You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for May 2009

Archives for May 2009

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

May 22, 2009 by Leave a Comment

manhattan_group 1. Linden Lab are excited about the take-up of voice in Second Life, stating more than 15 billion minutes of voice have been delivered in-world. It’s also worth reading the comments in response to FJ Linden’s post on Second Life’s ‘Green’ infrastructure.

2.US-based hospitality recruitment firm, Manhattan Group, are increasing their presence in Second Life, including weekly office hours to speak with potential applicants. Nothing ground-breaking there, just a tiny step along the road to widespread adoption of virtual worlds by enterprise. You can check out their presence here – there’s even a bunch of Australian hospitality jobs listed.

3. Speaking of static rows of 2D listings, the FBI are excited about Second Life too.

Filed Under: Events, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Evolver – portable avatars

May 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

evolverThere’s a great story over on Maxping about Evolver, a now web-based avatar creation tool from Darwin Dimensions. There’s no shortage of tools like this but where Evolver shows particular promise is in regards to being able to share avatar creations across a range of platforms and media.

The majority of partners are yet to be announced but the beta already offers sharing with the following virtual worlds: Friends Hang Out, 3Dxplorer, Qwaq, WorldViz, Vast Park, Torque Game, Wonderland and Active World. The detail of the avatars isn’t to be sneezed at either – as the public gallery shows

There’s also a service to clone your real-world face onto an Evolver avatar, something I’ve never really seen the point of doing but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t popular. All up, Evolver has promise – a Linden Lab takeover target perhaps? You can also read a short interview with Darwin Dimensions’ CEO here.

Filed Under: General News, User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Second Life user retrospectives

May 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment

This may be the future, but Im looking at the past.

This may be the future, but I'm looking at the past.

The Second Life sixth birthday is looming. What, I wondered, were the changes, for good or for ill, that made the biggest impacts upon the community of users, since the last birthday? While pondering this, I had the following thoughts:

“Don’t worry, users can barely remember what happened last week. 12 months down the track, they’ll have forgotten the whole thing.”

We’ve all had this thought at one time or another: we’ve held the expectation that the majority of users will not only not notice the impact of the Second Life event that causes us so much elation, or grief, or confusion, but will surely not remember it in times to come. Perhaps the majority of users have not even held an account for that long.

Maybe that’s true.

But stop to consider this: a minority of users are deeply invested in Second Life. If a minority of users both notice and recall events that occurred with respect to Second Life, perhaps that’s ok. If the minority of users are the people who use Second Life more of the time, then the impact of their memories could be weighty indeed.

Let’s take that as read.

Now combine this with the fact that memories are elastic in time. Things that you felt very strongly about at the time will tend to linger in the memory, and can seem to be more recent than other, less charged, memories.

So, we have a minority of users who, with their investment in Second Life, are more likely not only to have long and sustained memories of things that affected them, but also to continue to talk about those things, and to pursue restitution where things have gone badly. Their effect upon Second Life and upon the community is greater than you might otherwise expect, in this specific fashion.

During the week, I asked readers of Tateru Nino’s Dwell On It blog, and others, to leave a comment containing their memories of Second Life, highlights and low lights, over the past 12 months. I also asked them not to do any research, but to work from their own memories alone. I felt that it was important to ask users who have enough investment in Second Life to read blogs about it, and to respond.

As you might expect, respondents remembered quite a number of things that had happened previous to that time as actually occurring in that year.

The other thing that struck me was the overall number of events that were recalled by each user; i.e. many, many more than I had expected, or could remember myself.

So, with those thoughts, I present to you the list I compiled from the responses I received, in date order, with links to interesting and pertinent information.

Age verification: announcement to implementation.

4 May 2007 Age and Identity Verification in Second Life

5 December 2007 Age verification arrives on the Second Life grid (updated)

Ageplay: in the media, getting banned.

10 May 2007 Child Porn Panic Hits ‘Second Life’

30 October 2007 Virtual Ageplay Still Too Real

The gambling ban.

25 July 2007 Wagering In Second Life: New Policy

The banking ban.

5 January 2008 Virtual Banking – Linden Lab intervenes

Bay City announced.

22 February 2008 http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Bay_City

Trademark issues.

25 March 2008 Linden Lab asserts control of names and images

Havok4 released on the main grid.

31 March 2008 Cry “havoc” and let slip the squirrels of war!

Mark Kingdon, new CEO.

