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Watch this video >>> WARNER BROTHERS RECORDS
http://216.73.118.22/SL/WEB/SecondLife2/wbr.php
I just thought of something...CNN and Warner Bros. are the same company...right???
Maybe we should talk to this guy? http://www.linkedin.com/in/ethank
Now if that don't make ya think I dont know what will!
Warner Bros. to Launch Album in Second Life
http://www.3pointd.com/20060522/warner-bros-to-launch-album-in-second-life/
Warner Bros Records Seeks ‘Second Life’ Mini-World
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/warner_bros_records_seeks_second_life_mini_world/
Projects: Warner Brother's Records
http://www.millionsofus.com/projects_wbrecords.php
Transformers Director & Producer in Second Life
The office of the future is definitely virtual. I could see microsoft acquiring this one day
I like the picture in your sig better. LOL If that's yours when can I come visit. :) Yeah I couldn't sleep that's why I'm up posting on Ihub. What a life I have.
the educational initiatives there seem to be growing parabolically.
reassuring and a much better use than all the porn garbage in there.
First Documentary Completely Filmed in Second Life, Commencing Online
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080509/3654990en_public.html?.v=1
A Little Grafting of Second Life into a Legal Research Class
http://www.llrx.com/features/secondlife.htm
KOM’s Digital Nation looks into Second Life.com
http://www.ameinfo.com/156211.html
Teenagers to take embarrassing ailments to Second Life doctors
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/10/secondlife.spain?gusrc=rss&feed=technologyfull
DCCCD ventures into virtual world of Second Life
http://www.mesquitenews.com/articles/2008/05/12/mesquite_news/news/976.txt
Very nice. Second Life is quickly going to become an extension of our real life.
Co-Founder of Second Life Says Academics Are Biggest Trailblazers in Virtual Worlds
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2983/co-founder-of-second-life-says-academics-are-biggest-trailblazers-in-virtual-worlds
Cory Ondrejka, the co-founder of the virtual world Second Life who is now a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, said in a speech today that virtual worlds are here to stay, and that professors are among the most active pioneers.
“In my view the academy has been blazing the trail of adoption of virtual worlds far more than gamers or industry,” said Mr. Ondrejka, who spoke at a conference at Case Western Reserve University called Collaboration Technology and Engaging the Campus 2008.
Naturally, the event was broadcast within Second Life, in Case Western’s campus in the virtual world. I attended the conference virtually, and was able to ask Mr. Ondrejka what the biggest challenge for Second Life was in being able to be more than just a passing fad in higher education.
“The challenges with Second Life is it has significant technical challenges for use,” he said, noting that it takes powerful computers and fast network connections for Second Life to function properly. “You can’t assume that your students are going to be able to run Second Life within the school’s network infrastructure.”
He argued that some form of 3-D virtual environment will catch on, though he admitted that it might not be Second Life that wins the race. The reason that the idea is powerful, he said, is that studies show that humans respond to a visual Internet, and that they express greater trust for the people they communicate with when they see a virtual representation of the person. “Learning in a place in 3-D affects us differently than text,” he said.
Mr. Ondrejka said that when professors first build a virtual campus, they usually try to exactly replicate a classroom in Second Life, with desks, chairs, and walls. But then they realize that the world allows different kinds of movement and communication than the real world. “You realize that in a world where you can fly, classrooms aren’t really that useful,” he said. So professors have built new kinds of classrooms online with no roofs. “Suddenly you see this explosion of classroom forms that matches what they’re trying to teach,” he added.
Organizers of the conference set up a booth for The Chronicle in Case Western’s Second Life campus during the event (shown below), and I manned our table between panel sessions and chatted with a couple of conference participants.
Chronicle's booth in Second Life
At one point my virtual avatar got stuck between a virtual chair and the wall of the booth, however, and I had to reboot my computer to get that sorted out. Luckily that’s never happened to me in real life. —Jeffrey R. Young
Chronicle's booth in Second Life
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink |
Scientists Get a 2nd Life
By Terra Questi
May 9th, 2008
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/31953/title/Scientists_Get_a_2nd_Life
Online world opens up news ways to do and learn about science
To track down neuroscientist Corey Hart, you could stop by his laboratory, located on the second floor of Drexel University’s medical building in Philadelphia. Or, you could visit the lab of Luciftias Neurocam, located in the virtual world of Second Life.
