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Eloise Pasteur

Gwyn's Home » Not So Lively: Chronicles of Day One on Google's Virtual World - 0 views

gwynethllewelyn.net/...y-one-on-googles-virtual-world

analysis comment gwyneth llewlyn lively second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • (no new virtual world supports the Mac these days, in spite of the “promises” done to “support it soon” — with “only” 8% of market share and growing, the Mac is simply not interesting for developers to focus on)
    • Eloise Pasteur
      Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
       
      Not true, Small Worlds does
  • Being — like all Google products! — a Beta version, there are perhaps 40 or 50 available options (not the “millions” announced by Google reps) and they can be somewhat configured, but the choices are confusing and very, very limited.
  • “Linden Lab” room a close second. Figuring out that here I would already find a few familiar faces from Second Life®, I went for that one. The choice was certainly correct — Dusan Writer, Grace McDunnough, Jurin Juran, and likely a few others (sometimes it’s not easy to figure out who’s who!) were around in the room, testing the cumbersome interface. And cumbersome it is!
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • 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
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    More on Lively. Google is missing the mark
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

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
Ole C Brudvik

eslteacherlink.co.kr - About us - 0 views

eslteacherlink.co.kr/index.php

education englishvillage holo-teaching holodeck secondlife

shared by Ole C Brudvik on 21 Apr 07 - Cached
  • n January 2007, Eslteacherlink.com constructed English Village,  an immersive 3D simulation for language learners and teachers across the globe!  At English Village teachers meet students in REAL TIME, using an avatar, Virtual white boards, VOICE, 3D objects, and role playable holodecks to provide 21st century learning.
  • Futuristic, yet Practical Instead of keeping our island flat, and having the majority of our buildings  on the ground level, we have situated 13 glass classrooms along a 120 meter high, horse-shoe shaped mountain ridge. Below the steep mountain ridges, lies a welcoming sandy beach that reaches out into a c resent moon shaped bay area. This large open space is used frequently by our teachers for special learning activities, such as market place and carnival role play scenarios.
  • The Onion Our meeting area is in the shape of an Onion, and is constructed of 100% virtual pink stained glass.  We actually never planned to use a giant onion as our central meeting area... but it actually does a great job of representing  the organic nature of our island ~ We build. We make mistakes. We learn.... and sometimes we cry!  So.. an onion - is perfect. Everyone begins in the onion. When an avatar teleports to our island for the first time, thats where they land - smack dab in the center beautiful pink wonder.  Around the edges of the onion are several multi colored hamster tubes sprouting out - connecting to each holodeck classroom. Inside the hamster tubes are convenient People Movers - you know, the ones you see at the airport.  Here, avatars just click on the red loading ball, and they are instantly moved along the pathway 100 meters to their destination.  This saves virtual transport time.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 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.
Noreen Strehlow

Exploring Diigo Secondlife Mashup - 73 views

I just have to agree that creating a 3D model of a cell is a great idea and have been working on other types of building assignments along those same lines. If anyone remembers the Edible Cell Cont...

diigo education mashups secondlife

started by Ole C Brudvik on 22 Apr 07 1 follow-up, last by Noreen Strehlow on 07 May 08
James OReilly

Versatile, Immersive, Creative and Dynamic Virtual 3-D Healthcare Learning Environments... - 0 views

