Mia Farrow makes an appearance in-world

As reported on another blog, Mia Farrow will be speaking in SL on the situation in Darfur .

If you’re interested in poverty or conflict in Africa, this may be well worth seeing. It’s occurring on the 9th January.

2007 – The Year of Second Life for Australia?

It’s the time of year where reflection tends to come a little more to the fore. In this case of SLOz, the reflection is obviously about SL. The interest generated in SL in the past three months has been phenomenal, and recently user concurrence (number of SL users logged in at one time) has broken the twenty thousand barrier. All that said, come January 2008 will SL be any more persuasive as a social medium in the wider population than now? For me the answer is an unsatisfying maybe.

In an Australian context, our smaller population is a double-edged sword – the word-of-mouth regarding SL combined with recent media coverage will increase the aussie userbase, not that it’s possible to quantify that. On the other hand that same small poplation will limit the amount of resources Linden Labs will throw at the Australian market, unless Australia were to become the base for SE Asian marketing / support / operations etc. There certainly is no cohesive Australian community in-world that I’ve been able to nail down. A couple of groups exist that are either inactive or have a handful of members. One of the aims of this site is to increase communication between Australians – if thats one of the facets you’re seeking with SL.

As always, your suggestions and thoughts welcome. Happy New Year!

Australian Library

The shell of an Australian library is available and there’s a call for anyone interested in coordinating the project and bringing the library to life.

Check it out in-world.

Indulge your spaceship fetish


Check it out in-world. Just make sure you’re ready to fly as location is elevated. If you do hit the ground you’ll see a well-known spaceship.

Teen Grid gets an education focus

Claudia Linden’s post on the official Linden blog shows the level of interest in SL from the education community. This was a focus of the report on the 7.30 Report last night , where a Sydney University group were utilising SL as a teaching tool.

It seems self-evident that a formal presence in SL from an Australian university can’t be far off.

Second Life featured on the 7.30 report

ABC TV’s The 7.30 Report featured Second Life tonight (Friday 29th December). The focus was on an Australian user, Lythe Witte and how she took part in the SL community. The story also covered another virtual world, Entropia Universe.

The thrust of the story was how virtual worlds may play an increasing role, and the interest of big business in it all. There was also some discussion on governance and intellectual property issues. A link to the full transcript will be posted when available. We’ll also contact Lythe Witte to see if she’d like to make a comment.

The biggest shame is that the SL grid is down at the time of the publicity.

December ‘Second Opinion’ released

Linden Labs have released the December issue of Second opinion. The new Civic Center section looks further at self-governance issues in SL. It’s encouraging to see the wider strategic view of SL continuing to be discussed whilst the day-to-day issues and infrastructure are addressed.

At present I think Linden are a duck – calm on the surface but one mad pair of legs swimming underneath. At least the duck’s eyes still have their focus.

Happy Festive Season – Your Suggestions for 2007?

Firstly, thanks to everyone checking out this site each day – we’re averaging over fifty unique visitors daily and already have a number of email subscribers via the FeedBlitz signup at the right of this page.

Secondly, SLOz will have a reduced level of new content between the 25th and 29th December but the site will obviously be available.

Thirdly, what we’re really interested in is reader’s suggestions of what they’d like to see on SLOz. Do you want more pics of in-world activities, more profiling of aussies in SL? Do you want a discussion forum? Any suggestions welcome.

Have a great Xmas and 2007!

Orion’s business

Orion Keynes is Sydney based and runs a design business in-world. He’s also a SLOz reader 😉

Check it out in-world

Town Hall a little chaotic

The issues facing Linden Labs were never starker than today’s Town Hall .

The Town Hall started 10 mins late due to repeater issues, and the issues weren’t able to be resolved. This resulted in a significant number of people either getting nothing from the Linden repeaters or intermittent, garbled sentences. So apologies, but no live transcription here I’m afraid. It also begs the question that if a live text chat can’t work, then the graphical issues are a much larger step beyond.

One piece of good news for anyone interested in working for LL is Cory’s assertion that: “we are a very distributed company already and want to become more so.” – so working for LL outside of the Bay area is an increasing possibility.

After Cory Linden’s introduction (which wasn’t heard by me and many others), the questions started flowing in.

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