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Welcome to my weblog, which I use for keeping track of interesting stuff. It serves as my basecamp for the exploration of the Internet, the "Blogosphere" and life in general.


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Some books I enjoyed!



Great book on wiki adoption!



A classic on corporate blogging!



The most interesting biography of Billy Joel to date!



New York Times Bestseller!



The Book on My Blogging Platform!



Start your own "revolution" and lead it!



The history of Google and Internet Search!




An interesting and addictive device!

First Real City in Second Life: Zoetermeer!

The Dutch city of Zoetermeer (near Rotterdam) claims to be the first real city to set up a virtual counterpart in Second Life.

Please find the press release (unfortunately in Dutch).

Because the press release is in Dutch, I have translated a few of the intentions with the Virtual city of Zoetermeer:

  • a place for citizens to meet and discuss
  • offer city services after hours
  • increasing the “social cohesion”
  • co-creation of the infrastructure with citizens
  • a virtual base supporting communities of people doing hobbies in real life

As for the hobbies, Zoetermeer is in an exceptional position to host a number of interesting sport locations:

Already two of these locations (Snowworld and Dutch Water Dreams) have shown an interest of entering Second Life themselves.

According to the press release the city of Zoetermeer has not yet bought land, but its Town Hall is already under construction (see image).

Related: all my Second Life articles

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comments image | post image posted Feb 15, 02:20 PM on Feb 15, 2007 | category image category: Second Life

  1. First city? Seems like not much more than a press release at the moment. While Dordrecht is already up and running: secondlife://Dordrecht/135/82/23/

    Sounds like Zoetermeer is merely trying to claim the first mover pr advantage… :)


    — Ton Zijlstra    Mar 2, 07:24 AM    #

  2. Hi Ton,

    Thanks for stopping by here!

    Didn’t know about Dordrecht, so thanks for the tip.

    Could it be that Dordrecht is a private initiative? This could explain the speed of implementation… :)

    I will check it out.


    — Marcel    Mar 2, 07:50 AM    #

  3. That could be an explanation yes :)


    — Ton Zijlstra    Mar 2, 02:48 PM    #

  4. Hi All,

    Thanks for mentioning Dordrecht. The speed of implementation is indeed caused by the fact that we are doing this in our free ‘after work’ hours and with private money investment.
    We recently added another Region to Dordrecht and have plans to expand Dordrecht with at least 5 more Regions.

    Since demand is high we are trying to pick up some speed and implement the build of Dordrecht at a faster pace. Unfortunatelly I am currently the only builder of Dordrecht replicas, but we are trying to find more enthousiastic builders.

    Kind regards,
    Elon Jacks


    — Elon Jacks    Mar 24, 10:58 AM    #