www.jmir.org/e26

shared by James OReilly on 13 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Virtual 3-D Healthcare Learning Environments
  • The author provides a critical overview of three-dimensional (3-D) virtual worlds and “serious gaming” that are currently being developed and used in healthcare professional education and medicine.
  • Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Siemens’ Connectivism Theory
  • accelerating momentum
  • there are some fundamental questions which remain unanswered.
  • it is beneficial to address while the race to adopt and implement highly engaging Web 3-D virtual worlds is watched in healthcare professional education
  • Therefore, Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory [5] and Siemens’ Connectivism Theory [6] for today’s learners will serve as theoretical frameworks for this paper.
  • A 3-D virtual world, also known as a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World (MMVW), is an example of a Web 2.0/Web 3-D dynamic computer-based application.
  • applications that enable social publishing, such as blogs and wikis
  • the most popular virtual world used by the general public is Linden Lab’s Second Life (SL)
  • health information island
  • US agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health conduct meetings in SL to discuss the educational potential of SL
  • virtual medical universities exist all over the world
  • The term “avatar” is an old Sanskrit word portraying a deity which takes on a human shape
  • Trauma Center
  • Virtual worlds are currently being used as educational spaces [1] and continue to grow in popularity on campuses and businesses worldwide. Furthermore, access to versions of virtual worlds on the Web, such as “Croquet,” “Uni-Verse,” and “Multiverse” are predicted within two to three years to be mainstream in education
  • there are reported advantages to having students engage in these emerging technologies
  • By allowing students time to interact with other avatars (eg, patients, staff members, and other healthcare professionals) in a safe, simulated environment, a decrease in student anxiety, an increase in competency in learning a new skill, and encouragement to cooperate and collaborate, as well as resolve conflicts, is possible.
  • High quality 3-D entertainment that is freely accessible via Web browsing facilitates engagement opportunities with individuals or groups of people in an authentic manner that illustrates collective intelligence
  • Advanced Learning and Immersive Virtual Environment (ALIVE) at the University of Southern Queensland
  • Who would imagine attending medical school in a virtual world?
  • Problem-based learning groups enrolled in a clinical management course at Coventry University meet in SL and are employed to build learning facilities for the next semester of SL students. This management course teaches students to manage healthcare facilities and is reported to be the first healthcare-related class to use SL as a learning environment.
  • Another example of a medical school using SL is St. George’s Medical School in London.
  • Stanford University medical school
  • Another virtual world project developed by staff at the Imperial College in London, in collaboration with the National Physical Lab in the United Kingdom, is the Second Health Project
  • Mesko [35] presents the top 10 virtual medical sites in SL.
  • The development and use of 3-D virtual worlds in nursing education is increasing.
  • Some educators may balk at adopting this technology because there is a learning curve associated with the use of 3-D virtual worlds.
  • Let’s have fun, explore these fascinating worlds and games, and network with others while respecting diverse ways of life-long learning and current researchers’ findings.
  • there is an underlying push in higher education to adopt these collaborative tools and shift the paradigm from a traditional Socratic method of education to one possessing a more active and interactive nature
  • One may view online virtual worlds and serious gaming as a threat to the adoption and purchase of high-fidelity computerized patient-simulation mannequins that are currently purchased for healthcare-profession training. For example, nurses may login into SL and learn Advanced Cardiac Life Support at their convenience, and it costs virtually nothing for the nurse and perhaps a nominal fee for the developer.
  • The educational opportunity in SL may not be a replacement for the doctor- or nurse-patient interaction or relationship, but SL may serve as an adjunct or pre- or post-learning tool.
  • one recalls when critics questioned the validity and reliability of the stethoscope invented by Laennec in 1816 and how today it is second nature to use this assessment tool.
  • 2006 health fair
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!
Dr. Fridemar Pache

Technology - Mash into SL - 58 views

Welcome Abbath, I am interested too, how to bridge the two systems. From the Web into SL there is an easy way to make connections. Leave in some wiki or other page, where you have write access, ...

mash technology

started by Ole C Brudvik on 20 Apr 07 6 follow-ups, last by Dr. Fridemar Pache on 24 May 07
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
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

