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Eloise Pasteur

The Real Second-Life Killer … » VTOR - Virtual TO Reality - 0 views

www.vtoreality.com/...1755

aspca fashion killer life second shoe expo shoes

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 15 Jul 08 - Cached
  • However, I predict it will be a game that can do shoes better than Second Life, because if they can do shoes well, then everything else will have to be fabulous, too.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 15 Jul 08
     
    Prediction for the SL Killer. Whilst somewhat tongue in cheek, she does have a point you know!
Helen Otway

Avatars As Communicators Of Emotions - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...080709110053.htm

avatars communicators emotions virtual_world

shared by Helen Otway on 14 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Helen Otway on 14 Jul 08
     
    Based on research
Eloise Pasteur

Second Life offers healing, therapeutic options for users - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

healing second life support therapy

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08 - Cached
  • poured out my heart from a place of loneliness and grief. Click click went the computer keys, like the staccato beat of my heart. Clack clack went their replies, their empathy and their own tales of triumph and woe. Via my avatar - the persona I'd created to engage here - I was participating in an "anxiety support group" in the free, virtual world of Second Life.
  • As I write those words, I can hear the scoffing. Pathetic! Escapist! Are you addicted to computer games? Do you have no friends? Second Life? That place is just about weird sex fantasies!
  • No wonder analysts at Gartner, a leading technology research company, predict that three years from now 8 in 10 Internet users will work or play in virtual spaces.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • more attention to elaborate hairdos than Cher in her heyday
  • It has, in short, all the trauma and pain of real life, and some cautions are in order when it comes to seeking psychological support.
  • But maybe because it's a dream realm, hopefulness abounds. Nowhere is that truer than in Second Life's support groups, which help people cope with everything from cancer, depression, bipolar disorder and autism, to caretaker stress. There are more than 70 such groups, according to Second Life's Health Support Coalition. Most are secular. While a few groups are facilitated by associations such as the American Cancer Society, peers run most.
  • As expressed on the Web site, www.supportforhealing.com, associated with Second Life's Support for Healing Island, "we are NOT and never will replace the help of professionals ... but purely hold a safe place for people to come when they need a shoulder."
  • A year ago, before I had explored Second Life, I would have laughed at the idea of virtual shoulders. How can a person possibly be "real" via an avatar anyway - much less have a meaningful conversation with a puppy dog, barmaid, elf, or wilder avatar appearance such as a blob or a tree? It's hard enough to trust someone in real life, much less "second life." Then again, what better place to connect our yearning selves with other yearning selves than in a space of mutual creation - a place where those very selves can be one's unconscious made manifest? Indeed, avatar, in its original Sanskrit, refers to the descent of the soul in human form. Click, clack: When I rose from my hourlong anxiety group meeting, I felt seen and heard in the deepest part of me - more so, in fact, than in some "real life" interactions, where we often put up fronts.
  • The anonymity of Second Life can make all the difference in opening up to share within a support group. Somewhere in small-town America, a wife and mother of about 40 - she could be your neighbor or relative - suffers from serious depression. She loves animals, so within Second Life, as Fionella Flanagan, she's a big gray dog with a shaggy white mane. She attends the depression support group. Why does she do it? "I don't have to worry about what I say in the group coming back to bite me in my home town."
  • She also suffers from fibromyalgia, one of those crippling, invisible diseases that some doctors say is "all in your head." In Second Life, Fionella doesn't "have to overcome real life prejudice when I say I'm sick. There's none of that, 'but you look so good' junk."
  • When anxiety support group avatars were asked whether they were more honest as avatars than in real life, a wild-haired blonde, Galvana Gustafson (in real life an American, dancer and bassoonist with a master's degree in psychotherapy), put it this way: "My avatar is more honest than myself because the rejection won't hurt as much."
  • "All of Second Life is my support group," she reported.
  • Morgana later discovered the Support for Healing Island "because I was going through a major relapse with my bipolar and needed help from people who understood. I personally like to be in groups that are survivors, sufferers, and caretakers and loved ones, supporting one another. The best help and advice I have ever gotten are from people who have experienced firsthand."
  • People with autism or Asperger's especially seem to appreciate Second Life.
  • Researchers of autism use Second Life as a laboratory and tool. At the in-world SL-Labs and Teaching and Research facility, at the University of Derby in England, Simon Bignell, a lecturer in psychology, studies how Second Life can "enhance first life social-communication skills in people" with autistic spectrum disorders. The Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, Dallas, offers a therapy in Second Life for people with Asperger's that helps them practice interviewing for jobs.
  • Second Life's Health Support Coalition (a collaboration between Soj, the avatar Gentle Heron and Carolina Keats, who in real life is a medical librarian) has won a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to create an Ability Commons, for 40-plus smaller health and support groups. "Imagine a paralyzed 23-year-old lying in his family's back bedroom," the coalition wrote, "yearning for contact with age peers in similar situations. Second Life offers people with serious physical and cognitive disabilities opportunities to socialize and get information."
  • opens each meeting with disclaimers: "Please do not let these meetings take the place of professional help," he typed to us.
  • One in-world psychologist, Dr. Craig Kerley from Georgia, who was profiled on CBS's "Early Show," has hung his shingle for "cybertherapy" at $90 per hour. This work, he says, "can be valuable for those who have limited choices in their geographical region, have limited time to drive to regular in-person appointments, have limited mobility, and have limitations in their lifestyle that make traveling to a brick and mortar office difficult."
  • Still, Dr. Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UC Davis and a specialist in virtual worlds, cautions about therapy in Second Life, even with professionals. He advises using it only as "a potential adjunct to face-to-face therapy," and to "use passwords or other cues in Second Life to make sure you're talking to the right person" - the real therapist, not scammers posing as one.
  • Yellowlees uses Second Life as a teaching tool, not for therapy. His Virtual Hallucinations sim gives "the lived experience of schizophrenia - to hear voices and see visions" so his students (and the rest of us) can "get inside the head, just a bit, of someone who's psychotic." It certainly sparked empathy in me, much more richly than a mere clinical description of the disorder would have done.
  • Empathy: There's that word again, an odd one to associate with impersonal bytes and modems, but the right one. Second Life is a hot, humming thing of wire and light, a "server" - spiritual teachers would like the metaphor - that can carry community and genuine human sympathy.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08
     
