Now, before you all start shouting at me, lemme 'splain what I mean. Two of the hallmarks of the Web 2.0 experience are Interconnectivity and Transparency. Interconnectivity in the sense that it's becoming increasingly possible to share information between online applications -- store photos on Flickr, share them with Tumblr, link to them with Pownce, etc.

Transparency is the ability to see, at a glance, what a connected user's life contains. You can see what music they listen to, read their opinions, know who they call friends. Think of the networking involved in MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Now, try to imagine SL with these concepts in place. I'd like to see which residents you and I have in common. I want to see your Snapzilla photos in a window in your profile. I'd love to stream my iTunes music directly into my avatar, not my land, for others to hear by simply subscribing to my stream. I need to be able to IM my friends from without SL. If people are going to keep touting SL as the 3D Internet, and LL isn't going to disabuse them of that notion, then these things need to be done. What will it take? What coding is required? Someone tell me I'm smoking hash just by thinking this is possible!

The Churches Advertising Network (CAN) is planning to create a series of posters based around the concept of overcoming regret for past mistakes and starting over with a second chance at life. They have an island in SL designed to resemble first-century Palestine, which will host the posters and later, a nativity movie for residents to enjoy, leading up to Christmas.

The island links to secondlifechance.co.uk, the website devoted to fostering the messages of the Christian faith. This site has been active in taking advantage of online networks, having previously created a page on MySpace, attracting some 2,235 friends.

The increasing acceptance of SL among religious groups is a good sign of its potential longevity and value among those who don't consider themselves early adopters. The question of whether or not there is worth in SL is answered by the interest itself; value is created by simply trying it out. Christmas is on its way, and whatever your personal feelings toward the holiday, it's going to be fun to see what residents will cook up to deck our virtual halls.

(Via inspiremagazine)

Oasis fans rejoice: Lord, Don't Slow Me Down is the name of the new double-DVD documentary by the band, and you can see the trailer for it at the Blue Horizon business park. While there, fans can also pre-order the DVD, which will be released on Amazon on October 29th.

Additionally, there is a t-shirt for your avatar and a coffee table book available for free. The trailer itself can only be seen on SL and MySpace, which is an interesting choice of venues, and speaks well for the increasing popularity of SL as a viable medium for advertising.

From the press release: "Oasis fans can be found in all corners of the 'real' world and we wanted to make sure that their Second Life counterparts also enjoy what promises to be one of the decade's greatest rock documentaries and live concerts."

(Via pressdispensary.co.uk)

Koinup.com is a social networking site akin to MySpace, but for virtual worlds such as SL, IMVU, and The Sims. There are a few such sites, but most of them are devoted to a particular platform, rather than the all-inclusive Koinup. One of the things this site has over its competitors is its graphical interface, which is fairly slick.

Additionally, the inclusion of machinima makes this juicy, as well as a feature called Storyboards, which seems to be a way to plan out machinima the way animators plan their pieces, key moments at a time. Koinup is free, and boasts 'almost unlimited' storage space. Get in there and tell us all about yourselves!

(Thanks, Pierluigi!)

As far as catchy titles go, it's kind of bland, but it's the concept that will sell Raph Koster's latest project. Metaplace is a platform for developing virtual worlds that are designed to operate with already-available websites, as easily as embedding a widget into MySpace.

This has the potential to be huge. Imagine being able to create a little virtual world for visitors of your website, in which people can engage with each other and talk about your brand. Because it's designed to interoperate with existing Web technology, there's no need for visitors to download a client (as long as their browser can handle the protocols Metaplace worlds use, of course). Koster says that people will be able to take assets from other people's worlds to start their own, customizing it however they like to create their own unique experience. Currently available only in 2D, Metaplace is working towards 3D.

This approach is farther from the '3D Internet' that many believe will come about. It's more of a Balkanized version, where every website is its own little world, competing more or less equally with others. There is no mention of fees on the website, though likely the model will entail ad revenue, RL company sponsorship, and the like. Koster mentions that he expects an open beta to begin next Spring.

(Via mercurynews.com)

I'm excited to read Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine, perhaps better known as his SL avatar Tom Bukowski.