Serendipitous Sex - Eloise's thoughts and fancies - 0 views

eloisepasteur.net/...index.php

Second Life sex adult invention creativity

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • My contention is simple - when we're in Second Life to work, we can use the same techniques we use in first life to focus on the task at hand rather than that gorgeous avatar. If we want, later, to consensually jump that avatar's virtual bones (to be deliberately somewhat crude) and they are interested too, then just like flirting in the office, we can run off together and do this. However, if we're in a space that forbids this - Lively I'm remembering you here, but not only you - there is that allure of the forbidden, the censored, the naughty. People can, and will, work around the limitations in some quite amazingly inventive ways. Knowing it's not forbidden lets us (as a group) apply that energy and creativity to the task at hand when we're working, and apply it to the avatar at hand when we're not - in much the same way we learn how to do as adults.
  • The obvious corollary to this: if we ban sex from Second Life (which isn't the same as the current proposals about the adult continent) we switch back to a situation more like Lively where the allure of the forbidden becomes stronger. Creativity, learning and the like go down, and how long would it be until Second Life follows Lively into closure?
  • There are a range of other things too. The sex market in Second Life contains a huge amount of innovation - if people want to do sex, people will find ways to let them and support them. Whilst not every tool to support avatar sex turns into a tool to support education or business in Second Life, quite a lot (not all, but quite a lot) of the tools that you find used in education and business settings in Second Life, have their origins in the sex industry. Even when they're duplicating tools that are used in RL education/business settings, the code in Second Life is often explored and refined in the sex industry in Second Life first.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So, there you have it. Second Life, in my opinion, gains from the fact that it lets the adults play as they choose as well as work as they choose. The fact there's a market for sex toys drives innovation in Second Life, and supports the business and education communities too. Although the press would, at least sometimes, have you believe it's a playground for perverts, so is the atomic world. But I do rather suspect if you remove the sex play entirely, you remove one of the things that, whilst it draws unwelcome attention, drives Second Life to be a success.
Kerry J

A word of caution when trying the Second Life Viewer 2 Beta with current OpenSim | just... - 3 views

justincc.org/...er-2-beta-with-current-opensim

opensim viewer virtualworlds education second life Second_Life iluedau edauilu sl

shared by Kerry J on 13 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Kerry J on 13 Mar 10
     
    Thursday, February 25, 2010By justinccHi folks.  Just a brief blog post to remind people to take care when experimenting with Linden Lab's Beta Second Life Viewer 2 with the current OpenSim builds.  I've seen mixed reports of how well it works with OpenSim at the moment (some people seem to suffer a crash almost immediately while others seem to be able to use it to some extent). However, according to John Hurliman the version of the OpenMetaverse library currently being used by OpenSim has a problem dealing with at least one of the new inventory packets in the 2.0 Viewer.  This means that it's not impossible that using the viewer with OpenSim today could inadvertently destroy some of your inventory items.
anonymous

SSRN-Virtual Rule of Law by Michael Risch - 4 views

papers.ssrn.com/...papers.cfm

law VirtualWorlds regulation

shared by anonymous on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Oct 09
     
    This article, which follows a presentation at the West Virginia Law Review Digital Entrepreneurship Symposium, is the first to consider whether virtual worlds provide a rule of law that sets expectations for virtual business. Many consider the rule of law a catalyst for economic development, and there is reason to believe that it will be equally important in virtual economies, despite differences from the real world. As more people turn to virtual worlds to earn a livelihood, the rule of law will become prominent in encouraging investments in virtual business. The article finds - unsurprisingly - that virtual worlds now lack many of the elements of the rule of law. Which aspects fail is more surprising, however. Provider agreements and computer software, the sources of regulation that are most often criticized as "anti-user," provide the best theoretical hope for achieving the rule of law, even if they currently fail in practice. On the contrary, widely proposed "reforms," such as community norms, self-regulation, and importation of real-world law face both theoretical and practical barriers to implementation of the rule of law in virtual worlds. Part I of the article describes virtual worlds and their connection to business. Part II defines a framework to measure the rule of law in virtual worlds. Part III discusses the various types of regulation in virtual worlds, and Part IV critically analyzes how these regulations measure up against rule of law requirements. The article concludes with some suggestions about how providers might enhance legal rule in virtual worlds.
Kerry J