    Personal anecdote of seeking support in Second Life. It is written by a journalist and addresses a lot of the issues from several sides - including advice from various mental health practitioners and comments from volunteers as well as some real insight into the world of SL and relating it to the public.
Eloise Pasteur

Finding health information, community online - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

groups health second life support

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08 - Cached
  • On finding support groups in Second Life: The SLHealthy wiki (slhealthy.wetpaint.com) is probably your best and most comprehensive resource for Second Life health support groups, organizations and locations.
  • On "official" Second Life health support groups like those operated by the American Cancer Society versus groups begun by individuals who have suffered from a particular ailment: We have not reviewed the information provided by groups, though in several instances, we've decided not to list information about a group because it's clearly unethical. One example is a pro-ana (or pro-anorexia) group, and another was a for-profit "organization."
  • If you're thinking about joining a group, I suggest you use the same radar you might in the real world: Do you feel comfortable? You should feel perfectly OK about asking questions you have.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • I sure understand professionals' concerns about the validity of information provided in peer health support groups, but it's important to understand that they meet anyway, with or without our support and listing. It's caveat emptor, as it is everywhere else - on the Web, in the media, it's all about questioning and evaluating health information. It may be surprising, but from my own observations of people in health support groups, the discussion does get round to whether information is valid or not, surprisingly often. I think we all are coming to realize that the goal has to be empowerment, so that the individual can be a true partner in his or her health care - informed, skeptical, involved, well-supported within the health care and personal communities.
  • With regard to health information from groups, I'd recommend you use what you learn as you might use information from Wikipedia: a great resource with terrific anecdotes that may help you understand more about a health condition, but not necessarily authoritative. And it might not necessarily apply to you, with your own unique health history, medications, and more. It can be a wonderful starting point and provide you with questions you can explore on your own, discuss with health care professionals and check out with a medical librarian. Someone should come up with a Latin corollary for caveat emptor that means "always ask, always learn"!
  • Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08
     
