In a statement issued a few days ago, Captain Winter Jefferson of the Second Life Fashion Police announced that a warrant has been issued for the non-violent capture of Philip Linden, creator of Second Life, for crimes against good taste.  Captain Jefferson stated that Mr. Linden has already been tried and convicted, and that sentence will be passed, preferably by locking the accused in a casual haberdashery, upon his capture.

If you see this avatar:

please notify your local Fashion Police precinct immediately.

Thanks to Hamlet Au. Comments aplenty at both blogs, but welcome here as well.

Here it is…AVENUE SLCC 2009, the first real life print of an SL Fashion & Lifestyle Magazine that was created for the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco this year as the Official Media Partner.

AVENUE gets first hand interviews with :

- Philip, M & Torley Linden

- Anshe Chung of Anshe Chung Studios, the SL/RL millionairess whom AVENUE had the honor of being commissioned to give her avatar a makeover along with her RL husband and business partner, Guni Greenstein

- The creme de la creme of our favourite creators in fashion, architecture, interiors, sim designs, business & arts

- The new treet.tv

If you would like a rl-copy mailed to you as a coffee table keepsake, send a notecard to Rusch Raymaker before they run out. Very limited copies left! Find out what everyone at the convention was raving about!

In the meantime read it here on ISSUU or get your copy at our inworld vendors.

“Another Perfect World” “in search of Virtual Paradise”

NEW FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FILM ON VIRTUAL WORLDS

Internet Premiere (dutch subitles edition) 31 july. Replays 1 – 6  august 2009

Holland Doc 24 TV (cable & satellite & web live stream & Livestation)

• Friday 22:09 – 23:06 CEST
• Saturday 02:49 – 03:46
• Saturday 10:50 – 11:47
• Sunday 06:12 – 07:08
• Sunday 19:14 – 20:11
• Monday 17:19 – 18:16
• Tuesday 14:27 – 15:24
  
• Wednesday 02:36 – 03:33
• Wednesday 12:39 – 14:36
• Thursday 12:18 – 13:15

More replays on this digital tv channel are possible.

INTERVIEWS: Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden of Second Life), Jae-Kyung Song of Lineage, Hilmar Veigar Petursson of EVE Online,  Raph Koster of Metaplace and Kevin Alderman /aka/ Stroker Serpentine of Strokerz Toyz

Kevin Alderman (SL: Stroker Serpentine) creating animations for his Adult Second Life business

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This documentary will also be broadcasted TV in more countries:  Probably on SBS Australia, NRK Norway, YLE Finland, SVT Sweden and other TV  stations.

TRIVIA:

In this Youtube preview there is a scene about virtual worlds money and economics there is a machinima fragment, shot by Sandwoman Petion. Of a burning Dollars sculpture and with an  ‘Euro-Avatar’ running passed. These Second Life objects were created by Herman Bergson for the Meta.Live.Nu event at the  ‘Goodbye Dollar’ party in Amsterdam, NL. This scene appears  not inthe full version.

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The festival premiere was in april 2009 at Hot Docs, Canada.

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The British TV premiere was 23 June 2009 on Channel Four /More 4

True Stories presents: Jorien van Nes and Femke Wolting’s fascinating insight into online virtual worlds. Second Life, World of Warcraft, Metaplace, U World – all virtual worlds where the user can create their own paradise, far removed from real life. People can create societies that range from the democratic to the dictatorial, have avatars that resemble their ideal and can engage in actions that their real life personality would never dream of doing, from cyber-sex to virtual crime. But who creates these worlds and are they the right people to be crafting idealised societies that pretend to address and solve the inadequacies of the real world?

The Internet TV premiere was:  june 2009, Metaworld2

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The Netherlands TV premiere was: Thursday 30 july 2009, Nederland 2

Voor miljoenen mensen is het virtuele universum een plek die steeds meer vervlochten raakt met hun echte leven. De plek waar makers en spelers hun eigen paradijs kunnen creëren, ver verwijderd van de echte wereld; geheel naar eigen inzicht, variërend van democratie tot dictatuur. Hier leiden de virtuele inwoners een leven waarvan zij vroeger niet durfden te dromen; van warlord tot succesvol cybersex ondernemer.