Luciftias is Hart’s digital alter ego, or avatar. Like his real-life counterpart, Luciftias tracks the twitches of frogs’ muscles to find clues to the spinal cord’s ability to control movement.
Robert Amme, a physicist at the University of Denver, has a laboratory in Second Life, too. There his avatar double, Dr. Bob Vandeverre, is building a virtual nuclear reactor to help train the next generation of environmental engineers on how to deal with nuclear waste.
Hart and Amme are pioneers among a growing number of scientists and educators now using the online world of Second Life to pursue real-life science.
Created in 2003 by Linden Lab of San Francisco, Second Life — or SL as it’s known to its members or “residents” — is a 3-D world that allows users to buy “property” (actually time on one of Linden’s powerful computer simulators), create objects and buildings, and interact with other users. Unlike a game, with rules and goals, SL offers an open-ended platform where users can shape their own environments. In this world, avatars do many of the same things real people do: work, shop, go to school, socialize with friends and attend rock concerts.
SL is largely known for its recreational and business activities. But it’s increasingly becoming a world where scientists and educators go to get down to real science. After starting out as a handful of individual efforts, SL’s SciLands has grown into a mini-continent with 45 simulated islands or “sims.” More than 300 universities and museums now maintain a presence in SL, as do an alphabet-soup list of organizations such as NASA, NOAA, ACS and the CDC.
“Early on, when SL really got going, it looked like it was going to be a huge playground,” says Amme. “I thought personally, who needs a second life unless you don’t have a first one?”
Although SL retains a large recreational component, with fantasy, racy nightclubs and sex, the science islands have distinguished themselves as places to connect with the “outside” world. Scientist-avatars guide students through formal university educational programs — such as the University of Denver’s master’s degree in environmental engineering — or create exhibits designed to demonstrate scientific principles. Navigational tools let users zoom in and around objects, making SL a convenient place to investigate phenomena that would otherwise be hard to visualize or understand. Avatars can, for example, initiate chemical reactions with a touch of their hand, watch a tsunami form or stroll through the internal structures of a cell.
But the 3-D visualization is only part of the draw. With 13.4 million registered users from more than 100 countries (Americans make up less than a third of the members), SL provides a rare opportunity for scientists to interact with the public, and vice versa, says Joanna Scott, who oversees the Nature Publishing Group’s three islands: Second Nature, Second Nature 2 and Second Nature 3.
Last fall, Scott initiated a lecture series where real scientists enter SL and talk on a wide range of topics. As the scientist-avatar speaks into a microphone, the sound is streamed through SL’s audio system. Anyone from SL can attend and participate in the discussion following the talk. During one recent lecture, people from all over the world came to hear a scientist from Royal Holloway, University of London, talk about climate change. Scott is now seeking ways to stream images, via webcam, from real-life lectures into SL so that people can communicate across worlds and participate in the same events.
Such “mixed world” events, gatherings that take place simultaneously in SL and real life, remove many of the long-standing barriers in science communication. “Chances are, the scientist would never have traveled all over the world to talk about his work, and nobody from South Carolina would have traveled such a great distance to listen to him,” Scott says.
Although SL is not the first online virtual world, experts say better Internet connections, more realistic graphics and a boom in the video industry are driving forces behind the new interest in using such environments, especially in the classroom.
“Students are no longer prepared to learn using traditional techniques,” says Tracy Kennedy, a University of Toronto lecturer who studies educational uses of online virtual worlds.
Through iPods and mp3 players, Facebook, cell phones and texting, young people become familiar with current technologies and often view them as an extension of themselves, Kennedy says. As a result, they’re drawn to learning techniques that employ novel devices. “Most of this younger generation has grown up entirely with the Internet. How can we not incorporate technology into our curriculum?” she says.
Entering SL is easy: You simply download some free software and choose an avatar and name. Mine is Terra Questi. Recently, after a brief stop at Orientation Island — where I learned to chat, fly and manipulate virtual objects — I set out on a tour to get a firsthand view of Second Life’s science.
