Second Life

By communities@secondlife.com Winterfest Activities and Events – Something for Everyone! Winterfest Shops & Land Auctions Snowman building contest Ice Skating and Bonfire under the stars with live music Residents vs. Lindens Snowball Fights Second Life Community Sponsored Events Calendar

By mittfox My story doesn’t end there, you’ll be pleased to know. I could quite easily pen an entire novel on the subject of Second Life were I so inclined (it’s still a possibility). Rather than subject you to a painful wall of text, I think I’ll serialise this epic saga for easy digestion. Keep an eye out f...

By Morgana Hi there! I have been a member of Second Life, for over 3 years and, i think of myself as a pretty good “bargain”  finder. I love to shop in Second Life.. I promise to be objective.. M~ Hi there! My name is, Morgana Hilra.. I have been a member of Second Life, for over 3 years and, i t

By secondtimesvwr Oct. 9, 2009)–The University of Texas at San Antonio is joining 15 other UT System institutions in a new $250,000 University of Texas System initiative designed to transform undergraduate education. As a part of the Virtual Learning Community Initiative, the UT System purchased a 50-is...

By Ⓟ Ari Blackthorne™ The simple matter of fact is: if you can hear it, you can copy it and steal it. If you can see it, you can copy it and steal it. As for copybot: it works the exact same way. If you can see it, you can steal it. it always has been this way on the internet. They really don’t care if you are here tomorrow or not. That, dear friend is the majority attitude on the grid. Copybot and entitlement attitudes were given their birth at the onset of the open-sourcing of the Linden Lab grid viewer. The cat already is out of the bag and there’s no setting him back in. I am most happy that Linden Dollars are tracked and transactions occur only through the server, because if anyone got their hands on that code, woe-be-the-grid.   [read the full post]

By Daniel Voyager Baffin – Teen Grid Transfer Station – Jade Lily This is where our youngest Residents come to celebrate their transition to the Main Grid. Celebrate the spirit of Second Life! 􀀊 This is a quick easy guide for TG residents transferring very soon to the Main Grid or Teens that ha

By Harper Around the Grid is willing to provide unbiased and unreserved reviews of Resident-created and -sold, non-pornographic products, especially fashion and hairstyles, and of Real World books on Second Life. Virtual submissions for review should be sent in world to Harper Ganesvoort, an...

By Ⓟ Ari Blackthorne™ While running some routine analyses of the user concurrency figures for Second Life from 2006 to the present, we noticed some interesting things. Median concurrency, one of the indicators we’ve traditionally eyeballed to indicate the health and growth of Second Life took a recent dive after many years of steady increase. From Second Life median concurrency declines as bots/campers progressively purged] And so the grid grows. All those people flooding-in. Many of them after that pot at the end of the virtual Second Life rainbow. Of course if you’re one of the honest ones it means creating, creating, creating. And selling it all.   [read the full post]

By Ⓟ Ari Blackthorne™ However, the down side to this also has to do with the way all content is created as we choose. You could, in simplistic terms refer to the Second Life grid as a three-dimensional web page. Okay, each sim could be a page, group of sims be a web site and so on. This is a good thing. This is a bad thing.

By Prad Prathivi But then there’s yet more questions of integrity and credibility. Who are they getting favours from? Are their activities/tiers in world being subsidised by Linden Lab? Are they being paid to promote certain LL products? Do they have invested interests/sponsorship in Linden Lab or oth...

By John Postill Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human.

By Ⓟ Ari Blackthorne™ Linden Lab releases it’s own ‘after-market’ viewer, which I find funny, especially since I had just run the gambit on after-market viewers for Second Life Grid in my most previous post. Now in addition to the “official” Second Life viewer from Linden Lab (LL), said company releases anoth...

By Ⓟ Ari Blackthorne™ Isn’t choice a wonderful thing? Where “Emerald” relates to Second Life, it also is a Grid Viewer and a damned good one. Viewer links: Alternate Viewers page by Linden Lab (this list does not include all alternate viewers one can find on the Internet.)

By JohnnyRS I still think SL has some promises but there are some major competition coming up this and next year. I think Second Life will still be the best virtual world for user created content. Some of the upcoming virtual worlds may get more advertisers from big companies, though. That could get more u...

By Gwyneth Llewelyn A few of us who are in Second Life® mostly for business have long ago complained to Linden Lab, in the years of 2005 and 2006 mostly, how little they cared about businesses in SL, and how little effort they put in expanding and opening the virtual world to healthy business from the real world.

