Search Results for second life
Videobloggers inside Second Life
Check out Michael Verdi's
video of his character's awesome house inside
Second Life —
it's a trippy floating house with huge screens on the exterior playing back videoblogs. The videoblog in the clip is
Ryanne Hodson's
Dance of Destructive Forces. Mmmm,
layered realities… bring it on! ...
Second Life membership now free
I've dabbled a bit in Second Life, one of the coolest visual virtual
world environments I've seen — a place that always makes me wish I had a bit more time to develop a presence there. As
opposed to the general bent of most MMORPGs, Second Life isn't
focused on killing and conquering, but on creating and building 3D objects, vehicles, buildings, clothing, and so on.
Virtual goods are created and sold in a virtual economy based on Lindenbucks — named after Linden Labs, creators of the
metaverse.
They just announced that Second Life will drop its usual $10 membership fee, in the hopes that attracting users in
volume will lead to higher revenues from "land fees," paid by users who own property in the game to maintain their land
holdings. Second Life currently has 45,000 members and is reportedly growing at a rate of about 10 percent per month.
What do you think the prognosis in the market is for these kinds of virtual universes — explosive? Steady? Fizzle
out? ...
Second Life Thriller mashup
I have been totally digging on the spate of MMO-themed mashups I've been finding lately that animate in-game characters
and avatars to act out music videos or DIY scripts. Here's a nice one that mashes up Second Life with Michael Jackson's Thriller:
Some
other faves are the World of Warcraft "Internet is
for porn" mashup and the WoW Gaybar video.
Anybody have any others to add to the meta-list? ...
Libraries to host literary activities in Second Life
I love this kind of stuff. The Alliance Library System and OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) have announced that it will be
offering select activities in the virtual reality space Second Life.
“We are excited to be offering new outreach programs, events, and services to people who might not otherwise come
to the library,” stated Kitty Pope, Executive Director of the Alliance Library System. “Second Life has almost 200,000 residents and is rapidly growing in popularity. This
will allow us to see what works and what does not work in this area. Second Life has malls, residential neighborhoods,
online communities – why not a library?” Examples of OPAL public online programs include book
discussion programs, interviews, special events, library training, memoir writing workshops, and virtual tours of
special digital library collections. This is just one more example of SL being put to great use. Via
3pointD ...
Wells Fargo buys island and is doing business… inside of Second Life.
This is timely considering our recent
discussion about Second Life — Wells Fargo
has launched a private "Stagecoach Island" inside the virtual world of Second Life, and is aiming to teach young adults how to handle their finances. If this is anything like
the "free financial advice" I got from a session with a Primerica/Citigroup consultant a couple of years ago, it
surely involves pushing Wells Fargo-flavored financial services as the solution to handling those finances.
This certainly positions Second Life as a marketing platform, and if Wells Fargo sees some success with their
experiment, we could expect to see a proliferation of business entering virtual space beyond the microeconomies that
are already going on there. There's going to be a lot of legal wrangling going on in the process of figuring out the
rules of how real world business should be allowed to operate in virtual environments. ...
Linden Labs gets $11 million to turn Second Life into Walmart World
Linden Labs, creators of the virtual reality game/experience Second Life, just got another $11million in venture
funding. Investors included Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. In Silicon
Beat's coverage of the funding it's said that the money is going to be spent making Second Life more
"mainstream." By that they mean commercial, which is a real shame. The CEO compares the commerce
there in terms of number of equivalent Walmart stores. Gross. Second Life is already quite
commercial, and the most interesting parts of it are the non-commercial events and locations, if you ask
me. But I guess real estate is real estate, huh? When you're ruled over by a God-King (Linden Labs CEO
Philip Rosedale, right?) then benevolence is too much to ask for. I guess those of us who prioritize the
noncommercial parts of life, be it our "first lives" or our second, will just have to keep digging out the
niche spaces we always have. You know what they say, it's ...
Sims creator says gaming good for the brain, does Second Life prove him right?
Will Wright, creator of TheSims series of video games, has a new article in Wired describing how he believes gaming is fostering imagination and problem solving in a
new generation of young people. Want to see a fascinating example of this? Check out the crazy world of
Second Life from Linden Labs. Some people say it's not a game, but Wright's
analysis relies on the simulation of social interaction and I know of now better example. From just the two most recent posts on W. James
Au's fantastic New World Notes blog.
The 1920 film
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is being shown tonight in the
Pixel Cinema.
There's a Linux users group meeting this weekend.
The Second Life Music Fest
will occur simultaneously in Philadelphia and in game.
There was even a protest this week over failure to support key
characters in other languages. Weird.
Seems Wright's conclusion about gaming is past the point
of deniability, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it appears that it takes some brain power in ...
