companies. Some have structured agendas, others provide a free-form venue to air frustrations and ask for advice.

If you'd rather not spill your feelings to people in Shanghai, join a virtual mastermind group, formed of entrepreneurs in other areas.

Whether face-to-face or virtual, mastermind groups are a great way to relieve some of the stress of being an entrepreneur, as well as to make life-long friendships and valuable business contacts.

PERSONAL BOARD

A more formal alternative to a mastermind group is a board of advisors. Meetings can be formal – weekly or monthly – or informal one-on-ones over coffee. The only topic of conversation is you and your company.

What do the advisors get out of it? Some enjoy seeing a company getting started, or are considering starting a new business of their own and would like to learn more about the process before they jump in. They want to see all the mistakes you're making – so they can avoid them later. Others simply like the validation of being asked for advice and may even allow you to put their names and photos on your website.

If you meet someone informed and competent, don't hesitate to ask. You'll be amazed at the amount of advice you can get, at no cost, from experienced professionals who want to see you succeed.

THE PROFESSIONAL

If your problems are serious – or might become serious if allowed to progress unchecked – you may want to see someone on a more professional basis. A shrink, a counselor, or a coach, depending on the degree of medication and psychotherapy you are looking for.

The Shanghai Community Center can refer you to English-speaking counselors at a variety of price points. Shanghai boasts high-end therapists, who work with senior executives, and charge accordingly as well as some equally competent but more flexible counselors who work on sliding scale, based on your income.

I personally recommend these guys highly – they were extremely helpful when my marriage hit the skids a few years back. They didn't save the marriage (it was pretty hopeless) but I learned a lot of skills that I've seen been able to use in business. Title for a future book: “Everything I Know About Business I Learned in Marriage Counseling.”

Shanghai also has an abundance of business coaches. Ask around for recommendations, and pick someone you feel comfortable with, and who has a background that will be useful for your business. Some coaches are former executives who have been through all the issues you're facing now, and can help you through them. Others have years of experience counseling people in your situation, and can tell you what worked for others.

Even coaches who are completely new to the profession, having just completed their certifications, can be valuable if all you're looking for is a sounding board, a safe place to vent, or a shoulder to cry on.

THE SELF-HELPER

Self-help books often get a bad rap. Some of it is deserved – most are completely useless. But some are great. The problem is you're not going to know which is which except by trial and error, since what works for other people might not necessarily work for you.

Back when we first started marriage counseling, the therapist recommended some books, and those books led to other books, and eventually I ended up with “Feeling Good” by Robert Burns.

I am a big fan of making lists and creating spreadsheets. This book uses a cognitive therapy approach to teach you how to manage moods. I won't give away too much, except to say: it involves lists. I love this book, and try to keep a copy with me wherever I am. This is not easy, since I keep giving it away to people.

If you're in a bad mood and can't shake it, feel hopeless, like the rest of the world is against you, pick it up. Chaterhouse might have it or, if not, they'll order it for you. The sequel, “The Feeling Good Handbook,” covers much of the same ground.

For short-term mood problems caused by business stress, this is a great alternative to medication.

BOOZE

Sure, cognitive therapy, board of advisors, mastermind groups – they all sound good, in theory. But, in practice, many entrepreneurs turn to the old standbys for mood management: sex and alcohol. In Shanghai, there's plenty of both.

I know some entrepreneurs who spend most of their free time in bars. The problem with this solution is that its temporary. Once the alcohol wears off, the one-night stand goes home, and the chocolate cake is all eaten up – you're right back where you started. Except you're fatter, with a weak liver and an STD.

I'm not saying that I've been there, and done that. Okay, I've been there, and done that. Who hasn't?

But think of it this way. Your mood – whether manic or depressed – is a business problem. Would you solve your other problems by throwing a party and hoping the problem goes away?

Eventually, you have to stop and face the music: cut costs, or fire the malingering employee, or call the client and admit your mistakes and offer up your plan to make sure they never happen again.

The solution is often painful, but you'll feel better once you take your medicine and get it over with.

So call the coach, therapist, or that peer support group. Admit your problems. It will be painful the first time you do it. In fact, even going through a checklist in Burns' book is painful the first time.

In fact, now that I think about it, the feeling is very similar to that call to a client to admit I screwed up.

Hmm. There's probably a deeper meaning in there. I'll have to discuss this with my mastermind group.

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Maria Korolov Trombly is founder and president of Hong Kong-based Trombly Ltd., which runs editorial news bureaus around Asia. Trombly Ltd.'s BrainTrust Editorial division provides corporate communication services such as press releases and white papers. And the China Speakers Bureau is the largest speakers' agency in Greater China, representing over 300 speakers and experts on topics such as economics and business, culture, and technology.