MetaFilter posts tagged with secondlife

Everything is fleeting

Wordshore — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 04:27:46 -0800

"It feels strange to be active and highly visible on the Web for 15 years but it was only when I joined Facebook that someone from elementary school or high school ever contacted me." In which on Ev Williams's platform, Mr Haughey compares his experiences of Facebook and Twitter. Other recent comparisons of Facebook and Twitter by Forbes, Forbes again, the New York Times, Social Times and Tweetsmarter.

Virtual and Analog Art

Deoridhe — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:43:01 -0800

Bryn Oh is staging an art exhibition called Virginia Alone simultaneously at the Santa Fe New Media Festival and in Second Life (free account required). Virginia is a blind, 80 years old woman who made audio recordings of her life alone in the Canadian wilderness. Bryn distilled hundreds of tapes down into several excerpts accompanied by both analog and virtual images. Bryn's other art works are preserved at her YouTube.

"We Don't Care If You Are A Member of the Gorillaz. Let's See Some ID."

tpoh.org — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:21:38 -0800

What Do You Do When Your Only Online Identity is a Pseudonym? In a move reminiscent of recent Facebook purges, a well-known Second Life user (whose only online presence is pseudonymous) finds his new Google+ account deleted, allegedly for not being a real person. Whether this move is directly related to the limited-beta status of Google+ or not, questions remain for those who have been 'unpersoned' by Facebook and hopeful that Google's laissez-faire attitude toward personal identification would make G+ a friendlier environment - particularly given Google's encouragement - as recently as February of this year - to "be who you want to be" when using Google services.

Peter Greenaway & Second Life Machinima

juv3nal — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:37:16 -0800

Peter Greenaway (wikipedia, previously 1, 2, 3, 4) talks about Second Life Machinima (also, Vimeo of a talk from 2010).

High art, Low art, and OHHH YEAH!

codacorolla — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 08:21:44 -0800

Koolaid Man in Second Life: “Maybe the Internet is for me what Paris in the 20s was for Joyce, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein or New York in 50s was for Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg.” Jon Rafman (previously with the 9eyes Google Streetview blog) gives guided tours of Secondlife, and records some of his experiences. Being related to Secondlife, some content is naturally not work safe. The interview from which the quote in the FPP is pulled. My favorite quote from the video linked above,

You know there's an aspect of Seconlife that's grotesquely kitsch. And I can't help but, and I can't help but lov[e] this aspect. I think we've reached a point now... my generation... where we don't even know whether we're celebrating something, and saying it's great and affirming it, or if we're engaging in ironic critique and mocking it. We've almost collpased the two.

Art:21 Blog writes,

According to Rafman, it is the live navigation of Second Life that constitutes “the performance,” which goes down something more like an experiential, group lecture that favors extroverted participants. It is Rafman who navigates Kool-Aid Man; however, he asks attendees for their input on what to do, where to go, and what to say to other avatars while perusing the program. Like a physical tour with an informed tour guide, Rafman invites the audience to ask questions throughout the tour. During the performance, we stumbled upon virtual parties, orgies, dystopian wastelands, and the most bizarre social encounters occurring between other avatars

_{Found via Frontsection's art column.}

Learning Science in a video game

Made of Star Stuff — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:39:51 -0800

In a 19th century village called River City, the people are suffering from a mysterious illness. Many believe that there are bad spirits in the air or water causing the disease. Those suffering are shunned, but the plague worsens. In desperation, they turn to a group of experts in the new "Germ Theory": 21st century middle school science students. [Quicktime movie] River City is a multi-user virtual environment, based in ActiveWorlds (Previously). Students make avatars, talk to citizens in the world (some are dumb AIs, but they can be puppetted by the teacher), and have a workspace in which they can perform water quality tests and other diagnostics, record the results, and create and test hypotheses. The software design includes the ability to record what steps students take, in what order, how often they repeat content lessons or experimental steps, and other aspects of their approach to solving the problem. Can River City help students learn science? [Quicktime movie] It appears that working in the virtual world of River City helps students learn science in part because it gives them a sense of "self-efficacy" - that is, they can take actions to try get an outcome, and see how well their actions worked. The grownups are pretty boring. They're trying to communicate to other pedagogues, so we can forgive them. Listen to what the students are saying instead. "Now I've become a mad scientist!" [Quicktime movie] One of the researchers, Diane Ketelhut, is investigating using simulation environments like River City [YT] not just to teach science, but to assess learning. In other words, the video game is the final. She hasn't published on this yet, but she gave a presentation at the AAAS meeting last February, and showed a video of fifth graders talking about taking their final exam in River City. They knew that it was a test, but they "kind of wished that it had been harder."

This Would Save a Lot of Time

netbros — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:12:18 -0800

World Builder by Bruce Branit. A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. There's more at Not Possible in Real Life, dedicated to identifying and sharing well conceived and realized content creation in Second Life® that would not be possible in real life.