22 April 2008 Announcing our New CEO!

Second Life fifth birthday: who and what is not welcome?

21 May 2008 Calling All Cultures to the Second Life 5th Birthday Celebration

30 May 2008 Calling all cultures? Not any more.

30 May 2008 Shape-Based Exclusion [Updated]

5 June 2008 M-rated avatars disinvited, then re-invited, to Linden’s birthday bash

16 June 2008 LL Hopes For Nipple Free 5th Birthday Celebration

SL5B.

“M Linden’s speech at SL5B viewed by many as a slap in the face of early adopters.” Marianne McCann

“The Linden Prize was also at SL5B. I remember how everyone was anticipating the “big news from Mitch Kapor”, and then scratching their heads at what it turned out to be.” Jacek Antonelli

Mono.

21 August 2008 Mono Launch

Burning Life 2008.

Ran from 25 September to 5 October 2008 http://burninglife.secondlife.com/

New City Sims.

20 October 2008 New City Area Discovered

Immersive Workspaces.

20 October 2008 Linden Lab and Rivers Run Red launch Immersive Workspaces 2.0

Openspace controversy.

28 October 2008 Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

28 October 2008 Lost in the void

Big Spaceship.

3 November 2008 Transforming the Second Life Experience

Winterfaire.

28 November 2008 Winterfaire! Coming December 19 – January 5

13 December Win a Space in the Second Life Holiday Marketplace! (The Holiday Marketplace got underway shortly before the holiday period was over).

Xstreet and OnRez.

20 January 2009 XStreet SL and OnRez to Join Linden Lab!

Maps.

22 January 2009 Improvements to mapping and upgrade to SLurl.com

Linden Blog.

18 February 2009 After much ado with half-measures, the new Linden Blog is released.

Content Ratings.

12 March 2009 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content

21 April 2009 Update – Upcoming Changes for Adult Content

27 April 2009 What do Second Life’s new content ratings actually mean?

Second Life and Open Source.

30 March 2009 Intensifying Open Source Efforts

Finally, I noted that we noticed several Lindens leaving (Robin, Zee, Ginsu, Katt), but barely noticed those who came to take their place.

See this, Linden Lab? Users matter, and they have long memories.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual world history, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Drafting Guys over 60

May 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment

New Direction for any war: Send Service Vets over 60! 

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 42 to join the military.

They’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys.

You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 35. 

For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. 

 Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy. 

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! 
 I can’t sleep, I’m tired and hungry’ We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while. 

An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get  up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell.
Besides, like I said, ‘I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical s-of-a-b…. 

If  captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser. 

Boot camp would be easier for old guys.  We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling. 

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however.  I’ve been in combat and didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. 

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet. 

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head. These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way. 

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists.

The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them. 

***How about recruiting Women over 50 …with PMS??? !!!   You think Men have attitudes !!! Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my God!!! 

If nothing else, put us on border patrol….we  will have it secured the first night! 

Share this with your senior friends. It’s purposely in big type so they can read it. 

Filed Under: Age, Email Joke Graveyard, General humor, Military

The Multiplicities of Internet Addiction – a book review

May 19, 2009 by 1 Comment

This book review appeared yesterday over on Metaverse Health, but given the book’s Australian author and it’s broad examination of online behaviour, I thought it was worth re-posting it here.

Johnson – The Multiplicities of Internet 2a1

Nicola Johnson from the University of Wollongong in Australia, recently released a book titled The Multiplicities of Internet Addiction – The Misrecognition of Leisure and Learning. It’s an engaging read, not least for the very objective look it takes at the concepts of internet addiction and framing the issue within the realities of a net-connected society that has changed immensely in the past twenty years or so.

Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice is the frame for the qualitative study of eight New Zealander teenagers and the illumination it provided on the perception of technology use amongst those who’ve know no different (digital insiders), those who haven’t (digital newcomers) and those who are plain not interested (digital outsiders). Additionally, there’s some fascinating discussion on how expertise is being developed by digital insiders and how this expertise is at best partially gained from the traditional educational institutions in place at present.

It’s the elaboration of the experiences of these eight teens that allow Johnson to weave in a great deal of the substantive research that’s occurred into the nature of addiction in regard to online activity. There’s no assertion of internet addiction as non-entity, just a much smaller subset of use than usually claimed. As contributing writer Feldspar Epstein has written previously in relation to heavy use of virtual worlds by people with disabilities:

Can you imagine telling someone with no legs to forsake their wheelchair? How about someone with a pain disorder? Are you going to tell people with crippling mental disorders that they are not allowed to take drugs to normalize and enable them? Are you going to tell deaf people they can’t use Teletype in place of the telephone?