    Quick overview of using support groups in Second Life with an analytical slant and a link to SfH's list of groups
Eloise Pasteur

Second Stindberg: One year Babel Translations - growing of a virtual business - 0 views

stindberg.blogspot.com/...l-translations-growing-of.html

business model second life service translation work

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 12 Jul 08 - Cached
  • By that time I was primarily offering English/German at a price of 2 L$ / word, but soon requests for other languages came. I recruited French and Italian translators, soon Danish and Swedish followed. I charged 3 L$ for those languages, but kept English/German for a long time at the lower level as I was making these translations myself. In August 2007 I acquired my first reference customer. Blaze Columbia of Blaze Fashions not only insisted on paying the double rate, she also gave me some valuable business tips, like implementing a minimum fee for jobs. Back then I was in awe of what I considered "large" amounts of money, so I did not follow her advice of establishing 500 L$ as minimum fee, but instead chose 250 L$. I was reluctant to mention this limit to the first clients, but none of them objected. So up to date 250 L$ stayed the minimum amount for translation jobs.
  • In January I took my associate Tina Lynch aboard. Not only did she work on French translations, but she also replaced my notecard-based bookkeeping with a sophisticated spreadsheet based on Google docs. Under her lead we refined the spreadsheet over the next month, and now it is an invaluable tool of keeping track of jobs, degree of completion, distribution of jobs among translators and calculating revenues and fees.
  • In May, Babel Translation took over the competing agency "2nd Tongue Translation". For a couple of months we have silently cooperated already, granting 2nd Tongue a bulk buying rate for the languages they did not offer themselves. As 2nd Tongue's manager had to reduce her SL involvement, Babel Translations stepped in and integrated 2nd Tongue's business into our own.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Today, Babel Translations is the premiere translation and copywriting/text creation agency in SL. With a 3-figure number of jobs and a 6-figure amount of translation fees in recent months, our 50 translators provide the finest and most professional translation services in SL. We cover almost 20 languages, and each language is at least covered by 2, typically 5 translators. The translators themselves are in most cases RL translators, or have a similar qualification in language teaching, journalism or other text creation parts.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 12 Jul 08
     
    Description of setting up and running a translation service in SL including a range of tips for the budding SL entrepreneur
Fred Delventhal

Cell phone + Web cam + Second Life = Magic - Teach42 - 0 views

www.teach42.com/...hone_web_cam_second_life_magic

cellphone livevideo second_life secondlife sl streaming video webcam

shared by Fred Delventhal on 13 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Fred Delventhal on 13 Jun 08
     
    Streaming Live Video in Second Life
  • Fred Delventhal on 13 Jun 08
     
    w00t! Stream live video into SL.
Eloise Pasteur

Letter to Second Life Residents « Official Second Life Blog - 0 views

blog.secondlife.com/...etter-to-second-life-residents

blog fixes m linden plans second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 10 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Second Life continues to expand each and every day. New Residents are joining, artists are creating amazing content, new businesses are springing up, big companies are entering for the first time, educational institutions are building virtual universities… and the list goes on. Everyday I learn of something new, something bold, something you’ve created.
  • Second Life offers something no ones else does - an astoundingly rich array of user-created content and a large, diverse and ever-expanding virtual economy.
  • The content and economy reflect the diversity of the Resident population. Your creativity covers 1.5 billion meters of space that’s taken more than 500 million hours over the past five years to assemble. It’s a mammoth undertaking.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Our growth has come at a cost which you felt, and still feel - platform stability, viewer performance, lag, inventory management, etc. It’s important for you to know that we are ALL OVER these problems and that we’re making progress.
  • We have redesigned and rebuilt the registration process to make it easier for new members to join. Although it is still in testing, we’ve seen a significant improvement in registration levels. Significant. That, plus press attention outside the US have allowed us to hit some new registration records for the year. Very exciting. In addition, we are reworking the first-hour experience for new Residents to help them become more quickly acclimated and connected to Second Life and able to enjoy the richness and experience earlier.
  • m top to bottom – recognizing that new users don’t need such a dizzying array of features, and experienced users, land and business owners and content creators need better tools that are more thoughtfully designed and organized for their needs. Everyone needs better inventory management and search is due for an overhaul. We hear you. We’re on it.
  • Our next viewer, when it comes in full release, will offer a much better inworld experience. With more than 50 crash fixes, you’ll have fewer viewer failures and we’ve fixed some irritating elements in the interface.
  • In addition, Torley Linden has produced a library of 150 video tutorials designed to make it easier to do everything from teaching new Residents basic skills to putting media on their parcel. The videos are currently displayed on the blog and organized by category for easier consumption.
  • Support continues to expand its services to the Residents; in the last quarter we have redesigned the Support Portal interface in response to your feedback, to bring key components of our service front and center so they are more accessible.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 10 Jul 08
     
