SL Blogs

A short list of blogs about or from Second Life

Second Life, the Official Linden Blog
Gwyn's World by Gwyneth Llewelyn, on a feature length movie premier to be held in SL on Jan. 9
New World Notes by Wagner James Au, who was the embedded reporter in SL.
Second Life Herald founded on October 23, 2003, by philosophy professor Peter Ludlow. Its mission, as described the next day, was to observe, record and study "the legal, social, and economic implications" of life in the virtual world.
The Metaverse Messenger, a Real Newspaper for a Virtual World.
Second Tense by Hiro Pendragon.
Second Life Future Salon, sponsored by the Acceleration Studies Foundation.
3PointD; the current story is about IBM's business ventures on SL.
Prokofy Neva's BlogHUD from Second Life.
And my favorite, Metaver.se, about the SL region of Chilbo by Fleep Tuque.

Technorati Tags: SL, SL blogs, Chilbo, entrepreneur

Chung SL Interview, CNET

Second Life's original millionaire, Anshe Chung, was interviewed by CNET's Daniel Terdiman onDecember 19, 2006. Chung talked about her business, how she makes money in Second Life, and the recent announcement that she's got a million dollars in virtual-world assets and currency in Second Life.

Second Life residents were able to join Terdiman as he interviews the most successful SL "land baron". The discussion was open to the SL public.

Future interviews in the CNET Second Life bureau, include alternate-reality game pioneer Jane McGonigal (December 19), Smart Mobs author Howard Rheingold (January 11), Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin (January 16), Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle (January 23).

Technorati Tags: SL millionaire, SL interview, entrepreneur

Advice to companies considering SL

Ian Schafer of Deep Focus, writes at Clickz Network "As I write this [November 17, 2006], there are just over 1.4 million residents* in Second Life, with over $704,000 spent in the last 24 hours. Though the number of users isn't going to bowl anyone over, the spending should."
His advice to companies considering SL includes:

Spend time in Second Life first. The concept of Second Life isn't difficult to grasp, but living in it is.
Give back to the community. Determine how your [company's] entry will actually benefit the Second Life community.
Work with the right partners. Odds are, your existing interactive agency doesn't know much about building property, coding actions, designing clothes, and vending in Second Life. Make sure it's working with someone who's been at it for years.

This directory includes nearly 50 reputable Second Life developers. And there's always oDesk.

* projected to be 2 million residents by year-end

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, SL, rich media

Real Business in SL

PA Consulting and The Sunday Times are hosting an online seminar “Getting real about business in Second Life” on July 24 at 2pm UK time. According to the The Sunday Times, corporations like IBM, CISCO and Reuters all have a presence on Second Life but SL commercial life is dominated by virtual small business owners, some of whom are making real money. In June, 132 residents earned more than $5,000 a month in SL, up from 97 in January. A further 1,340 earned $500-$4,999 a month, up from 837 in January.

However, The LA Times opines that "a three-dimensional online society where publicity is cheap and the demographic is edgy and certainly computer-savvy — should be a marketer's paradise. Four years after Second Life debuted, some marketers are second-guessing the money and time they've put into it."
According to The Escapist, A main difficulty for advertisers is the fantasyland nature of Second Life, with no need for food, clothing or other mundane staples of real life.

Maybe the question isn't whether brands are bored with SL, but whether Second Lifers are bored with brands... from Tech Digest.

SL Education Presentations

Here are some of today's presentations at the SL Education Conference: Best Practices. The full schedule includes times and locations in SL.

Deb Butler on A Living London: Non-Educational Sims that Work for Education.

Jeremy Koester on Gaming and Learning in SL Talk. An outside the box look at immersive environment opportunities in SL.

Marie Digne on The Center for Water Studies: a virtual simulation for real life education.

Suku Sinnappan on Virtual Identity and Representation.

Josephine Dorado and Dan Winckler on Creative Collaboration and Cultural Exchange.

Beth Ritter-Guth on Monsters to Monarchs: Teaching Literature Using SL, and later, The GenX Professor: Teaching Issues for the Non-Tenured.

En Ye on Using SL to Enhance Software Engineering Education: The MO-SEProcess Game & SL Groupthink Game.

John Jamison (avatar Virtual Bacon) on Two Years of Introducing Educators to Second Life in 60 Minutes, or: Tips for Dinosaur Wrangling.

Jonathan Richter (avatar Wainbrave Bernal) on Creating a community of practice and searchable database of learning objects in Second Life: The SaLamander Project.

Chris Collins (avatar Fleep Tuque) on SL Best Practices in Education: An observational survey of educational institutions in the virtual world of Second Life.