Maar wie zijn de bedenkers van deze werelden en welke ideeën en ideologieën liggen eraan ten grondslag? Hoe gaat het bouwen van een virtueel utopia in zijn werk? Wat zijn de economische en politieke regels in de virtuele wereld? Is er persvrijheid? Hoe wordt er handel gedreven? Moeten de virtuele inwoners zich aan wetten houden, of zijn zij daar eindelijk helemaal vrij in? Zijn het echt ideale werelden zonder aardse beperkingen?

In deze documentaire gaan Femke Wolting en Jorien van Nes op zoek naar antwoorden op deze vragen.

Zij spreken de oprichters van de grootste virtuele werelden, waaronder Philip Rosedale van Second Life, Jae-Kyung Song van Lineage, Hilmar Veigar Petursson van EVE Online en Raph Koster van Metaplace over de ideeën achter hun werelden.

More references:

http://raphkoster.com/2009/05/09/another-perfect-world-documentary-on-vws

Treet TV

Today marks the grand opening of the SL6B Fairgrounds with the annual opening Ceremony speech by Philip Rosedale aka Philip Linden, founder of Second Life! The regions will open at 10am SLT for those wishing to attend in person, however, space is incredibly limited. Avatar agent capacity has been reduced to prevent instances of lag and otehr technical issues.

BUT NEVER FEAR!!

As a courtesy, our friends at Treet TV have offered you a free Television to watch the event from your own home if you are unable to be here in person. You can log into Second life and obtain your TV from the notice Archives of any Sl6b group or, alternatively, you can get one (Also free!) via XStreet SL! No land deeding is required! Simply rezz the Television in an area with build/scripts enabled and click the TV for a menu and select the LIVE CHANNEL.

OR!!

If you have your own land and Television you wish to use, simply plug in this URL at 10am SLT – http://streams.treet.tv/live.mov – and ENJOY the show!

Tonight Live Studio at SLB6, originally uploaded by SuperDave-in-SL.

This Weeks Show will be Broadcast from SLB6. Second Life’s Birthday Celebrations Sims. Where SL Residents are putting on their best dressed Space Suits to celebrate Second Life’s 6th Birthday, in futuristic style.

Yep I went for the Big Telly, Perfect World Productions my company that produce both Tonight Live and Fabulous Fashion with Angie Mornington, have a build out there, as you can see from SuperDaves pic. I figured that in the future we will be watching our productions on nothing more than a piece of plasma glass…no nobs, no arial ect….and putting a studio in that! well not possible soooo I went for Space Age Kitch, I imagined I was a home owner in 2050 with a retro bent…who liked the old TV shows of Lost in Space and My Favorite Martian, and the Jetsons and went for that. Oh and yes I built it myself..so its not really whoa amazing..! but I did what I could with my building skills learned from years of Trial and lots of error…Keeping the prims down is verrrry tricky specially as I can’t build sculpties…(missed that trial and error completely..) I actually found the building very relaxing and therapeutic as I and my entire family have been laid flat with a nasty flu virus for an entire week, and forming a complete thought or sentence has been very difficult, so just building and tweaking has been nice.

Inside the Telly is our multipurpose TV studio. Where both Tonight Live and Fabulous Fashion will be filmed for the duration of the SLB6 event. Fabulous Fashion will be there next week, they are taking a break this week.

We will have freebies on offer at the studio, and there will be models wandering around from the Fabulous Fashion Show, Angie and I will be there as much as possible with other staff members to help promote our shows in world.

I figure there are still about 80% of the population who probably don’t know we make Television in SL, and we hope that this will help let them know they can watch their virtual world on TV from the comfort of their SL Homes or live in our Studios.

Treet.tv and Designing Worlds have builds out there too, as does the Giant Snail Racer’s and a few other Treet.tv shows so go out and take a look!

This weeks show at the build, features Dusty Linden the organizer of the SLB6. I want to find out why they chose this week to have the Birthday what happened on this week 6 years back? was it like “One Big Step for Man, One Giant Leap for the Avatar? Was it when Philip Linden first stepped on the grid? and what was the first Birthday party like? did they have one? Also we will find out a bit more about what this years party is going feature? will L.L have a big announcement? We will also be showing some sneak peeks of the builds and talk about who is featured.