Each of these technological advances were radical in their time; some of them were seen as being destructive, to society or to the individual. It’s hard to imagine any of these people being denied their enabling technologies in today’s first world society (one hopes). I hope to live in a future where my enabling computer habits are accepted.

Johnson’s assertions based on a thorough exploration of the literature, reveal a similar conclusion: internet addiction does exist, but when the preconceptions of digital newcomers and digital outsiders are removed from the equation, the prevalence of internet addiction seems pretty limited indeed. As Johnson concludes:

Digital outsiders (and some digital newcomers) find it unfathomable to understand the preoccupation that digital insiders have with their online lives. Because it is not what they did in times gone by, they find it difficult to understand the value, worth and social capital received by avid users in what appears to be an unhealthy obsession. As I have argued, these practices are not only misrecognized as obessions or addictions, but they are misunderstood.

This book’s research base means it’s more likely to be consumed and digested by those who are doing research or study in the area themselves. Which is a shame, as the discussion deserves wider recognition and debate. Work like this balances out some of the excesses on the mainstream media side of the equation. It’s only a lack of dissemination of this perspective that will ensure the sensationalism camp prevails for some time to come.

You can purchase this book from our online bookstore, Amazon direct or direct from the publisher.

Filed Under: Australian News, Review, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

May 18, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. The Industry Standard (USA) – Real world laws intrude on virtual world behavior. “Navigating the laws of cyberspace is getting ever more complex as virtual worlds themselves become mirrors of the real world. That’s one clear message from a Stanford University event on legal frontiers for digital media that I attended today. Protecting children from predators is at the top of the list. But there are thorny issues about who owns the property created in the worlds, what rights to privacy should users expect, how operators should work with real-world law enforcement, whether gambling with virtual money should be regulated, and in general whether or not real world laws should govern behavior in virtual worlds.”

2. The Boston Globe (USA) – The learning game. “Call me a dinosaur if you like (you won’t be the first), but I believe the best way for kids to learn is simply to read a book and the best place for them to spend their childhood is outdoors. Brace yourselves for one more heresy: I also think that, for all of the Internet’s wonders, it does a lot more to distract young children than to inform them.”

3. Fast Company (USA) – OpenShaspa: Energy Management in a Virtual World. “Want to manage your energy consumption by playing a video game? The OpenShaspa Home Energy Kit aims to do just that, by letting you oversee energy management in a virtual world. Shaspa’s kit, which is constructed from open-source components, contains a system of wireless sensors that control home energy output. The sensors can send data to cell phones and Internet applications like Google’s upcoming PowerMeter. Additional sensors for utility resources like gas and water can also be tacked on. Wireless sensor networks are becoming increasingly common, but OpenShaspa’s virtual world adds a new element to smart grid energy monitoring. OpenShaspa can be linked to an open-source spin-off of Second Life called OpenSimulator.”

4. Wired (USA) – Simulate Star Clusters with Second Life Mod. “Ever wanted to control the stars with your outstretched arm? An open-source virtual reality platform just made it possible. What in 1991 was a novel physics solution now comes packaged in a virtual world for you to intuitively explore. A new simulation in OpenSim, an open-source version of the popular virtual world Second Life, shows how a handful of objects floating in space react to each others’ gravity. In physics, this is known as the N-body problem. It’s simple if you have only two objects: they orbit their common center of mass in a circle or an ellipse. But three or more objects send the system into chaos. Physicists and mathematicians banged their head against it for centuries, with a general solution emerging less than 20 years ago.”

5. Huffington Post (USA) – Living in Sim. “Is somebody with a joy stick guiding my hands as I type this? Are they making me want to go across the street to Starbucks right now? Are we all living in a computer simulation? With Sims 3 coming out next month, it seems worth pondering. Sims, to help the uninitiated, is a sophisticated and addictive life simulation game. Millions of people are immersed in it, as well as in Second Life and World of Warcraft. Me and my kids were once avid players of Sims. Then one day a Sims character got into her hot tub, became drained of life force and never got out. ”

6. Singapore Entrepreneurs (Singapore) – Interview With Simon Newstead, Founder Of Frenzoo. “Based in Hong Kong, Frenzoo brings fashion online and in the form of 3D avatars. They will be here in Singapore to present at unConference 2009 and we had a chat with Simon Newstead, founder of Frenzoo.”

