I think it's funny that Microsoft should weigh in against Sony in this article, claiming that Sony apparently didn't realize what it was getting into with the whole 'Home' business. Is this a message that Microsoft is working on their own virtual offering?

We know that they have dabbled a bit in SL, but are they ready to go whole hog? I can't decide if it's the sort of thing that they'd do, or feel pressured to do, given that virtual worlds are on the rise, with many different developers putting their irons in the fire. Would it be wise for Microsoft to spread themselves out further by offering something significantly different from their current suite of applications? They're still trying to build up their online apps to compete with Google ... what do you all think? What would a Microsoft virtual world be like?

(Via Joystiq)

The next time you feel like LL is restricting your rights (justified or not), read this article from our sister site Joystiq. Apparently, Peter Edwards, the Executive Producer for the upcoming Sony virtual world Home, has told the Official PlayStation Magazine that there will be no costume play (or 'cosplay') in Home. He claims to want to keep Home friendly to family members, which is funny considering it's probably not Mom and Dad who will be interested in Home.

Of course, with all the recent hoo-ha over ageplay and adult content, LL is edging us closer to that boundary anyway, but at least we have it right now. Whether or not that will remain the same, we have nothing to fear from Home.

(Thanks, Wai-tung!)

What do you get when you take Second Life, bump up the graphics, and remove the ability to sell or to create anything of your own? That's Playstation Home. Our friends over at Joystiq attended SGD'07 (that's Sony's Gamer's Day for those of us outside the gaming circuit), and got a chance to drive it around along with a bunch of other folks.

Joystiq's Kevin Kelly posts his hands-on impressions. Activity in the comments thread is understandably ... brisk.

"You can customize pretty much any aspect of your avatars facial features ... as long as they look human. No horns, fairy wings, dragon scales or stuff like that -- unfortunately."

Personally, I think Playstation Home is a great idea, generally - there's just nothing there to appeal to someone like me. What about you? Take a gander at the impressions. Does Playstation Home appeal to you?

Ross Miller wrote this up on our parent site Joystiq. Apparently some zany Russians have found a way to network their drinking games. A special USB powered shot glass is used, which can track how much the user has consumed (or poured out) over time. It then passes that data into a chat room for all to see. Obviously the perfect solution to keep the party going while you're in those long boring college courses.

I don't know how easy this would be to hook up to Second Life, but it could be great. The first RL/SL drinking game where you drink every time someone questions the usage stats, griefs Anshe (don't do that), the grid goes down, or you stumble upon a sex shop while trying to show SL to your boss.

Mercedes-Benz Island is now live in Second Life. The multisim build does the standard test track thing that other car companies have already pioneered. The main sim, located in the center of the island, features a small concert area located outside of a virtual dealership, an interactive tour, and a couple of freebies thrown in for good measure. (I got my free Mercedes Racing outfit. Did you?) .

The most interesting item in the dealership is a cloaked new C-Class with a sign indicating that it will be revealed on March 16Th. Hopefully once it is unveiled, we can all get one to drive. If not, I say we all bring some Scions over to the island and try out the test track.

Jared Rea on our parent site Joystiq reminds us that today is the official launch day for Myst Online URU Live the Second Age, the second chapter of the GameTap Original MMOG. If you have played any of the earlier single player Myst games, the multiplayer version is very similar. You explore the world and solve puzzles revealing more and more of the story line.

One of the twists that sets URU Live apart from the rest of the MMOG flock is all of the characters providing quests are real people role-playing from the Cyan Worlds Studios. If you are interested in exploring a new world, but are not ready to take on the daunting task of reaching level 70 in The Burning Crusade, URU Live might just be the place for you.

There is an article up on CNN.com about educators in Second Life. To which I had a very similar reaction to as Raph Koster who titled his post about the article "Another day, another SL mention on CNN." I kind of wish I had thought of that first because it made me chuckle. It is true Second Life is getting a lot of press lately and seemingly more press about if it should be getting so much press. But no matter your stance on the issue, I think one place Second Life deserves the coverage is in relation to education. The actual heart of the issue for me is explained in the CNN article with this statement: "The three-dimensional virtual world makes it possible for students taking a distance course to develop a real sense of community, said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School..."