By Ari Blackthorne™ So reading through this highly negative diatribe about how bad Second Life is and what losers all the residents are, I still couldn’t help but smile wide, feeling seriously nostalgic. And it brings back what are now fond memories, but brutally disappointing experiences at the time.

By SLHerald Politics in the United States have not been kind to the Republican party of late, so it is understandable that some of the party faithful have taken refuge in the fictional entertainment world of Second Life. Reporting on this trend, Alessandra Narayan's interview illustrates how virtu...

By landsendkorobase I know though that part of me will always be Landsend Korobase, and she will exist until Second Life no longer exists. She is me - in particular the free and extroverted aspects of myself that often get muted in real life due to heavy and constant responsibilities. All her history, mistakes, a...

http://www.itcnetwork.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=214 Session notes for a featured session at the ITC eLearning conference, a debate on: are "Virtual Worlds are the Second Life for Online Learning"? This post is a live blog of discussion.

By Peter Quirk The trust issues in virtual worlds arise from the peculiar insistence that your name in Second Life can’t be your real name and from the absence of any facility for a corporation to attest to the identity of someone purporting to represent the company. This is not a problem unique to virtual...

By Dan Schawbel What are some tips you have for using Second Life to establish a personal brand? Personal branding in Second Life is done through your avatar itself. Make sure to take the time and even financial investment to create a compelling avatar.  You’ll want your avatar to stand out from the crowd an...

By keystonesl As I roam the virtual frontier, I’m occasionally asked for advice about establishing a presence in Second Life, and I share the same bits of advice time and again. I thought I would share a summary of these points here for any readers considering the same, and invite comments, corrections o...

« Poets: A Wealth of Open Mics Await You in Second Life (1st in a series) Oct 05 2008 Help! I’m an Introverted Writer in an Extraverts’ World! Posted by: Joan Kremer in First Life, writers in virtual worlds, writers resources, writing contest Methinks it used to be far easier to be an introv...

By Kitty O'Toole Kat Alderson dropped a HUMUNGOUS folder on me during the week asking me to review the items enclosed.  To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement, everything except the kitchen sink was included in it!  To be able to review the items and do them justice meant I had to remove all my existing...

By Elaine Polvinen Previous Posts in This Series: How Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part IV - PRIMSHow Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part III - UV MAPSHow Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part II - TEXTURESHow Clothes Are Made in Second Life:Part I- THE BASICS

Are they a step backward into little more than 3D chat or a harbinger of a future seamless integration of fully immersive, user generated virtual worlds like Second Life into the web? Will the future of Virtual World’s be in the browser: Interview with Avi Bar-Zeev

By M Linden If you were able to read every recent article about Second Life, you’d see tremendous diversity in the use cases presented. Here are some “must-read” articles that show the incredible diversity of Second Life: Massively Paralyzed Man Walks for the First Time in Second LifeAlcoholics Tr...

By Morris Vig But you know, I don't regret a purchase...or a minute spent watching live music in Second Life. What a great way to expose yourself to new influences! So go attend a show (SL viewer: Search>>Events>>Live Music) or check out any of the links that I put together for this post. The aven...

By Stone Culdesac From: post gazette Cybertainment: Second Life is focus of documentary filmed in virtual world Quote from the site - “Molotov Alva and his Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey” is the first documentary filmed entirely in the virtual world of Second Life. The half-hour “Molotov Al...

By pacificrimx Wow, little did I know that I was going give fuel to a flaming forest fire over the weekend with my recent posts on the new client (1, 2, and 3). Last Friday my post about the sudden lagging of my lab computers running Second Life solicited a blog post at New World Notes. This post was well written a...

By Aleister Kronos So back at the end of January, not only did I pay the strange L$ amount and my February tier, I also set up a subscription to pay the 30 bucks. At the end of February, yesterday, the said sum was duly paid over and I got a nice statement from PayPal to that effect. Phew! The system works!

By Flipper Peregrine Many of the books I have read about virtual worlds, or Second Life in particular, tend to focus on success stories: how to make money, how to do things within virtual worlds, or extremely general overviews. This book has a very different dedicated focus: must-see locations within the Seco...