We also talk to Singer Clairde Dirval Second Life’s answer to Bette Midler and Janice Joplin all rolled into one. This girl has a voice that cannot be ignored, its big.. its huge! its gritty and she is one bad arsed singer. Go up to her Myspace page she has a song featured she definitely won’t be singing on our show ( we are P.G) …it involves an electrical toy and lonely nights at home…..I’ll leave it up to you to figure that one out..http://www.myspace.com/clairededirval

We also talk to Jenaia Morane from Book Island about HIV Testing Day, is Aids the forgotten disease? are people becoming blase about it? why have an HIV testing day? how is book Island and Karuna Sim involved in Second Life…Important questions.
www.tvwsp.com http://slurl.com/secondlife/Karuna/33/213/29

Entry to this weeks show at the build is restricted. We are only allowed 40 people on the sim max, and we have to allow room for the other builders there of course who are all hurrying to finish their builds before the cut off day. If you wish to attend the show out there this week, you must be a member of the Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe Group, and request a spot through Brekka Nightfire. With crew and guests we only have 23 available spots for general public. And Brekka has taken bookings already so IM her NOW.

We will have a screen up at the Tonight Live studio hooked up to the live feed so you and your friends can go watch it there if you cannot get in to the Build at SLB6. The sim will be capped so even if you are in the Tonight Live group but haven’t booked a spot you won’t be able to get into SLB6 if its booked out. And of course it will be online at http://archive.treet.tv/ or put http://streams.treet.tv/live.mov in your browser or Quicktime viewer and watch it here! The archive will then be up a few hours after it is filmed.

The build is at the Virtuocity Sim very near the Main stage next door actually so please stop by and say hello!

Also I’ll be doing a gig from the main stage at SLB6 on the Sat Night of the 27th at 11pm come out and see us if your up!

Tonight Live Studio url http://slurl.com/secondlife/Northpoint/211/142/32

In a great way!  Philip has been more visible with fixing slurl.com which had been broken for months.

sim001, originally uploaded by iliveisl

Now he has announced that the viewer will become a community development project.  This is a good thing because other examples of this (FireFox, Blender 3D, and Moodle) all have had passionate people add so much value to them.

This will help SL become the choice in virtual worlds and perhaps as ubiquitous as the Flash Player.

Great job Philip!

Na passada Sexta feira recebemos como convidado nas ilhas Tagus e Alma o criador da plataforma Second Life.

Julgo que foi a primeira vez que Philip Linden se deslocou a um simulador Português.

Este encontro teve a duração de cerca de pouco mais de uma hora e insere se no âmbito do trabalho que está a ser desenvolvido pela Comunidade Cultural Virtual numa série de áreas nomeadamente a cultura e educação.

Em breve vamos decerto abordar as características deste encontro e dar a conhecer algumas das novidades do nosso projecto assim como da conversa com o Philip.

Philip Rosendale deu a primeira entrevista a um órgão de comunicação social português.

Obrigado pelo vosso apoio.

wow, maybe we are kinda psycho – from being so discouraged with the openspace disater (yes, it was a disaster to us and many of our residents – after all, something like 14,700 OpenSpaces are gone now!)

anyway, from being all “bah” to all “yay”  \o/

maybe it’s cuz Philip is back in action (i’m sure he was busy behind the scenes).  it’s nice to see something that he did that affects us and that is the slurl map.  it used to be a big part of our website until it pooped out like 6 months ago.  even had Guy Linden meet with me inworld to look at it (that was pretty awesome support, submit a ticket and then get with a real Linden for support inworld – impressive)

as the chairman of the board, Philip is the highest ranking officer of the company (yah, and the passion behind it all) and it just felt really good to see his hand back in it again, really boosts our confidence in sl.  thanks Philip!  =)

*waves to philip*

Sometimes, in the past, i protested for some comments of Philip Linden, the founder of Second Life. Most of the times i though he was having a wrong idea about the community of residents. Anyway, although all that M Linden is making me miss Philip badly. And we are having M for the last six month, so maybe is time to analize his work.

M said in an interview by Dusan Writer some days ago:

80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes content creators. We are putting more than 80% of our investment in the consumer market because a good part of our investment in Enterprise crosses over (shared media). We talk about Enterprise because we are doing new things there. We need to talk more about our plans for consumer because we have many big projects under way there.