A virtual world evolving
My first stop: Second Nature 3, an island where Drexel neuroscientist Hart has created a virtual ecosystem with plants and animals that can evolve and live out lives of their own. “Cobblefish” and “jellypods” swim in the clear, blue waters surrounding the island. On land, bees whiz by to pollinate plants, which then produce seeds that grow. Hart created everything on the island using building tools called “prims.” He is now putting together a new creature called Simfrog, a virtual clone of his slimy flesh-and-bones lab model.
Back in his bricks-and-mortar lab, Hart uses an electromyograph to track neural pathways involved in frogs’ hopping. Here in his virtual lab, he plans to explore the early development of those patterns and figure out why the frog evolved the neural combination it did. By putting Simfrog under various evolutionary pressures — forcing it to forage for food and dodge predators — Hart wants to see if alternative motor pathways emerge from an incalculable number of possibilities.
“With motor control you have all these different muscles, so the question is, how do you choose the right combination of muscles to execute a movement?” Hart says. “Theoretically, there’s almost an infinite number of ways you could execute any given movement.”
Besides answering his own research questions, Hart sees the ecosystem as a way to illustrate lessons in evolutionary biology for non-scientists. He has done all the programming needed to allow other users to develop and release plants or animals onto the island. So occasionally a new critter or plant will appear.
“Sometimes they get out of hand, and I have to go in and play God and kill something off because it was poorly designed,” he says, recounting the example of a prolific seed-producing plant that created havoc on the island. The plant spewed scads of ill-adapted seeds into the air. Because they were not programmed to take root and sprout, the seeds tumbled when they hit the ground, steamrolling over other plants and creating a pileup in the island ravine. The island’s computer responded by crashing.
Extra-credit chemistry
I teleport to Drexel Island, where real-life chemist Jean-Claude Bradley sends his avatar, Horace Moody, to meet me. Moody, a spry plum-colored cat, is the first animal avatar, or “furry,” I’ve encountered.
Despite his initial skepticism, last year Bradley helped establish his university’s presence in SL. He now uses the program to augment his introductory course on organic chemistry. By clicking on an obelisk, students can view a series of molecular images and choose an image that corresponds with a question. The students compete in races to work through a series of 20 to 30 questions, with real prizes awarded for the winner.
Students may also use SL to interact with and create representations of chemical reactions. Last fall, one of Bradley’s students created a life-size model of a camphor molecule for extra credit, now on display on one of the Second Nature islands.
Bradley is one of an estimated 5,000 educators worldwide using SL in their curricula. Some use it to bring in guest speakers from across the world or to encourage students to explore topics on their own. Others, like Amme, immerse their students in virtual worlds, with courses and programs held entirely in SL.
Bradley says that although only a fraction of his students — 5 to 10 percent — currently participate in SL, that number is likely to increase as students become more familiar with it.
"There’s a misconception out there that all students are very tech-savvy, and that’s simply not true,” he says. “Second Life provides an additional way for students to explore class material, but it doesn’t appeal to everyone.”
A steep learning curve can also discourage students who are not highly motivated to use SL, he says. Statistics from Linden Lab show that only about one in 10 people who register in SL actually become regular users. I keep this statistic in mind as I jet off to my next destination.
Learning to fly
In many ways, Second Life is just like real life, and things don’t always go smoothly. Despite hours of practice, I still have difficulty flying at high altitudes.
Ourania Fizgig, avatar for University of Arizona’s Adrienne Gauthier, giggles (yes, avatars can emote) and hands me a flight feather so that I can fly as high as I want. Learning to navigate in SL takes time, Ourania says. “When I first went into Second Life, I spent 30 hours — one whole week — immersing myself and finding links to various places. I don’t think I felt comfortable until I was in the world for maybe 80 hours.”
For her online lab sessions at the university, she brings in real-life assistants to help student users navigate in SL. Still, many of them are struggling at the end of the semester to complete even the basic tasks.
