Case study: Atos Origin Alison Booth is leader of Techwatch at the consulting division of IT services company Atos Origin. She recently asked one of the new graduates entering the company to study the online virtual world Second Life to see if there was any value in the company becoming more involved in the virtual society.

How and Why to use Second Life for Education? Do you think Second Life, the virtual world is still about gambling and pornography? Forget it! While gambling is being forbidden in SL, education has its golden age. Let’s see why we should use Second Life for education:

Collaboration: You can contact people of the same field of interest from around the world.
Without boundaries: You can work with people without boundaries (neither technical nor geographical). ….

Rosedale and Whether Second Life Is Too Early My interview last week with Second Life creator Philip Rosedale is up and available.

As you’ll see, I’ve known Philip since he was CTO at Real Networks back in the Internet dark ages. The conversation in San Francisco last week ranged from why virtual worlds could someday be bigger than the Web itself, to some how Second Life has helped some users lose weight. Rosedale tackles the hard question of whether Second Life is too early and will be like Apple’s Newton or AOL — pioneers that ultimately gave way to newcomers (Palm, Yahoo) that got it right. The short answer: No one knows, but Rosedale constantly thinks about the question.

On the cover: Living a Second Life Art Heartsdale is flying. Not in a plane or helicopter. He is parallel to the ground below him, soaring through the air with his arms trailing behind him. The sky is sunny and cloudless, the perfect day for spending time on the beach below him. Lying on the beach seems pointless when he can glide through the air.

Then, he falls. His arms flail back and forth in a panic only experienced by free-falling. Everything should go black in a few seconds, but it doesn’t. He smashes into the ground, stands up and brushes himself off.

Art Heartsdale is my avatar — my virtual representation — in Second Life, a world created by its residents, a world with almost no limitations.

WoW, Second Life, possible money laundering machines In the world of organized crime, nothing is exempt as long as it will further their schemes. In line with this thinking, Symantec warned authorities with the possibility of criminals using online games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life for money laundering purposes. That’s another form of online crime apart from piracy.

Hi Sam from Second Life Here I am on Live2Give Island in Second Life blowing you a kiss. Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its Residents who are online versions of the people who venture into the world (also known as avatars). I’ve been exploring it for some time now to see how accessible Second Life is in the hope that one day we can hang out together there.

A Day in the Second Life of an Avatar Millions of Americans are spending their money, meeting new people, getting advice, and living their dream life through a virtual world called Second Life.

Today’s installment describes a day in the life of an avatar.

The First Architecture Working Group Meeting We imagine a future where Second Life is able grow beyond the borders of Linden Lab. We see regions running on open source, alternative simulators. We see web services that allow people to build mash-ups of Second Life and the Web. We see organizations being able to integrate their members and their members’ avatars. This is the vision of future Second Life Grid that we want to develop.

Added:

Second Life and Research Meeting Some of the Penn State folks using Second Life met to discuss using SL for research, and what were the implications for following Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards. Leading the discussion was Professor Beliveau (Ed Lamoureux). Ed’s done some pioneering work in this area and had some good advice to share.

Millions of Us Discusses How to Protect Brands in Second Life In just a few minutes, I’ll be joining Haver Cole of Metaversatility, Peter Millionsofus and Celebrity Millionsofus of Millions of Us, and Nic Mitham of K-Zero to discuss brand protection in Second Life. We’ll be speaking at Noon CST at the New Globe Theater, Millions of Us (152, 125).

IBM To Bridge Realities, Stage Trans World Event Today Today at 12pm PST IBM, Cornell University and Metaversed.com will be staging a trans world, tri-reality event in 4 seperate locations, two of which will be 3D virtual world platforms glued together by virtual camera crews and IP telephony.

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