I went and took a look at Philip Rosedale’s new venture today, Coffee and Power, and was struck by how good a concept this is. Basically people ask for things to be done, offer some sort of fee for the mission and then await responses. Unfortunately it’s only available right now in San Francisco, where the website tells us all great ideas start but I can recall watching Karl Malden going around the streets of San Francisco as a kid and it didn’t seem like a great idea then!
The thing I like about this site though is that it looks fun, although a lot of the requests are “Bring me a sarnie” at the moment, it has potential. However I’m wondering why this isn’t being implemented in Second Life!
The site uses a virtual currency, the C$ in this case, although there is talk of bars in San Francisco accepting this! Beer always makes me think something is a good idea, a few weeks ago at Villa Park there was a guy with something like a ghostbusters backpack on his back selling beer, a friend tells me they’ve been doing this in the states for years, it was a simple but beautiful idea. I’m getting sidetracked, but these simple concepts go by us day in day out until someone has the foresight to implement them, which is a talent, it may seem obvious, but it takes someone with talent to bring the obvious into our sights.
So how could this work in Second Life? Well at the moment with Coffee and Power, you can sign up to receive email or SMS notifications, the latter only seems to work in the states, you then see what people are offering ot wanting, in short it supplements these two forums in Second Life:
So you’d fire up the Second Life Maps API, piddle about with some markers, get people to signup, notify them either via im or email of what missions are avaliable and Bob’s your uncle! Easy yeah? Actually no, it wouldn’t be easy, the chat system in SL would need a major boost and the maps would be troublesome, but the concept, there’s no reason this concept couldn’t be implemented in Second Life, and if I lived in San Francisco I’d be tempted to set a mission for someone to implement it, although I’m not sure how much mileage I’d get out of offering to buy someone a Philly Cheese Steak.