Ok, is only me? I don’t see where this 80% is going, and i don’t think it is for LDPW and the roads. Either seem to be for software development, because performance is getting worse in the last months although the “lower” impact of Openspaces now that almost 2000 sims disappeared in the last month.

We still don’t know how many islands will be lost until July next month, when the process of changes on Islands products will change. I just know we are having less “land” to explore and enjoy… and more residents (users hours and residents inworld are peeking), and that produces more problems with servers, so the “excuse” of poor performance to change the Openspace product is just going against Second Life itself.

As you may know Reuters left Second Life recently, Eric Krangel (Eric Reuters inworld) wrote a really interesting article talking about his vision of Second Life and why they left. I think you should read it because his opinion is pointy.

Personally i think all that is due the bad work of Linden Lab, Public Relations must be on holidays, Software development to be too it seems, so we just have M saying in an interview basically “All is good, all is ok.”.

Linden Lab acts like if the residents were citizens of a benevolent dictatorship, where M is the “Emperor” and the Lindens, the government. A dictatorship where they do “the best for the nation and its people” under their point of view ignoring the citizens. But they seem to be forgetting we are not citizens, we are customers! They seem to forget Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not compulsory taxes. They seem to forget Second Life is NOTHING without the residents and their creativity but empty virtual land, where teaching virtual classes or making business presentations, of course.

I’d like to quote here, to end this post, something Vint Falken wrote in a blogpost, something that explains also my feelings with Linden Lab in the last times:

Excuse me my bitterness. But I still feel betrayed: a 2 year relationship, that you _know_ is dying. You still wish to fix everything, mainly because of the effort you put into it, because of you’re used to it and because of the mutual friends you now have, not because the butterflies are still there. You keep trying, attempt to be bedazzled again, but the other party just f*cks it up, each time. Eerrr… overreacting, me?

If the resident had the power to vote for Linden Lab CEO, be sure i would never vote for M.

UPDATE (Dec. 02 2008): Just after posting this M published a post in the Official Linden Blog in the same line “We are better than ever and nothing is happening”.

When Second Life founder and former Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale ( a.k.a. avatar Philip Linden) was in Amsterdam in september 2008, he gave a very inspiring lecture and intimate Q & A at the third EduverseSymposium at De Balie: ‘Your Virtual Future‘.

Watch a livestream video recording of this conversation with Philip Rosedale on the future of virtual worlds here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4909956707241607926

And there is also a machinima video online (created by Chantal Harvey), shot at the mobile virtual auditorium of De Balie.

EPISODE 1:

• Mp4 (Quicktime player) http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-episode1MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2163.mov
  

• FLASH http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-episode1MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2760.flv

EPISODE 2:

• Mp4 (Quicktime player) http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Part2MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept232411.mov
• FLASH http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Part2MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept232660.flv

EPISODE 3:

• Mp4 (Quicktime player) http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Episode3MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2601.mov
• FLASH http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Episode3MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2776.flv

EPISODE 4:

• Mp4 (Quicktime player) http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Episode4MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2162.mov
• FLASH http://blip.tv/file/get/Chantalharvey-Episode4MostComprehensiveLookAtVirtualWorldsEVERSept2654.flv

You can make a ‘TEST-transmission-drive’ yourself in this ‘TVerrari TESTosterona – Philip Rosendale edition’: for only One Linden Dollar (L$ 1). Pick it up at Amsterdam sim. Play Media for a live-television-paint-job!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amsterdam%202/205/205/25

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I mean Katt Linden. Well, she is supposed to be the Public Relations of Linden Lab and i though, maybe i was wrong, that she was managing the relation between the Lab and the residents.

Ok, maybe she is just working now in the relation between Linden Lab and “corporate customers” (what is a hard work itself), or maybe is just the commercial policy of Linden Lab has been just too “aggressive with customers” to find an “excuse”. I really think her work must be really hard… specially lately.

