Pictured above: The Twitter Lab on Birmingham Island

As part of this year's British Science Festival virtual world specialists Daden have been commissioned by the organisers to recreate an interactive map, available both on the web and within Second Life, of virtual world based UK scientific research and educational activities.

In the past fortnight science and education projects in the UK and, in some instances, around the world, have registered their projects and Daden have used the data provided to indicate their locations on a live Second Life map. Clicking on the map markers provides a link to teleport to the projects location in Second Life. The map is being hosted at B-scape on Birmingham's island in Second Life. Currently more than a dozen projects are listed although it is hoped that more projects will be added over time. A 2D version of the map is also available on Daden's website.

It's not until you see the projects on a live Second Life map that you fully appreciate how big Second Life is and how spread out, within the virtual world, the projects are located - although predictably there is a cluster at SciLands, an area within Second Life devoted to science and technology." says David Burden, Daden's Managing Director.

It is hoped that this map will inform people about projects they didn't know about - and encourage them to visit them in-world during the festival and beyond.

In addition Daden have also created a British Science Festival "Twitter Lab" based around Twitter posts. The lab, which consists of laboratory beakers and test-tubes, bubbles with tweets to #BritSciFest @britishscifest, @astonuniversity, @unibirmingham, and @bhamsciencecity which gently float into the Birmingham Island's sky. In case you miss reading the tweet bubbles Daden have also added some screens around the area showing the last ten tweets which include those terms. Even B-scape hasn't escaped showing #britscifest tweets floating up from a 3D view of central Birmingham.

Soulla Stylianou, Daden's Client Director is transfixed "It's very calming standing around the Twitter Lab watching what people are saying about the festival. The bubbles coming from the testubes are either luminous pink or purple and those, added with the blue tweets from the beaker, make a colourful display of tweets."

Users without access to Second Life, or running projects in other virtual worlds, are not excluded from the project. All information will be available through the map's web page at http://www.daden.co.uk/bsf which will include a link to the browser based version of the Second Life map, and lists of projects in other worlds. The map and Twitter lab can be viewed on Birmingham Island, in Second Life.

The British Science Festival, hosted by Aston University in Birmingham, runs from Tuesday, September 14th to Sunday, September 19th.