Your2ndPlace

If you've spoken casually with Sarah Nerd for more than two minutes, you're probably well aware that she's a devout (read: obsessed) fan of Nine Inch Nails(NIN) and the band's frontman, Trent Reznor. Sarah recently became a finalist in a local contest to meet NIN and Reznor. From a glimpse at the MySpace page Sarah has created for the contest, it's clear she's pulling out all the stops.

Recently, Sarah requested that SL users take inworld and/or RL photographs of themselves holding a sign promoting the contest.

Sarah's contributed a great deal to the SL Community. She's also become a dear friend. So I'd consider it nothing short of a personal favor if people would take a few minutes of their day to help make Sarah's dream a reality. That may sound melodramatic, but if you know Sarah, then you know I'm speaking in earnest.

The sign is available at SL Exchange and onrez . The contents of the photo beyond the sign are limited only to the user's imagination.

Users of The Sims Online(TSO) will be enjoying their last day today. The servers are set to go down tomorrow (August 1st). Though my knowledge of software technology is so basic that I should have a bumper sticker reading "Enduser 4 Life," I can't help but think The Sims was a stylistic influence of Second Life. As a viable online platform, I have no doubt that TSO was itself influential. In fact, several users of Second Life have told me that they were formerly TSO users.

I was among the first. I signed up for the beta test in November 2002 - one month before the game went live. Though I bought the released game and became a 'charter member,' within two weeks of sporadic use, I was gone again. TSO simply did not hold my attention. The single-player counterpart had that problem for me as well. To this day, I pull out my original "The Sims" game once every 2 years for 2-3 days and then return it to my collection. The user behind Konner McDonnell is very much the introvert. He likes his games single-player and his interaction with others to be constructive in a specifically 'real world' sense. I've always considered myself as being somewhat 'unusual' so I suspect my reasons for abandoning TSO are lost in the numbers of people who were simply "too bored, too fast." But that certainly can't be the extent of it.

While I'm sure people that use Second Life have a diverse history in the MMOG world -and many have no such history- the similarities beg the question of whether SL somehow took ideas like TSO and expanded beyond the limitations of that platform to create something with more realistic implications. In effect, 'sealing TSO's fate.'

As I mentioned here, Marillion is having a contest for the most viewed video on YouTube for their song, 'Whatever Is Wrong With You?'. Since I'm without enough bandwidth at present, I can't follow through in time to do a machinima for the contest - but maybe one of you readers can. I'd contacted Marillion in the past about doing something in Second Life, but it never got responded to... so maybe one of you folks could show them the power of virtual worlds combined with their lyrics.

I mean, if I can't compete for the £5,000, one of you could.

Consider these lyrics:

We need to talk..
about the way you've been behaving
We need to talk..
about the Christmas lights in your clothes
We need to talk..
about the stranger in the kitchen
We need to talk..
about the scissors and the silver foil
I thank God..
You're so fabulously..
Odd

If that isn't Second Life, I don't know what is. Toss in Sarah Nerd's prim baby for good measure. The scissors and the silver foil could even be seen as a reference to Prokofy Neva, though I'm not certain that the song was written about her...

Read enough? Good. Watch the clip below, head over to WhateverIsWrongWithYou.com, read the rules, get the MP3 after reading the terms, and go a little... machinima.

When 'Second Life Improves Real-life Social Skills' came up on my radar, I just had to ask myself what it was about. Since I had not written the article, I had no idea - so I went and read it. It seems that a PhD student has submitted a paper that has been interpreted as saying that Second Life assists real social skills.

She definitely hasn't been hanging out with my crowd. Or Pighed, for that matter. It isn't that I don't believe that Second Life has the capacity for positive social skill development - I just seem to have the soft and putrid underbelly of it in my face all too often.

From the article:

..."There are not many places we go in the world where we are guaranteed social contact, in real life it is harder and less likely that you will go up to a stranger and start a conversation," said Ms Grant...

But in Second Life, unless you create some sort of real world link with the owner(s) of the other avatar(s), everyone is a stranger. Some are stranger than most, and most are stranger than people outside of Second Life - sometimes in nice and interesting ways, but sometimes in disturbing and macabre ways. A balance is struck based on who you wish to be associated with... but when you're writing about Second Life, that balance has to be less utopian and more realistic.

