Second Life and other Virtual Worlds

The massively multiplayer game EVE Online is special in many ways -- it is possibly one of the biggest social experiments ever, and it is live and growing.

Stop the presses! Linden Lab is out with a (potential) solution for the crisis! (...) Now, before you start jumping and screaming “Hoorah for Linden Lab!”, it pays off to read the small print. This is a reseller programme, not an “authorisation” to allow running one’s own exchange. What this means is that the “authorised resellers” will be allowed to buy and sell L$ on the LindeX (presumably at lower fees than the common residents) and offer them for sale on their own exchanges. They do not allow them to directlybuy and sell L$ to residents. So all transactions have to go through the LindeX.

If Avaya has its way, business students will be replaced by avatars in a virtual world. Don’t laugh: It already happened at MIT Sloan

 

(...) The company’s platform, Avaya Live Engage, is not about creating a virtual reality to live and play in; it’s about conducting business and educating people in a way that allows users to communicate as though they were attending a physical event, says Paul McDonagh-Smith, Avaya Live Engage’s learning practice leader, who’s based in London. “We want the experience to be emotional and engaging,” he says.

While Live Engage and Second Life share some similarities, there are differences, too. If coming to class as a giant bird is on your wish list, forget it. Avatars appear as people on the Avaya platform, unlike on Second Life, where they could be just about anything. With Avaya, you don’t design a virtual space for your event: You pick a template, such as a classroom, and then get started. And security measures are in place that require participants to be who they say they are, even if they’re using an avatar, says McDonagh-Smith.

Linda Kellie OAR files

The following are entire regions by Linda Kellie. They are licensed as “do anything you want with them, no attribution required” — which is equivalent to a CC0 or “public domain” license.

They are free to use for any purpose, including resale and commercial.

"Firestorm introduced Vincent Nacon’s alternative cloud maps in this last release. There are four cloud tga files to choose from, and they're far more realistic and robust than the normal viewer clouds.

http://www.facebook.com/Nin9.Series Teaser for the upcoming 2013 series Nin9 Sim in opening shot: World of Rach (Merci Rachelle Raviprakash) Music: swank.inc...

It may seem crazy that virtual exercise can make you lose real weight, but it works. (...) Last week yet another study came out, this time from the University of Kansas, showing that participants in the virtual program lost weight. And, more importantly, that they kept off more weight than participants in a traditional program. (This study was published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.) There are more studies, using avatars in other platforms as well. It all seems to come down to the Proteus Effect — when we identify with our avatars, we are more likely to change our actual behavior to match that of our virtual selves.

Date: 3rd of May
Time: 12PM (noon) SLT
Adress: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Companion/121/14/340
Curated by Heidi Dahlsveen/Mimesis Monday

Find out more about this event at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/249608351847430/

Firestorm Viewer 4.4.0.33720 with Server Side Baking Support Not only is this a major update with loads of new features, as well as performance and stability improvements, but it is also a necessary upgrade for you if you want to be able...

Will stick with V1 interfaceWill add support for mesh, media-on-a-prim, server-side baking and export permissionsWill continue to support OpenSim

Work is resuming on the Imprudence viewer, the developer team announced this week.

Flash Fiction Center is a place for everyone interested in this form of short storytelling: writers, readers, students, and educators. This virtual environment is designed to help people learn about flash fiction and to motivate them to write this type of concise story.
Currently, Flash Fiction Center is online at

http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Camie-Rembrandt/Flash-Fiction-Center

Sebastien ‘VR Geek’ Kuntz is one of the world’s foremost experts on virtual reality and explains why good content is crucial

Press release: Announcing the 1st Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013

The Overte Foundation and AvaCon are pleased to announce the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013, to take place on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on September 7 and 8, 2013.  The OpenSimulator Community Conference will be a celebration of the platform and of the large and varied community using and co-creating it.  It will feature two days of keynote speakers, presentations and panels on different topics, and an expo area to showcase community activities and projects.

Anyone who is interested in the OpenSimulator software and the future of the metaverse is welcome to attend.  We especially hope to see OpenSimulator developers, grid administrators, and members of the community who participate on OpenSimulator grids.

The conference will be held entirely within the OpenSimulator environment.  The official program will be held in a grid specifically set up for the conference.  We expect 150-200 attendees of the conference to be able to attend virtually on the conference grid, as well as an even broader audience through live streaming of the conference sessions on UStream.  In addition, the conference will offer social hours following each day’s program to accommodate satellite events that will take place in the many grids operated by members of the community.  There will also be an exposition area on the conference grid for sponsors.

Google through a new project called Ground Truth is becoming an ever more sophisticated virtual mirror of the real world.

If you use Firestorm, you may have noticed, tucked away in Preferences > Firestorm > Windlight, the option to select different sets of cloud textures: default (which is what we've been seeing until now), altocumulus, cumulo-nimbus and layered.

Kitely Market is now open to merchants! Content creators are invited to create a store and add products to it. The market is not open to buyers yet, but we are now working on this functionality, and we expect to have it ready this summer.

During the Spring Semester of 2007, this fool rushed into Second Life, something he felt would not only change education but the world beyond. Virtual worlds looked like a utopian technology with lots of zealous folks ready to evangelize the masses.

Six years later, grading what may be my last-ever student projects about virtual worlds and somewhat wiser, this educated fool wonders why SL did not change the world or even higher ed. I’ve written elsewhere about why SL failed to become that “3D Web” of yore. Meanwhile, the bandwagon has moved on, the cheerleaders yelling “hurrah!”and “higher education will never be the same!” for MOOCs.

 

I’ll sum up what I’ve learned about utopian narratives and would-be transformative technologies here, based on not only the last 6 but the last 25 years of studying and writing professionally about technological change, especially that which generates legions of enthusiasts.

Look past the message to the messengerWait for results unless you are an entrepreneur or venture capitalistBe a trailing-edgerFind community locally, not just onlineConsider what students have in their hands

"Second Life" is the name of a new show at the CB1 gallery in Los Angeles by Lisa Adams, a painter of some renown, and yes, it's inspired by Second Life itself -- or more specifically, as the gallery write-up...

Jackie Morie, a virtual world designer in telehealth care, thinks they can. Morie is a Senior Scientist and Project Director for the University of South California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT).

If you rent land or own an OpenSim grid, you can now kick [griefers] from your parcel or grid using your viewer, like in Second Life, thanks to code donated by Avination yesterday to the OpenSim community and expanded to include hypergrid visitors by hypergrid inventor Crista Lopes.