Is not only the “Openspace issue”, is everything. In the last months the way Linden Lab had a really confusing and even aggressive policy with the customers. From that sentence of Philip Linden: “Bad weather, oppressive regimes, poor economic conditions — that’s what makes an SL user.” to the SL5B censorship, to the big technical and performance issues, … After all that Robin Linden said in a comment on a post of New World Notes this:

Premium subscribers — a good number of whom are landowners (but certainly not all) — are very important to us…

Oh, really? I wonder how may be things if Premium subscribers were not very important to them. Ok, maybe i seem sarcastic… but is because i am. Or maybe is Robin who was being sarcastic.

So we have Jack, M and Robin Linden making comments and posts about the last BIG conflict between Residents and the Lab, but wait… who is Linden Lab Communications Manager? Katt Linden. But where is Katt?

Work was painfully quiet last night. I arrived about 15 minutes early to set up and while there were people in there, it was nowhere near normal. As soon as that contest was over, everyone left and no one returned for my shift. I don’t think the head count ever passed 9 (2 dancers, the DJ, the campers, Blaspheme, and myself). So where is everyone? Blaspheme’s been on hiatus for health reasons and I know Slick’s got the flu at the moment (though he only goes to the club when I’m there), but where’s everyone else? Some have speculated that the drop in traffic is being caused by the move while others blame the saturation of clubs on the grid. Supply has surpassed demand and now people are scattered instead of congregating at a few popular places. One of the dancers mentioned one popular club that sill gets a lot of traffic, so I took note and paid the place a visit after work. She thought it had to do with the fact that they have contests running at all hours, but I suspect it’s actually achieved some success because it’s essentially an escort driven place planted in the middle of a huge mall. Not my idea of a good time. Still, I took a look around and even spied a Caged Asylum employee in the crowd. I hadn’t seen him dance up until that moment. After reading a few of their job application notecards and noticing that several of their employees didn’t quite live up to their “quality clothes” requirement, I left. I wonder if by “quality” they meant “something you bought here.”

Having had my fill of that place, I decided I’d do a little exploring. All of my friends were offline, so I got a little adventurous. I dug out my landmark for the bridge at the Nova Albion and popped in. To my surprise, no one was on the bridge! Miramare was back in place but everyone was gathered in the street. I didn’t stick around for long though. I saw particles in the distance and flew off. It turned out to be a dance floor with one lone dancer. As tempted as I was to stop and have a dance with her, I kept moving. I’d had enough of empty dance floors at work earlier. I flew in a direction I knew I hadn’t seen before and found yet another empty dance floor in the midst of the city. That’s when I decided to take to the road. I followed the road in directions I was sure I hadn’t been and eventually found a huge bridge over a stretch of ocean. I wasn’t about to ride past that bridge without seeing what was on the other side, so I veered right and started the long journey.

About halfway across the bridge I noticed a fellow fly past me in the opposite direction. I guess he saw me too because he stopped to look. We idled there for a minute before I said hello. He was new and had taken to exploring as well. Like most noobs, he looked pretty ridiculous. He explained that he had tried to modify his clothes and ended up turning them white. We talked for a few minutes and I dropped him a few landmarks to get him started and showed him how to use the search function. He said that no one had helped him before that and he was very appreciative. I offered friendship before we parted and told him to IM me if he needed anything. About an hour later I got a TP request from him. He was in a freebie place I hadn’t seen before and had acquired a nice suit, prim hair, and shoes. He was stuck in a sitting animation, so I passed on the rose a friend once gave to me (yay for trans/copy perms!). He wanted to wear the rose on his shirt so I told him about attachment points and tried to explain how to edit the position, but he had a hard time getting it where he wanted it and just took it off. Next time I’ll direct him to Torley’s videos.

Speaking of Torley, I finally took a trip to Here! I’ve been meaning to do that for a while. I’ve seen pictures of Here and it’s even more awesome in person. It’s like a physical interpretation of fun with little bits of Linden here and there.

I only got to look at a small corner of the region because I was summoned by my new(b) friend.

I’ll have to return though. There’s just so much to look at! I’ll have to make a special trip just to explore the rest of the place. So where was I before I got distracted by Torley? Oh yeah…the bridge! On the other side of the bridge was place called Shermerville, which looked like your average suburban neighborhood. The houses were way too close together for my taste, but it was nice if you’re into that sort of thing. There’s even a police station. I saw one one police officer on patrol while I looked around.