Konner McDonnell was kind enough to email me a few links to look at regarding yesterday's news of the successful teleportation between Second Life and OpenSim. While, at a simple technical level, this is no big deal - logging an avatar onto a secondary grid - the architecture cooperation is noteworthy.

One can log in to multiple websites on the Internet with the same username; it stands to reason that the same should be true of virtual worlds. The difference, of course, is in the assets - something which was apparently not addressed in the teleportation... yet. Basically, IBM and Linden Lab had a handshake across their virtual worlds to verify that the systems could communicate. While the technical details require more digging to understand how this happened, the week old Linden Lab blog entry pretty much explains that this is only for logging in and teleportation. The real test will be the asset server.

And so, one's avatar will be hopping grids in the not too distant future. That sounds fun and interesting on the surface, but it also brings with it new problems that have to be looked into:

• Security: Soon, your password for your avatar will become that much more important as it leaves the Second Life sandbox and goes forth to brave new virtual worlds.
• Names: Naming limitations in one world may not exist in another. While this may not be a big deal for some, it can be a very big deal for others. Like Pighed.

I generally tend not to write - anywhere - unless I have anything genuinely interesting to write about.

This week, I became the Queen of Holland. I suppose that's fairly interesting. On Wednesday, I became the new owner of the Holland sim - the latest chapter in my ever spiraling descent into land addiction. The event coincides with my six-month anniversary. (Has it only been six months?)

Holland is a rare bird these days, it seems - fully owned/rented with happy residents and business owners, most of whom have been there at least a year and have no plans to leave. Owning a sim wasn't on my list of things I ever realistically planned to do. When the situation presented itself, though, I did some careful research - and I found it to be about as stable and self-sustaining as anyone could hope for. It's not a money-maker by any means, but that's not really my primary motivation for acquiring it. Eventually, I hope to revitalize the shopping district and bring in a little extra rent to help pay back part of the cost of the sim.

Also, you can't beat the name.

My current home is still on the mainland, and probably will be for a while. I don't expect any parcels to be opening up any time soon in Holland, and I say that with considerable delight.

I do know, however, that I've entered into a whole new realm of commitment. I've already been on the phone once with concierge ("Wait, you mean I have telephone support?") and it hasn't even been 48 hours since nation-maintenance became my queenly duty. I am, however, blessed with some of the nicest residents that are probably known to exist in Second Life™©®.

Feel free to stop by sometime. I've opened up a cafe in the Galeria (although Starbocks will be replaced soon with a more recognizable Dutch brand). The Galeria is still under construction, so please pardon the dust. If you're looking for weed or hookers, though, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed!

This evening, Bart Heart sent me an offline IM with links to three announcements posted by Second Life International Business(SLIB) CEO Tyrian Camilo. Please click here for the main announcement page.

While I'm not one to jump when a CEO throws me a few links, I had to make a note of this. How could I not?

When Camilo acquired WJUV, a company owned by the now-delisted Atlas Venture Capital(AVC), the owning company had been halted by VSTEX pending an investigation. As I've noted several times, I was the de facto chairman of the AVCIC, the committee appointed by AVC shareholders to investigate potential wrongdoing by then-CEO Monkey Canning. In the AVCIC Final Report , I criticized the transaction as fraudulent on Canning's behalf and where Camilo and Intlibber Brautigan where concerned, a decision of questionable integrity.

But Camilo, who has reportedly dabbled in the notorious 'ad farm' method of selling land at extortive prices, is learning: You play with fire and you get burned.

Based on the announcements, Camilo's request for the domain transfer of WJUV's website, WJUV.com, was met with a request by our ol' pal Frank Corsi (former SL: Jasper Tizzy): Pay me for my 50,000 WJUV shares, first.

Whether Corsi owned any shares is unknown, but Camilo was quick to announce that his 'lawyer' had been contacted. Some six hours later, Camilo posted a third announcement to report that the website had since been sold to Valentine Heart Inc (VHI) CEO Bart Heart, despite Corsi's offer to sell it to Camilo for $30 USD. Camilo decried this transaction as unfair and, again, alluded to a possible litigation.