Second Life Pros

[news source]
In response to DMCA regulations, Linden Lab administrators deleted a lot of pirated content from Second Life, apparently taking down some things that weren’t pirate, after all.
“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.”
If you don’t the details, take a look at the Wikipedia page about DMCA. I don’t agree on its principles, and I don’t like when DMCA interferes with freedom and creativity. …read more

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In a few days it will be Second Life’s fifth anniversary, and they will have a huge event!
Are you ready to roll?
They say that [bold is mine]:
“All exhibits are PG, because we want to make the SL5B as inclusive as possible.  All Residents, from all communities, and all countries are welcome to attend, exhibit, volunteer and build. We’re thrilled that 60% of our Residents hail from outside the United States, reflected in roundtables from Japan’s Keio University to your fellow Resident musicians around the world.  As a result, we are reviewing and approving content to make sure it matches our …read more

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The 15th Quadriennale in Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome) starts today.
SARDIGNA is there with the work named “Joker was here. You’ve been chosen” by artist Giuseppe Stampone.
The critical part of the 15th Quadriennale has been entrusted to a Commission of five curators and art historians: Chiara Bertola, Lorenzo Canova, Bruno Corà, Daniela Lancioni, and Claudio Spadoni.

They have chosen to focus on the 1990s-2000s years, and to devote particular attention to young and mid-career artists who started to gain notice during this period. It is therefore a Quadriennale that is particularly focused on emerging art, which offers a panorama of some of …read more

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[news source]
Linden Lab decided to put on hold mainland supply until July.
This is their comment (bold is mine):
“The average price per meter is the key metric we observe to decide levels of mainland supply. It takes account of all resident-to-resident sales per day, but excludes a number of data items such as zero value sales (when friends swap land around), Governor Linden sales (including Auctions themselves) and all private estate sales.We also measure sales by groups and those by individuals separately although at the moment the average price for both is similar (group sales being as much as L$1 per …read more

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I’m reading it in my RSS feed reader, even if the post has been somewhat deleted from the blog… anyway:
“Ever wondered how to find out when the next Linden Talk or Event is? Ever wondered how you would find out about a Linden’s Office Hours?
Well we’ve set up a calendar just for you! Linden Lab now has a Public Events calendar that everyone can access and see when and where a presentation or talk is going on. We’ve also added in Linden Office hours to make it easier for you to attend.
You can view this calendar here.
To add this calendar …read more

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[thank to Travis for the news source]
Weblin is an avatar that allows you to communicate in real-time with other weblins on any site as you surf the Web.
Weblin lite is a tool that allows Web surfers to make themselves visible to other users by assigning an avatar, or “weblin” to depict a user at the bottom of a Web site.

The new lite version is browser-based, eliminating the need to download any software.
Future versions of Weblin will allow you to liberate existing avatars from other virtual worlds including, Second Life.
For more details, click here for the press release.
It seems interesting!

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It’s sunday, a day with few slow news on virtual worlds.
The expanded time leaves space for thinking.
Today I’m thinking, in fact, on the future of Second Life.
I’m trying to figure out where SL is going, and if that direction is the one I wish.
I think that Second Life has huge adoption barriers, that block a great mass adoption in the world; also, the framework is not easy to use, and it exposes its flanks to critics. In general, Second Life should evolve, as a service.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The focal point is that Second Life, in …read more

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Good news for OpenSim: Microsoft, according to its SL developer Zain Naboulsi, is going to offer some volunteer development work for OpenSim. This could be the start of a precious partnership, don’t you think?
I strongly believe that OpenSim is the way to go, and I’m convinced that Linden Lab, and Second Life, will be the first beneficiary. It will help them remember what open source is, and weigh their decision on it.
Here’s the whole interview.

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[news source]
This is soooo cool! For Second Life’s 5th anniversary, the metamusicians Dizzy Banjo and Lillie Yifu have created a huge bottle: you can fill it with text or audio messages, even if Dizzy prefers audio because “…it will play intermittently as part of a fun interactive sound and music installation…“.
The messages should try to answer the following questions:
What does Second Life mean to you?
How has your Second Life affected you?
What hopes do you have for the future of SL?
If you are not familiar with audio recording and uploading, Dizzy prepared this YouTube tutorial that explains everything.
Do it, before June …read more

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OpenSim is an interesting project, an open source server to host virtual worlds.
From the wikipedia page:
“OpenSimulator uses libsecondlife to handle communication between the client and server, so it is possible to connect to an OpenSim server using the Linden Lab Second Life client“.
Second Life and OpenSim can now enjoy a limited, yet very important, interoperability.
This is so important because OpenSim is forcing Linden Lab to think about their open source policy, in a way or another.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think that going open source is always THE only answer; some companies, such as Linden Lab, are at risk, …read more

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