Educators in SL

Many online collaborative groups for educators in Second Life are summarized here.

Jeremy Kemp manages the Second Life Education Wiki for Linden Lab.

Sarah (avatar Intellagirl) Robbins manages the SL Researchers list She has just launched UberNoggin, and is preparing a Second Life for Dummies. Earlier this month, she reviwed Jaiku, an alternative to Twitter.

The wiki for SLED (Second Life in Education) includes a great introduction to SL education resources.

WebHeads, a community of practice online, has a new article on MUVEs, and education in SL.

To round this out, there's a Grad Student Colony, and 19 pages of posts tagged education and Second Life on Del.icio.us

Fortune on Second Life

From David (Liveoak) Kirkpatrick of Fortune on Second Life:

It has been on the cover of Business Week, on the front page of the New York Times Escapes section and in the coverage of Reuters, which has now assigned a reporter to operate full-time inside Second Life. The Reuters reporter, Adam Pasnick, told CNET that his assignment has caused so many waves he's been getting interview requests from Poland, Colombia, Brazil and New Zealand.

W Hotels has built a prototype of its new Aloft hotel brand inside Second Life. It was featured in the Times, among many other articles. W President Ross Klein told me that while the company originally just wanted to test out concepts, the PR value from all the stories written about Aloft in Second Life has given the company a "hundred-fold" return on its investment, just in positive PR. Even IBM (Charts) CEO Sam Palmisano can now be seen lurking around Second Life.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Second Life is that it includes links to content outside.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, SL

Conflict Resolution in SL

Earlier today, as avatar Taffy Taliaferro, I met with a group of Second Life avatars to discuss the potential for using virtual worlds such as SL for conflict resolution, negotiation or mediation, at the hospitable invitation of avatar German Zond of the PA Consulting Group.

Two general frames of reference were considered: SL as a venue for RL conflict resolution and SL as venue for in-SL or SL-RL conflict resolution.
Among the relevant SL characteristics and capabilities discussed were:

• simulation/demonstration: playing out the consequences of the conflicting courses of action (including role-playing)

• the "equalizing" effect of SL communication channels to put "everyone on same level"

• discipline/constraint imposed by text chat on communication as dampener of conflict (despite the historical opposite result of electronic text communication as amplifier of conflict)

• development of games, events and workshops to learn or practice mediation and negotiation

Avatar Delia Lake described the governance model being developed by the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) for the Better World and Colonia Nova islands, which includes a constitution with rules, a democratically elected representative government, and a dispute resolution process.

Avatar Team Mascot commented that to date, SL has been populated by "enthusiasts" who are keen to make the environment "work", so have been inclined to avoid conflict. Now that the population is growing explosively, there are far more people inclined to "grief" others, so the need for governance and constitution and "law enforcement" is coming to the fore.

CNET reported yesterday that Linden Lab has "invited the FBI several several times to take a look around in Second Life and raise any concerns they would like, and we know of at least one instance that federal agents did look around in a virtual casino," said Ginsu Yoon, until recently Linden Lab's general counsel and currently vice president for business affairs.

UPDATE from Linden Blog: Despite reports to the contrary, we know of no law enforcement agency that has opened an investigation into gambling in Second Life.

Educators and Librarians in SL

The University of Cincinnati SL Wiki provides several papers on educational resources and groups in SL, including Blended Realities by Cynthia Calongne, Colorado Technical University, and Jeff Hiles, Wright State University. Snippets follow.

Education organizations with a presence in SL
• New Media Consortium (http://www.nmc.org)
• Alliance Library System
• Second Life Educators Wiki at SimTeach
• Second Life Education SLED community email list
• Real Life Education in Second Life group

Educators can pick up teaching tools at the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Library. Founded by Ross Perkins (avatar Milosun Czervik) of Virginia Tech, the ICT Library is part of a cluster of libraries on Info Island, an initiative originally funded by the Alliance Library System. The Second Life Library at Info Island, HealthInfo Island, and Caledon Library in Caledon’s Victorian sim support researchers, scholars and residents thanks to the efforts of Lori Bell (avatar Lorelei Junot), Carol Perryman (avatar Carolina Keats), JJ Jacobson (avatar JJ Drinkwater) and other distinguished librarians.

Presenting in SL

From Ben McConnell at the Church of the Customer, comes this:

If you're a road warrior on the tradeshow marketing circuit or do regular presentations to customers, prospects or clients, this is bound to happen soon: You'll be asked to present in the virtual world of Second Life.