Ourania leads me to an island she developed for the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory called LivingintheUniverse. Here, her students have created an interactive timeline of Earth’s history, from 4.6 billion years ago to the present. As we enter the timeline, Ourania interrupts the tour to show me how to run. Crossing through the ages, we zigzag between asteroids in the late heavy bombardment period, and sprint through a torrential downpour that simulates the conditions 4.2 billion years ago when the oceans started to form.
Further down the timeline, posters dot the landscape, illustrating various scientific events through the ages: the first living cell, the beginning of photosynthesis and the birth of science. By clicking a poster, users can collect information on each event.
Gauthier says she is looking for ways to make exhibits more active, especially as she plans ahead to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. Recently named to the SL-wide, multi-institutional committee for this celebration, she is applying for grants to open a virtual astronomy center that could offer the latest news and imagery on astronomical objects.
“There are some incredible things you can do in SL, but it takes money to purchase the land and hire the kinds of experts and gurus that know how to make things work,” she says.
The cost of buying and maintaining an island for the first year is in excess of $3,000. Though researchers say SL funding is scarce, some funds are available. The National Science Foundation, for example, has provided more than $6.5 million to date to explore and develop educational opportunities in SL and other virtual worlds. Amme’s nuclear reactor is funded by a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In-world conferencing
While some scientists seek ways to raise funds for their SL projects in the real world, others are finding ways to make a living in-world. One is Troy McConaghy, who helps others develop exhibits and events in SL such as NanoLands, a relatively new site on Nanotechnology Island. After receiving his doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University, McConaghy entered SL. For the past three years, he has documented the evolution of SL science in his blog at www.troymcconaghy.com, where he lists all SL science sites and events.
“At first it was easy because there wasn’t a whole lot to keep track of,” he says. Now the list includes an ever-growing string of conferences and seminars. “I can see a day in the not-so-distant future when there is an event going on every day in science.”
McConaghy, whose avatar Troy McLuhan attends several meetings a week in SL, says virtual conferencing is one of the fastest-growing SL activities, allowing people to attend meetings they couldn’t ordinarily fit into their time or budget. This April, the International Virtual Association of Surgeons hosted the first fully in-world SL conference.
Virtual conferencing is especially advantageous in science, McConaghy adds, where research efforts can transcend several disciplines. “Molecular biologists and electrical engineers may be doing similar things in modeling and simulations, but they wouldn’t ordinarily go to each others’ conferences,” he says.
And the public’s interaction with virtual worlds is just beginning, he says. A presence in Second Life or some other virtual world may become as commonplace as having an e-mail address.
His words remind me of something Scott said when she talked about developing the lecture series for Nature. “Second Life is real life. It’s just a different medium for communication.”
Back in Second Life, I set out for one more place, a destination I will likely never travel to in real life — the moon. I reach the site of the Apollo 11 landing through a link set up by Elon University and grab a pair of space boots. As I explore the moon and the machinery left behind, the boots leave imprints of my tracks on the moon’s surface. Finally, I prepare to leave, stashing my flight feather away in my inventory. I’ll soon be returning to Second Life for a second look.
Teenagers to take embarrassing ailments to Second Life doctors
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/10/secondlife.spain
* Graham Keeley in Barcelona
* The Guardian,
* Saturday May 10 2008
Spanish health authorities launched a virtual portal through the Second Life website yesterday designed to help young people too embarrassed to speak to a doctor about sexually transmitted disease or a drug problem.
Real doctors will log on and offer advice to their anonymous patients. What both will see is an image of a consulting room with a doctor and a typical patient.
Dr Rosario Jimènez, of the Adolescent Attention Working Group, is one of the doctors who will spend up to four hours a week answering their virtual patients' questions.
She said: "Teenagers do not often go to see the doctor but this is an efficient and amusing tool to reach them because we can both use the same route. Even though they do not often suffer serious illnesses, they often expose themselves to risks which can develop into problems in the future.
"This is a way to talk about their doubts about taking drugs or sexual relations which they cannot do in a traditional consultation."
The Second Life health portal was set up by the Spanish Society for Family and Community Medicine (FYC) and the Coalition for Citizens with Chronic Illnesses.
Dr Luis Aguillera, FYC president, said: "This idea started as a way to connect health professionals and adolescents and to give internet users a reliable space to get health advice."
