Take It Or Leave It
According to blogHUD user Dedric Mauriac, a version of the TV show ‘Deal Or No Deal’ has hit the metaverse, called ‘Take It Or Leave It’
Great idea!!
Dedric is also building a Wheel of Fortune (I think š ) in SL too!
Category: Second Life
Live From Second Life
I can’t promise this will be on all the time, as it was a quick test idea that I have thought about for a few months and got round to doing once I got more memory for the MacMini (running Windows).
Let’s see how this holds up – this blog doesn’t get many readers, so off you go! All ten eleven of ya š
Linden ATM?
I was just looking at a list of virtual worlds and games out there and was looking at Entropia Universe‘s site. It seems like they have a real world debit card available which lets their users withdraw their in world currency as real world cold hard cash from any ATM!
I think that’s a great idea and one which I think Linden Lab should look at doing with their own Linden Dollar in Second Life. How cool would that be!? š “yeah.. put in on my PrimCard” š
Now that’s what I call a flexi friend š
The Descendants of Ruth flock in
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2sxcW-lxHA]
On the day that Second Life reached the 1 million residents mark, the interest has apparently seen around 50,000 new signups already today! I decided to get an alt and record the arrivals on one of the Orientation islands. This one is island number 32 for arrivals!
As you can see, everyone starts off as a female! People also see this strange (sometimes gender-bending) transition from a plain female avatar to their own customised version (it can be quite amusing).
The name of this avatar is ‘Ruth’. She is an early basic model from Fractal Designs’ Curious Labs’ e-frontier’s 3d character designing and animating software called Poser, which many people use to create the .bvh animation files which get embedded into ‘poseballs’ in Second Life. She is the basic form of every avatar in SL.
So, welcome!! ‘Descendants Of Ruth’!
I think that could be a great name for a band in Second Life. š
Virtual ā3Dā Podcasting Expo
I just read about an expo billed as a ‘Virtual International Podcasting Expo’. The details are here.
When I read this, I thought ‘ooo, in Second Life?’ – but apparently not. The site seems extremely vague about the hows and whatnot of this ‘3-D Virtual Expo’ but looking at one of the pages here, it looks like a web-based habbo hotel-type thing.
They appear to have a pretty good (and long!) lineup of speakers. It will be interesting to see what happens and how it all works.
There could be all sorts of reasons why they do not choose Second Life to do this, but I think they could do it there too, to an extent. I get the feeling it’s jumping on the bandwagon a bit, but if it’s good for podcasting and it helps people learn, then that’s good enough for me. š
Yahoo!ās Tech Mom Looks at Second Life
Dory Devlin, Yahoo! Tech’s ‘The Mom’ has a post here about Second Life, since hearing of ‘Adam Reuters’ (Adam Pasick) being ’embedded’ as a journalist in Second Life for Reuters – they have a dedicated site at http://secondlife.reuters.com. There’s a hearty discussion thread building on Dory’s post! Lots of ‘I don’t get it’ posts and lots of ‘I make money!’ posts.
Recently, Adam posted a story that the US Congress are launching a probe into the virtual economy that exists within Second Life (and a follow-up here). Many people make quite alot of money in this virtual world. Some even more than the employees of Linden Lab, the creators and curators of this new ‘metanation’ which I inhabit.
It’s an interesting discussion – and one which will have to be addressed soon, whether we like it or not. I heard about a year or so ago of someone who was trying to go through his taxes and wanted to deal with the money he was being paid to look after someone’s character in a different game. His accountant and the taxman had no idea what to do, so shrugged and ignored it.
I think it’s bound to change. But I wonder how the various global tax offices decide to deal with it. There will probably be virtual tax havens you could log in from, to avoid paying. We’ll see. What about if Linden move all their servers offshore? How about Sealand? That’s a ‘very Second Life’ place š
In the next week or so, we’ll hit the 1 million users mark in Second Life. (Currently stands at 983,621) That will be a big day which will no doubt garner headlines all over the world – then more users will come – and more money will be exchanged – etc, etc… š
Doctoe Schnook and I (Koz Farina) hope to start a podcast purely about Second Life soon. Stay tuned! š
BBC News : RSS NewsReader : Secondlife : 2
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEy3VYXlUE0]Another demo of something I have been meaning to try for ages. After dusting off some old actionscript skills from back in the flash5 days, I was able to get a screen reading RSS feeds. WooHoo!!!! Animated!
BBC News : RSS NewsReader : Secondlife :Koz
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z8zbjH9S9o]
Here’s a demo of something I have been meaning to try for ages. After dusting off some old actionscript skills from back in the flash5 days, I was able to get a screen reading RSS feeds. Yay to that!!
Google Ad(makesno)Sense?
Recently, I decided to it was high time I had a look at Google AdSense. Having never placed advertising on a website before, it was kind of weird, but the Google interface and instructions were very easy to follow.
I have put it on my Second Life blogging system pages at bloghud.com
But, while looking over their system today, I decided to have a look at their AdSense policies page and was rather surprised to see this entry:
“Copyrighted Material
In order to avoid associations with copyright claims, website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results.”
Whaaaa? I’m pretty sure I have seen loads of sites for AV with Google ads on them.
Does anyone out there know more about this? Have I misread it, or are all these people breaking the policy?
Second Life : The Band!
Did you know there was a band, back in 1971 called ‘Second Life’? Nope. Me neither, until I came across a listing in a newsgroup about 70’s music.
Their one and only album, eponymously titled ‘Second Life’ is quite a rarity it seems. The tracks sound very Arthur Lee/Love/Hendrixy/Doorsy with long guitar solos and endless drum noodling. lovely.
Oh, and naturally, long hair š [which they appear to share] š
From ‘Second Battle‘ where you can get this on CD :
“I would describe this one and only album by SECOND LIFE (same line-up as TIGER B. SMITH) as a “no compromise” hard rock masterpiece, especially because of its self-titled opener, a varied opus of twenty minutes consisting of floating acoustic parts, powerful moments and expanded instrumental solos.”
cosmic!