The International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), a non-profit, volunteer-run educational facility in the virtual realm of Second Life, takes its exhibit sponsorship auctions to eBay to attract the attention of more real-world bidders. The sponsorships for full-scale models of two lunar vehicles are up for auction -- the "Apollo Lunar Module" (built by Lora Chadbourne) and the unflown Russian "Lunniy Korabl" (built by Helori Pascal). The auctions will run from October 1 to October 21, and sponsorships will begin on November 1, 2007 and end on January 31, 2008. Winning sponsors will have their names prominently displayed on the exhibit's display signage. They may also elect to have a logo displayed for an additional fee.
Kat Lemieux (SL name, Katherine W. Prawl in real life) is co-founder of the museum and CEO of the nonprofit ISM Corporation. She said, "The exhibit sponsorship auctions allow us to give individuals as well as organizations the opportunity to support the museum, and get some recognition for their contributions at the same time. We are very interested in seeing whether eBay auctions are a viable approach, since this might permit us to reach a much larger donor pool than only holding silent auctions within Second Life."
"I'm curious to see how this sponsorship auction turns out," Troy McLuhan (Troy McConaghy in real life), Vice President of the ISM, added. "Like many things we've done at the museum, it's an experiment."
The museum is the principal activity of the ISM Corporation, a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Kansas, USA. The ISM hopes to raise enough money to cover the monthly usage fees owed to Linden Labs for the maintenance of virtual land, and contribute to the corporation's operating costs.
As promised before the new land auction system has finally gone live. You can see it here and bid if you so choose.
I don't happen to have a spare USR1,200 or so to throw at it and see how it works, but it looks pretty much like the old interface to me, just some background changes, but if you know different please let us know below. You would assume that having it backed by eBay's technology would make it fairly robust, let's hope so!
Linden Lab is switching to eBay's FairMarket auction platform for land auctions, releasing more developers to work on core functionality and stability, they say. The new auction system is slated to open on Wednesday, 19 September.
While existing reservations of land will be honored for three months, but the reservation of space through the auction system will no longer be supported on the new auction platform. Automatic reservation around private regions will remain. Linden Lab promises further updates on reservation and space allocation.
Sharp-eyed reader Ronan Juran alerted me to this. Just northwest of the Nouveau sim is and island labeled eBay. There don't appear to be any buildings on it yet, and of course it's locked to teleports. The shape of the island has a strange, organic resonance with me, and I can't put my dewclaw on it exactly.
Remind me, everyone: does eBay have any professional interest in SL? Has money been invested? I can't recall! Regardless, this is kinda exciting! With the increasing interrelation between SL and the 'Net, something like having some form of integration with eBay could potentially be huge for SL. If anyone has any further information, please drop us a line! Thanks, Ronan!
Apologies to our readers, I only caught this today. Network In World is a job fair which began on the 15th, and ends today, the 17th. Representative companies are Verizon, T-Mobile, Ebay, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Sodexho. From the event's location on TMP2 Island:
"Representatives from all the companies shown here will be present for scheduled interviews. If you haven't scheduled your interview, please email us at NiW@tmp.com. You can also copy and paste your resume into a notecard and drop it off into one of the drop boxes located within each company's lobby."
This job fair in itself shows a great leap forward in thought on the part of the representative companies, not only in the sense that respondents needn't be physically present to conduct a job interview, but also that they're using SL to do this. If any of you are looking for new work, do check this out before it's too late!
The sim of Amsterdam has come up for sale on the auction block at eBay. Starting bid, 20,000 US Dollars, or for 50,000 USD you can own it outright, this second. I wouldn't wait though. Sim Amsterdam is the very definition of hot property, in more than one sense.
The whole move comes as a bit of a surprise, so the first thing we did was grab the legendary Stroker Serpentine for a quick chat, and to make sure that it was a legitimate sale, rather than a fake or a prank. Serpentine confirmed that it was indeed on the level.
As everyone's probably heard recently, eBay is pulling the plug on dealing in virtual goods. Well, that's what the media is saying, but they're not entirely correct. eBay is pulling the plug on dealing in virtual goods that you don't have intellectual property rights over (that is, where you own the intellectual property, or have permission from the owner).
That means Second Life goods are exempt. Some from other virtual worlds may be exempt too. A lot will depend on the Terms of Service involved. Your level 52 night elf? No. Your set of jeweled, super-unique swords? No. Your Second Life products? Yes. Your Second Life account? Definitely not.
The 2006 Plone Conference will be held this year in both Seattle, Washington, and Second Life. Plone itself is an open source Content Management System, employed by organizations all over the world, such as Marriott, eBay, NASA, and Oxfam. This will be the first year that the conference will also be broadcast within SL, allowing users who can't make it to the RL conference to participate.
The conference runs from October 25th to the 27th. For those who are interested, you may contact Tao Takashi, who many of you know as a producer of well-crafted video within SL. He's the architect behind bringing the conference into SL, and he has photos of the viewing rooms up on his site.
As promised 
Linden Lab is switching to eBay's FairMarket auction platform for land auctions, releasing more developers to work on core functionality and stability, they say. The new auction system is slated to open on Wednesday, 19 September.
As everyone's probably heard recently, eBay is pulling the plug on dealing in virtual goods. Well, that's what the media is saying, but they're not entirely correct. eBay is pulling the plug on dealing in virtual goods that you don't have intellectual property rights over (that is, where you own the intellectual property, or have permission from the owner).