The Spanish-language isla de salud (health island) on Second Life will also include detailed information on health matters and a meeting room for website users.
The FYC plans to open other Second Life portals for chronic conditions in six months.
Aguillera said: "Even though a virtual consultation can never substitute for a real face-to-face one, we will be able to deal with problems of dermatology and psychology through a webcam."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iOFZL0bOGvE5nDcRB5eGLUbrYClQD90IHTF80
TV Lookout: highlights for the week ahead, May 11-17
By FRAZIER MOORE – 1 day ago
What could you learn about reality while immersing yourself for months in virtual reality?
Filmmaker Douglas Gayeton ponders life's big issues by means of a digital surrogate in "Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey," premiering 8 p.m. EDT Thursday on Cinemax.
Its premise is simple. Gayeton delves into the online virtual world called Second Life for an extended stay, professing to have left real life behind.
"Whatever connection I once had to that carbon-based world is now gone," he claims, while his avatar, Molotov Alva, journeys far and wide in this alternate realm, trying to figure things out.
Billed as the first documentary shot entirely in virtual reality, this half-hour meditation seems to be the creation of Molotov Alva, who captures footage of Second Life's sights with the camera he totes.
Meanwhile, he contemplates such issues as the "reality" of standing on a virtual-reality beach. There is no crunchy feeling to the sand, no salty scent in the air. It's up to his sense-memory to fill in the gaps.
"But what would become of this place after my memories faded?" he wonders. Without memories to give life to the artifice of Second Life, how could this digital facsimile sustain him? Unless, maybe, "after my 'first life' memories were gone, I would no longer miss what I'd lost."
Maybe you're a Second Life regular. Or maybe talk of avatars and virtual worlds leaves you cold. No matter. This "Search for the Creator" is whimsical, thought-provoking and visually arresting. Even when experienced from the real-life couch in your living room, it's a trip.
Other shows to look out for:
_ Better get your head out of that virtual sand long enough to do something nice for mom in a real-life way on Mother's Day. NBC marks the centennial of this holiday with "America's Favorite Mom," airing 7 p.m. EDT Sunday. During the broadcast, one lucky mom will be crowned, based on online voting, from semifinalists in five categories: Military Mom, Working Mom, Single Mom, Unconventional Mom and Stay-At-Home Mom. Prizes for the winning mom include $250,000 in cash. Donny and Marie Osmond are hosts of the one-hour special.
_ World-renowned climber and filmmaker David Breashears returns to the scene of Mount Everest's worst tragedy in "Storm Over Everest," airing 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday on PBS (check local listings). This two-hour "Frontline" combines original cinematography with dramatic recreations of the weather of May 10, 1996, when a ferocious storm hit the mountain, trapping three climbing teams near the top of the world's highest peak. In the film, survivors recount the progress of those expeditions as they approached the prized summit, then felt the weather deteriorate, within minutes, from favorable to deadly. Hurricane-strength winds reached 80 mph, and temperatures plunged to minus 30. Breashears (who was making his third ascent, leading an IMAX film team) assisted in the rescue effort. Five climbers died before the ordeal was over. (Airing May 20, "Left for Dead: Miracle on Everest" tells the related story of Lincoln Hall, who, after reaching Everest's summit in June 2006, fell victim to cerebral edema and severe frostbite, and was given up for dead by his Sherpa guides. Then he lived to tell the tale. This documentary airs on National Geographic Channel.)
_ "Maxed Out" reached theaters a bit more than a year ago. Since then, this documentary's chilling look inside America's debt crisis has only become more valid and urgent. It exposes a nation "maxed out" on insurmountable credit-card debt and mortgage payments, and explains why the poor keep getting poorer and how the world's largest banks are courting disaster with their credit practices. Filmmaker James D. Scurlock warns that, as Americans rack up ever more debt, the winners are the big banks and real estate moguls, and the losers are everyone else. "Maxed Out" makes its television premiere 9 p.m. EDT Wednesday on Showtime.
EDITOR'S NOTE _ Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org
A Second Life for corporate America
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-secondlife10-2008may10,0,2472150.story
Strait-laced in the real world, workers do business as animals or blue-skinned hipsters in a parallel reality on the Web.