Developing for SecondLife / OpenSim | drupal.org - 1 views

drupal.org/350618

virtualworlds opensim drupal

shared by Kerry J on 27 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Kerry J on 27 Oct 09
     
    Second Life objects are written in a language called Linden Scripting Language (LSL). For more on how to use this language, refer to this wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal. A good tutorial on LSL can be found in this Dr Dobbs Journal article using the Linden Scripting Language. The Second Life framework Drupal module interfaces with Second Life using the llHTTPRequest() function. See details here for llHTTPRequest. In order to write a Drupal application that interfaces with Second Life, you need to create a new module. See the sltest module in the samples directory for an example. The app is the application name, and is also the module name. The cmd is a command that your module/app must handle. The args vary from one cmd to the other. The $sl object contains the Second Life info you need to know, such as region, location in the grid, user name, user key, ...etc. The $args is an array that is passed from the LSL script to you.
Eloise Pasteur

MediaShift . Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On | PBS - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...t-virtual-life-goes-on050.html

Second Life journalism Reuters CNN PBS review

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 20 Feb 09 - Cached
  • How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario, as I detailed in a previous post on MediaShift. Some journalists simply tired of SL, as so many people tried it and then bailed because of its steep learning curve and high technological requirements. But the journalists that have been more enmeshed within the world have been rewarded with plenty of cultural and sociological (and yes, business) stories.
  • John Lester leads customer market development for education and health care for Linden Lab, which runs Second Life. I met him in-world and had an instant-messaging chat with his alter-ego, Pathfinder Linden, about how the media has covered SL over the years. My SL name was Lynx Wickentower: Lynx: Did media miss the bigger story of Second Life? Pathfinder Linden at the educational meeting in SL Pathfinder: That seems to be a typical pattern for the human species, yes? We did it with all the previous mediums. We'll do it again in the future. We always misunderstand new mediums, initially treating them like pre-existing ones (e.g., treating the web like print media; treating television like radio). But then we learn new ways of seeing the tools and new ways to leverage them.
  • As for Reuters' coverage of SL, they did better than most journalists who did drive-by stories with a day or two of research in-world. The bureau lived for more than two years. Still, James Wagner Au, who writes the excellent New World Notes blog about SL said they could have done better. "Their writers, Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel, are fine journalists, and did some great external business-oriented reports, but at the same time, I don't think they were ever passionately engaged in the medium or Second Life's community on an experiential level," Au told me. "Consequently, their reporting very much had a distanced, 'outside looking in' flavor that caused them to often miss the big picture, in my opinion."
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  • While Reuters thinks that the story has moved on from Second Life, CNN and many others beg to differ. The broadcaster now has an even larger presence in SL. Rather than send in a reporter as a corresponent in-world, CNN relies on SL residents to report their own news as citizen journalists for its iReport site. CNN.com senior producer Lila King said that Second Life iReporters have posted 376 stories since it launched a year ago, but that relatively small number did lead to a number of stories on written by CNN.com producers (including this one about relationships in-world). King Since iReport.com launched in Feb. 2008, Second Life iReporters have posted 376 stories. It's probably worth noting that "in-world" iReporters actually began sending stories when the iReport SL hub launched in November 2007, but we don't have an accurate count of stories submitted before iReport.com launched. King said that SL has been more than just a story-generating tool for CNN's iReport team; it's also helped them learn to nurture an online community. "We've started to see a new benefit of being in Second Life: it gives us a place to polish our skills in community building," King said. "Newsrooms everywhere, ours included, are trying to learn how to foster meaningful, two-way conversations with their audiences. When we hold our virtual news meetings every Tuesday afternoon (2 pm Second Life Time/5 pm ET) with the Second Life iReport community, that's exactly what we're doing: listening and interacting in real-time, offering feedback and courting new ideas along the way."
  • One thing that has survived the hype is the virtual economy of Second Life and other online worlds and gaming environments, where people sell virtual goods with game-based money that can be converted to real money. BusinessWeek's Hof believes that's a story that has staying power. "The notion of virtual economies is already becoming a solid business model for many game companies, and even social networks like Facebook -- by some accounts up to $2 billion in revenues -- so that seems like a trend that has some legs, and it's one you can credit Second Life with proving as much as anyone," Hof said. "And of course, the idea of user-generated content is huge today on a number of fronts, though Second Life is just one example of that."
  • Eloise Pasteur on 20 Feb 09
     
