Tech -- Culture -- Humour
As mentioned previously, the new comedy on ABC, The Librarians was the impetus for a forum held on the Melbourne Laneways section of ABC Island. The build itself featured aspects of the TV show, utilising one of the Laneways buildings previously unused.
More than thirty people attended, including a respectable cohort of librarians. There was some interesting discussion of library stereotypes and fairly general agreement that another successful Australian comedy has been born.
Telstra have announced the development of a replica of the Sydney CBD on their suite of islands. It’s a development with business firmly in mind:
“At SydSim, real world businesses will soon be able to explore the commercial opportunities available in the virtual world, by renting an office or shopfront at the virtual location of their existing real world premises.
This is an opportunity to secure top-notch locations in a 3D virtual skyscape of Sydney’s CBD, and see what sales, marketing and employee collaboration opportunities are available, without the fuss of setting up their own island.”
When we contacted Telstra and asked when SydSim would be a reality, we were told it was already live. All I could find this evening was the start of a build on two new sims: Martin Place and Loftus:
There’s never been any doubts about Telstra’s commercial focus within Second Life – this is an obvious evolution from the successful land rentals and the recent expansion of two more sims. I’d imagine there’ll be no problems selling the SydSim real estate – the real challenge will be managing lag issues on what is already a popular neck of the woods.
What’s not in doubt is Telstra’s committment to SL – the other Australian Telcos have some major catching up to do in the virtual world sphere.
I’m encouraged by the work being done on an improved search interface in Second Life.
I’ve always believed one of the biggest causes of users giving up on SL is the hassle in finding anything in-world. Between Linden’s work and the ever-growing list of third-party SL viewers, there’s a chance SL may be user-friendly. I kid you not.
Are there additions to the search functionality you’d like to see?
Australian made comedy The Librarians makes it debut this week and there’s a tie-in event scheduled on the Melbourne Laneways section of ABC Island.
The full info from the notecard I received:
“DATE: Thursday November 1st
TIME: 7:30pm AEDT, 5:30pm (WA) 1:30am SL time (PDT)
The Librarians, is a new six-part comedy series from ABC TV, based around the highly-strung head librarian of an outer suburban Melbourne library.
This new social satire premieres on Wednesday October 31 at 9.30pm AEDT. Or if you can’t watch it live, you can view it online at http://abc.net.au/tv/librarians/from 10:00pm.
Then on Thursday night, in conjunction with the ALIA, Emerald Dumont – a librarian avatar from the Australian Libraries Building – will host a discussion.”
In the eleven months SLOz has been running, one of the most vexed questions about Second Life and virtual worlds in general in pornography. Our story on Linden Lab’s ban on ageplay is the most viewed story on SLOz and by an extremely large margin – its follow-up is also regularly read. The reason for the enormous number of views comes down to the venerable search engine.
Each day we get hundreds of views of the ageplay story, through people typing a bunch of terms into Google or other search engines. Some of the more common being used are:
– child porn
– virtual child porn
– preteen porn
– preteen panties
– beastiality
– virtual porn
– legal porn
– child panties
There are a bunch of other ones I won’t publish here, suffice it to say there are some sick people out there. What it illustrates is the universality of the issue across the internet. Linden Lab’s crackdown appears to have been effective in minimising overt ageplay. What it can’t do is minimise the significant demand for undesirable images nor the dilemma of defining what consitutes pornography or otherwise.
Where do you see this issue progressing in future?
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Find great articles on a variety of fun subjects such as the first computer made, and a computer buying guide. We also have info on the development of textbooks, as well as video games and a host of other subjects.
As promised, we spent a little more time checking out ‘Real Estate Life’, the island launched by the REA Group. There’s a lot of emphasis on space and it’s certainly not a build that has logo saturation – the main building certainly has its fair share but otherwise it’s an understated approach.
We caught up with Dave Platter, Corporate PR and Internal Communications Manager from REA to ask a handful of questions:
Lowell Cremorne: What was the impetus for the decision to develop a presence in Second Life?
Dave Platter: The web has changed a lot since we got started with our first site 12 years ago. SecondLife represents one possible vision of what the web of the future will look like.
We want to be a part of it so we could better understand how it works. That way we can apply the lessons we learn to our 16 real estate websites.
Lowell Cremorne: You’ve mentioned a primary aim is to engage with the SL community – how do you plan on achieving that?
Dave Platter: Launching the REA Group island is the first step. But in one sense it’s the least important of all. What’s really important is building relationships. So our next step is to spend more time in-world, using the island as a base and perhaps a place for meetings and events. We’re walking with baby steps and we will use what we learn from other Second Lifers to help us decide what to do next.
Lowell Cremorne: Do you have a timeframe for your committment to Second Life – are there success metrics that would lead you to leaving if they weren’t met?
Dave Platter: At this point the only thing that would cause us to abandon SecondLife would be if we simply decided there was nothing else useful to learn there. But, given the vitality of the community and the innovation the platform displays, there probably is a lot to learn in SecondLife.
Lowell Cremorne: Will the islands have any staffing?
Dave Platter: They won’t have full-time staff for now. It’s not a retail store or even an information booth, although there are some information screens. Rather than waiting on the island for people to drop by, we’ll seek out people, places and events of interest, and also sometimes we’ll invite others to come by.
It’ll be interesting to see how the island fares over coming months – there’s no shortage of near-deserted corporate presences around Second Life. If the enaggement strategy espoused is put into practice, REA may be one of the success stories.
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