Observant SLI reader Matt Bowerman spotted the latest issue of Good Magazine on the stands in Austin Texas, sporting a cover story on Second Life. Unfortunately, the story chronicles one apparently sex-obsessed writer's wanderings and musings on his lack of a virtual penis. [Caution - contains a virtual penis image]

People who are familiar with Second Life will immediately find author Morgan Clendaniel's narrative littered with inaccuracies, and misleading turns of phrase. Heck, there are five assorted penis references by the time you get to the bottom of the second paragraph, where the author felt the need to violate the gambling ban to bankroll himself some genitalia.

Bolstering the "one man's search for a penis" narrative, is some supporting material and research. The piece aspires to become balanced, and it comes close, but seems to fall short of the mark and finishes with penises again. It's obvious that Clendaniel didn't have a great time. "Something fun and social must be happening in Second Life," he writes, "but it certainly isn't happening where I am."

Take a look. Tell us what your own thoughts are.

As brilliant plans don't always have a way of working out, I left for Austin quite late on the 9th. Not much was happening yet in the world of SXSW. Check-in took place from Noon to 8pm, but I was on a mission that could not be stopped. I was after the Nokia N800 tablet.

I arrived at 8:30pm after a two hour drive into Austin. I met up with BuhBuhCuh Fairchild and we immediately headed over to CompUSA to get the glorious device, which would later turn out to be downright awful. When we returned, it was time to party.

Word on the street was that the place to go was The Blind Pig...

While staying with Spin Martin and his wife, Astrid Ophelia, there were four laptops needing access to the internet. Two used EVDO, but that left two that needed WiFi. The Hilton charged 9.95-12.95 per night for internet access. However, two machines cannot connect to the same WiFi in the room.

Also, you cannot charge more than one connection per night to your room fees. You must use a credit card for the secondary connection, and then it can take up to 30 minutes before both connections can be used at the same time.

Another issue that came up was bandwidth. While Spin was using Second Life, the connection was dropped and he was unable to restart it. After calling for help, he discovered that a tech monitoring the packets had disconnected him.

Will the Chicago Hilton do the same? Will we go through these issues when two to four people are sharing a room? I certainly hope that isn't the case.

I'm still in Austin due to unforeseen circumstances, but I managed to find a computer to share some of my stories with you, starting with my favorite. As previously mentioned, qDot Bunnyhug (Kyle Machulis) was at SXSW on a panel dealing with teledildonics. In preparation for his panel, he brought along some exciting new sex toys, some of which vibrated and others that were single use.

At BarCamp Austin, he gave me one of these single-use sex toys, which amused me to no end. I was so thrilled with it that, after a few drinks, I probably walked a good mile to Ze Frank's party at Malatov on Saturday night. I ran into Tony Walsh, of Clickable Culture, and asked him to film for me. I got in line and asked Ze Frank to finger the sex toy. You'll just have to see it to believe it! Stay tuned for more stories about the sights and sounds of SXSW.

South by Southwest, or SXSW for short, is rapidly approaching. Scheduled for March 9th-18th in Austin, Texas, it is an annual festival that celebrates music, movies, and web development. Attended by over 10,000 people from all over the world, it is a staple of Austin tourism. It is known for giving bands their big break and panelists major credibility.

Some of our very own Second Life residents will be speaking on panels there, including Spin Martin, Aren Mandala, Hamlet Au, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, Zero Grace, SnoopyBrown Zamboni, Reuben Tapioca/MillionsofUs, qDot Bunnyhug, Walker Spaight, RC Mars, and Jade Lily. The topics they are covering vary wildly, such as Your Video Blog Can Save the World, Terraforming the Internet: When 3d Models Meet Business Models, Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds, On the Edge of Independant User-Creation in Gamespace, Sex and Computational Technology, Web 2.0 to Web 3D, Gamers Games: Microcontent and User Creation, and American Cancer Society: Applying Technology for the Nonprofit Sector. Other residents rumored to be attending are Max Case, Jeremy Neumann, Glitchy Gumshoe, and myself.

There is a group in Second Life, appropriately named "SXSW'ers". If you are interested in attending and would like to hear about meetups, join that group. For now, I'm just askin' if you're going! Well ... are you?

In other mixed reality news, San Antonio based content company, Metaversality, is throwing a bash in Austin at Mozarts Cafe. Popular Second Life musicians Frogg Marlowe and Melvin Took will be performing before a live audience of residents. The party begins at 2PM CST and ends around 7PM CST, at which point we'll be going bar hopping!

The confirmed attendees so far are Adri Saarinen, Peter Newell, Haver Cole, Zabitan Assia, Dragontat Zagato, moo Money, Troy Vogel, Moira Stern, Ute Hicks, Memory Harker, Euterpe Roo, Katt Kongo, and many, many more!

• Who: Metaversality
• What: SLTX Meetup
• Where: Mozarts Cafe, 3826 Lake Austin Blvd, Austin, TX 78703
• When: Saturday, February 17th at 2PM CST
• Why: Do you really need a reason to meet your fellow Second Lifers?

News 8 Austin did a nice piece covering Democracy Island, a virtual world environment for learning and participating in the Democratic process, developed by Beth Noveck of the New York Law School, Jerry Paffenforf of the Electric Sheep Company, and others. While it was developed as an educational tool for the populace at large, this story concentrated on its use in park building.

Democracy Island is the virtual home of the real world Landing Lights Park in Queens, New York. While the park is slated to be redeveloped there was not enough budget to do the amount of planning the developers wanted. So they recreated it in the Main Grid. Residents can try their hand at placing common objects found in parks. Data will be collected over time and commonly made decisions will be compiled and presented to the real world architect.

Video of the story is also available here.