Jeff Barr shares his experience in making presentations on Second Life. His sound advice includes:

Spend time in-world first: This may be the most important piece of advice that I can give.
Attend some events in-world: Watch how the presenters interact with the audience, and [learn to] do much of what they do - movements, gestures, chatting, IM’ing, and so forth.
Master the basics of Second Life: ... the most interesting part of any presentation is actually interacting with the audience — listening to their questions and concerns, ... and responding appropriately. Anything less and you are simply broadcasting to them.
Dress the part: Putting on and taking off clothing is definitely a fundamental Second Life skill, and if you can’t be trusted to get dressed, can you be trusted to present good content?
Get your gestures ready: ... gestures as part of your presentation will take some presence of mind, but they will add realism to what you do, and will also make clear to the audience that you truly understand what makes Second Life special.
Watch yourself: On a second computer, place your alt in the audience, and keep an eye on your own presentation.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, presentations, SL

Fortune on Second Life

David Kirkpatrick, Fortune Magazine, on why IBM's Sam Palmisano and other tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine:

... what's beginning to catch the attention of IBM and other huge corporations is ... the ability to use Second Life as a platform for a whole new Net - this one in 3-D and even more social than the original - with huge opportunities to sell products and services
Among the initiatives announced by Palmisano: a $10 million project to help build out the "3-D Internet" exemplified by Second Life.
The company's backers include some of the world's smartest, richest, and most successful tech entrepreneurs. The chairman and first big outside investor is Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3, the spreadsheet application that helped begin the PC software revolution. Other investors include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft chief technology architect (and inventor of Lotus Notes) Ray Ozzie - each credited with a seminal networked product of our age.
At first, ... Only 1,000 people were regularly visiting after five months, and money was running out. Smith and Kapor, who had invested the lion's share, considered pulling the plug. But they were astonished by the creativity of Second Life's few denizens.
Impressed by this passion, Kapor wrote another seven-figure check, and Second Life relaunched in January 2004, this time with more focus on user creativity and in-world entrepreneurship. Linden took the advice of Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law School guru on intellectual property, who recommended letting users own their own content.

Technorati Tags: SL, entrepreneur, innovation, 3D

Business in SL - Conference

Conference in London, late September: Achieving Real Business Growth Through Second Life (Note: This conference title is registered) According to the sponsors, The International Quality and Productivity Center (IQPC), most SL residents are Europeans over the age of 30. The presenters' list includes head shots of their SL avatars.

Back in April, Mitch Wagner noted that "quite a few Second Life users are network engineers. These are Cisco's customers, and Cisco is aggressively using Second Life to communicate with them." In May, Business Week described SL in terms of Anshe Chung's "booming land development business, which she has built from nothing two years ago to an operation of 17 people around the world today. As we chat, her story sounds like a classic tale of entrepreneurship." And in July, Sheila Yoshikawa of Sheffield University reported on the Blogher 07 SL Conference, including the business and branding panels. Recent University of Utrecht research on business in SL is summarized Browsing the Metaverse (The full pdf report is available online in Dutch)

Heavyweights on SL

Especially now that IBM has gotten a Second Life, some more heavyweights are establishing themselves on Second Life. According to A Shel of my Former Self,

Cisco Systems is the latest company to open an island — two, in fact —in Second Life. How risky would it be to claim to be the first company to open two islands consecutively in SL?

Shel Holtz, who is also VP of Crayon, continues

At the bottom of Dell Computers‘ home page, there’s a pull-down menu you can use to load a version of the home page in the language of your country. It’s a pretty comprehensive list, and it got a bit longer recently with the addition of Second Life, nestled between Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, SL

Overviews of Education in SL

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a blog on the Wired Campus, including a short video on the recent opening of the San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science in SL.

A Trailfire trail points to numerous recent articles on Second Life in higher education.

Librarians Matter and eLearning Art and Design summarize the recent SL conference, Virtual Worlds, Real Learning? sponsored by the UK-based EduServe Foundation.

Also from the UK, Dave Taylor's Knowledge Transfer Innovations.

SLOZ, the Australian Second Life News Source on educational institutions and projects in SL.

Dembe Wellman's Puritan's Guide to Second Life guide to real life education places.

Avatar Milosun Cervik's Milosun's Musings

MIT TR on SL

Second Earth, the long MIT Technology Review story (registration required) opens with the weather map created by Jeffrey Corbin of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Denver. "The map I am standing on belongs to NOAA, and it covers a 12-by-20-meter square of lawn on a large virtual island in Second Life." In the end, author Wade Roush says

In the course of my research for this story, I bought land in Second Life, built a house, filled it with furniture, bought and razed the adjoining land, lifted my house a hundred meters into the sky to get it out of the way, and began work on a bigger house. I was also befriended by dozens of Second Life residents, several of whom I now know better than my real neighbors. Most were delighted to hear about my story, to tell me how they're spending their second lives, and to show me their own creations, including a hot-dog-shaped airplane and an animated Tibetan prayer wheel.

