Yep. If Second Life’s involved, how could sex toys not also be involved? A manufacturer of, uh, intimacy aids has filed a lawsuit alleging that users bootleg, with impunity, the virtual sex toy brand it also sells in Second Life. More »
If your Kotaku comment made it into the talking points of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation panel a couple of weeks ago, this video immortalises your screen name. More »
I’ve got a re-cap of last Saturday’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation right here, but if you’re looking for quick quotes and interesting issues to rehash, here are a few gems. More »
Physically, you may not have been at EA Redwood Shores this weekend. But if you commented on to Justin Cole’s op-ed column to Kotaku, you were there in spirit. More »
A lawsuit filed in Arizona on April 17 charges Second Life creator Linden Lab and a slew of other individuals for trademark infringement on TASER’s handheld self-defense device. Insert zap joke here. More »
Second Life creators Linden Lab have been shopping for shopping, acquiring virtual goods marketplaces OnRez and Xstreet SL in order to integrate them into their popular virtual world.
I was recently discussing the mainstream media’s love affair with Second Life, and how the bloom appears to be off the rose. The Denver Westword News recently followed around a Denver University ‘media specialist’ who is working on SciLands, where NASA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other scientific groups have a virtual outpost; while Jeff Corbin, the ‘media specialist,’ and other academics are practically beside themselves with the potentials for nuclear research in Second Life, the other side is presented:
Now others at [Denver University]seem to be paying attention. “Can you imagine if we really succeed, if we get twenty students into this laboratory to do physics experiments?” says Hill excitedly. “Putting them into a nuclear control room and letting them do things and destroy things and not letting them get hurt? Think of what this means. Imagine how powerful this can be for education.”
But not everyone was thrilled when the story hit the online newspaper Inside Higher Ed last year. “Second Life isn’t stable enough to test something that important,” one commenter wrote. “Why not make a program that will actually simulate that properly? Second Life doesn’t even stand up to normal ‘game’ quality. It can’t even properly simulate a car.”
Zing! The accessibility of Second Life is cited as a reason institutions are having ‘notable’ results with their virtual counterparts, but I’d be curious to know how ‘notable’ is being defined.
With help from the feds, a Denver scientist helps Second Life go nuclear [Denver Westword News via TerraNova]
Remember when you couldn’t drunkenly fall out of bed in the morning without landing on some kind of Second Life news? Things were getting pretty serious for a while there, to the point where a lot of reports started spinning around that millions and millions of people were “playing” the thing. Millions? Really? Hardly. New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon has, in an interview with VentureBeat, laid out a new userbase disclosure model the company are working on for Second Life. They’re not counting registered users as “users” anymore, because while over 15 million people have signed up for the service, nowhere near that many actually use it. No, the number of “simultaneous users” is around 68,000. That’s it. 68,000. Sure, that’s the number logged on at once, not the total number of “active” users, but the total can’t be more than a couple hundred thousand. Chin up, Lord British, there’s hope for Tabula Rasa yet!
Q&A: Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon on Second Life’s latest evolution [VentureBeat]
Ok, so virtual property disputes aren’t exactly new, but there’s a little wrap up on some of the current issues over at a Canadian website. Most of the issues discussed revolve around Second Life, but the questions of virtual property and other virtual issues are getting increasing attention:
A sense of community is important to NASA. That’s why they opened a NASA mansion for parties and just hanging out, hacking software and making Uranus jokes. But the NASA mansion was only good during the night. NASA’s Andrew Hoppin explains how Second Life allowed connections during the day.