    Balanced article about the impact of journalism on SL and SL on journalism.
Eloise Pasteur

Gwyn's Home » Blog Archive » Let's put e-democracy to a test! - 0 views

gwynethllewelyn.net/...lets-put-e-democracy-to-a-test

Second Life change.org vote democracy Obama

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 31 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Barack Obama’s change.org website is accepting requests for ideas and projects to be implemented during his term. Knowing that he’s all for technological innovation, and that several successful experiments with e-democracy were done inside Second Life®, let’s try to push for even more. Andabata Mandelbrot is proposing that we vote to create an international metaverse - the Internet equivalent of virtual worlds. To get this implemented, we need 400 votes! And the deadline is… today at midnight, so we need to hurry… Voting is simple, you just need to create an account on the change.org account and vote (you can even log in with your Facebook or MySpace account) by clicking on the icon. If you’re willing to promote this idea, you can, of course, do more — add widgets, push it to your social network, and so on. With a surprisingly open-minded approach, voting is not limited to US residents, but it’s totally open to international voters too. The change is for America, but its impact will be global. A nice touch!
  • Eloise Pasteur on 31 Dec 08
     
    Vote for a change in the US and the metaverse, even if you're not a US resident
Eloise Pasteur

SL Bloggers Mix and Match - Making 'em stay - 0 views

www.brandaluna.net/...s-mix-and-match-making-em-stay

Second Life new-user-experience male

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 17 Nov 08 - Cached
  • this post is her detailed look at keeping new male residents engaged in SL
  • Right, where was I? Oh yeah, the learning curve. I’m supposed to be telling you about “The lack of encouragement for new male residents to stay in Second Life”, but since I’m, err, female — does a quick check, right, okay, definitely female — I decided to conduct an Extremely Unscientific Survey among male residents to see what they had to say. 16 male residents responded, and the general consensus is that… [drum roll] … friends are generally the greatest form of encouragement for new male residents to stay in SL. “I came and went my first year. I hung around when I finally started making some friends and started going places and doing things with them,” says Dyami Jameson.
  • “I think men in Second Life are more motivated by ‘goals’ and scoring systems, which makes SL less attractive to them than women, who are more attracted to the social aspect of the metaverse,” comments Prad Prathivi. “Guys are naturally competitive and aim to lead the pack, which is harder and less obvious to achieve in SL.”
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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.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 17 Nov 08
     
    Thoughts on keeping men in SL
Eloise Pasteur

The Otherland Group - Blog: Second Life at a Cross Roads? - 0 views

otherland.blogs.com/...second-life-at.html

3dinternet analysis blog future life plans second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 31 Jul 08 - Cached
  • For many people outside of the "virtual worlds industry" the terms "virtual world" and "Second Life" are still more or less synonyms. This is especially funny, as many people in the industry seem to have written off Second Life because of many disappointing developments in 2007 and the big negative hype in the press.
  • It is not a secret, though, that Linden Lab's management and investors still believe that the Second Life technology will be the (or a least "a") corner stone of the future Web3D. Is this totally unrealistic? And would would Linden Lab have to do, to make this come true if it isn't? Making the platform more stable is a simple answer - and certainly a pre-requesite. But what about other decisions? More control? Or less? More openness? Or a tightly controlled product? And a product for which target groups? Based on what business model?
  • Both will tell you, that Linden Lab indeed has a rather profitable business model, is expecting significant growth and is targeting markets way outside the current user base (actually alienating large groups in the current user base).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 31 Jul 08
     
