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Peter Stindberg explains it this way: “Males want challenges, tasks and goals — all this is not apparent in SL. You need to find your own purpose in SL, make your own goals, find your own tasks. This makes SL less attractive compared to a kill-all-enemies-grab-all-gold type of game.” He suggests converting orientation stations into games which might offer a reward, perhaps a small amount of L$ or some sort of avatar clothing or equipment. “It’s a stereotype, but give each new male resident a fishing rod and a shotgun, fill the Linden seas with fish and the forests with deer, reward each trophy with L$1 or status points or gadgets, and the crucial first days and weeks will pass more easily,” adds Peter.

Male fashion blogs have blossomed, among them Winter Jefferson’s blog, In Cold Blood; Lawless McBride’s blog, Half Arsed; Takeshi Ugajin’s blog, Shop with Takeshi; Lustinian Tomsen’s blog, Second Life Male Style and Fashion; Monta Horan’s blog, Monta; and Oscar Page’s blog, Oscaresque. Of course, one can’t leave out the collaborative blogs Men’s Second Style and SL Men, and now there are even two blogs covering male-related freebies: Free Finds for Men and Free for Men.

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.

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.

Actually - and for some of my readers maybe surprisingly - I think that Linden Lab has a strategy for the coming years and Second Life's place in the Metaverse.

In parallel, it is interesting to see, that Linden Lab created a "Department of Public Works" earlier this year, which is responsible for "beautifying Second Life" - after a long long time, where the company just flooded the market with more and more "land" (servers) which quickly were converted into huge trailer parks.

The problem for Linden Lab is, that they target so many dfferent audiences. And it is impossible, to offer all of these audiences ONE single product, a product that will make all of them happy.

I believe, that they are all part of a unified strategy to position Second Life as a standard tool for creating and accessing the future Web 3D as well as to position Linden Lab as one - but not the only - important service provider.

ut, comparing SL to "The West" (as Mitch Kapor did it in his birthday speech), please consider: not all of the important groups and personalities in the American West of the 1840s or so would be well respected citizens in the California of 2008

a second important audience, Linden Lab is targeting, too, is the corporate audience, the educational institutions, etc. Despite Linden Lab's propaganda, this is a very small market today (the majority of earnings comes from consumers) but it is growing. This audience needs more "control & security". If Linden Lab wants to succeed in these markets, they have to provide that - not only on seperate estates, because the vast society of Second Life CAN be an interesting aspect for some of these projects, too :) Not all of them work best in a walled garden.

For those who want a walled garden, I am sure, that Linden Lab will soon offer some options which go well beyond what is possible on private estates. It will be possible to host closed sub-grids in Linden Lab's data centers in 2009. I am very certain of that.

Linden Lab will offer one. Others will do that, too. There will be "adult grids" (they are already being built). There will be grids for many, many sub-cultures and those will certainly not have the same set of rules like Linden Labs SL has (now or then). And there will be corporate "Intraworlds", educational and marketing grids, tightly controlled and partly or fully closed off to the public.

i3D Tools at English Village Holoteaching™ Virtual holodecks enable teachers to "Holo-teach™." Holoteaching™ is a term we use to describe teaching using a holodeck. Plain and simple. We'd love to do this in the real world, but since real world technology is not yet available we are doing it in SL. Holoteaching™ provides a number of advantages for our teachers. Namely - context.  If you've ever taught a language class to a group of students, you will understand the importance of context.   For example, if a student was, say, going to Italy for a vacation, and wanted to study how to order some food - they could easily pick up a book on Italian language and memorize the necessary phases.  If however, they were actually able to do a trial run - and actually sit down IN an Italian restaurant BEFORE they went on vacation, the likelihood of a good meal would most definitely increase. This is EXACTLY what holoteaching provides - an avenue for teachers to immerse students into rich role play scenarios where the walls, floors, and ceilings are textured to match what they are learning! Talk about fun!

Holo-teaching also allows transforms our classrooms into versatile meeting spaces.  If a teacher needs to provide office hours, or meet with the president, or a college across the globe, they can easily transform their classroom into the appropriate space.  Need a meeting room? No problem, click on meeting rooms, and choose from our selection. You can't find a meeting room you like? No problem, build it yourself, and our engineers will program it into the holodeck for you!  Need a library to do research on educational technology? Load our research lab, and have the walls filled with links to real world research portals on the web!  The options are endless!

Interactive White boards English Village also makes use of several interactive white boards in Second Life. This allows our teachers to import Real World content from their PowerPoint presentations.  Once loaded, teachers can flip through each slide easily like they would in a normal class setting.  During conferences, our teachers also have the option to allow their audience, or guests to import and share their own PowerPoint slides during the meeting.