    M Linden's address to the world on the blog. It's a well written piece, unlike some of the Lab's previous effort, and although it's not as formal as a plan with timelines, it's got some nice indication of recent successes and imminent improvements in the pipeline. It's a confidence inspiring piece that maybe they've got management for their current size and maturity
Eloise Pasteur

It's Lively in the virtual sea » VTOR - Virtual TO Reality - 0 views

www.vtoreality.com/...1731

comment lively opinion second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Update 11:11am PST: Lestat figured this out and shared. You just double-click on the seat cushion to sit in the chairs
  • In its current state, Lively is like IRC in 3D. You can meet your friends in a room and chat with bubbles over your head. I’ve seen many attempts to do this type of thing over the years but the only one that comes to mind as being a big success is Habbo Hotel.
  • When there is an ability to actually create something original objects (can’t do yet), stream audio and video (can’t do yet), interact with objects (how can you do this?),
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    Yet more on Lively
Eloise Pasteur

Look Lively! - Massively - 0 views

www.massively.com/...look-lively

comment lively massively opinion second life tateru nino

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • The Massively crew has spent a little more time hammering away at Google's new virtual artifice, Lively. By now, you've probably seen all sorts of news reports calling it a rival and competitor to Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life. Technically, that's what we call bollocks
  • Describing Lively as a rival to Second Life is like calling a conference center a rival to a library. They're just not servicing the same needs, and the comparison is fundamentally nonsensical. Lively is tightly focused, and fails to intrude on the bulk of virtual worlds space.
  • Movement is accomplished by double-clicking on a spot to teleport your avatar there, or clicking and dragging the avatar with the left mouse button to walk your avatar. Don't try to drag your avatar past the border of the camera view without repositioning your camera first, or you will get unsettling jumps and find your avatar in strange places.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Lively keeps things simple and does those simple things well. The television in our sample room is playing the trailer for Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. A few clicks is all that is required to link a YouTube video to a television object -- but as far as we know, no other embedded video formats are supported.
  • All content that is currently in Lively is made by Google-approved developers, and is presently free -- though it looks very much like the majority of content in Lively will be pay-for before long.
  • If you want to interact with an object (sitting down, for example), single left click on the object. If you want to play an animation, single left click on your avatar, and select an item from the animations tab (different lists of animations are available depending on whether you are sitting or standing). And ... that's actually about it. Lively is simple, and straightforward, and focuses on doing one thing well: The furnishable 3D chatroom. It can be embedded on a webpage and your avatar can be in multiple rooms at once via different browser windows or tabs. If you've got a group of up to 20 people (who all have Google accounts and are running Windows), and want to share a Youtube video or sit around and shoot the breeze in a lightweight space, and having your own content isn't for you, then Lively is for you.
  • But a rival to Second Life? No more so than corn syrup is a rival for sea salt.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    More on Lively, from the Massively crew
Eloise Pasteur

Reuters/Second Life » Google launches virtual experience web-site - 0 views

secondlife.reuters.com/...es-virtual-experience-web-site

comment lively second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Google on Tuesday launched a three-dimensional virtual experience website, similar to the popular virtual world Second Life.
    • Eloise Pasteur
      Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
       
      Really?!
  • “If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose,” Niniane Wang, engineering manager, who oversaw Lively’s creation, said on Google’s official blog. Lively also allows for playing YouTube videos in virtual TVs and showing photos in virtual picture frames inside the rooms, Wang said.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    Reuters take on Lively
Eloise Pasteur