    Thoughts on the future of Second Life in the development of the 3D metaverse
Teachers Without Borders

Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills - 0 views

www.eschoolnews.com/...index.cfm

21st century skills eschoolnews games gaming second life

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 28 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Online gaming can help students develop many of the skills they'll be required to use upon leaving school, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity, agreed educators who spoke during an April 16 webinar on gaming in education.
  • gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making
  • repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • "I call Second Life an engine for creativity," she said.
  • L'Amoreaux cited a team of students in an internship program studying museum creatorship, who partnered with others for a Second Life activity that involved a recreation of the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 Nazi Germany.  As participants, the students assumed the roles of reporters, exploring the events for themselves. 
  • Still, Trevena cautioned that teachers, administrators, and technology staff must work together and be prepared to support a Second Life program.  Identifying sustainable funding sources, upgrading computers and investing in hardware, and having a backup plan if the Second Life platform is down are all necessary.
  • A 2006 NCES and University of Michigan study found that by age 21, the average youth has watched 20,000 hours of television and played 10,000 hours of video games, said Ntiedo Etuk, the CEO Tabula Digita, which offers games centered on pre-algebra and algebra. 
  • "The reason that [gaming] is successful is obviously that it's relevant to students--it allows for the notion of competition, which gets students going, there's an opportunity for socialization, and there is instant feedback on what they're doing right or wrong," Etuk said. Video games also foster collaboration, because instead of a teacher standing in front of a classroom, students begin to help one another and become teachers themselves, he added.
  • Teachers can set difficulty levels and receive reports on student data, including the last time a student played their game, what their score was, right and wrong answers, and the topics they covered.
  • "We found that students in our project have improved their self-efficacy in science,"
  • Video games engage students and help foster some of the 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, which may be more difficult to acquire in a traditional classroom with a textbook.
  • "When you think about the skills that students need when they leave school, like creativity and curiosity...identifying problems and solving them--these are skills that [can be] hard to teach in the traditional face-to-face classroom," Clarke said.  "And a lot of these technologies are being used in the corporate world--IBM is now using games to train its employees, so you see simulations and games emerging outside of K-12 education."
  • Teachers Without Borders on 28 Apr 08
     
    Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills Environments such as Second Life can both stimulate and educate, experts say
Ole C Brudvik

NMC Campus Observer » About - 0 views

sl.nmc.org/about

education secondlife

shared by Ole C Brudvik on 22 Apr 07 - Cached
  • The NMC Campus is an experimental effort developed to inform the New Media Consortium’s work in educational gaming.
  • Now fully operational, the NMC Campus has been carefully constructed to provide researchers and students dozens of prebuilt settings for experiments in social interaction in 3-D space. Expressly designed to encourage explorations both formal and informal, traditional and nontraditional, real and surreal, and serious and playlike, the spaces are flexible and will lend themselves to additional uses, yet to be defined. The campus has a variety of places for these interactions, from the serious to the fanciful, each designed to support an optimal group size; these range from 2 to more than 75. The campus also supports a wide variety of traditional media, including posters, PowerPoint slides, photographs, charts/graphs, videos, and weblinks, and these resources continue to be added on a regular basis as a core component of the project. All of these resources are available to NMC members who may wish to bring classes to the campus for a visit, as part of a research project, or for a full term. Complete details on using the campus are available on the NMC Campus wiki. Also available is the complete Second Life toolset of sophisticated building tools and the LSL scripting language, with which all of the NMC Campus and Second Life has been created. These allow the creation of virtually any simulated situation, process, or environment, and the incorporation of sophisticated interactivity. For the latest information on the project, see the main pages in this blog,
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