Michael Osias, IBM (a.k.a Illuminous Beltran in Second Life) has been working hard to make virtual worlds useful places. And, today, the 3D Data Centers that Michael has pioneered in OpenSim (also demoed here in Second Life) appeared in Earth Times, CNNMoney.com, Trading Markets, Street I...

By SLHerald “Griefing” takes many forms in Second Life, but the results are the same. There are dozens if not hundreds of “anti-griefing” groups, all devoted to filing abuse reports, I guess. Why does griefing and trolling ignite so much drama and controversy in online communities? And why do griefin...

By Stone Culdesac Post from: The Grid Live Second Life News for February 2, 2008 From: Roumen’s Weblog Chat transcript from Second Life Quote from the site - I attended the Second Life NetBeans chat yesterday. It was quite a lot of fun - if you missed the chat you can read the transcript here. My colleagues David...

By Stone Culdesac From: Second Life Blog Announcing the Havok4 Early Adopter Program Quote from the site - Several months ago public beta testing of “the project you thought would never ever get finished” was announced - the project to update Second Life with the Havok4 physics engine. For more informatio...

The emergence of many forms of virtual worlds will be a notable trend in 2008. But Second Life as the largest and most highly developed user generated, 3D immersive world will continue to blaze the trail for the most world changing potential for virtual worlds - collapsing geography. How vi...

By Stone Culdesac Real Lawyers in a Virtual World Real lawyers making real money from Second Life. Second Life Drops the Hammer On Gambling Looks like the end is in sight for people earning a living using gambling and casinos in Second Life as Linden Labs has posted a new policy concerning gambling inside SL.

By Stone Culdesac From: Fortune Second Life still living its first one Quote from the site - The buzz has diminished but Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale says his Second Life virtual world is stronger than ever. Now he vows to make it a “stable public utility.”

By finn1 According to an article in the Virtual World News 11/26/07 titled, "China's Grand Virtual Worlds Plan - A First Hand Look." The next Virtual Worlds Conference will be April 3-4, 2008 in NYC. I don’t know if you are aware of the various virtual world activities that have been taking place in Ch...

By dusanwriter If Second Life is to fulfill its mission to represent the “everywhere Metaverse” it’s time to start thinking about what makes a 3D world different from the flat Web in how we think about, search and represent content and their connections.

By Nic Mitham I am an Orange: The recently launched Orange island (review here) in Second Life is hosting a summit (Nov 16 10am onwards) on avatar identity. 174 Major brands now in Second Life. Back in June the number of major brands in Second Life topped 100. Now, as of mid-November this total has reached 17...

By Guido Lang Forget the blocky shapes and blurry textures that now dominate Second Life. The virtual worlds of 2012 will look even better than the high-definition 3-D gaming environments currently offered by the PS3 and the XBox 360. The virtual worlds of 2017 will be photorealistic, and the simulati...

By pacificrimx The Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference was held today. This event was held in both Washington, D.C. and in Second Life. The webpage for this event is located at: Start of Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Sue Singer, Linden Lab, Taking a Question on Grid Stability

CSI: New York' proves that virtual worlds can be compelling plot devices Good, short review of CSI:NY's Second Life crossover episode. Sounds like the TV episode was solid. How will the Second Life side measure up? CSI:NY Second Life Episode Hits Expected Notes Virtually Blind reviews th...

By stranger109 Yesterday New World Notes was the first to report on what has become the biggest story for the world of Machinima. HBO has apparently offered a "six figure sum" for the rights to a machinima series set in the Second Life universe that began back in March. Entitled My Second Life: The Video Diar...

The virtual hospital in Second Life and Second Life avatars were used as the sets and characters in conjunction with real life settings and people to create these films. They are very high quality productions by film maker Dylan Byrne. They are distributed on a range of websites including Y...

By Guido Lang McCarthy said she wasn't sure if people were mostly introducing themselves by their avatar names or the ones they use in "meatspace" -- otherwise known as the real world. The 800 attendees, in any case, were just a tiny sample of Second Life. Although the online world claims nine million res...

By Alex Iskold When you encounter Digital Physics in software, it seems magical at first. In fact, the magic is done by mimicking real life. The life-like behavior of software in devices like the iPhone is created by plugging in formulas from real physics. For example, you can apply gravity and viscosity f...

So perhaps the winning combination for kids in virtual worlds is for parents to moderate their usage, make sure they have real-world friends in the worlds, and play along and monitor what they’re doing. Educating parents and kids about virtual worlds will go a long way to mitigating probl...