This cuts to the point of a growing issue related to distance learning. While many schools are moving towards distance learning is the learning provided with conventional distance learning a good way to learn? I would argue that it isn't. While students commonly score well on distance learning exams this learning may not transfer into the real world as well as learning gained in a class room. The addition of students and peers found in a class room can not be replicated on a website based learning environment. I believe that Second Life and other virtual worlds provides a way to have both distance learning and collaborative class room style learning at the same time.

Zack Stern on our parent site Joystiq covered this article as well, and did a pretty good job. One thing that I Second Life Insider readers understand, but is an important addition to his coverage is that while Second Life is an interesting and presumably powerful platform for education Kids these days shouldn't be using it for education because of the age restrictions. Should we be making more of an effort to differentiate between Second Life and the Teen Grid?

Okay, bear with me, everyone: Despite my seeming geekness ... geekitude ... geekosity, whatever, I'm not really tech-oriented. It's true that I used to do artwork for Atari in the days of the ill-fated Jaguar console, but graphics technology seems to have progressed beyond my ken. I know, for example, that textures in games take up space. Perhaps the most space, I don't know. I think I've heard that it presents a problem sometimes. As an artist, all I cared about was "Are they molesting my precious visuals?"

Regardless, this post on Joystiq interests me. New algorithms from a company called Allegorithmic that purport to compress texture files up to 70%? I'm not saying it's impossible (see above), but consider the wording: " ... aim to reduce the size of in-game texture files by up to 70% ... " Let's remember that 'up to' includes the number zero.

I may be jaded, but I'd like to believe this is something that works, and it's something that somehow, LL can use to benefit us all. By the way, I'm not digging on Joystiq in the least. I'm sure the wording mentioned above comes straight from the mouths of Allegorithmic, and were not the words of my brethren on the front lines of the console war. Peace out.

Our sister/umbrella site Joystiq (much love, y'all) has posted a story referencing a recent Economist article. It summarizes something Philip has said about RL commerce coming into SL: "Another economic difference, says Mr Rosedale, is the lack of economies of scale in Second Life. In real life, a shoemaker, say, can reduce the average cost of making a pair by producing huge amounts, and the average cost of marketing by buying advertising in bulk. In Second Life, however, scale means nothing. There is no manufacturing cost to minimise. Gimmicks, such as giving away free shoes, are useless because nobody actually needs shoes at all."

Joystiq, however, argues differently: "Second Life's denizens are concerned that the entrance of big business into the world will drive them out. They're right to be concerned. Their businesses are as at risk as the local bookseller's business before Barnes & Noble comes to town."

I'd like to point out something that neither source has. In Philip's case, giving away free shoes does work if you give them to a newbie, who 1) May be unable to afford the cost of even cheap shoes, and who then 2) Proudly displays them to all her newbie friends, who now clamor for them, and possibly even save up for them, or find ways to make money to buy them. People may not need shoes in SL, but they want them.

In Joystiq's case, there are a number of reasons for residents not to fear Big Business. First, many residents, particularly Immersionists, don't want their carefully crafted spaces to be tainted by commercialism from RL. Second, because of instantaneous travel between sims, it's as easy to get to, say, Preen, as it is to go to American Apparel. Third, all creators go through the same process to create their wares, whether it's done by a team or by a single user. It's entirely possible that a preexisting SL store could create or emulate a style of clothing designed by a RL store. Therefore there is no material difference between a white t-shirt made by The Gap and one made by Mistress Midnight. What matters then is which one costs less; that is the one the average user will buy.

SL is just different, and RL businesses hoping to make a profit from its residents need to take the time to consider how it's different, and how to turn that to their advantage. The old ways will fall by the wayside. Simply building a store and hoping your brand will bring everyone running just won't work anymore.

