A Bunch of Links

It's Friday and I don't want to work at work, nor at blogging; so, I'm giving you all a bunch of links to enjoy. Hopefully this will help you pass the time and you'll be yelling "whoo hoo I'm done" soon.

Lainy Voom Machinima

I love Lainy's stuff as you can tell by my posts. Enjoy them yourself.

Social Research Foundation

The group has been researching users of SL (whoop did I just use a trademark to promote a product! TOO BAD!) since 2003, and they have a GREAT report analyzing users of Second Life.

Gwyn’s Home » Second Life® Bloggers Require Clarification

Gwyn says, "Tell us that you won't sue us for promoting YOU product and we won't be pissy. " Well she says it lots better. *grin*

Second Life Library Project » Blog Archive » Infoisland Universe

Video! I loves video.

inSL Reactions (What Is This Crap?)

A link to links re: inSL trademark issue. :-P

Modeling Real Life in Virtual Worlds « The ARCH

Another video, but this one's on architecture in virual worlds.

R TM (What Is This Crap?)

Get one! Wear one!

Well that's it for now. *sigh* I guess I should try to find lunch and then organize my staples.

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Wanna get Lindens for answering questions about your SL relationship?

I just got this email from a resident who's doing an educational project in SL. If you are interested in helping out, let him know:

"I am an undergraduate psychology student at Minnesota State University of Moorhead and am having trouble recruiting people who are in a current relationship on SL. Can anyone give me any advice on where or how to recruit around 250 participants to take a survey. The participants will even get paid in Linden. Thank you so much

Benjamin Erie (Benjamen Leakey - inWorld))
Minnesota State University of Moorhead"

Robbie Dingo's New Machinama

"Don't look at me little puppet!"

So which is it? Is the avi my puppet or am I the puppet of my avi? Second (Real) Audience vs. Real (Second) Audience

The quote in the title is from a movie. I'll give you a prize in-world if you know what movie it's from. Email, IM, call, or comment to give me your answer.

ReLIVE08 Conference

I'm excited to read about the upcoming conference regarding Researching Learning in Virtual Environments (ReLIVE08). Too bad it's in England. The keynote speaker is Dr Edward Castronova the author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games and Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality. The subjects for the conference are:

• Crossing boundaries and making connections

• Opportunities and challenges of virtual worlds for learning and teaching

• Approaches to research

• Implementing and sustaining innovation

Virtual Worlds and Collaborative Work: Survey Results

SRI Consulting Business Consortium's research program on virtual worlds has just published a report on VW work. The results are interesting and I'm sure VRWorkplace would agree with them: that VW will be a role in certain types of collaborative work, research and development should embrace this medium, and that ease of use will be important for the future success of ANY VW platform. Knowing this I wonder, "How does SL manage to continue to prevail?" LOL!

Virtual Worlds and Cultural Differences

I just finished reading a great article on cultural differences when using email. It seems that in East Asian countries workers avoid using email to communicate with their superiors because it seems disrespectful. They fax them. I would say that Second Life would allow people to work while respecting cultural differences. East Asian workers could bow, wear business attire, or whatever makes them more comfortable when addressing their superior.

And finally, my workforce can feel comfortable working with me by wearing wings and falling to their knees when I enter a room. *grin*

Social Workers in Social Worlds

For those of you who are interested in social work in SL *cough NICKI cough*, then this site is for you. It's a couple who have put together a group and some resources for exploring SL from a social work perspective.

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AI in SL (God I love Acronyms)

I had posted about research on bots creating an envrionment where people feel they are not alone. Now it seems Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is experimenting with Artificial Intelligence in Second Life: Child-like intelligence created in Second Life Does anyone have a SLURL for where we can check this out or isn't it public?

Architecture in the Metaverse

It seems that I missed this great event for SL achitects, but at least we have the web page. http://archidemo.blogspot.com/

Rezzable: How Dinos Became Extinct

The scientists were only partly right: it was a meteor shower and volcano, but it was brought on by an alien rave gone wrong. I bet that alien got grounded when it got home.

Dharma Talk

I went to a Dharma talk by kusaladharma Demar, a RL Buddhist monk in SL, whose studied for 11 years and came to SL simply to teach the Dharma.

kusaladharm speaking:




A shot of him with the group in the background.

Parcel Media Video Tutorials

I love the new parcel media feature on the Release Client.

Here are the links to Torley's vid-tuts on the subject:
YouTube - PARCEL MEDIA: Play webpages, movies, & more - Second ...
YouTube - PARCEL MEDIA: Make your own media screen - Second Life ...
YouTube - PARCEL MEDIA: Click actions - Second Life Video TuTORial

I hope you get to enjoy them as much as I do.

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Exploring

Nicki and I explored two builds. The first one is called Tunnel of Light from Rezzable. This build requires the Windlight Release Candidate viewer to enjoy the effects and textures. This was my first time using the Windlight viewer and I spent A LOT of time being dazzled by the pretty lights and water before I realized I should take snapshots. Here are a few from the experience. I HIGHLY recommend giving it a try even if you've never used SL's test software before.









It was an amazing experience. I'm hoping to get better at taking snapshots to capture the great stuff in SL.

Then we moved to Loscusolus (130, 170, 22). This was a build that made me think of greifer attacks as an artform. I won't ruin some of the fun stuff, but know that you'll prolly have to relog a few times.

Here are some shot of what happens when you click on some poseballs:

Nicki Shooting Me Like an Arrow



Um ah...no comment



You too can be a part of an art piece:








I hope you enjoy them both.

Scripts for Reflexive Architecture

I love enchanting a build. Scripts are the magic of our time; so, to that end, I include this link from « The ARCH to a script that will allow a prim to change color based on an avatars position. Enjoy!

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