Griefing comes to First Life

thirteenkiller — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:07:02 -0800

BREAKING NEWS: Kasparov assailed by flying dong. Possible inspiration

Second Life Twitter Typewriter

brownpau — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:36:53 -0800

Giant Twittering Typewriter in Second Life. Type here (SLURL) and press the carriage return and it posts to here. Yay. [via]

But if the vaults are empty, what will Scrooge McDuck swim in?

Asparagirl — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:58:40 -0800

According to the latest biweekly numbers released last Thursday by the Federal Reserve, for the two weeks that ended January 16th American banks had negative $1.3 billion in non-borrowed reserves. This is, historically, extremely unusual; just two months ago they had $30 billion (positive, of course) in non-borrowed reserves. The only reason some banks haven't been shut due to insufficient -- negative! -- reserve requirements is that the Federal Reserve is currently loaning them enough money through the brand new TAF (Term Auction Facility) program (also running in Canada and Europe) to make up their shortfalls. Today's TAF press release says that 52 American banks or institutions are currently receiving loans totaling ~$40 billion -- but the Fed refuses to name who they are. The banks' collateral for these TAF loans are those same yucky hard-to-price CDO's that caused the banks' liquidity problems in the first place -- and the Fed is purposely using outdated prices for the collateral to prevent their being marked-to-market and thus collapsing CDO prices and freezing matters even further. Not surprisingly, some economists see the creation of the TAF as a backdoor bailout of banks in trouble. But how much longer can this go on? [via] Coincidentally (one hopes), the banking system in the virtual online world Second Life has just collapsed following a run on their banks due to inappropriate valuations and bad counterparty risk, wiping out many players' real-world investments...

Making Machinima Movies

TrinityB5 — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:26:45 -0800

Machinima (muh-shin-eh-mah or ma-shin-i-ma) is a hybrid filmmaking technique where people utilize game engines and environments to create videos. At first, it was little more than screengrabs and screencasts of in-game action, but it has now grown to include sophisticated storylines independent of game action. Shows and entire series have been made from The Sims, Halo, The Movies, Quake, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and Second Life to name just a few. Actually, some Team Fortress 2 machinima was recently mentioned (October 9th). Over the years, there have been some really amazing productions, such as the now legendary 100-episode Red vs Blue series (also previously mentioned) which was created with Halo 2. A lot of machinima can be found and viewed for free on machinima.com. The Internet Archive also maintains a machinima section. The recently-released BloodSpell, a "punk fantasy" from Strange Company, is believed to be the first feature-length movie released using the Neverwinter Nights game engine. (watch online free, free divx download - 847 MB, free quicktime download - 903 MB). Two of the people behind BloodSpell, Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram have co-written the just-published "Machinima for Dummies". One problem with using game engines and environments is that one does not own the rights to distribute the video. Some game publishers have turned a blind eye, while others have been more supportive. More recently, companies have been clearly outlining their policies with regard to Machinima, and some like Microsoft, have been surprisingly flexible. For example, Microsoft’s revised "Game Content Usage Rules" specifically allow entry into film festivals, even where there are monetary prizes. Linden Labs, makers of Second Life, have always been very encouraging of machinima, and has a page with tutorials and videos dedicated to it. They’ve even sponsored a trailer contest. And one owns what one creates in Second Life, meaning it can be sold without fear of a lawsuit for violating copyright or infringing on trademarks. This past September, HBO spent a reported six figures for the North American television rights to My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva, a short-form documentary which was shot completely within Second Life. Other have come up with a different solution to the rights issue. For example, Moviestorm takes a new approach to creating machinima. Although, it is based on gaming technology, it's not a game. Users can create characters, build sets, record dialogue, use multiple cameras, edit scenes, and most importantly to some people, everything one creates with it belongs to them. Recently out of beta, and free to download, the windows (XP/Vista) software seems to have already obtained a cult following among enthusiasts. They also have a very late beta for macs (intel), and a PowerPC version is promised as well. Recently, several hundred people attended Machinima Europe, the first European Machinima Festival (Flickr photoset, trailer) which was held at the De Montfort University Campus Centre in Leicester, UK. There were discussions, demonstrations, and an awards ceremony to honor the best of Machinima. Over 150 films (PDF) were entered from a wide variety of countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Croatia, Slovakia, Japan and Australia. Video of both the event and the awards can be found here (Flash/QuickTime). Stolen Life, which utilized the voice talent of sci-fi fan-boy fave Claudia Black (Pitch Black, Farscape, Stargate SG-1) took home a fistful of awards, including Best Picture. She's become quite enthusiastic about the possibilities of this medium (interview on YouTube). In professional filmmaking circles, machinima techniques have been used to do pre-visualization aka 'pre-viz'. Major Hollywood studios have been saving a great deal of money creating entire scripts in this format, both to show to potential investors and also as a new sort of storyboard to test shots and setups prior to filmming. There was an article entitled "Preconceived Motions" in the October issue of Computer Graphics World about this very subject. For more information, check the Machinima FAQ. A great way to stay on top of the latest machinima news is by subscribing to MachiniFeed, "the Blended Feed for the Machinima Community". Also worth noting is the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. The afore-mentioned Hugh Hancock, is not only a co-founder of Machinima.com, but also of the Academy. [Note: this is my first post]

