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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 »

It doesn’t look like much, at least not from the outside. A pair of double doors on a quiet San Francisco street leading into a converted warehouse. The low morning sun casts shadows across the street, accentuating the edges of the surrounding buildings and making everything look sharper, more real. Once inside the double doors, though, reality effectively ceases to exist. Here there is no death, no disease, no pain, no gravity and no sex - or not as we know it. Here you can be anyone you want to be. Nine years ago a brown-haired, bug-eyed, boundlessly enthusiastic man in his late twenties called Philip Rosedale founded a website called Second Life. The principle behind it was simple enough. Using the latest technology, people would be able to enter a virtual world. There, they could create a new identity for themselves - an avatar. If they wanted to change sex, that was fine. If they wanted to have two heads and a tail and give themselves a silly name like Aurora Lunarsea, that was fine too. There were no limits, except the limits of users’ imaginations, and next to no rules. Read the rest of this entry »