Wed 10 Dec 2008
Stories from Second Life: Glenn Linden talks with Joni West of This Second Marketing
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Wed 26 Nov 2008
Stories from Second Life: How Languagelab gave language learning a new lease on life
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Sat 27 Sep 2008
Visit Burning Life, today through Oct. 5
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For years, Philip Linden has talked about the annual Burning Man Festival and the ways its open-ended nature, participant-created content and art contributed to his vision of what Second Life could be.
For those who aren’t familiar with the event, Burning Man is an annual week-long art, fire and community celebration in the Black Rock Desert – a 400 square mile expanse of barren landscape in Northern Nevada – focused on community values like immediacy and participation. Attendees are invited to be whoever they are, express themselves however they want without fear of judgment or social criticism. It’s a place controlled only by the limits of the imagination – a place where 50,000 individuals come together to form a peaceful, respectful community where all ideas have merit and everyone is invited to create, share, explore, learn and grow.
Sound vaguely familiar? It should. Many of the same principles that guide Burning Man form the core foundations of the Second Life community.
With the histories of Second Life and Burning Man so closely intertwined, it should come as no surprise that a virtual rendition of the event exists – and will be celebrating its 6th anniversary starting today. Burning Life, as it’s called inworld, has now grown into one of the larger, annual Second Life events. This year’s Burning Life – which runs until October 5 – will feature art and live performances, interactive theme camps, a fashion show and of course, the burning of the Man amid a fireworks display.
To help commemorate Burning Life’s anniversary, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey and Philip will be participating in a panel discussion on Tuesday, Sept. 30. They’ll be chatting about their experiences, inspirations, reflection, future goals and the roles that both Burning Man and Second Life play in enhancing the human condition.
For more information on the discussion or on the event in general, including schedules and to find out how you can contribute and participate visit the official Burning Life Web site.
When: Burning Life opens Saturday at 9 a.m. pacific time and runs to October 5th.
Center Camp stage kicks off at 11 a.m. pacific. See the performance schedule here.
Where: Burning Life
What: Art installations, live events, music, discussions and more.
Original post by Katt Linden
Thu 21 Aug 2008
SECOND LIFE, August 21 (Reuters) - Browser-based virtual world Vivaty, currently accessible through Facebook and AOL Instant Messenger will be embeddable by users on blogs and pages throughout the Web within the next two months, CEO Keith McCurdy said this week.
McCurdy also said Vivaty is internally testing the technology on the Firefox web browser, and expects to announce official support for Mozilla’s browser “in the next few weeks.” Presently Vivaty only runs within the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser on Windows.
There’s no timetable at present to extend support for Vivaty to the Macintosh, he said.
While every virtual world is scrambling for users and attention, the competition closest to Vivaty may be Lively by Google. Like Vivaty, Lively is a browser-based virtual world embedded in IE. Google originally invested in McCurdy’s startup, but ultimately Vivaty and Lively launched on the same day.
McCurdy said Google’s presence only validates Vivaty’s idea. “Before we launched, people asked: Why be in the browser?” he said. “After Google launched — or echo-launched — we get almost none of those questions.”
“Their product looks very different. They have a cartoon look, we have more of a Sims look,” he said.
Vivaty’s goal is to allow avatars to create a virtual space that ties into the rest of their web presence. Already users can hang a virtual picture frame on their wall, and have it display images from a Flickr account. Tighter integration between Vivaty and Facebook (already a partner), eBay, and Twitter are all in the works.
“People will have a lot more ability to pull stuff in from the rest of the Internet,” he said. “Brands love that.”
Coke Zero and Target are early Vivaty branding partners. “Second Life has brands coming into Second Life, but then they’re locked in,” McCurdy said. “We turned that inside out.”
Embedding a Vivaty scene on a corporate web site is more attractive to advertisers, he said.
Further expansion of Vivaty Create, a user-generated content tool, is planned. McCurdy doesn’t expect problems with pornography or griefing. “We’ll have people who will check content, and you’ll have the community check content,” he said.
But while McCurdy wants to further open up his virtual world to outside developers and add more avatar customization, he doesn’t see that as Vivaty’s draw.
“We’re not trying to be a 3D modeling program,” he said. “We’re erring on the side of simple, easy-to-use, and mass-market.”
Original post by Eric Reuters
Tue 17 Jun 2008
Pirated content deleted from Second Life
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SECOND LIFE, Jun 17 (Reuters) - Linden Lab has deleted objects from the virtual world in response to DMCA complaints, according to resident reports.
“Over the past few days a lot of content has been removed,” said Kevin Alderman (Second Life: Stroker Serpentine). “They did a sweeping takedown.”
“I logged on today to find that the SexGen objects that I made using the free 62 SexGen object, have all been removed, as have there [sic] scripts,” said avatar Sgoobzy Sideways in the Second Life forum (Second Life login required).
“I have just discovered the same loss of scripts, but mine weren’t SexGen,” Nickola Martynov added on the same thread.
Alderman, who holds the SexGen copyright and initiated two infringement lawsuits last year, said he has no legal action currently underway and is surprised by the timing of Linden’s policy.
In the past, Linden Lab has showed reluctance to get involved in copyright disputes between its customers. The company issued a somewhat puzzling statement on Tuesday afternoon that said some content was accidentally “disabled” but then reiterated its DMCA policy.
“Linden Lab inadvertently disabled some inworld content this past weekend,” the company said on its official blog. “Linden Lab has not changed its DMCA policy.”
“When we receive a valid DMCA notification, we send affected Residents email notice so they aren’t surprised when we remove content from their inventory and inworld locations,” the statement continued.
Second Life has a fully realized micro-economy in which entrepreneurs sell each other virtual goods and services. But without any police or law enforcement, theft of intellectual property — avatars copying each other’s software, often brazenly — has emerged as a serious problem for virtual world-based businesses.
Avatars can file a complaint with Linden Lab under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act asking Linden Lab to remove pirate content from their servers. But Second Life residents have complained Linden’s follow-up to DMCA notices has been spotty at best.
Frustrated Second Life business-owners have turned to lawsuits as an option. Last year Second Life users Robert Leatherwood (Second Life: Volkov Catteneo) and Thomas Simon (Second Life: Rase Kenzo) were sued for distributing copies of virtual objects. Both cases settled for nominal amounts.
Original post by Eric Reuters
Fri 25 Apr 2008
Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale explains why he has chosen online marketing executive Mark Kingdon to succeed him as CEO. Rosedale dropped by the Thomson Reuters building in London to discuss the transition with Technology Correspondent Matt Cowan.
Original post by Reuters Newswire