Is This Utopia? Are Ruins Beautiful?

salvia — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:56:46 -0800

Shrinking Cities (virtual and real): Analysis and Interventions. Don't miss the map of shrinking cities around the globe [PDF] or their description of urban decline in Second Life and a contest about what interventions to apply there (stay tuned). The title is from this quirky image in their press kit. Previously: 1, 2, 3.

[horn joke goes here]

nebulawindphone — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:18:42 -0800

I think....that unicorn love is a beautiful thing, and that if you find a spicy sexy unicorn stud muffin and want to let him fill you with his magical glittering seed, that is just fantastic. Probably NSFW.

Virtually employed

dersins — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:43:56 -0800

Second Life is a great place for a virtual job fair, right? Well, maybe not. (That recruiter's lucky all s/he got handed was a beer...) Even the cops are getting in on the action.. Time magazine probably thinks it's a bad idea, though maybe they wouldn't have 5 years ago.

Old World Meets New World

ericb — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:23:06 -0800

As it builds a presence and invests in virtual worlds, IBM is hoping to avoid potentially embarrassing incidents by establishing official guidelines for its more than 5,000 employees who inhabit "Second Life," Entropia Universe," "Forterra," "There" and other virtual worlds. "IBM, whose 20th century employees were parodied as corporate cogs in matching navy suits, doesn't have an avatar dress code. But guidelines suggest being 'especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona's appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.'" Other directives: "Don't discuss intellectual property with unauthorized people." "Don't discriminate or harass" and by all means, "Be a good 3D Netizen."

Second Life sucks, then you die

chuckdarwin — Wed, 09 May 2007 08:18:19 -0800

Secondlifefilter: The popular (and increasingly Euro-centric) site has certainly been getting some bad press recently. It's a little sad that a virtual world must now be patrolled by real policemen.

"I Heart My Gamer"

hermitosis — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:05:21 -0800

Are you a gamer-widow? Here is your lonely corner of the internet, with forums and resources to help you find help. Inspired by AskMe.

Sweden opens up embassy in Second Life

Milkman Dan — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:14:02 -0800

Sweden sends ambassadors to Second Life, becoming "the first country to establish diplomatic representation in the virtual reality world..."

Mental Suburbia

Falconetti — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:34:53 -0800

Architecture in Second Life: Virtual Banality

It may be just a game, but it's serious business.

clevershark — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:05:08 -0800

Running the numbers on Second Life. With Linden Labs' virtual world being taken seriously by journalists and even banks, it's clear that businesses see profits in virtual worlds. But with over US$800,000 in value changing hands in 24 hours it's becoming hard for even skeptics to deny the profit potential of Second Life. After all it's not just flying penis attacks. Not everyone agrees, however. How many of those residents just log in once, shrug then stay away?

Crime and Punishment, Online Style

PreacherTom — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 05:05:40 -0800

Crime and Punishment, Online Style Long a bastion of metaverse fantasies, avatars competing for style, and commercial dreams, Second Life has become a phenomenon. Lately, though, things are going a bit awry. Hacking attempts have been common, with the latest shutting things down only a few days ago. To address this crime, the SL crew is looking into creating a virtual FBI. Dibs on the Scully avatar.

This just in -- that girl is really a dude

camcgee — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:37:36 -0800

A Reuter's media reporter has been assigned to a new bureau in the virtual world of Second Life: "This is where the story is."

Vy am I covered in goo?

loquacious — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:10:03 -0800

SecondLife under attack from self-replicating grey goo. Worried about your avatar? Escape back to meatspace. Scripts not included on meatspace objects. Exporting self-replicating grey goo objects currently not available. (via boing boing) Free t-shirt not included.

Second Life turns in players to the FBI

skallas — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:06:13 -0800

Second Life CEO turns in players name to the FBI for disrupting one of his virtual parties. In the world of Second Life any player can create objects using the built in scripting language. Some players have created self replicating "bombs" or hand out embedded pornography. Instead of just banning users or limiting what can be done with the scripting language the CEO Philip Rosendale is simply turning over the names of players straight to the feds and expecting the FBI to prosecute players under existing anti-DoS laws. A case of the bruised ego of a self-important CEO or are virtual world 'hackers/pranksters' best treated like common criminals?

Alter Egos.

brautigan — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 22:59:11 -0800

Alter Egos. Robbie Cooper explores the world of online gamers again.