Pooky Amsterdam has tapped me about this, and I’m happy to slip-in this post for her.

This year marks the 5th annual Machinima Expo, a three day virtual machinima festival which bridges Second Life and the real world. The Expo will be held over the weekend of the 17th-18th November 2012, and submissions are now open for those wishing to participate.

There is no maximum running time for entries to the event, but a couple of rules must be adhered to:

Entries must comprise at least 50% machinima

Entrants must not have previously submitted the film to the Expo.

Note that films do not have to be filmed in Second Life (or any other virtual world – although entries created in any virtual world are obviously welcome), just so long as they are at least 50% machinima.

The closing date for submissions is September 30th 2012, and you can find the entry form on the Expo website.
See on modemworld.wordpress.com

I think ‘several decades’ is probably pessimistic by a decade or so in my opinion…

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We’re still several decades away from developing completely immersive computer simulations, but it’s not too early to dream about the ways we’ll be able to use them. Today we’re exploring the tremendous potential with new gadgets like Glass, Google’s computer glasses. But that’s just the beginning.

So, in preparation, given all the different options soon to be available, what kind of virtual reality experience will you choose?
Will it be a partial soft simulation? Or perhaps you would prefer an active communal experience? Confused? No worries, we’ll go over all your options. And in the end, you may even find that you’ll want to mix and match.

Indeed, when considering the all the different possibilities that could come about through the advent of advanced simulation technologies, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that there will be a wide number of interactive possibilities. Thankfully, a number of futurists have made an attempt to predict what we can expect — and how we may wish to spend our time in environments far removed from our own.

See on io9.com

C’est la vie, Countdown, Solidea, Boudoir, Kunglers, Vero Modero and more designers all in one week? Wow! Seems to me that Second Life’s Sydney Fashion Week will surely rock!

Thanks to IMA Owner and CEO, Ananya Mai, for giving me a preview of the stage where the action is to happen. I reaaally loved how the ramp, inspired by the Sydney Opera House, looks like; and to describe it in a word, I choose GENIUS! 🙂

SFW is a welcome development to fashion lovers from the Asia-Pacific region; as most of the great fashion shows and activities are usually scheduled based on the US timezone. I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to see what the designers will come up with.

See on www.slfashionjournal.com

Japen’s 3Di, Inc., best known for their browser-based OpenSim viewers, will be testing a new, free, public, Unity-based virtual world this weekend, called 3Di Cloud.

According to 3Di senior manager Norman Lin, individuals and groups will be able to embed a window into their private virtual world right onto their websites, like they can now embed YouTube videos. This part isn’t new — ReactionGrid’s Jibe is also a Unity-based world that runs in the browser and can be embedded in a webpage, and so can the OpenSim viewer plugin from SpotON3D.

What’s different here is that the 3Di Cloud product has a free version.

See on www.hypergridbusiness.com

The third annual Serious Games Conference was held last in week in Singapore and it was a real pleasure to speak at the event. The event was well attended by a variety of speakers and industry representatives from across the globe and local Singapore developers.

Designers, developers and domain experts shared their experience, current developments and where they believe serious games are heading. Presentations were made by representatives from companies such as Crytek (South Korea), Digitalmill (US), Eduwealth (Singapore), Littleloud Studios (UK), MOH Holdings (Singapore), National Institute Education (Singapore), Playware Studios (Singapore), Ranj Serious Games (Netherlands), Rockmoon Pte Ltd (Singapore), Serious Games International (UK) and yours truly from Hummingbird Interactive.

See on e27.sg

Running through the end of July are Audience Participation Events for the UWA Centenary 3D Art Challenge, with 90 artworks from around the globe and MachinimUWA V: Seek Wisdom, with a sublime collection of 51 short animated film.

Both of these events are set up such that the viewers or the audience experiencing the artworks or the film, can submit a top10 list in the order they think will be the ultimate juried order. The 3 viewers or audience members who come closest in both art & machinima events can win for themselves up to L$10,000. To take part, click the link for the 3D Art or for the Machinima and everything is explained!

All this will culminate at 6am SLT Sunday 5th August where the Grand Finale announcement will be held for both events.

See on uwainsl.blogspot.com.au

With over 20,000 regions currently active on the grid, it is sometimes hard to picture just how big Second Life is, much less under how all the various component parts – continents, famous regional groups, places like the Blake Sea and Bay City – look and fit together. Harder still is to picture exactly how SL grew over the years.

So, if you do have an interest in the physical growth and development of Second Life, or are curious about SL cartography, Maps of Second Life is well worth a visit.

Brought together and curated by Juliana Lethdetter, the exhibition features maps charting the history of Second Life from 2002 onwards, and features maps supplied by groups such as the Historical Society of Second Life, the SL Coast Guard, and individuals such as Carl Metropolitan and Marianne McCann.

See on modemworld.wordpress.com

A nice piece from Sarah Lacy:

As anyone who has ever been near a startup knows, none of it is ever that simple, whether the startup succeeds or fails. And it certainly wasn’t for SecondLife — a company that seemed crazy initially, lauded as the next best thing a few years later, and was then dismissed as overhyped and mostly forgotten as the Web 2.0 wave gained steam.

SecondLife never went public or sold. There were chaotic transitions in management and pretty sizable layoffs. But far worse in the eyes of many, its audience just failed to grow. And in the Valley, many consider anything that’s not growth or an exit as a death. The hype cycle moved on, and even people in the back of the room were asking whatever happened to SecondLife, as Rosedale spoke.

 

“Did it ever sell?”

 

“I don’t know… Hey, did SecondLife ever sell?”

 

“I can’t remember…”

 

But Rosedale argued hard — and pretty convincingly — that SecondLife was a success. SecondLife has 1 million active users. That’s almost the exact same number it had at the peak when everyone was going ape-shit about it — when it was on the cover of BusinessWeek as the next big thing, when staid companies like IBM were building out SecondLife presences, when politicians were holding press releases inside of SecondLife, when Duran Duran and Depeche Mode were holding concerts there.

 

That number never fell, Rosedale says. If that was an amazing accomplishment then, it should still be an amazing accomplishment now that they’ve sustained it in a world where websites are fads that quickly come and go. More impressive, there are $700 million a year in virtual goods transacted inside of SecondLife every year. That’s more than enough to make the company very profitable.

See on pandodaily.com