Music reviewers are turned on to Second Life shows
I'm told that the music review site Pitchfork is one of the most respected music review sites online and so Chris Dahlen's Pitchfork
write-up on the music scene in Second Life caught my eye today. Here's his take on the basic idea: "While touring remains the most reliable money-maker and merch-mover for indie bands, it's also a
creaky, 19th century business model-- and a grueling way for new acts to reach new audiences. The internet helps bands
save time and money in hundreds of ways, as they post their gig schedules, direct their online street teams, and stream
and archive concerts for the folks who were too far away to attend. But what if artists could leap all the way into
cyberspace-- where they could play one show to a worldwide audience, and practically for free?"It's a fun article and touches on some of the key issues in this emerging phenomenon. For a look inside the
mind of a virtual music industry guy, see also Eric Rice on the topic. Found via 3pointD. ...
On the second day of Valentines
Classmates.com's 2005 'Romance Poll' reveals "...that when people
reflect on their love life, about 65% think about their first love or high school sweetheart…"
Interesting that. Have you thought about your first love or high school sweetheart lately? You're still in high school
you say?!
Here are some more highlights of this Classmates.com Romance Poll as published in a
recent press release:
— 70% of respondents think more people will turn to the Internet to find love in 2005.
— 59% of respondents thought of their first love or high school sweetheart in the last year.
— 65% of respondents reflect on their first love or high school sweetheart when thinking about their love life.
— 26% of respondents had used the Internet to look up or reconnect with an old boyfriend or girlfriend.
— 21% of respondents had an online romance in the last five years.
— 18% of respondents had used the Internet to seek a ...
Vivox is making virtual reality VOIP
Tony Walsh at
Clickable Culture has posted a long write up of some experimental technology in the works from a company called Vivox that will enable Voice Over Internet Protocal calls to made inside and out from VR
worlds like Second Life. What a trip. The company sees it as a way to
enable foreign language immersion learning and goodness knows what else. You can even call out into
the real world from inside another world. Given the Second
Life/Walmart comparisons being made I can't help but insist that my avatar is not going to be taking a job working
in a Second Life call center. Nor is he going to accept telemarketing calls from other avatars, ok? ...
Does the world need a Corporation for Public Gaming?
David Rejeski, Director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
in Washington, DC. has posted a call
for a public organization to foster the most enlightening aspects of video gaming - ala the Corporation for Public
Broadasting. I think that's a great idea. Given the possiblities for social good and the likelyhood for
those opportunities to go unsupported, an organization dedicated to fostering positive real world impacts in
gaming seems essential. I've covered many positive things being done in Second Life here over the last few weeks
- imagine how much more is possible. ...
World of Warcraft student ethnographies
So I'm echoing C.K.'s jealousy regarding why I didn't have classes as cool as
"Games for the Web: Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Games" when I went to college (biochemistry
seemed practical at the time… who knew?), and pointing you to a collection of student blogs (mostly LiveJournal) from this course.
Undergrads at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas conducted ethnographic studies from inside the World of Warcraft
virtual world for four months, and kept blogs on the progress of their research. They look at things like gender and
sexism inside the game, colonial themes, sociological and psychological factors of play, real world transactions of
digital items, etc. I was wondering earlier about the long-term
trajectory for these kinds of virtual worlds, and I think that sooner that we realize there will come a point where
it's more unusual not to have a presence in one (for those of us privileged enough to live in the developed world).
More game companies developing MMOs ...
What do you love about social software?
So sometimes we get caught up in the
money, in the
numbers and
rankings, and all the lesser ephemera
involved in the business end of social software. What I want to know from you all is this: what do you love
about social software? What about it compels you? How has it changed your life — or has it? ...
ObjectsSpace and ObjectsSearch
In my continuing search for signs of intelligent life in the expanding universe of online social media tools, I
found a brief press release
about ObjectsSearch and
ObjectsSpace—combining blogging, social networking, photo-sharing, and
search.
ObjectsSearch sounded familiar and I found that
The Daily Rundown lists
ObjectsSearch at number 9 in a list of the 'Top 10 Search Engines of 2004'.
Is search at the center of your social networking experience? Or is social networking at the center of your searching
experience? ...
Friendster Frees Sassa?
I received this tip that Sassa is out at Friendster, checked Jeremy Zawodny's
blog, and it appears to be solid.
Friendster hasn't been on my radar for quite some time now. MySpace, Flickr, del.icio.us, LinkedIn and Yahoo! 360 have
been the social networking services in my life lately.
Rob Hof over at The Tech Beat also
confirms that Scott
Sassa leaves Friendster as of June 13, 2005.
Wonder what potential means of resuscitation new CEO Taek Kwon might bring to the Friendster scene? ...