Yesterday's TR interview with Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research, on the Future of Search, also points to how people interact with Google and interact with each other on the Web.

Even if you are not especially interested in Second Life, the article is a great example of using the full capacity of the web to convey information. While the print version of the article is certainly available online for registered users, the web version is rich with related videos, SLURLs, SL images, comments and links to dozens of institutions, projects and individuals.

CNET, IBM and Kage Seraph the Avatar

The CNET interviews of real life people on Second Life are becoming more interesting, as transcripts are carried on the CNET web site. For example, Stephen Shankland's interview with IBM's pioneering strategist, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, includes SL audience questions, some sharp, some polite, addressing economic impact and proper attire.

Some observations by Wladawsky-Berger from that interview:

I honestly think that as we learn more about visual interfaces, we will have another very serious revolution in field after field and industry after industry, because changes in interfaces invariably are followed by major changes in applications.
We like the idea of creating virtual branch offices for our people in the field. Close to 50 percent of our work force is mobile--mostly sales or field people. That is very efficient, but it can be lonely.
I think Second Life and similar virtual worlds will open up lots of interesting opportunities for e-commerce to become more visual and to include people as sales help.

On that last point, kudos to avatar Prokofy Neva's Second Thoughts blog for the article on viral marketing by avatar Kage Seraph with his Elemental machine, The Killer App for SL. Original story by avatar Pixeleen Mistral from the Second Life Herald.

Technorati Tags: SL, entrepreneur, viral marketing, IBM

PC Magazine on SL

PC Magazine recently carried a story on business engagement with virtual worlds, especially Second Life.

To the surprise of many, the business world—that's the real business world—has fallen head over heels for Second Life and other virtual worlds.
"We're at the beginning of the next evolution of the Internet—the 3D Internet, as we like to call it," says IBM's Michael Rowe, "If Web 2.0 is a place where everyone becomes a producer, everyone becomes a content creator, the 3D Internet gives us a whole new level of social interaction in this collaborative space."
[At present] "The biggest benefit of Second Life—for companies—is the media attention," says Heather McConnell, an account executive with the international PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Snippets from PC Magazine. Thanks to Dan Kalagher for the pointer

For context, the Google ads on this page are for software allowing any PC to work with SL, virtual reality staffing, SL marketing, SL video reviews, and an exercise bike to use while exploring virtual worlds.

SL Beginner's Guide

A Beginner's Guide to Second Life has just been released by Arche Books. It is available in paperback or as a pdf file to download, and sample chapters are available in SL as a ThincBook.

The economy within Second Life is dependent on the Linden Dollar (L$) which allows residents to buy and sell the items they have created. The Linden currency can also be traded for US dollars (USD$) via the LindeX service (run by Linden Lab with “controls” restricting volume trades). The economy is closely monitored by LL to insure stabilization of the Linden Dollar. The sinks (things that cause L$ to be disposed of) and sources (things that introduce L$ into the economy) are managed and publicly reported. LL actively watches the indicators and intervenes to prevent swinging inflation or deflation in the value of the L$. Snippet from A Beginners Guide to Second Life.

Technorati Tags: SL economy, SL beginners, entrepreneur

Is a Virtual Business Life Worth Living?

Entrepreneur Magazine had a recent piece, Virtual Life Worth Living? about the experiences of businesses who tackled a presence in SL.

According to their experts, especially Steve King, lead author of the recent Intuit Future of Small Business Report: Technology Trends (pdf), there aren't enough users, it's not attracting the mainstream, businesses haven't figured out how to translate the physical into virtual worlds, and businesses haven't figured out how to successfully market in virtual worlds.

There's a rather different perspective in ComputerWorlds's What Second Life Business Exodus?, the Business Communicators of Second Life, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute's The Coming Second Life Business Cycle. There's also a collection of articles about SL and virtual worlds at Business Week.

Politics in Second Life

According to the Second Life Insider, SL will get a "House" of "Representatives". Several people, who do not actually represent anyone on Second Life, have decided to build this "House", in which to deliver political speeches about real life, mostly in California.

Why bother with expensive elections, or with inconvenient districts? Just open a building, call it "The House", and invite politicians to speak. It's unsettling to hear RL politicians, who ought to know better, be party to this.

As Prokofy Neva says,

It's not a House, and does not Represent a thing.
It's like the fellow who plunked "The Supreme Court of the United States" down in Second Life and opened up a talk shop saying he was going to empower citizens to discuss their disputes blah blah. Justice Soothsayer was his name

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur