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About Hippo Technologies
Hippo Technologies is a software and technology company based wholly within the virtual world of Second Life®. Second Life is unique among online worlds in that it boasts a fully-functional economy, with hundreds of thousands of US$ worth of transactions taking place every day across a wide range of business activities.
Businesses, whether they operate in the real world or the virtual one, require first-class business tools. Since its launch in early 2006, Hippo Technologies has rapidly developed a reputation as the leading provider of tools for a wide variety of business applications within Second Life.
Staff
Hippo Technologies draws upon a staff team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience. From systems analysis to database systems, from web design to user interface expertise, we have been able to leverage a wide skill-base to ensure that our software is not only carefully programmed, but designed and laid out with an eye for the user experience.
Our CEO and Chief Technologist, Andy Enfield, has over twenty years of programming experience and has worked for a variety of large UK companies and organisations. His current real-world career as a university lecturer and PhD researcher also influences the design and documentation of Hippo Technologies products, giving them a reputation for excellence among our large community of users.
We also have two helpful and friendly Support Managers, Samos Brissot and Raven Schwade, who are available to help deal with customer questions and problems.
Company Ethos
Hippo Technologies believes that good software design is all about the person. It doesn’t matter how many clever features a business tool has, unless it has been carefully designed, it will be confusing and awkward to use. Ensuring that our software is both powerful and intuitive to use is paramount to everything we do.
We also believe that good customer service is vital to building up trust. Over the eighteen months we have been in operation, Hippo Technologies has a gained a reputation for helpful customer service that is second to none, with all queries answered in person in remarkably short time.
Products
Hippo Technologies’ product range consists of several major pieces of software. Unlike our competitors we believe in keeping in constant development, we are not happy to rest on our laurels and let a product fall out of date. All of our software comes free updates for life.
hippoRENT Networked Rental System
Hippo Technologies launched in January 2006 with its rental system, developed when we took a look at existing rental systems and realised the market was full of expensive systems that, for most landlords and rental companies, were next to useless.With over 40, 000 copies sold, it’s easily Second Life’s most popular and widely used rental system.
hippoRENT is the only truly networked rental system currently available in Second Life. Rental boxes connect to a server, for full remote command and control, and the landlord can also rez vendors, that remotely display available properties for customers to browse, teleport to and rent. Its built in software development kit has allowed numerous bolt-on products to be developed and sold, from doors to teleporters to security systems. Simply put, it is the most popular, best-selling rental system currently available in Second Life.
In August 2007 we launched the web-enabled version of hippoRENT, enabling full command, control, configuration and vending parts of the system to be controlled using any web browser. As of August 2008, approximately 65,000 rental locations with over 40,000 tenants now use a web-enabled rental box and over L$4 million is paid in rent every day.
hippoVEND Web-Enabled Vending System
Our vending system is the fastest-growing web-enabled vending systems available within Second Life. What does web-enabled mean? Simply put, you can rez a server, drop your items in it, then configure prices and options using your web browser. You can rez vendors inworld instantly display your products. A customer pays a vendor and the remote server delivers it. You can manage everything from your web browser from that point — to which vendors display which products, to your sales logs, to your product prices, to who you want to share sales income with. The system includes ‘Catalogue Vendors’, allowing you to distribute vendors to customers to shop at home, or to affiliates to resell for a commission.
In the three months since we launched hippoVEND, the system has enjoyed a huge take-up, with large numbers of merchants switching from competitors like JEVN and Apez. Users enjoy the power, flexibility and ease of use of hippoVEND over those other systems.
- There are over 500,000 items representing over 200,000 products on the hippoVEND network.
- Daily sales of over L$2.5 million pass through the vendors of businesses that use hippoVEND.
- Since May 2007, over 1,000,000 people have purchased a product via a hippoVEND vendor.
hippoUPDATE
The third product in our portfolio is hippoUPDATE, a web-enabled update system. Using it enables merchants to automatically send product updates to customers, via our easy to configure servers which can also be managed using a web-browser. The only web-enabled update solution currently available in Second Life, hippoUPDATE gets around many of the problems that beleaguer SL-based update solutions (servers that change “key”, inter-object emails that fail, for the tech-savvy) and has quickly become the best selling product of its kind.
hippoTELL Web-Enabled Noticeboard
Our fourth product, hippoTELL, is a noticeboard system that allows you to easily change the messages on one, two or a dozen boards, from within Second Life or from outside, using any web browser. A powerful solution for advertising, education or business information, hippoTELL enables you to stay in communication with customers or friends even if you cannot get into Second Life from your current location. A wide choice of colours and formats and a built-in software development kit completes the feature set for this noticeboard system, now widely used by many real world companies, including IBM, in their Second Life setups.