I'll be the first to admit that I've not been keeping up with CNet for quite a while. There are so many other, more specific sources of the kind of information that I'm interested in (Joystiq, Engadget, anyone?) that I've been weaned off the CNet all-you-can-eat experience. However, Eric Rice has posted a recent interview with Daniel Terdiman, Senior Writer for CNet, conducted by Millions Of Us CEO Reuben Steiger. Apparently, CNet finally has an office building in SL itself, while Mr. Terdiman has been writing articles about SL since 2003! Funny how little things like this can just slip right under our noses, innit?

The subsequent interview reads a little bit like advertising for Millions of Us at times, but the in-world discussion that follows it is refreshing, asking residents what sort of things they'd like to see CNet cover from here on out. Do give it a read!

(Thanks, Eric!)

Bastion of free-thinking gamers everywhere, Joystiq has posted an article about racial harmony in MMOs, and it got me thinking. It's not just gender that residents play with in SL, is it? Unless there's a RL photo attached to someone's profile, we don't know who's driving that avatar. Sometimes not even then. It's a given that men sometimes play women and women men, but how often does someone play a different ethnicity than their own?

Hamlet Au on the inimitable New World Notes once wrote a piece peripherally about this. I've heard direct, racially derogatory comments toward others in the Shelter. Let's not forget the continuing remarks Furries receive regularly. Race is still an issue, even in a world where one can look like anything one can imagine. I'd have hoped that, as a society, we'd have grown beyond this by this time, or at least have put this behind us when creating our utopias, but I've been wrong about many things.

If anyone'd like to comment on their experiences with racism, consider this your forum to do so.

(Via Joystiq)

Our brethren at Joystiq have posted an article that should be of much interest to followers/detractors of SL currency movement: The Austin Games Conference hosted a presentation by Sam Lewis, the lead designer of the Cartoon Network's upcoming MMOG, on the creation and management of an online economy.

Presented in Powerpoint with accompanying notes, Lewis' presentation covers Economics basics before delving into what changes are necessary to utilize an Economics model when analyzing online virtual world currency traffic. It's an interesting look, and worth thinking about, considering how SL's market tends to fluctuate. Get Your Econ On!

Our compadres at Joystiq have posted an article on the Virtusphere, a virtual reality rig that promises free, actual movement. The article's final sentence asks "What game world would you like to explore in a giant, virtual hamsterball?"

Well, kids and kidlets, you already know the answer to that one. How fun would it be to roam around SL with one of these? My first thought was 'Too much fun', but now that I've had a moment to think about it, perhaps not so much. I'd say a good deal of my time in SL is spent sitting in chairs playing games, dancing, flying, etc. None of these require traversal of the landscape, rendering the Virtusphere useless. On the other hand, with the proper force-feedback mechanisms in place, it could be just as fun to take a run, a la the Relay For Life. What do you all think? Despite the unavoidable sticker shock that must come with a rig like this, would you use it?

There's a really provocative article up on Joystiq that I just came across, regarding a new breed of motion capture that looks interesting. I can see some interesting potential applications for SL here, though of course it's probably years away, and this wouldn't be applicable to wolfie faces anyway.

Rather than doing the stick-on dots thing, this method uses some sort of reflective powder to capture both performance and facial expression. The article itself is full of links to other articles, but we love Joystiq here, so it gets the linky love.

The 'Uncanny Valley' referred to in this article, in case you didn't know, is not an actual location, but rather a plot on a graph that shows how humans respond to faces (particularly 3D modeled faces) that mimic certain aspects of reality a little too closely for comfort. The best, and most often cited example of this are the characters in the recent movie 'The Polar Express'. When you look at these creatures, there's something just creepy about them, in ways that are difficult to describe.

Every now and then, I meet someone in-world whose appearance comes close to the Uncanny Valley, but so far, we've managed to avoid this phenomenon. More cartoony avs, please; I like my SL more presentational than representational, thanks!