Beyond Shermerville was Linden Village. By this time I had abandoned the road and taken to the sky. I watched the land info change as I flew across the tiny office parcels. Some of you may recognize the chair I’m seated in as being located in Philip Linden’s forest. Last night’s voyage has prompted me to start a series I’m going to call Meet the Lindens. This post is only a glimpse. I intend to go much more in depth. It’ll be fun, I plomise

Shuffling through blogs this morning, I came across a pair of art items, one quite a nice opportunity, and the other almost sure to generate controversy in light of previous happenings.

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First, the easy. Prim Perfect magazine and blog have joined with the Orange Island community to sponsor a fashion photography contest, which will run across five days during the week of August 25. Competitors must shoot to a different theme each day, at a location specified by the judges, for daily prizes. There will also be a Grand Prix for the Most Consistent team, available only to those who participate across all five days.

For more details, you can read at the Orange Fashion Photo Contest blog, or on page 48 of Prim Perfect’s issue 11. Get yourself warmed up, get a good model (or spruce up your own avatar), and go for it!

Thanks to Maggie Mahoney of Runway magazine.

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And now, the rough.

The word has gone out on the Big Blog.  Volunteers are being solicited for this year’s Burning Life Festival, the in-world equivalent of the famous Burning Man art festival in the Real World.  It’s said that Philip Rosedale got his idea for Linden World, the predecessor of Second Life, from attending Burning Man in 1999.  (That may be, but there must be a dollop of Neal Stephenson in here somewhere, too….)

So what’s the problem?  They’ve done this for several years now, with no complaints from anybody.  Well, Ari Blackthorne examines the festival in light of Linden Lab’s apparent current policy of sanitizing — some would say “Disneyfying,” as Manhattan did to a good deal of Times Square — the Grid.  Remember that Burning Life emulates Burning Man in many ways; and one of them has been a general casualness about clothing.  Ari is suspicious about what will happen to Burning Life if the Lab decides to go after the exposure factor, as it did with ageplay and other matters during the planning for the recent SL5B celebration.  Ari notes:

No one twisted anybody’s arm to go running around to the pr0n clubs, or to put their money into these banks, or any of all that other crap, yet it was the shrill vocal minority that whined about it all. And remember, the alleged trading of RL photographs of child porn in the sensational news story that seemed to be the catalyst for all the bad press about Second Life is alleged. The last word from Linden Lab is that they have not been able to find these assets in the system, thus the media company fanning those flames may also have been blowing smoke up Linden Lab’s ass - just to ‘validate’ the sensationalism of their so-called news story.

If this is the case, then the funky lab on Linden Street, where you could get away with about anything in its virtual world, is definitely adopting a policy of reaction to bad press similar to many normal businesses.  To borrow from an old television program, the new management is getting measured for a team jacket, size 54 extra-uptight.  Virtual nudity isn’t particularly my thing — I ran off last night from someone who was pretending to be a body model at Alady Island and asked me if I’d like to have some fun — but that kind of trolling insanity does not happen routinely in Second Life, despite what the press has to say.

Burning Life doesn’t fall under the canopy of “what you do in the privacy of your home is your affair,” but my understanding is that it’s usually been clean, safe and fun.  It isn’t a mass meet-for-meat market, but a place to display your creativity, just like the celebration of artists in RL; and what is SL but a whole mess of artists at one point or another, shaping a new world for research and enjoyment?  I think the festival should come under the rubric of “If it doesn’t hurt your neighbor or yourself, go ahead and do it,” advocated by such as the ever-lovin’ Spider Robinson in Callahan’s Lady.

The question is, will the new Linden Lab mentality allow that this year and in future?

For all the blogs I link to, I don’t read them as often as I should. So I was catching up on Wagner Au’s New World Notes, and I ran across this article from June 24, especially significant in light of SL5B:

One day Green Beebe noticed a brightly colored beach ball floating above Smoky, and flew up to see. “Now it might not seem very interesting, a beach ball,” Green acknowledges. “Except this beach ball was made by Philip Linden in April 2002 before SL was even launched.”…

Now that’s not bad, something surviving that long (at least in some form; Ham speculates that it may simply be a copy of a long-gone item). The odds are that there are other things out there, lost somewhere in the vastness of What Philip (and many others) Hath Wrought. But how would you be able to tell unless you started right-clicking on everything you see and checking properties?