7. Government of Jamaica Information Service (Jamaica) – Protecting Children in Cyberspace. “The Internet, cyberspace, represents one of the greatest technological advancements of the 20th century and plays an important role in all aspects of life but most importantly communication, education, commerce and entertainment. It has radically changed global social interactions. Many of you have witnessed children sitting beside each other but communicating via texting, instant messaging or by e-mail. The larger the group, the more the children seem to have fun. Their fascination with the social networking websites such as Hi5, Facebook and MySpace is unabated.”

8. How Do (UK) – Salford students clean up kitchens… in Second Life. “Here on How-Do we’ve seen pop stars, award ceremonies and even academic qualifications delivered through the virtual reality of Second Life… but students cleaning up dirty kitchens? Surely some mistake. Apparently not. In what is being hailed as a first of its kind kind of thing in the UK, Salford University environmental health students have been thrown into dirty and dangerous kitchens in the virtual world and told to clean them up.”

9. AsiaOne (SIngapore) – Philippines’ tourism campaign engages audience of new media. “Forget mere traditional advertisements and colourful brochures; the Philippines is getting edgier with new media to posture itself as a destination for the adventurous and music lovers. The “Awesome Philippines” tourism campaign, in partnership with MTV Networks, has harnessed interactive websites and virtual realities in reaching out to its target market of 18- to 35-year-olds, the age group deemed to be the most adventurous and thrill-seeking. The campaign’s most recent outreach tool is the creation of a simulated microcosm of the Philippines that Department of Tourism (DoT) Secretary, Mr “Ace” Joseph Durano has monikered the country’s “7,108th” island in the online virtual reality Second Life (SL).”

10. Web Worker Daily (USA) – Second Life Is Social Media. “Despite all of the hype about Second Life, followed by the Second Life bashing, followed by some more hype, and now the latest “Second Life is dead” pronouncements, the 3-D virtual world owned by Linden Lab is still breathing. I feel strongly — as do many others — that Second Life is an important, and often overlooked, aspect of social media marketing. To be clear, Second Life is social media. If you break down the key features of social media, you will see that Second Life stacks up very well against other popular tools. Here are some of the reasons why you’d be remiss to leave Second Life off a well-rounded, integrated social media marketing plan.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

May 16, 2009 by Leave a Comment

jokaydia-eurovision11. Second Life educator extraordinaire, Jokay Wollongong, is having a Eurovision party this coming Sunday.

2. Caleb Booker has an interesting article on funerals and virtual worlds. He links to a YouTube vid of an incident a few years back in World of Warcraft that I’d seen before, as a basis of showing how mindsets have changed about the death of avatars and their real world impacts. Well worth a read.

3. For those that missed last months Catalyst program on ABC TV about the use of virtual reality in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), you can view it here. There’s also an extra 7-minute interview with a US Marine whose PTSD treatment was benefitted by the use of virtual reality.

4. Human Resources and training virtual world NoviCraft has picked up Finland’s best e-learning product for 2009 and was the only game-based product entered.

Filed Under: Australian News, Events, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

Weekend Whimsy

May 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment

1. Earth Day Light Dancing in Second Life – “Spring”

2. VE Day Remembrance with Holocaust Survivor in Second Life

3. Pirates of Second Life

Filed Under: User-generated, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Metaplace enters Open Beta

May 15, 2009 by 1 Comment

metaplace-openbeta
Today the Metaplace team have announced the mover to Open Beta, so if you haven’t checked out this impressive 2D world with content creation, you now have no excuse not to do so.

If you want some insight into Metaplace’s founder, Raph Koster, you can check our interview with him here.

Things have evolved significantly since our impressions of the Closed Beta, but my thoughts haven’t changed: this is a potential game-changer of a virtual world.

Over to you: have you checked out Metaplace, and if so, has it captured your imagination or is it just another 2D option?

Filed Under: Alternatives, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Men have better friends

May 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Friendship among Women:

A woman didn’t come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a
friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among Men:
A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he  told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s
house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends.

Seven confirmed that he had slept over, and three said he was still there. 

 

Filed Under: Email Joke Graveyard, The Gender Wars

Previous Posts