Second Life

By SLHamlet I haven't had a chance yet to explore the War Poets Exhibition in Second Life, an extremely ambitious Oxford project that presents World War I poetry contextualized in an immersive simulation of WWI battlegrounds. However, the agile Emily Orr has,...

By SLHamlet There are many Second Life machinimas that aim to titillate with sexual imagery, but for my mojo, at least, few are actually sexy. Then there's "Sideways Time", the latest from Lyric Lundquist, whose expressionist machinima I've celebrated before, a geometric...

By Chestnut Rau Chestnut Rau’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL event..... New Babbage is a steampunk city-state located inside Second Life. The builds are extraordinary and the community consists of dedicated roleplayers who are friendly and welcoming to visitors. You can read all...

By SLHamlet The Lindens have partnered with 888 Holdings, an online gambling company, to handle payment services, especially for international Second Life users. As M. Linden puts it in the press release, "[W]e’re pleased to work with them to provide easy and...

By SLHamlet Awhile ago I mentioned the invaluable work of Tyche Shepherd, a Resident who meticulously tracks in-world Second Life data such as "Incident" reports. In a recent report posted on the SL Universe Forum, she has exhaustive details on the full...

By SLHamlet This is one of the lovelier demonstrations of Second Life Havok 4 physics at its most, well, physical: This mayhem is brought you to by a metaverse developer called Bytegang, helmed by the aptly named Loki Dancer. "We did the...

By SLHamlet Meet Second Life's oldest Resident: She's 97 years young. How to Make Second Life Truly Mass Market, Part 2: Point-and-Click Avatar Movement! (Heated but interesting conversation in Comments) Philip Rosedale Unveils New Company: "LoveMachine Inc" Offers AI, Destruction of the...

By SLHamlet Banana Vella is the quirky name of a fashionista with a yen for SL travel -- and her blog is named the same. Amid sporadic fashion spreads, she lavishly illustrates her many travels in SL, and they're locations you'll want...

By SLHamlet Quaintly Tuquri, an SL Resident living in Malaysia, looked at the most recent Second Life economic statistics, and noted something interesting: Her compatriots are responsible for 4% of in-world user-to-user transactions. That would not seem like much, but then, Malaysia...

By SLHamlet World of Warcraft, the largest 3D online world with 12 million subscribers, has it. Sims 2, which is often compared to Second Life, and is the biggest selling single-player 3D game for the PC, with 13 million owners, also has...

By SLHamlet Noting the dearth of SL blogs that are critical of Second Life fashion, I recently surveyed the demand for same. Here's the results: nearly 90% are potentially interested in reading an SL blog with negative product reviews. Iris Ophelia wrote...

By SLHamlet Penn State is ranked among the United State's very best public universities, and now the Chronicle of Higher Education reports it has another distinction: The school's online advisors are required to maintain office hours as avatars in Penn State's Second...

By SLHamlet Los Angeles architect David Denton uses Second Life as a tool for his work (more on that soon), and when colleagues complain that SL is too complicated, he has a novel reply: "If my 97 year old mother can do...

By SLHamlet Want an economical way to shoot Second Life machinima? There's an app for that. As demonstrated by Botgirl Questi, who captures SL video with her iPhone: I actually like how the iPhone gives the footage a glassy, abstracted appearance. (This...

By SLHamlet Today (November 8) at 4 PM SLT/Pacific, virtual goods expert Susan Wu will be the guest on SmarterTechnology's Second Life show, where she'll speak on "The Internet Economics of Vampire Fun". Fast Company named her one of 2009's 100 most...

By SLHamlet SL fashion designer Sasy Scarborough has a long and tormented post on the heartbreak of content theft, sent to me by my style columnist Iris Ophelia. Here is Sasy talking about one of her regular routines, tracking down stolen content,...

By SLHamlet Chestnut Rau's real life owner is under the weather, so Chestnut's Choices won't be running this week. If you know about excellent Second Life events happening from today until next Wednesday, please post details in Comments. Don't forget to include...

By SLHamlet Second Life Blog: Next Chapter! A year after ceding the CEO position to Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale just announced that he will no longer work at Linden Lab full-time, suggesting that work in his capacity as Linden's...

By Chestnut Rau Chestnut Rau’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events… Ahhh.....Burning Life. I just love this celebration of creativity and community in Second Life. The SL Burning Life Celebration is modeled after the RL Burning Man Festival that takes place in the...

By SLHamlet SL music aficionado Crap Mariner has word of a "bouncer bot", created by veteran performer Mankind Tracer. As the name suggests, it's a payment system for live musicians, and it addresses the problem of earning a decent gig fee, which...

By SLHamlet As a perusing of the ongoing New World Tableau series will show, a lot of Resident artists who use SL screenshots as their medium often process their images through Photoshop. The challenge is often figuring out how to use it...