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September 2008
The Archives
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09.29.08Linden Lab Announces New Interface for Second Life ViewerEdit: Headline changed - the viewer changes will be primarily interface but could include "carefully considered" changes to the underlying code base. See M's comments on the SL forums. Mark Kingdon announced that an outside design firm is hard at work on a new, user-friendly viewer for Second Life. The announcement comes in a longer update on his progress since taking the helm 4 months ago, and ironically was posted at the same time as I was sitting on a panel discussion about Philip's vision for Second Life. And what's interesting is that while the panelists all seemed to think that Philip ...
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09.29.08Second Life Strategy, Viewers, and Devices: A Week of GabThree events this week look at areas I've long been interested in and I invite you to attend. Philip Rosedale's Vision This afternoon at Metanomics a panel will use Robert Bloomfield's interview with Philip Rosedale as a jumping off point to discuss his vision (and, I suppose, its execution) for Second Life. I'm thrilled to be part of the panel, although I fear I won't have much to say compared to the others, who have thought longer and have far more experience than I ever will. The panel should include: Roland Legrand, Wagner James Au, Tish Shute, Bettina Tizzy, Nic Matham, Christian ...
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09.29.08Linden Lab Productized: Tom Hale Joins the Second Life TeamLinden Labs announced the appointment of Tom Hale as Chief Product Officer, highlighting the deepest advantage that I think Second Life offers as it evolves as both platform and world: knowledge and experience about the intersection of "gaming, virtual goods and virtual worlds, online communications, community and social networking". Today at Metanomics, I'll be joining a panel discussion of Philip Rosedale's vision for Second Life. And Tom Hale's appointment highlights at least one of the central contradictions that is perhaps the greatest source of confusion over "what Second Life will be when it grows up": that while it's a world, with ...
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09.28.08National Library of Medicine Grants $60,000 for AIDS Information and Outreach in Second LifeVia Health Info Island: "The Alliance Library System (ALS) is pleased to announce that the National Library of Medicine has awarded ALS a $60,000 grant for a project entitled "AIDS Information and Outreach in the Virtual World of Second Life." The project includes the creation of a new island with a community AIDS/HIV library/resource center. The resource center will provide information support and outreach to the Second Life community and beyond about AIDS/HIV and its prevention. The new island will also be home to a garden space where narratives about the AIDS/HIV experience can be shared through art, audio, video, poetry, ...
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09.28.08Nokia: Understanding Narrative in Second LifeNokia is an innovator with a robust philosophy of design and interaction, and their involvement with role-playing sims in Second life may seem a prelude to selling sexy phones for avatars, but hints at something deeper - a recognition of the unparalleled power of Second Life as a creative community, and the deep innovation that can emerge from it. Hamlet of New World Notes picked up on the focus group/sharing session hosted by the company, reporting on Eladrienne Laval's blog of the session. Clearly, Nokia managed to pull in a wide cross-section of Second Life role-playing communities, five of which were ...
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09.27.08Philip Rosedale on the First Hour, Browser-Based Clients and Failed FeaturesI woke up dreaming about debates and the difference between tactics and strategy, and how to know whether what someone says is true or not and how many turns of the dial the undecideds made, little squiggly graphs shifting ups and downs depending on whether someone hunches their shoulders the wrong way or looks too professorial or too angry. See - trying to decide whether Philip Rosedale has a vision for Second Life and virtual worlds is much the same - I mean, sure he has history and a track record and all that, but "the vision thing" is a ...
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09.25.08Cleanliness next to Godliness in Social NetworksStudents are advised to clean up their prims and hide their SexGens in inventory, I guess, or at the very least treat their Facebook profiles like a trophy case. Treat your social network profile like your own bedroom - meaning, keep it tidy and orderly - and good things will come your way, says a student leader and serial entreprenuer to Red Orbit. Your social network profile could indelibly affect employers first impressions of you, says Kevin Prentiss, who works for the student education company SwiftKick. At a recent talk at University of Mary in North Dakota, he stressed that ...
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09.25.08Australian Police Recruitment in SLThe Western Australian (WA) police department has entered the virtual fray with a new three-month trial recruiting drive in Second Life, according to a Western Australian newspaper. Citing the large number of people populating virtual worlds, the WAPD decided to meet technology head on. “Some people may think it's far fetched but the virtual world is accessed by millions of people worldwide every day,” said Gary Dreibergs of the WAPD. Metaverse Journal visited the virtual pavilion, called Step Forward, and offered its review, calling the island 'attractive and functional' but noting a serious lack of personnel presence. But Metaverse also noticed ...
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09.24.08Going Mainstream with 3D Content? Enter Adobe’s Creative Suite 4Adobe's announcement of Creative Suite 4 includes significant additions to the ability to work with 3D content, extending the ability of Flash, Photoshop and other programs in the 'family' to deliver rich 3D experiences and design across platforms. According to the Adobe press release: "Adobe Creative Suite 4 brings 3D center-stage providing the ability to paint, composite, and animate 3D models using familiar tools. Flash CS4 Professional now offers the ability to apply tweens to objects instead of keyframes, providing greater control over animation attributes. Also in Flash, the new Bones tool helps create more realistic animations between linked objects. With a ...
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09.22.08Philip Rosedale on Second Life, Usability, and Getting Grandma a New JobSo imagine for a minute that you're a coding geek. And you read science fiction sometimes, and you know who Ray Kurzweil is and you actually believe in the Singularity. Now, imagine that somehow your geekiness lands you in Silicon Valley and somehow through a combination of raw talent and luck you find yourself given a few of the keys to the magic kingdom - the one where open source and virtual reality and Chai tea all mix it up and people don't mistake TechCrunch for high-performance cereal. That's something like where Philip Rosedale ended up - he was given ...
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