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July 2009
The Archives
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07.17.09Taser Lawsuit Against Linden Lab Quietly DisappearsThere was a flurry of discussion recently when Taser decided to sue Linden Lab for copyright infringement. Virtual World News picked up the story, which was also covered in New World Notes and in-depth on Massively. The suit has now been dropped by Taser "without prejudice" according to Patent Arcade: In an interesting twist, Taser International voluntarily dismissed this case before Linden even answered the complaint. Taser filed a Notice of Voluntary Case Dismissal on May 5, 2009. Because Linden never filed an answer, the dismissal is without prejudice and Taser could choose to refile the case at a later time if ...
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07.16.09Linden Lab and the Job I’d Never Want to Have: Drive-by PostOK, can't help a quick link to a job post from Linden Lab...although who knows, maybe someone wants this one? Oh the mountains we could climb... Senior Scalability Engineer at Linden Lab JOB SUMMARY Play a key role in scaling the operational technologies behind Second Life to satisfy the needs of our growing Resident community and diverse business efforts. Design and develop scalable, modular web services that are easy to deploy, manage, and monitor.
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07.15.09Second Life Tour – Where Would You Go Today?So I have my endless folder of landmarks and a few "must see spots", and they run the range from "business in action" to "immersive environments". But here's the scenario: I need to give a tour to someone and I thought it was time to refresh my SLURLs. The tour is meant to demonstrate that yes, Second Life is vibrant, and yes, serious people and organizations are using it - but that it is also a site of 'social media' and community. The person who I'll be giving the tour to isn't a client or anything like that but someone in ...
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07.13.09In-World Business Models and Second LifeThe departure of Rezzable had me re-thinking what it takes to build a business in Second Life, or maybe it was more the comments on my post, most of which seemed to express one of two thoughts: "yeah, it was never clear what Rezzable was trying to do" or "the whole thing's a pyramid scheme anyways and Linden Lab is on top." Now, I've long held a few beliefs about this, things I can't seem to shake, and one of those beliefs, I suppose, is along the pyramid scheme lines, but it's not because Linden Lab is a giant Amway distributor ...
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07.12.09Getting Psyched About AvatarsThe benefits of immersive environments for psychology will be explored by a new working group, to be launched this coming Wednesday in Second Life. The group, called the Psychology of Immersive Environments Technology Working Group (or PIE.TWG for short) will be responsible for: 1) advancing basic and applied research on the psychology of immersive environments, 2) promoting immersive experiences and programs that are psychologically beneficial, 3) defining best practices for the early identification and assistance of at-risk users of immersive environments and the treatment of individuals currently manifesting symptoms of immersive disorder, and 4) collecting and disseminating scientific and professional information on ...
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07.11.09Future Interfaces for Virtual Worlds: The Second Life UI at Your FingertipsImage via Coroflot. I've long been fascinated by the interface for virtual worlds, and have just as equally been convinced that while the software UI itself has massive room for improvement, the big breakthroughs might come from other devices. I wrote some time ago about Microsoft's purchase of 3DV Systems, quoting an Israeli news report: “3DV Systems develops “virtual reality” imaging technology for digital cameras that it sells, called ZCams (formerly Z-Sense). Its main targets are the gaming market (”enjoy a genuinely immersive experience,” the company says on its Web site). Now that graphics have become so advanced, it explains, the key to ...
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07.11.09Quick Link: Books, Writers and Readers in SLFrom the Writers In The Virtual Sky blog comes praise for one of the author's favorite places for the more literary-minded in Second Life, Bookstacks, a sim that has a companion Web site. Alas Zerbino - aka Joan Kremer - is effusive in her praise of Bookstacks, noting that it is a wonderful place for a number of things: meeting other book lovers (the island is, after all, created by two of these, Simeon Beresford and Kghia Gherardi; author cheerleading; literary performances, from one of the many performance spaces at Bookstacks; reading promotion; the first Internet radio show to discuss ...
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07.08.09Rezzable Out, Http-InThere were two places that convinced me of the power of Second Life as a platform: Svarga (recently up for sale - and I'm not sure if it still is, but if nothing else it needs to be preserved by Linden Lab) and Black Swan Rezzable. Svarga convinced me that Second Life supported a quality of storytelling and immersion that would have, well, game-changing implications for how we experience things on-line. And Black Swan convinced me of the emotional and, I'll say it, spiritual potential of the immersive experience. The third place, and equally important, was my first little plot of land, ...
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07.08.09Benefits and Uses of Second Life by the US NavyThe Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport put together the following demo video of their work in Second Life, for presentation in Europe. The demo outlines three ways in which they used the virtual world platform: teleconferencing, rapid prototyping and collaborative engineering environments, training and education.
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07.08.09Quick Clips: Linden Lab and the Wisdom of CrowdsView the full interview with Thomas Malaby (and read the transcript) on Metanomics.
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