1. SpongeBob Squarepants in Second Life
2. Climate Change: In the Real World there is no Second Life
Archives for November 2007
‘edna’ arrives in Second Life
November 21, 2007 by 2 Comments
Terra Incognita is a veteran education presence in Second Life that we’ve covered previously. It’s an area that next week will be hosting the launch of a new service by edna (Education Network Australia).
The full announcement:
“Education Network Australia – better known as edna – is celebrating ten years of service to the Australian education and training sector on Tuesday, 27 November and is inviting educators from across the country to jump online and in-world to join the celebration.
From 3pm Adelaide time education.au, the company that manages the edna web site and related services, will be doing a live broadcast of presentations and the unveiling of the new myedna service on the island of Terra Icognita.
Pick up a free t-shirt, indulge in some virtual cake and champagne and, following the formalities, your avatar can rock out to popular Second Life band Space Junky.
For educators that don’t have the broadband or hardware to participate in Second Life, there is a parallel being held in edna’s Sandpit Groups using Live Classroom web conferencing software.
For more information, visit the 10th birthday page on the edna web site.”
Landbots and drowned avatars
November 19, 2007 by 3 Comments
The Second Life Herald ran a story today about landbots, those automated entities that cause all sorts of problems with buying and selling land. The SL Herald is alleging that around 20 avatars placed in water sims are part of the landbot scam. Whatever the reason for the submerged avatars, it’s a little strange. Yesterday I noticed that an avatar was showing up in the middle of a water sim:
I teleported to the spot and found this:
I returned 24 hours later and found the avatar in the same position and location. Not surprisingly there’s no profile data and the avatars are usually dressed in stock standard orientation clothing. Have you come across one of these drowned avatars? If it turns out they are linked to landbots then hopefully Linden Lab will have a clean-up. It’s hard to imagine what legitimate reason there is for their presence.
A horror week for stability
November 18, 2007 by 7 Comments
The latest blog post by Linden Lab tops off a horror week for Second Life stability. Combine that with the ever-present lag and usability remains the chestnut issue for Second Life.
If the rumours are true about Australian-based SL servers finally arriving, then part of the significant frustration with the Second Life experience will be remedied. The roll-out of improved broadband in Australia is likely to occur no matter who wins next week’s election, but it’s still a while off. None of it will remediate the enormous logistical task of keeping a virtual world running across thousands of servers – that’s something that can at best be minimised as a performance issue.
We’d be interested in your experiences with lag – has it been around the same for you, better or worse?
Computers as art
November 17, 2007 by Leave a Comment
It doesn’t get much more artistic than this with computers:
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