1. The Spy Who Lives Here
2. Hinterland Orkney: Scotland in Second Life
3. Mutiny in Second Life
Relay for Life in Second Life: teams being formed
February 19, 2009 by 2 Comments
A yearly highlight in Second Life is the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. The 2007 and 2008 events were big successes, with more than 55 million Linden Dollars (approximately 200 thousand US dollars).
Teams have started forming and if any Australian or New Zealand teams are forming, do let us know and we’ll promote your fundraising efforts. The team registration form can be found here.
The Australian Relay for Life is a superb community event for a lot of towns and cities. The Second Life version achieves that same community vibe and it’s an opportunity to remember those lost to cancer, to support those currently fighting cancer and to help find more effective treatments for cancers.
Thanks to SL Entrepreneur Magazine for the heads-up.
Merged realities: events and issues for virtual worlds
February 17, 2009 by Leave a Comment
1. Clever Zebra have made their Virtual Worlds for Business eBook a free download – all the details here.
2. ABC Island in Second Life sees the return of music trivia show Rockit this Friday night at 8.30pm AEDT. Everyone has a chance of being a contestant and it’s a lot of fun.
3. It’s always a small world: research shows that people in MMOGs congregate with people geographically close to them:
“It’s not creating new networks. It’s reinforcing existing networks. You can talk to anyone anywhere, and yet individuals 10 kilometers away from each other are five times more likely to be partners than those who are 100 kilometers away from each other.”
4. We’re well and truly still running our Victorian Bushfire fundraiser – all the details here.
Virtual world IP: not a steal
February 13, 2009 by 3 Comments
Virtual environments and the public Internet sport a bewildering array of economies, from purely fantasy economies to real money trading between users. Fundamentally, many of these are currency-based economies which we all understand – you purchase something you value and give something of value in exchange. That is, you buy something you want with some manner of currency.
People generally have a whole lot more trouble with various license agreements, such as the GNU Licenses , or the Creative Commons licenses. Infringements of these licenses are common, and when challenged the infringers are often rather baffled. Either they do not understand that the content can be misused, or they do not understand why the ‘license nazis’ seem so put out.
Let’s break it down.
None of these licenses is technically ‘free’. Yes, they involve the use of content for no monetary cost, but that isn’t the same thing. There are multiple definitions of the word ‘free’ and if you apply the wrong ones, at best you’ll be confused, and at worst you’ll end up looking like an ass. So, these licenses are ‘free’ as in ‘no monetary cost’, but they are not ‘free’ as in ‘given freely for no exchange in value’.
These licenses are your basic, free-market, capitalistic contract. The owner of the property has something of value (the exercise of certain rights with respect to that content) and their release of some of those rights under a license makes that value available in exchange for something of value to them (your compliance with the terms of the license).
You both get something you want out of it, in short. That’s basic capitalism at work. Money need not be a component of the exchange, demagoguery notwithstanding. However, this is the fundamental principle that a lot of people miss, because they mistake the various different definitions of ‘free’.
If you take the content and use it in ways that don’t comply with the license terms, it is essentially the same as refusing to pay. That is why people get steamed about it. The rights to use the content in certain ways is given to you based solely on your agreement to comply. No money is changing hands, but ongoing compliance to the terms of the license constitute the payment for the usage.
Vint Falken was surprised to find that a texture that she made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derives license was being sold by a number of merchants in IMVU, some of whom claimed it as their own original work. Some of those merchants were even more surprised that she had any rights to her work at all.
KirstenLee Cinquetti quit providing her Second Life viewer binaries when pressed to comply with all the terms of the licenses that she was required to uphold in order to retain her permission to distribute viewer binaries. Some licenses require more compliance effort than others.
If you were handing over currency to obtain the necessary rights, that would be one thing. However, the purchase you are making is paid for with ongoing compliance to the terms. Quite often, you can simply arrange some alternative licensing or purchase scheme with the rights-holder. If you don’t, however, these licenses aren’t as simple as clicking ‘Yes, I agree’ somewhere and forgetting that you ever saw it. They’re contracts that require you to uphold your part of the bargain or lose what you gained.
Trying to evade or cheat the obligations under which content was granted to you wins you no friends either. As Bruce Perens points out:
don’t look for, and use loopholes in the Open Source licenses. Nothing makes your company look worse than taking unfair advantage of people who provided their work to you without charge, expecting in good faith that you’d honor their license.
Why? Because you took value from someone without the intention of paying the asking price. And that upsets everyone.
It really is as simple as that.
Linden Lab’s enterprise momentum
February 12, 2009 by Leave a Comment
In one of the more illuminating posts on the Official Linden Blog in recent months, Linden Lab’s Director of Enterprise Marketing, Amanda van Nuys (SL: Amanda Linden), has outlined the potential uses of Second Life for business.
There’s nothing groundbreaking in the information, but it’s worth regurgitating some of her points to illustrate virtual worlds and enterprise in a wider context.
Ok, I admit it. When I first joined Linden Lab to head up Enterprise Marketing three months ago, I wasn’t 100% convinced that working in virtual worlds really works.
A refreshingly honest take and one that most people would identify with, when introduced to virtual worlds for the first time. There’s a fundamental skepticism that I come across on a daily basis – one that’s hard to combat, even with facts around virtual worlds usage and their advantages for business.
The virtual medium is extremely powerful and the ‘sense of presence’ is real—and that’s the magic ingredient that makes a meeting truly productive.
For those who inhabit virtual worlds, this is also self-evident, but it’s another aspect that’s difficult to illustrate to the business skeptic. The recent increase in awareness of virtual meetings as cost-savers may actually be the factor that overcomes the initial wariness so that the power of the solution comes through.
Ok, I’m the Marketing gal who drinks my own Kool-Aid—true. But, I’m also a believer, and if you’re not already—you will be, too. Just try it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Of course, Linden Lab touting the power of virtual world meetings is a little like a hamburger chain espousing the health benefits of their burgers. That said, the growing evidence around the efficacy of virtual worlds for enterprise supports their case, although it continually needs to be communicated in disciplined business terms. It’s been stated repeatedly that the current economic climate may actually be beneficial for virtual worlds and the enterprise. That may be true, but only disciplined ROI arguments will fully overcome the intrinsic skepticism entrenched in the minds of most business leaders.
Merged realities: events and issues for virtual worlds
February 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment
1. The upcoming SBS documentary, Alter Ego, now has a (superb) theme song available for free download here.
2. An interesting Second Life event:
The annual DREAMS Community Health, Education and Art Fair will be held from February the 15th through the 28th. This will be the 5th year for the fair at Dreams.
Each year the Dreams Community Fair is provided as an outreach program to connect & educate SL residents about support groups and their services with an emphasis on health related groups.
The fair is filled with group presentations; booths of information, SL related classes, live performances, talks and more!
The ever popular “Linden Dunk Tank Day” will return and is tentatively scheduled for Friday the 20th from 2pm to 6pm SLT
3. A useful article on health education and virtual worlds was featured in a 2008 issue of Telehealth World ezine (page 8). Better late than never mentioning this.
Openlife dumps Second Life viewer support
February 10, 2009 by 6 Comments
I haven’t logged into Openlife for a few weeks, so I was unaware that support for the standard Second Life viewer has ceased. The proprietary viewer is now standard fare.
Release 1.6.2 is the current build, and the Mac version runs like a dream for me. I’d argue its performance is zippier than the Second Life browser though it’s not without its own ability to crash. The Openlife web portal has also had some welcome further improvements.
As stated previously, this is a grid with momentum.
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