As Akela previously indicated, a new book on Second Life's virtual community is scheduled to be published in the spring by Princeton University Press. U.C. Irvine Professor Tom Boellstorff presents "Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human". His experience in SL as avatar Tom Bukowski has culminated in a promising introduction to the culture developed in this novel space. Through the involvement of the community in preparing his book for print, he has shown an appreciation for the creativity of Second Life residents and displayed a deep respect for the existing social guidelines.
Read on to find out how the cover art for the book was chosen.
Mashup Islander, or Christopher Dodds in real life, unveils connections between literature and real-time 3D art through his virtual moiré sculptures. His exhibit opened recently among a sea of enthusiastic visitors who immediately began exploring the interactive pieces. You may experience the work yourself on Info Island until November 15th, 2007.
Many thanks to Daruma Picnic, Elizabeth Rookwood, and Rookie Voyager for showing me around!
Who knew you could learn so much from hanging out in a virtual fishbowl? Artist Strawberry Holiday takes guests on a trip into the world of a 3D recreation of one of her real-life paintings through her exhibition at Kush City. Update: You can watch a machinima of it on Vlad Bjornson's Shiny Life site.
Besides being an interesting point of view to explore, the fishbowl installation also advocates acceptance for plus-size women in Second Life and beyond. On a canvas of blue water and a miniature midnight city, the artist's aquatic world is filled with plump mermaid sculptures, caught in the middle of their cheerful play. Although some residents present at the opening considered this work a combination between Van Gogh and Robbie Dingo, what captured me was the lovely way in which Holiday expressed her message. The style was fresh and lively, a definite must-see.
As Akela previously indicated, Havok4 is indeed out on the preview grid. Andrew Linden gracefully donated some of his time answering a few questions and he will be available for office hours this weekend. Should you want to chat with him directly:
If you've ever used the THiNC printing press, or read a THiNC book, and thought about what your book would look like in real life, now is your chance! Blurb, an online company that prints your book designs for you, is having a 20% off sale on 8x10 hardcover books. The code to enter is travel20-P9C24.
Once on the site, you are able to download software that is really easy to use. You are able to choose the size and orientation of your book, the theme, background, and borders. It even lets you select your own font! From there, you can load images from your hard drive, picasa, or flickr. It will let you know if it believes the picture to be too small for quality printing.
I had the chance to meet the Blurb team at SXSW and they totally rocked. This is something you don't want to miss out on. The sale ends on September 30th, so get started!
SecondLifeCasinos.com entrepreneur SL Loonie is launching a new way to screen your real life and SL movies into Second Life - by paying for them. In a world of cheap server space and free hosting options for Quicktime movies, such as blip.tv, I have to wonder how she plans to profit from this venture. Her prices range from 5 dollars all the way up to 80 dollars USD for 30 days of viewing. In addition, she has hosting and sponsorship options for parties. Maybe she didn't get the memo that residents have been doing this for free since the movie stream was introduced?
On the plus side, she's also hosting a contest where you can win L prizes and free screenings of your film. They are looking for the Tube2SLYouTube Film Producer of the Year 2007. What does this mean? They will take your work, which has already been compressed down to a low quality flash file and download it, then re-encode it to Quicktime format. I see Oscar potential. Or do I? The quality is pretty bad so I can't actually tell.
I'm all for showing off your hard work in Second Life, but I simply cannot endorse a pay model when there are so many other choices out there. If you're genuinely interested in earning the 25,000L price and seeing your movie highly pixelated on the big screen, you can get the rules and info here. The contest ends on September 14th, with the winners being announced on the 29th and 30th. Will you be participating?
Linden Lab are preparing to roll out a new auction system for land, and are anticipating 1-2 more weeks before release. Supply of new and recycled mainland territory is frozen until the new system is ready, and then will be resuming at previously announced rates.
Linden Lab plan to release more information about the new system in advance of it rolling out.
Artist Vlad Bjornson opens new avenues for expression through his Sculpted Thoughts art piece. The morphing sculpture impresses the eye with a smart mashup of sculptie functionality and the Second Life media interface. The sculptie object is coded to take on a new shape as it cycles through the textures from a QuickTime movie stream.
SL limitations in this area were surpassed with some clever and custom scripts made by the artist. For example, Bjornson's sculptie is updated at a speed of almost 8 frames per second in order to maintain a smooth animation (see the machinima demo above). "If sculpties reacted to the video stream properly, [the motion] would be totally fluid [...] SL probably doesn't pick up the changes otherwise", explains scripter Candide LeMay.
Welcome to the sixth installment of "Under The Grid", an irregular look at the mechanics underneath Second Life. This time, we're looking the announced release of simulator code.
The announcement that the simulator/server code would be released open source came at the same time as the announcement that the viewer source-code would be - both took place almost exactly two years ago, in September 2005.
Philip Rosedale, in his talks at SLCC this year, estimated that server-side simulator software would be open sourced within approximately twelve more months. Development staffers whom we have spoken to inworld and who have spoken on the matter on the development mailing list around the same time are estimating 1-2 more years.
There are a number of interesting blocking issues involved in opening up the server software.
The comments on the original post are worth reading too, but watching the careful, rational taking apart of argument after argument by someone who can back up his statements is always fun.
There is one place I quite strongly disagree though: "Many avatars have a different gender than the subscriber or take animal forms. However most brands mimic their real life experiences and value proposition in Second Life."
This is a good point that Eric makes.
Whilst it's broadly true (what does "many" mean? Is 10,000 many in SL? 100,000? 1,000,000? 30%, 60%?), it's not a good point when it's talking about targeting your audience. If , in RL, I'm the right demographic to be a fan of, say, holidays to New Zealand and that's what you are marketing, why does it matter whether I've got an avatar that looks like me IRL, or I'm a 20m tall hermaphrodite vampire furry? If you're trying to sell RL clothes on the back of SL clothes it might matter for whatever the equivalent to 'click through' is -- but I'll bet some proportion of those guys in girls' bodies will buy their RL loved ones something they see, like and probably wear in SL. I'll bet far fewer of them will scour normal websites and magazines looking for just the right dress/shoes/hair etc. It could just, if well handled, be an advantage. If HP are looking to market things here, I'm guessing we're talking computers, cameras, printers etc. The person that makes the decision about a new printer is the RL me. Does it really matter if I see their product advertised in SL as a tiny or in a man's body or a woman's? How?
(Original pieces by Hiro Pendragon and Eric Kintz)
Spent US$1,206,000 at an exchange rate of L$266.5 to US$1
Exchanged US$219,000 at an average of US$9,100.0 per hour.
Market buys were US$150,000
Market sales were US$69,000
Limit-limit buys were US$400
The busiest time was at 9am when about US$16,000 was exchanged.
The quietest time was 2am when about US$4,000 was exchanged.
This being an anniversary that's seared on the minds of the US population at least, our thoughts are with all those who have lost friends and loved ones since that fateful day.
A new viewer (version 1.18.3(5) apparently) 
If you've ever used the 
SecondLifeCasinos.com
Linden Lab are preparing to roll out a new auction system for land, and are anticipating 1-2 more weeks before release. Supply of new and recycled mainland territory 
Welcome to the sixth installment of "
Following my 