One mode of thought has it that humans stopped evolving once they began to manipulate their environment to make their lives easier; there's nothing like the threat of extinction to force evolution. However, while our physical evolution might have slowed or even halted, our social evolution continues, as witness the rise of the online social networking phenomenon exemplified by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and of course SL.

If I hadn't been such a poor student, I'd have gone into anthropology myself, so I'm eager to read Mr. Boellstorff's upcoming book, in which he relates his experiences being in-world for over two and a half years.

(Via chronicle.com)

You know what? I don't need a social networking tool. Actually, I don't think I even want one. Communications tools, now that's different. I'm using twitter and pownce (hey, Akela, aren't you supposed to pownce on things that twitter?), and about the only thing that would improve them for me (aside from them actually being, you know, reliable) is to hide away the lists of who is connected to who. That's information that I personally find to be both unnecessary and often actively misleading - your mileage may vary. I don't like misleading, personally.

I can't say as I've looked at a myspace page more than six times. I've never even seen facebook. I'm on LinkedIn, but is it actually useful to me? Not yet, no. Mostly they feel like a sort of webified way of wearing gang-colors. To associate yourself with brands, whether those are ideas, interests, hobbies or people. There are assorted third-party sites that add social-networking tools to Second Life, too. I can't say as they interest me either.

My friends list in Second Life, and my (kind of inadequate) groups list are tools that allow me to act or to communicate more effectively with than without. That's why I've got a blog, not a homepage. Social networking tools don't appear to afford me the benefits that I'm looking for, in exchange for the time spent.

Does the whole social-networks scene leave you a bit cold, or is there some sort of warm and fuzzy thing that I'm just plain missing here?

Hot on the heels of Barack Obama's my.barackobama.com, his own mySpace like social networking site, John Edwards has thrown down the gauntlet and taken his campaign into the Virtual World. Soon the virtual streets of Second Life will run red and blue with the campaign signs from every camp.

While the RL Edwards Campaign is fully aware of the Second Life efforts, it is truly a grass roots endeavor by Jerimee Richir, AKA Jose Rote. According to Steve O'Hear at ZDNet, the Second Life campaign head quarters will be rolled into the fold of the official campaign sometime next month.

While many people compare Second Life to social networking software, I have a hard time making the direct comparison. I agree Second Life ads many of the same social networking features as MySpace and Facebook, but it does so in a completely different way. When I use MySpace I tend to do so for a few minutes, but when I use Second Life I tend to do so for a few hours. When I meet people on MySpace I usually only meet people who are friends with my friends, while in Second Life I could meet anyone. Not to mention the fact that in Second Life I can do anything and represent anything about myself through actions and in MySpace I can only provide a 2D representation of what I think other people would like to see.

Of course that doesn't stop Robin Harper, VP Community and Support for Second Life, from being on a panel discussion along with some social networking big wigs. Check out the video above. Robin is on last but it is interesting to hear the differences between what she says and what the people before her say.

I appreciated this article on SL at SignOnSanDiego.com. Sure, it's another 'intro' article, meant to educate the ignorant on what SL is all about, but it's got a much more casual feel about it. The focus seems to be "I don't quite understand why this is so popular, but then, I said the same thing about MySpace, and look how that turned out."

He does make an interesting comparison between SL and Las Vegas, however. Read the article, and ask yourselves: Does what happens in SL stay in SL?

Hot on the heels of our previous post about the in-world Jonathan Coulter concert, I've got a treat: Adri Saarinen, PR manager for the event, has given us a wonderful interview about her work with PopSci and the Creative Commons group. Thanks, Adri!

SLI: How did you come to be involved in this project?

Adri: Well, I've done some PR for various SL organizations and events, so when Creative Commons contacted Zenigma Suntzu to produce a concert, he contacted me to handle the PR side of things. Zen was contacted because he produced the City Stages concert last winter.

SLI: So you're a team on this; who else is involved?

Adri: Zen as the producer, I'm working on the PR, and Slim Warrior is providing the venue and handling concert logistics. And, of course, the Creative Commons and PopSci.com teams working from their end.

SLI: How has it been working with CC and PopSci? How much collaboration do they give?

Adri: CC and PopSci.com have been very involved in the process, mostly consulting through email on things like logo placement. They also, of course, provided the concert budget!

More after the jump!