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 10, 2008
To save money in these tough times, universities, conference planners and global firms have started holding gatherings for far-flung employees and students in the online world known as Second Life.
Sun Microsystems Inc., a Silicon Valley tech company, has only one rule: Employees should show up looking like humans.
Other companies don't seem to mind if their workers take the form of animals and other entities while they're on the clock.
On a recent afternoon in Second Life, about 20 avatars -- the personalized character each inhabitant of the virtual world adopts -- gathered for a lecture on software development sponsored by Intel Corp. The semiconductor giant planned the event to spark conversation about complex technical topics among employees and others across the globe.
The Intel employee who opened the event was a tuxedoed half-man, half-lynx. He turned over the talk to an avatar in a tight, white shirt who called himself Zombie Bob. In the audience, a woman with a ponytail and sunglasses slept in the front row, a blue-skinned man with spiky hair listened attentively and another, clad in jeans and a T-shirt, stood in the background with her arms extended as if being crucified.
Meanwhile, a man wearing a rocket pack jetted in and out of the room.
Corporate America is still learning to embrace Second Life, where creative self-expression is expected. Since Linden Lab, a San Francisco company, opened the online community to the public in 2003, it's been an eclectic place where strangely appointed avatars meet, build fancy palaces, go sailing, buy virtual goods and have cybersex.
Where people are, marketers want to be. Two years ago, companies such as American Apparel and footwear maker Adidas started filling Second Life with stores and buildings. The virtual world's early inhabitants, who largely disdain anything with a corporate tinge, rebelled by launching terrorist attacks and starting gunfights in the shops. Faced with empty storefronts and ridicule, many companies pulled out.
Now, other companies are carving out parts of Second Life as their own. They are creating employee-only islands and office buildings, then encouraging their staff to meet there. Compared with plane tickets and hotel bills, it's pretty cheap: a 16-acre private island in Second Life costs $1,000 plus a $295 monthly maintenance fee.
And instead of staring at white walls during conference calls with strangers, employees can wander a virtual paradise and see representations of the co-workers they have never met.
Sun Microsystems, which makes computer servers and software, owns seven islands in Second Life, two of which are open to the public. The rest are used for training sessions and meetings. During its biggest event, a 12-hour corporate meeting held last month, 14 of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun's top executives hobnobbed with hundreds of employees. Alpine skiing, car racing, live jazz and a sandbox were also part of the event.
At one point, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, dressed in a San Jose Sharks hockey jersey and holding a golf club, sat in a virtual auditorium next to Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos, who had a mascot for Sun's Java software sitting on his shoulder (the mascot looks a bit like a penguin).
Hundreds of Sun avatars lounged in the audience, some wearing sneakers and jeans, others in business attire, asking questions about new products, Second Life and Sun's competitive position. Thousands of other employees watched the virtual meeting on monitors in Sun's offices in Santa Clara, New York and Tokyo.
Sun decided to hold the event after it acquired a software company called MySQL, which tracks its widespread corps of employees by the 110 airports they live near, rather than their actual locations. Sun was looking for a way to introduce the MySQL employees to their Sun colleagues, and Second Life seemed the best solution.
"No matter where you're working, you can show up to the Town Hall," spokeswoman Kathy Engle said.
Forrester Research, a respected firm that focuses on the technology industry, recently highlighted the potential for its clients in a report titled "Getting Real Work Done in Virtual Worlds."
Swiss construction giant Implenia, for instance, worked with IBM Corp. to test ways to turn off lights in real buildings by flipping virtual switches in Second Life. The University of Maryland simulated a highway emergency and had participants respond in a different virtual world, designed by Forterra Systems Inc. And a company called Qwaq created a zone of oil rigs, refineries and offices to enable energy professionals to walk through their properties and discuss repairs while viewing actual equipment.
"Virtual worlds are relatively inexpensive, don't require a great deal of start-up technology infrastructure, and provide a naturalistic, immersive approach to simulating space, people, and objects," wrote Forrester analysts Erica Driver and Paul Jackson.