Someone needs to build a museum to house this forlorn little beach ball. It should be placed on the Metanational Register of Historic Landmarks. It should be preserved somehow!

(By the way, Ham, who was the owner listed on the thing?)

Et voila comme chaque 23 juin les festivités sont lancé, cette fois ci elles dureront 2 semaines, avec 20 iles dédiées à l’évènement. Cette année j’ai décidé de participé au travers de deux projets qui m’ont permis d’accéder aux iles depuis 15 jours et de découvrir toutes les animations au fur et à mesure de leurs installations. Vous trouverai sur le calendrier officiel toutes les dates des évènements à venir avec dès ce soir (19:00 paris) le discours d’ouverture de M Linden & Philip Linden.

Il y à beaucoup de créations trés interressantes sur ces Sims, tout ce qui touche à l’éducation et aux interfaces web/SL à le vent en poupe et je pense que cela représente bien les vraies opportunités de SL maintenant que la vague de Buzz marketing a passé son chemin.

Pour ma part, je présente dans la rubrique “Visualisation data” une planisphère en 3D qui affiche en temps réél les zone jour/nuit sur terre, le tout couplé avec un système de GPS qui permet de retrouver un lieu sur terre avec les coordonnées de latitude et longitude (la partie script est comme d’habitude à 80 % du Bonca Chikuwa :p).

Le deuxième projet est dans la partie “Education” ou avec des membres de l’association SaveTheManatee.org j’ai mis en place sur l’île d’Actengo une visite éducative pour présenter les Lamantins (Manatee), une sorte de vache des mers surtout présent en Floride ou je les avais découvert il y à quelques années. Le but est de mettre les gens en situation et de leur expliquer comment protéger cette espèce fragile.

Image by Torley published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

“Bad weather, oppressive regimes, poor economic conditions — that’s what makes an SL user.”
Philip Linden (AKA Philip Rosedale)

Yes, he said that in an interview for Reuters, not a joke, just part of an interview.

Of course maybe Philip wanted to say Second Life is a good way for some people to have access to some kind of contents under “adverse” conditions, but the sentence is too categorical, too emphatic…

Most of the residents in Second Life have their RL residence in USA or in Western Europe, or in other countries like Brazil, and the regimes there are supposed to be democratic.

I agree some people live in countries with some rainy weather, but most of us (I mean MOST OF US) life in areas with a non-extreme weather, or even really good weather.

But, for me, the worse on Rosedale’s affirmation is the “poor economic conditions”. First, poor people can’t have a computer, and second and even more important, they can’t have the broadband Internet connection Second Life requires, specially in some continents like Africa.

I would say some other comments about this, but i just prefer to say Mr. Rosedale is, with this sentence, “not quite in touch with reality”. (Rheta Shan dixit)

April 1, 2008; 8:09 a.m. SLT

The Internet Subcommittee just finished their hearing, as reported yesterday in New World Notes and this blog. Testimony was pretty much peaceful and with little or no confrontation; the main concerns have been in-world fraud, the terrorism question, and if teens can be kept in teen-oriented areas and adults in adult areas. For those worried about tax legislation, almost no mention was made of the money exchanged in Second Life; some note was made of revenues, but not a word about taxes was said.

Philip Rosedale was the lead witness, and he impressed me — at least in his opening statement — as very much the starry-eyed visionary many have portrayed him as. As the questions got a little tougher, he acquitted himself well generally — when he was given a chance to state a full answer. The rapid fire of begin to talk and follow-up question can make anyone look somewhat bad, and Rosedale was not the only one out of the group to suffer from this syndrome. Possibly the tensest part was, as I worried, when they got to the separation of teens from the main Grid and adults from the teen Grid. Rosedale did his best to work around the question, but he had to admit that there was no real way to exclude one group from the wrong simulators with present technology and legal limitations.

Watch the Subcommittee site for an archive of the hearing in Windows Media.

UPDATE, 9:47 p.m.:

Reuters carries a full summary of the hearing.

UPDATE, April 2, 7:32 a.m.:

Ben Duranske does a very good analysis of the hearing, more factual than my quick off-the-cuff take above.