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.

Then again, it looked like most of the crowd was complaining about the excruciatingly painful lag.

Combine that with a confusing little interface and it was clearly anything but a “fun” experience. And remember that we were all cheating. Everybody on the “Linden Lab” room at that time was a veteran Second Life resident; we’re not exactly newbies with virtual worlds. We have tried several, and in some cases, use different VWs regularly and every day. We’re used to lag, to semi-functional software, to application crashes (several people crashed during the few hours I was online), to things not loading, to silly mistakes that everybody does. We’re also used to the insanely complex (but virtually rich) interface of Second Life, and use computers and their complex applications to accomplish tasks every day. And, of course, we all are very open minded and eager to try new things out.

Lively was anything but Lively — except for the fact that you were in a visually unappealing chatroom with a lot of friends or at least acquaintances from one’s journey across the Metaverse. Like I usually say, most virtual worlds I’ve tried only capture my attention for about 15 minutes, and it’s up to the developers to make sure that I enjoy the first 15 minutes

The “cartoonish” look (which is so great for rendering things quickly) is also something that baffles me. I can’t believe that Google is targeting the teen population.

After all, Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld claims: What that means is that companies will be able to re-create their office and meeting space, and events companies can create or re-create entire conferencing facilities. Your avatar can wander around, see the “booths,” check out the conferences or interface with other “attendees” — all in virtual space.  Really, Mike?… They might do that, but definitely not on Lively.

Even a MoU representative (who, as said, did create a room for a client in Lively already) considers that opinion an “interesting hypothesis”. Put into other words, not even MoU seriously believes that article, and it’s just one of a series — which, if I didn’t know the reputation of the magazines writing them, I’d just believe they were infodumps straight out of Google’s marketing department. The claims are just ludicrous.

If Google has more plans for Lively, they’re not telling — and instead are offering a terrible product, way below their usual offerings.

So why are people so enthusiastic about Google Lively? I have only one explanation: it has the brand “Google” behind it.

As a 3D-chatroom-embedded-on-the-web, it falls behind almost every other product and application I have tried in the past 4 years, no matter where you wish to find something good. The animations are goofy and cartoonish, to the point of extreme irritability.

The interface is not obvious, but then again, SL suffers from the same problem, and it’s just a question of getting used to it.

There is no content creation at all; no way to integrate it with anything; no programming/scripting; no chat tools (even GTalk, known to have the least features just after SL’s chat system, has far more!).

And, more important: no support, a terrible forum system (I can’t answer on half the threads), no helpful people around… if you bump into a Google Developer, they’re very likely very friendly (or so everybody who met them claims), but that’s all you get.

Google’s webpage for Lively is even more minimalistic than anything else they’ve launched before

And there is nothing on the Google developers’ sites either.

Searching for the “most popular” rooms leads to the inevitable: the most rated one was a dance club (since you can stream music) and on the top ten list you had a lot of sex-related rooms as well.

This was a terrible disappointment. I admit to being very naive. I was expecting something with at least the quality of Vivaty which at least has pretty decent avatars

but using SketchUp to import at least crude models. Even importing plywood cubes would be nice! Instead, we have to rely on the “Catalog”, created by a limited group of Google developers.

Some SL residents managed to talk to the Google Developers, and these said that there was a 3D Max plugin to allow the creation of content into Lively. The plugin works 90% of the time but it can only improve. There is no idea or plan or announcement on if that plugin will be released to the public.

Google is known to be “the company that does no evil”. But looking from my point of view — an enthusiast of the 3D Social Web — I feel cheated. We were doing great in opening the minds to millions of users to look at the Metaverse as Second Life defines it as the next human-machine interface for all our tasks. Granted, we all know it’ll take ages — another decade at least — but we all are here for the long term. Instead, what we get from one of the industry giants is that “3D is bad, embedding cartoons on Web pages is good”. Why? Well, it should be obvious. Google is the market leader in (2D) web search content — both text and images (and soon video). While there is an HTML-based World-Wide Web, Google will be a major player in it — always.

I don’t think there are coincidences. In about 24 hours (not in the same day for the timezone-impaired), Sun’s Wonderland gets slashdotted, Linden Lab announces the massive growth of Second Life and demonstrates the interoperability between their main grid and IBM’s OpenSim-based grid, and Google launches their own virtual world, Lively. July 8th was definitely the Day of the Metaverse!

So, like probably billions of people around the world, I tried to join in to Lively and see what’s all about. Not to be turned down by the lack of Mac support