Of course, entrepreneurs are trying to take advantage of the corporate influx. Last month, a Dana Point-based company, Corporate Planners Unlimited, opened a conference facility in Second Life, the Virtualis Convention and Learning Center. There, companies can hold meetings in a grand ballroom during the day and staffers can descend on virtual escalators to a private yacht in the evening.
Founder Dan Parks said Virtualis provides a space for organizations that lack the money or time to build their own island. Virtualis will save companies thousands of dollars by helping people meet online, he said, rather than in person. Plus, meetings would be less dull in Second Life.
"If you want a giant black unicorn to fly down with the chairman of your company and land on the center of the stage, you can do that," he said.
High-tech titan IBM, which has nearly 387,000 employees in 170 countries, began building in Second Life in late 2006. Now, about 5,000 workers visit Second Life and other virtual worlds to conduct meetings, train new employees and hold orientation sessions. In April, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it would become the first to host private regions of Second Life on its own computer servers, which provide more security and privacy than the islands hosted on Linden Lab machines.
* Video of an Intel Second Life lecture
Video of an Intel Second Life lecture
* Virtual office party
Virtual office party
Second Life helps IBM learn how to make meetings more efficient, said Jim Spohrer, director of services research at IBM's Almaden Research Center, which frequently uses Second Life and other virtual worlds.
If someone goes off on a tangent during a meeting, he said, colleagues send messages telling the person to get back on track. If an avatar falls asleep on screen, that's a good sign the staffer isn't paying attention. In fact, it means he or she has stepped away from the keyboard. Salespeople try out pitches in Second Life, and they're recorded, played back and critiqued by colleagues.
The eccentricities of the virtual world also lead to social connections that aren't possible on conference calls. For instance, Spohrer said, avatars sometimes bring their virtual pets to meetings and chat about them or invite colleagues back to their Second Life homes to show what they have built.
The virtual workplace can be tougher to oversee than the real one. One male IBM employee appears as a female avatar with heels. Another is simply a cloud of particles. But peer pressure to act professional is driving conformity.
Early on, Spohrer said, employees designed bizarre avatars even for client meetings. But most are getting more serious now.
"Just like social culture in the real world, it evolves," he said.
Like other companies in Second Life, IBM has laid down ground rules. It instructs employees that if they "encounter behavior that would not be acceptable inside IBM, you should 'walk away' or even sign out of the virtual world."
At Santa Clara-based Intel, human-resources executives and lawyers decided that if employees use "Intel" in their avatar names, they are forbidden to visit Second Life's many strip clubs or other virtual houses of ill repute.
"If you're there with an Intel last name, you have to behave as if you are representing Intel," said Paul Steinberg, an engineer with the Intel Software Network.
Sun suggests that workers clothe their avatars in "business casual" for corporate events. But at night, Sun lets them cut loose. It created a nightspot, Club Java, where employees and fans of the company socialize and dance. Some wear spacesuits or cat tails.
At a recent '60s-themed party there, a disc jockey blasted "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "Another Night Another Dream" as avatars pulsated on the dance floor. Beneath flashing strobe lights, a leggy blond in white boots shook her hips near a man wearing a tuxedo, his bow tie loosened.
Sun's Second Life project leader, Fiona Gallagher, lives in Hampshire, England, so she doesn't usually get to party with employees at headquarters. But as she sat at her computer during the recent Club Java session, Gallagher sang along to the music with such exuberance that she woke up her husband.
She said the incident showed just how real events in Second Life could feel. "It's all about community building," Gallagher said. "Events like this bring people together."
alana.semuels@latimes.com
Tomorrows episode of "Rise of the videogame" on the Discovery channel science is going to be about SL apparently..
http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=48.15383.30525.30716.4
WATCH THIS VIDEO >>> Second Life, a communicator’s dream tool
http://journalist77.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/second-life-a-communicators-dream-tool/
If Second Life isn't a game, what is it?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17538999/its_not_a_game_secondlife_the.html
Ddragon's guitar licks are on fire at the NBC-Universal Headquarters in SL:
Okay, thanks. When I get there I will be "Metrolane Billig"
Metro, come on into SL: The water is fine.
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