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Human Interest
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Thursday, 21 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by: If you're thinking about using Second Life to meet people, you might be interested in the Eduserv Foundation's recent experience.
It decided to hold a discussion in Second Life as a follow up to its 'Virtual worlds, real learning' symposium held there earlier in the year.
Art Fosset (his Second Life name) had been working hard on a meeting management scheme involving chairs that turn from red, to amber to green in response to a delegate's wish to speak. Participants indicate their desire to contribute by raising their virtual hands.
The idea is probably a good one in certain contexts, but a meeting of thirty to forty interested and engaged adults probably wasn't one of them. The pace was leaden. Realising things weren't going to plan, Fosset disabled the digital chairman after 19 minutes and the remaining 65 minutes went at a fair old lick.
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://blog.iwr.co.uk/...
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by: PUBLIC DIPLOMACY ISLAND - Is Second Life really accessible to those with disabilities? A recent conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) and the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication explored that question.
Judy Brewer (Charioteer Voom in SL) is the director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Bruce Bailey (Phivo8 Writer in SL) is an Accessibility IT Specialist on the United States Access Board. Two virtual ambassadors, Quixote Mills and Diplomat5 Burton, served as moderators for the event. Thirty guests listened and participated in the Q&A.
It was clear that much rehearsal had gone into making the conference itself accessible to those with hearing disabilities. Presenters used an audio stream, but content was to be textually captioned so that all could participate. Regretfully, the captioning segment of the program did not work although all parties tried diligently to get it to function as it had in rehearsal.
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://www.slnn.com/.../
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by: By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, June 20 (Reuters) - The Amsterdam sims, a popular Second Life destination famous for its detailed recreation of the Dutch city and virtual red-light district, has been sold to 3dutch.com, a division of Netherlands-based media company Boom BV.
Last March the Amsterdam regions, a creation of Second Life adult-products mogul Kevin Alderman (Second Life: Stroker Serpentine), was sold to Nedstede Groep for US$50,000 on eBay. The deal later collapsed in a dispute over intellectual property rights.
“The investor did not have any web/SL experience,” Alderman said of the previous buyer in a Second Life interview. “They were not pleased that they could not have IP rights to everything on the sims, not just objects belonging to me.”
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/...
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Written by Enniv Zarf
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
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Sponsored by:  By Farqot Gustafson, Reporter
SLReports.Net Like a lot of Second Life residents, I regularly check several SL-related blogs. One of the most widely read bloggers is Mitch Wagner of InformationWeek.com. When he’s not chronicling the fun he’s having integrating a Mac and Palm Treo, his blog often covers topics ranging from businesses establishing an in-world presence, to the subtle sociological impacts of dealing with friends and contacts from within SL. He’s also written some significant articles on sex in SL, without the all-too-common nudge-nudge-wink-wink mentality found in many other blogs. I recently had the chance to catch up with Wagner’s avatar, Ziggy Figaro. We started out at The Blarney Stone, and later TP’d to Dr. Dobb's Island. Even though we communicated in chat mode, one of the first things we talked about is SL’s upcoming voice technology.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 19 June 2007 )
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Read more...
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
The internet-based virtual world Second Life may have a serious impact on people's real life relationships, one of Britain's best-known scientists warned yesterday.
Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, said she feared users of the popular simulation could abandon the messy intimacy of "real-life" human relations for two-dimensional liaisons in the virtual world.
Second Life was started in San Francisco in 1999 and now has seven million players who can create their own characters, known as avatars, buy goods, throw parties and build their own homes.
However, Baroness Greenfield says the implications have not been thought through. "People who dismiss it as a game will be in for a rude awakening," she said. "This will have a huge impact on society.
"Offering people the chance to have a permanent soap opera going on, in which they can participate, will be even more pervasive than reality TV such as Big Brother.
"This is the ultimate in that you can be involved, you can interact, but still you are hiding behind an avatar."
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
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Sunday, 17 June 2007 |
Cleveland - There are digital worlds out there that most of us have no idea about. One of them is called Second Life (SL), and it's got 6 million residents. These residents are avatars – animated cartoon-like characters – created by ordinary people who register to take part in Second Life. These ordinary people buy their avatars houses, open bank accounts for them, take them out to bars, and let them throw parties. All the things we all do in our first lives.
Occasionally things get out of hand, as often happens when cartoon characters get together. Recently, an avatar was allegedly raped, and some people want the perpetrator brought to justice. And I don't mean the avatar.
They want the real person who created the rapist avatar to be punished in real life for what his character did in Second Life. The Washington Post recently reported that police in Belgium are investigating whether a crime had been committed.
READ IT ALL HERE:
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0618/p09s02-coop.html...
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Human Interest 
