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.

What Louise has done is work on a guide dog and a white stick that use sensors to detect the surroundings and say in text what is around you. You can pick up your own copy at Wheelies.

EVA: Essential Voicechat Advancement. This is, in effect, a plug-in for Windows that reads the chat log and reads it out via the system's text-to-voice system.

What is it with the Australian media? Why are they focused on slandering Second Life as a failure? I have recently discussed my research findings of commercial activity within Second Life with several journalists, where only minimal quotes have been used out of their original context; in order it seems, to support an obvious negative bias.

This is extremely disappointing as it is not an accurate reflection of the important invaluable opportunity that Second Life has provided pioneering commercial exploration of VR capabilities.

Vital 3D avatar immersion lessons have been learnt, modeling and building skills developed, use of digital agents, telepresence, interactive, navigational and communication applications explored, and platform and cultural limitations realised. This is all invaluable experience for commercial frontrunners preparing to invest in a virtual future.

Gary Hazlitt and Gazlitt (aka as me!) take a ‘break’ in over fifty worlds comprising the current metaverse, here is the holiday video…

hat there are quite a few worlds now getting their balance on the shoulders of Second Life and really getting to grips with the social networking aspects vs the 3D’ness

There IS a balance between a social space and an ‘agreed’ advertorial world - “you give me valid experience, I accept a level of advertising”

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).

Today I have managed to put up for sale two new items. Item one is a texture organiser HUD

Also released is the long awaited movie screen and HTML-on-a-prim screen with category storage.

nd since the outside content doesn't pass through Linden Lab's servers, it won't necessarily appear exactly the same way and at exactly the same time to all viewers. The company is currently working on allowing people to associate live Web content with so-called prims, the geometric building blocks that Second Life denizens use when creating virtual objects. Web content could then be stored on a portable object that a user's avatar can carry anywhere in the virtual world. "You can take it out and show it to someone without that land having to be yours," Miller says.

A virtual whiteboard, for example, might display a document, which two users could work on at the same time. In addition, he says, the company is building a programming interface that will allow other developers to import different types of media--Flash, for example--into Second Life without any change to the virtual world's underlying code. Miller says that companies or individuals will then have much more flexibility to use the types of media that suit their purposes within the world.

However, Rivers Run Red's Bovington says that Second Life tends to be the cheapest, most versatile way for a company or individual to try out Web integration. Although it has fewer security features, he says, it requires a smaller initial investment.

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.

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.

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.

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.