hippoSECURE Land and Home Security System
Our fifth product, hippoSECURE, is a powerful security system designed to protect homes and land from unwanted intruders. Integrating neatly with our hippoRENT system (so landlords can offer security to their tenants) or running independent, it can protect rectangular or circular areas, eject on group or personal land, mainstain separate “white” and “black” lists and much more. Over 3,500 users rely on it to protect their land or tenants from unwanted intruders.
hippoVISIT Notification and Alert System Land and Home Security System
Keeping on top of who is visiting your stores and when is a challenge for Second Life traders. Our hippoVISIT system consists of a HUD worn by the user and detectors rezzed at the locations you wish to track. When visitors come, the HUD can alert the user (by sound, pop up window, or text message) so that you can respond to the customer. Sensors also keep lists of visitors which can be automatically emailed to you at a frequency you choose.
hippoIMAGE Texture Browser and Organizer
hippoIMAGE is a powerful texture browsing tool, designed to make it much easier to organize, search and examine your texture collections. Rather than wade through your Second Life inventory, trying to find the image you need — hippoIMAGE lets you find it in seconds and preview it in various different ways. Zoom in to see it in detail, examine multiple images at once in thumbnail mode, or tile a texture across the viewer to see what a tiled version looks like.
hippoTELEPORT Intra-Sim Teleport System
hippoTELEPORT is an easy to use way to connect together one or more points in a sim, allowing you, friends, customers or tenants to quickly leap between them. With a wide choice of teleporter designs, secure access lists, easy customization and the ability to network to a rental box, hippoTELEPORT has been an astonishing success, selling almost 5,000 copies since it was first released.
The Future
Hippo Technologies believes in constant innovation and development and 2008 will see continuing expansion of the feature-set of all of core products; users of our software enjoy free updates for life.
On the strategic front, creative partnerships with other leading Second Life companies (and a couple of real-world ones) will further extend our presence throughout Second Life over the next twelve to eighteen months.
Testimonials
Here is what customers have had to say about our major product lines:
hippoRENT
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“There’s no way I could improve on this. Seriously. I tried - and discarded - several renting systems for my purposes before I found HippoTech.” — Luc Aubret
“I was considering buying other more expensive rental systems and I am truly glad I didn’t! This is the best one by far. The networking feature alone is what got me. I love how it integrates everything. Don’t buy the other ones!” — Dano Fugazi
“I can’t believe I spent more than double this price for a much weaker product. Highly recommended to anyone.” — Jeffrey Weka
“This is absolutely a phenomenal product. Price, features, functionality just plain an incredible product. At this price you should buy it for “just in case you want to set something to rent someday”.” — Brodie Rothschild
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hippoVEND
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“I have done a lot of searching before I purchased this product. What sealed my choice was how quick the responses were back to the questions a bunch of us from my group had about this product. That shows a merchant who is ready to stand behind his/her product 100%.This is an awesome product, and I highly recommend it. It’s also very easy to upgrade.” — Bri McMahon
“I have been vending for about two years now on SL. I was a loyal customer to the leading server based vending system all that time, nothing could sway me to change. So I purchased hippoVEND because I use their HippoTech rental boxes already, and think they are great, never a problem with them. This system is excellent. You have SO many options with what you can do with sorting your items- and the records of sales, you can see at a glance where you sell and where you do not. Setting up vendors takes me half the time it did before. No notecards to edit, no server ID numbers to paste...and from the website you can update all your vendors and SEE what’s online and what is not. Compared to what I have been using this seems so much more advanced. And since it does not use in game “keys” for server/vendor communication, no more updates killing my sales!” — Andie Ramona
“I am not normally one to write reviews, but this vendor system oozes professionalism. Having tried and given up on JEVN and Apez I have finally found a system with all the bells and whistles I need and easy to setup. So much better than the competition!” — Jemima Boucher
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hippoTELL
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“Stellar products, for a fraction of what the crappy alternatives cost. We use all the Hippo Technologies products, every one, and couldn’t be more happy or satisfied with performance or features.” — Samos Brissot
“Easy to use and the web interface is great. I updated via my browser and a few seconds later it was displayed in world. The notecards were explanatory and overall it’s just a great product!” — Hazel Kyrgyz
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hippoUPDATE
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“I’ve used several update servers in SL and this has to be by far the best one I’ve ever used.” — Yolaman Allandale
“This is simply amazing ... Andy is truly amazing ... And the website interface you can use to send out your products too. Well, it is simply incredible. As well as this, the customer service is unbeatable. Absolutely perfect.” — Tribal Toland
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hippoSECURE
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“Having tried (and rejected) most of the security system "brands" in Second Life, I was pleased to see HippoTech release hippoSECURE. It does everything I want a security system to do, is priced sensibly, and integrates beautifully with my hippoRENT rental system ... my tenants are now able to leave in griefer-free peace..” — Johnny Jedburgh
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hippoVISIT
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“Excellent system. Works great! Another fantastic Hippo product. Very easy to set up and use. Definately recommend this product.” — Kira Rosewood
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