Google Launches Virtual World Called Lively - 0 views

www.techcrunch.com/...es-virtual-world-called-lively

comment lively opinion second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    A really short bit on Lively, and one of the few positives I've read
Eloise Pasteur

Second Life's low population density - Massively - 0 views

www.massively.com/...d-lifes-low-population-density

analysis life population-density second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 26 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Eloise Pasteur on 26 Sep 08
     
    A suggestion as to why Second Life is "empty" compared to towns.
Eloise Pasteur

ArtsPlace SL: Where are the new approaches? - 0 views

artfossett.blogspot.com/...where-are-new-approaches.html

challenge education immersion presentation second life tools

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 07 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Speaking only for myself, I have as little imagination as the next bloke, probably less. I broadly agree with where Stephen is coming from - I am crap at thinking up different ways of presenting stuff to audiences in-world - but I also think that there are times when simply replicating a RL activity is perfectly OK.
  • Over to you... how would you use SL to share and discuss 4 positions on a topic without it simply looking like a re-creation of a traditional RL panel session?
  • Eloise Pasteur on 07 Jul 08
     
    Some support for the idea that SL can be boring, should be boring, and challenge to suggest ways 4-way discussions could be made better in SL
Fred Delventhal

EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 43, Number 5, September/October 2008 | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

connect.educause.edu/...47218

education learning magazine secondlife sl teaching virtualworlds

shared by Fred Delventhal on 22 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Fred Delventhal on 22 Sep 08
     
    Virtual Worlds? "Outlook Good" AJ Kelton ("AJ Brooks") Whether it is Second Life or another virtual world, this foundational movement is not going away. The question to be addressed in the coming months and years is how higher education and, subsequently, individual institutions will determine the best way to continue to move forward with virtual worlds. Higher Education as Virtual Conversation Sarah Robbins-Bell ("Intellagirl Tully") Virtual worlds can become an important tool in an educator's arsenal. But using this tool requires a shift in thinking and an adjustment in pedagogical methods that will embrace the community, the fluid identity, and the participation-indeed, the increased conversation-that virtual spaces can provide. Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World Cynthia M. Calongne ("Lyr Lobo") The use of virtual worlds expands on the campus-based and online classrooms, enhancing learning experiences. Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences. Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse Chris Collins ("Fleep Tuque") Beyond the capabilities that virtual worlds offer us at the moment, it is the possibilities that we can imagine for the future that may be the most compelling. Virtual worlds technology, like the Internet in general, is changing the way we access and experience information and the way we can access and connect with each other. Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education Chris Johnson ("ScubaChris Wollongong") When using a roadmap, one can take many different paths to reach a desired destination. Similarly, institutions can take many different turns along the road to implementing an ideal virtual world for higher education.
Eloise Pasteur

DMCA notices in Second Life: A practical example - Massively - 0 views

www.massively.com/...econd-life-a-practical-example

dcma life second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 11 Sep 08 - Cached
  • The basic lessons here seem to be: The regulations governing DMCA notices are heavily in favor of the issuer. That's a matter of US law, and if that bothers you, you should speak with your United States federal representative. Act quickly, if a DMCA notice is filed against you and you wish to contest it. You have no time to dither. If someone files a notice against you, you have only two days to have a complete, correct and satisfactory counter-notification faxed to Linden Lab. Someone may file a DMCA notice against you with complete anonymity as far as you're concerned. While they have to give an identity to Linden Lab, that information is never available to you, unless they chose to pursue additional legal actions above and beyond DMCA notices. Once a DMCA notice has been filed, your identity is held hostage to whatever content has been nominated in the notice. You must divulge your identity to the person who filed the notice, via Linden Lab, in order to have your content returned to you. If your content should be returned to you by Linden Lab, the odds are that not all of it will be returned, and that some of it will be returned in an unusable form, or in a state that requires additional time and cost from you to restore it to original condition. The people utilizing the CopyrightAgent Linden account apparently need some training (or retraining) in the mechanics of the Second Life permissions system. While the Lab may be exempt from liability, it seems improper to carelessly damage or destroy a user's content in the act of restoring it.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 11 Sep 08
     
    Description of having a DCMA filed against you and the downside of it, even when you are innocent!
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