You are currently browsing the monthly archive for Dicembre 2007.
Despite vendors’ rapturous embrace of Second Life, many observers remain skeptical about its legitimacy as a business tool, or serious environment for real- world business. (Non porn business, that is.) Face it, the minute IBM starts dropping wads of PR dough and allocating marketing bodies to Second Life, it’s time to run in the other direction. Sad but true. It’s like watching a high school vice principal trying to be hip and happening. It just doesn’t wash. And frankly wouldn’t you prefer that he not even try? (Related aside: Fake Steve Jobs’ thread about Irving Wladawsky-Berger holed up in the Second Life metaverse was brilliant.) Read the rest of this entry »
I just finished my advance copy of Edward Castronova’s Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality (2007, Palgrave McMillan.) As anyone familiar with Costronova should expect, the book is provocative and entertaining. Castronova’s central premise is simple: as more and more people spend a larger percentage of their waking hours in virtual worlds, these synthetic environments are going to radically impact how we design our real world societies. He predicts that massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds are going to affect how government policies are crafted, how businesses are run, and how classes are taught. Read the rest of this entry »
A NSW artist has become the first Australian to set up an online gallery through the Linden Company’s program Second Life. Broulee man Ritchey Sealy discovered the virtual reality game almost six months ago and has since created a two-story art gallery in the simulated world, which he runs for about $5 a week. He said it had placed his art on the global map, and viewers from as far as South Africa had walked through his gallery’s virtual doors. Read the rest of this entry »
Extropia an ambitious Second Life microgovernment identifying itself as an “independent technocratic city-state,” opened last month. Extropia’s designers hope it stands as an “exemplar of the future we want, today, where technology is used exuberantly in the service of beauty and fun.” Extropia is focused on creativity, offering residents an “exhilarating haven for creative expression – in architecture, social relations, sexuality, artistic and technological media.” Extropia announced this week that it has sold out all available plots on its “Extropia Core” hub, but that it will be opening a second sim in early February, and is taking reservations for land there now. Retail space in the mall is still available. In the meantime, the board of directors at Extropia is keeping busy. Upcoming events include a party at Al Andalus (another microgovernmental project in Second Life that opened in September) to commemorate the opening of Extropia’s “embassy” there, and a December 22 Solstice celebration. Read the rest of this entry »
Like many retailers, Chapeau Tres Mignon started preparing for the Christmas shopping frenzy in mid-November. There is just one tiny difference. The accessories shop – renowned for its owner’s signature hats – is located in Dreamworld East 183, 194, 21 on the information super highway, rather than on any real life High Street. But just because the framework of the store and everything inside it is built with bits and bytes rather than bricks and mortar, does not make what is on sale any less desirable. Read the rest of this entry »
A dazed and confused Ben Trovato struggles to get a life in a virtual world. Christmas is a time for miracles. Before the week is out, we will look back, shake our heads in wonder and say: “It’s a miracle we survived.” Personally, I am not prepared to chance it. Taking crime, taxi drivers and the aberrant nature of my family into account, the odds of not surviving are disproportionately high. I don’t have enough money to flee the country. I do, however, have plenty of time. Time which I intend spending with my new friends in my new life. My Second Life. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to The Traveling Avatar’s Quick and Dirty tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs. Today’s episode is “Do Spend It All In One Place.” Avatar fans’ favorite places to spend money. Every few shows I try to spend my time talking about where to go in Second Life instead of tips on how to behave when you get there. A few shows back I asked for some places that you folks liked to visit, and I was surprised at how much you guys like to shop! So, in honor of that, our first episode will be all about shopping! Read the rest of this entry »
The Internet’s first supermodel, Tracey Walker, made her mark in cyberspace in the 1990s, now she makes her mark in another world in cyberspace called Second Life. Tracey Walker was well known in the early days of the Internet as the very first Internet supermodel one of the first Internet celebrities (TraceyWalker.com). She has went from being the first pin up queen of the Internet to her new job of making women avatars beautiful in the popular cyber world called Second Life (Secondlife.com). Read the rest of this entry »
A company that develops content for virtual world “Second Life” has laid off several employees, including Austinite Joel Greenberg, who was profiled in this Statesman story in April. The Washington-based Electric Sheep Company, which develops content for virtual worlds such as Second Life, has laid off 22 employees, according to published reports. Greenberg, the vice president of marketing innovation, was hired to develop an ad network for Second Life, a virtual society in which online role players act out alternate lives. Read the rest of this entry »
With competition fiercer than ever before and the media constantly redefining social norms–failure seems to be a steppingstone for adulthood. It’s no wonder teens are turning to escape mechanisms to find comfort and bliss. Just like the lure of Pleasure Island for Pinocchio or the Looking Glass for Alice–today’s teens are being lured into the fantastical worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Second Life. However, as the past has taught us, fantasy can have detrimental effects on reality. Read the rest of this entry »
