General News – Page 80

Relay For Life commences

July 28, 2007 by Editor 9 Comments

The SL Relay for Life is in its third year, and this weekend is the culmination of months of work and promotion.

Spread across four sims, the course has some great sights, music on tap and a bunch of entertainment and commemorative events scheduled (SL Insider has the full schedule listed). There are different themed areas such as Pinocchio and Tomb Raider to walk through in addition to chatting with other participants.

Like the Australian Relay For Life, groups have set up camping areas and the whole thing has that similar community spirit. You can even enjoy the sight of yor hair disappearing as you cross sims on the walk.

Do yourself a favour and do at least one virtual lap and donate some money for cancer support and research. Check it out in-world.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: event, nonprofit

Blow up the pokies

July 26, 2007 by Editor 18 Comments

Linden Labs have clarified in no uncertain terms their stance on gambling in SL – it’s not to occur, full stop.

The actual policy is:

“It is a violation of this policy to wager in games in the Second Life (R) environment operated on Linden Lab servers if such games:

(1) (a) rely on chance or random number generation to determine a winner, OR (b) rely on the outcome of real-life organized sporting events,

AND

(2) provide a payout in

(a) Linden Dollars, OR

(b) any real-world currency or thing of value.

This includes (but is not limited to), for example, Casino Games such as:

o Baccarat
o Blackjack
o Craps
o Faro
o Keno
o Pachinko
o Pai Gow
o Poker
o Roulette
o Sic Bo
o Slot machines

It also includes Sports Books or Sports Betting, including the placing of bets on actual sporting events against a book-maker or through a betting exchange. Linden Lab will actively enforce this policy. If we discover gambling activities that violate the policy, we will remove all related objects from the inworld environment, may suspend or terminate the accounts of residents involved without refund or payment, and may report any relevant details, including user information, to authorities and financial institutions.”

It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for compliance with the policy to be achieved. When I first joined SL in 2006 I was advised to pick up some free $L by using camping chairs. I still had a casino landmark saved from back then and I tried it this evening and took the pictures contained in this story. As you can see, this casino hasn’t done anything to meet the new policy as yet.

Whether you love or hate gambling in SL, the new policy will remove a cultural aspect of the grid. Maybe some will even miss the sight of rows of zombie-like chair campers:

Will you miss the casinos in SL?

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: gambling, legal, lindenlab

Linden Lab offer resource directory

July 3, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Linden Labs have announced the aggregation of a range of directories into a Resident Resources database. Any SL resident can submit information on a tool or service they’ve created, but it will cost you L$250 per category you list in. Allow up to five business days for your listing to be approved. It’s good to see the community side of things actually expanding a little since the reduction of SL forum options.

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: community, lindenlab

Garden for the Missing

July 2, 2007 by Editor 4 Comments

The Garden for the Missing is a simple but powerful presence on the mainland Remora sim. Motivated by the tragic end of a missing persons case in her neighbourhood, owner Ronnie Rhode set up her presence. She states she’s been passionate about the missing persons issue since 2002 but only recently joined Second Life.

The pictures of missing persons are sourced from a range of US-based organisations including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, BeyondMissing and Project Jason. Ronnie is hoping to move to a larger location and has a donation wishing well to help her achieve that aim. While we were there another SL resident was donating assorted flowers etc to help decorate the area.

As Ronnie herself said when we had a brief chat, the more people that see the faces of the missing the more likely they are to be found. It doesn’t get much more worthwhile than that.

Thanks to Aussie SL’er Rails Bailey for suggesting the story.

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: General News, Landmarks of note, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: landmark, nonprofit

Second Fest

June 30, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Second Fest is on this weekend and it’s very Australia-friendly with Day 2 kicking off around 9pm AEST (4am SL time). The rumours about an avatar appearance of the Pet Shop Boys are probably nothing more than that, but hey those guys were avatars fifteen years before SL so it’s an obvious fit.

The Intel sims are spacious to say the least with multiple viewing locations:

Check it out in-world

Filed Under: General News, Music, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: event, intel

Location guide for new users

June 29, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Tateru Nino from SL Insider has formulated a brilliant list of locations for new SL users to visit.

It’s well worth spending some time checking out the locations mentioned.

Filed Under: General News, Landmarks of note, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: tateru, usability

Gamer Revolution on ABC TV

June 27, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Tomorrow evening on ABC TV, the first of a two-part series called Gamer Revolution will screen. It’s a wide-ranging look at gaming but from the snippets I’ve seen I believe Second Life receives an examination.

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: media

Transformers – more than meets the virtual eye

June 23, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

A prefect bridge between the two parts of the SLCN TV interview series would have to be a quick look at the new Transformers presence. It’s been sheperded by the SLCN crew and ‘atmospheric’ would be the best description of the whole shebang.

I’ve not had a lot of Transformers exposure so not sure how true to the original the build is, but it did remind me very much of Half-Life. Similar in look but also similar in navigation – this is not a simple walk around effort.

Check it out in-world.

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: business, landmark, media

Some big guns take aim at SL’s usefulness for business

June 20, 2007 by Editor 2 Comments

The SL Herald in their inimitable style discuss some criticism being leveled by big business at SL. Quoting a Forbes article titled ‘Sex, Pranks and Reality’, the SL Herald summarise the corporations shutting up shop or thinking about it. The prize quote from the Forbes article comes from Wells Fargo’s digital agency:

“Going into Second Life now is the equivalent of running a field marketing program in Iraq.”

Of course, I’m yet to understand why any corporation would go into SL with any perception other than it being an experiment. An experiment with potential for success, but one all the same.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: business, media, Op-ed

We had to do it…

June 17, 2007 by Editor Leave a Comment

Pretty much every SL-focused website has run a story on the Playboy opening (The SL Herald covers the island features). There’s no particular Australian context although there no doubt continues to be a dedicated Australian readership of Playboy.

The real interest for us is what Playboy had decided to do to make their island a place people would visit more than once. On a fifteen minute tour, my answer to that question is: not a great deal. Sure, there are videos to view, clubs to dance and multiple private areas to get personal with someone else, but there’s nothing that you won’t find at a hundred other clubs or malls – the Playboy brand is really the only differentiator. After fifteen minutes I was very much feeling ‘been there, done that’.

It’ll be interesting to see what sort of traffic the island receives in the longer term – a regular entertainment schedule will be a must-have just to match a number of successful SL-native options.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: business, landmark, playboy