Second Life Pros

Ariella Furman makes real money in virtual worlds. How? Building presences in Second Life, using her film and media arts degree.
He was fascinated by Disney World when she went there for her first summer vacation as a college graduate, and when she got back to Ivyland, in Bucks County, she decided to invest her time in making machinimas (videos) in Second Life.
Here you can find a long and interesting interview to Ariella, which I suggest you to read.
In my view, those forms of art are perfectly meaningful in Second Life, and here art may be even less expensive and more …read more

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I know that Brazil has a very active SL community, as well as relatively huge business efforts.
Look at this overview of the Brazil Second Life activity.

Wagner James Au explains us that the Pontos de Cultura movement  did put together two big efforts, one of which is the Centrol Cultural Bradesco, “a Second Life venue owned by Brazil’s largest privately held bank.”.
Read the article for more informations. Brazil is definitively moving in the right direction.

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Lots of events and stuff for Second Life fifth’s birthday (SL5B).
Interesting enough, there will be a closing Keynote by Mitch Kapor, on Monday, July 7th, at 9am PST.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, but I really hope that somebody will be able to tell me everything about it!
Mitch Kapor is a great man: he accomplished many things in his life, last but not least the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I’m curious to see what he thinks about Second Life, virtual worlds, and such. It will be tremendously interesting! Be there, if you can!
In the meanwhile, if you are a man, …read more

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Interesting comments on Second Life statistics by superb Wagner James Au.
This is the economic stats page, if you want to check it out by yourself.
Some considerations:
1) Premium accounts fell from 92,000 in January to 88,000 in may.
2) On the other hand, total users hours grew from 28,200,000 hours in January to almost 32,000,000 in May, which is interesting, and positive.
3) Monthly active users dropped from 543,000 in January to 532,000 in may. This is VERY bad.
It means that there are less users (premium and monthly are down), but the ones using Second Life, use it more often (since there are …read more

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[source]
Saint-Gobain, a mirror, glass, and high-performance material manufacturer, set up a presence in Second Life, thanks to Stonfield InWorld.
Main reason is (bold is mine):
“…to share ideas and invent their next generation of products with a great focus on sustainable development.”
More informations here.
Sustainable development, green initiatives, and such, have a great opportunity in Second Life: they can experiment, they can get feedback, they can do A LOT of stuff without building anything, thus reducing their environmental footprint, and giving users the possibility to be heard.
I’m curious about the bigger players (oil companies, manufacturers, etc), and what they plan to do with …read more

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Cisco’s CEO John Chambers believes in Second Life: here’s a long interview. (Q&A on Cisco’s blog)
Basically, he compares SL to the early internet, when Cisco’s predictions about the future were not taken for granted. After years, the power of Internet came along, and it changed the world forever.
Now, in John Chambers’ words:
“very often if there is one thing that I have learned in my thirty years in high tech is sometimes concepts are a little bit too early but when they do take off they take off with tremendous speed and efficiency.”
This means, of course, virtual worlds.
And again:
“The future is …read more

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Twelve cool tips for interior design.
Habbos create 100th million avatar (Second Life, are you listening?)
The super secret SEX diary of Philip Linden (very fun!)
Men shares more than women (aha!)
Real jobs in virtual worlds (check them out!)
Ophelia’s gaze: free fashion items for all (even italian ones!)

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[source]
A religious battle broke out in Sorens, and the two combatants are the Church of Enturbulation and a group from Scientology.
As someone said, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat its errors.
I always hated religious fanatism, and the outcomes of religious beliefs. Here’s one intimorating consequence of these kind of things.
The fact is simple:
The Church of Enturbulation on Second Life has a facility that educates people about the methods and problems with the Church of Scientology.  Next door was the home of a Scientology group called “Scientology, Hey its not so bad!.”
Charity Stohr, the founder of the …read more

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I discovered this blog yesterday, and it has an interesting post with seven tips for real world business in Second Life.
Some excerpts, here and there, and my comments between ( and ):
Interestingly, despite last year’s rampant over-hyping of SL and the recent negative downturn, at least a few of the avatars that visit us for coffee With crayon say that there are still lots of marketers who are first discovering Second Life and other virtual worlds, and thinking about what opportunities and challenges they present
(In fact, it was an HYPE, and journalists and bloggers perfectly know what a HYPE is… …read more

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[source]
This sentence is worth reading:
“There are 20+ patent applications up for review by the USPTO right now  “involving virtual worlds and different types of credit accounts, charge accounts,  escrow transactions, risk mitigation (to name a few) used within these worlds,” explained Samuel Weis, who is in charge of reviewing the applications”.
Do you know what it means?
It means that in a few years, or even months, patents will start working and limiting virtual worlds or, if used correctly, will be their main economic engine, fostering innovation and research investments.
Problem is that virtual worlds seem too tightly connected to US legislations, which …read more

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