In our culture of hype, the Second Life virtual world had its day in the sun. Almost a year ago, I contributed to the hubbub with a big story in Fortune about how even IBM CEO Sam Palmisano was calling virtual worlds a major future trend. More recently, with all the buzz about Facebook and social networking, you may have heard less about Second Life, or even assumed it was waning. But in a recent interview, Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, which operates it, insists that both company and service are thriving. Read the rest of this entry »
Forget those late nights on the wards grappling with real patients to perfect taking a history for the MRCP – medical training is going virtual. Second Life, the online 3D world, is set to become the world’s largest medical training institution and, as Bertalan Meskó reports, it could change the way we view education entirely. Second Life is an online virtual world, a bit like a computer game where you play the lead character. Since it was opened to the public in 2003 it has grown explosively to more than 10 million ‘residents’. The main benefit of Second Life is that it makes it easier to communicate with people from around the world and to use videos, images, texts and web links at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
During a summer of (virtual) scandals, lawyers and the press routinely referred to the financial markets of the immersive digital playground Second Life as “lawless” and “a Wild West” (see “The Fleecing of the Avatars“). The flip side of these derogatory terms is that Second Life is a libertarian’s dream. As one who studies financial markets, I hope regulators will give markets such as Second Life’s enough freedom for us to learn something about how to regulate real-world markets, and when not to try. Read the rest of this entry »
The bad news keeps coming for Second Life. Linden Lab, the company that develops and operates the virtual world, released October and November economic stats yesterday, which show that total user hours in-world actually declined in November, for the second-ever time in Second Life history. The total number of user hours spent in-world declined 5% in November. On its company blog Linden Lab attributed the decline to unplanned service outages. There are other possible mitigating factors as well: November is a short month, with a four-day holiday weekend in it (although that last factor is offset by the fact that the holiday is celebrated only in the United States, which accounts for less than half of Second Life user base). Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been a Second Lifer for a year. I’ve had many of the same problems, experienced some of the same fears and have repeatedly slammed the relentless hype about the virtual world and the activities there. However, here’s the thing: Despite the terrible user interface, the presence of strange avatars, questionable marketing Second Life, we have only just scratched the surface of this virtual world’s potential. Put aside the problems and the hype for a moment, and consider some of the obvious strengths: campaigns, bizarre monuments to artistic vision and the myriad other issues that have vexed people and companies trying to us Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Abreu’s virtual version of himself is not exactly a carbon copy of the real thing. For one thing, his animated computer character in the online universe called Second Life can fly. For another, it’s a girl. Abreu’s professor required her students to spend a week as a character of the opposite gender, and when the week was over, Abreu decided not to switch. His class project involved persuading people to be interviewed. “People tend to treat females better,” he said. “People actually talked.” Read the rest of this entry »
For Christmas, Christine Louie has already found a pair of pointy red shoes for her girlfriend, tucked them into a pink box with a white bow and slipped them under the tree. Only her friend will never wear the red shoes. Nor will she match them with her clothes, store them in her closet or exchange them for a better-looking pair of shoes. In the latest example of how our real world is colliding with the online one, Louie’s gift exists only on the Internet on her friend’s Facebook page. Per Louie’s instructions, it can be “opened” on Christmas, when the gift wrap can be removed to reveal the red shoes. Read the rest of this entry »
Linden Lab is working on upgrades for voice communications in Second Life, including the ability for avatars in-world to receive phone calls from people in the real world, as well as Linux support and moderator controls. Linden Lab is also working on a standalone desktop client for chat. In the first quarter of 2008, users in Second Life will be able to get real-world phone numbers assigned to their avatars, and receive calls from real-world phones, said Joe Miller, vice president, platform & technology development for Linden Lab. Users will be able to get voicemail, which can be e-mailed to the user or listened to when in-world. Read the rest of this entry »
Internet idealists like me have long had an easy answer for creative types – like the striking screenwriters in Hollywood – who feel threatened by the unremunerative nature of our new Eden: Stop whining and figure out how to join the party! That’s the line I spouted when I was part of the birthing celebrations for the Web. I even wrote a manifesto titled “Piracy Is Your Friend.” But I was wrong. We were all wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
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![REMIX~ Blazed [Lou]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2625/4219330813_7a4c131378_t.jpg "REMIX~ Blazed [Lou]")
