Ch-ch-ch-changes............

Well things are always changing in second life. with the state of the economy I now have some of the same stress I do in my RL........lets just all hope we can keep the lindens rolling......






paidContent.org - Industry Moves: Second Life CFO Departs For The Real World

Linden Lab CFO John Zdanowski has resigned, headed off to "find the next business adventure," according to the company blog. Known as "Zee Linden" in-world (his avatar is pictured here), Zdanowski said it was time to move on given that Linden had successfully grown from a cool tech startup, to a profitable company with a "very healthy cash balance."

He joined in 2006, right before everyone from Reuters and Showtime, to the U.S. Army became obsessed with Second Life, and he's one of the few members of the company's initial executive team that lasted this long: founder and CEO Phillip Rosedale stepped down in early 2008, and co-founder and CTO Cory Ondrejka (now at EMI) left in 2007

Zdanowski's exit comes on the heels of another long-time vet's departure: VP of marketing and community development Robin Harper also just quit, per Virtual Worlds News, meaning relatively new CEO Mark Kingdon has the room to grow his own team. (Recent new hires include a Chief Product Officer, and VPs of strategy and emerging business and core development).


The New Virtual Red-Light District: Second Life Tackles Its Sex Problem

A major part of Second Life’s appeal is that people can make their avatars into anything they want: vampires, steampunks, fashion models and, of course, strippers and escorts. Sex sells in Second Life, just like it does in the real world; though there aren’t any hard stats, adult and sex-related transactions make up a significant portion of the $35 million in real money that Linden Lab says filters through its virtual economy each month. But adult activities are also what has kept certain brands and companies from setting up shop in-world, so Linden Lab announced that it will be restricting such activities to an “Adult Continent.”

In an official blog post, Linden Lab said the idea was to “improve Second Life for everyone” and “give residents more control over what they see.” But VP of customer relations Cyn Linden also told New World Notes that it would help “businesses and education [groups] to feel more comfortable about what they encounter” in-world. The company said it would solicit feedback in its forums and message boards to come up with a working definition of adult activity, which could include “explicit sexual conduct or genitalia,” “representations of intense violence” and “stimulated drug use,” among other things. The changes are expected to roll out over the next few months.

More after the jump.

The adults-only zone will be separate from the mainland; people who want access will need to be age-verified through either a credit card or Linden Lab’s own verification service. Residents that own land earmarked for adult activities will not have to move, but they’ll be required to rope off the area and set up age-verification controls. Adult-related content will also be filtered from the Google-powered search listings, meaning people will have to search for it explicitly.

Linden Lab has struggled with ethical and regulatory issues in Second Life in the past, including accusations of child pornography that forced it to ban “age-play,” or the depiction of erotic activities using child avatars in 2007 (via Reuters). It also had to crack down on “banks” that promised residents sky-high interest rates for their “investments” and then collapsed, taking users’ real-world money with them; the idea is to govern Second Life in a way that maximizes freedom, but keeps real-world authorities from stepping in.


Virtual world to help disabled build self esteem

HOUSTON -- (March 27, 2009) -- Using internet-based technology, experts at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston are changing the way women with disabilities interact with the world -- by having them experience it through a new one.

Research has shown that there are numerous barriers to health promotion intervention programs for women with disabilities including transportation limitations, health problems, and problems finding personal assistance services and child care. Researchers can now break through these barriers by making intervention programs available in the virtual world. Through a grant from the United States Department of Education, BCM’s Center for Research on Women with Disabilities will develop an intervention program in Second Life® that focuses on self-esteem, a critical element in health and wellness.

Interact through avatars
Second Life® is a 3-D multi-user virtual environment on the internet that allows its "residents" to interact with one another through avatars. The avatar, the user’s representation of herself, can be as similar or as different from her real self as she wishes, meaning she does not have to be disabled in Second Life®.

"Second Life® allows women with disabilities to experience virtual life as an able bodied person," said Dr. Margaret Nosek, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at BCM. "They can be who they want to be in the virtual world rather than living by the standards set by others," said Nosek.

Although most internet-based self-study programs may be effective in eliminating some of the barriers to participation that many women with disabilities face, they do not allow for social interaction, which is important for building self-esteem.

Practice skills
"Second Life® allows them to interact with other women while learning and practicing new self-esteem building skills in the virtual world," she said.

These new skills are then applied to real life situations, with women developing goals and action plans that they implement in the real world.

The program, which will be available in Second Life® in late 2009, will also link to the Garden of Wellness, a 2-D site developed by the BCM researchers that gives women with disabilities other health and wellness tips.

The Virtual REAL life..........

The Virtual REAL life..............
CLAYMONT, Del. — Delaware authorities charged a woman with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through the virtual reality Web site "Second Life."
Kimberly Jernigan, 33, originally of Durham, N.C., was returned to Delaware to face charges including attempted kidnapping after she was arrested in Maryland last week.
Court records show that Jernigan drove to the 52-year-old man's apartment Thursday with a stun gun, handcuffs and duct tape.
She fled after he came home to find her there and called police.
Police said the two met online on "Second Life," a social site where people create virtual alter egos.
The man broke off the relationship after they met in person.
Court records do not list an attorney for Jernigan, who was being held in lieu of $65,000 bail by New Castle County Police in Delaware........



Angry online divorcee 'kills' virtual ex-hubby
Police say woman logged on virtual reality game and ended ex's avatar

TOKYO - A 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher's sudden divorce from her online husband in a virtual game world made her so angry that she logged on and killed his digital persona, police said Thursday.
She used his identification and password to log onto popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in mid-May, a police official in northern Sapporo City said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.
The woman had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.
She was charged with illegal access onto a computer and manipulating electronic data, police said. If convicted, she could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine up to $5,000.
As in "Second Life" in the U.S., players in "Maple Story" raise and manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting against monsters and other obstacles.
The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married, and killed the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his beloved online avatar was dead.
The woman was arrested Wednesday and was taken across the country, traveling 620 miles from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sappporo, where the man lives, the official said.
The police official said he did not know if she was married in the real world.
In recent years, virtual lives have had consequences in the real world. In August, a woman was charged in Delaware with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through "Second Life."

and then this......


5 Worst Websites
We're sure that somebody out there is enjoying Second Life, but why? Visually, this vast virtual world can be quite impressive, but it's notoriously slow to load (it runs on free software you have to download) and difficult to navigate, even with a broadband connection. You interact in the space through an avatar, but creating and personalizing this animated representation of yourself is tedious. Movements feel clunky and there can be a terrible lag. As on many sites, there's a learning curve for novices, but Second Life's is simply too steep. And there are crazy people around every corner — disruptive types that spread graffiti and get in your way and throw you off your groove. Fans praise Second Life as a virtual hangout where you can meet and chat and buy sneakers and real estate (that's fake stuff for real money) and dance and go bowling and have sex — suggesting that "virtual humans" doing "human things" online in Second Life is somehow less pathetic than, say, cooking Kaldorei spider kabobs or making magic pantaloons in World of Warcraft. The corporate world's embrace of the place as a venue for staff meetings and training sessions does seem to lend Second Life a layer of legitimacy. But maybe it's a case of some CEOs trying too hard to be hip.



Ima go build something.....;/

BBC and virtual worlds

.....picked up from BBC today. I guess it is official about Cory.......A very real future for virtual worlds
Second Life has long been seen as the bell-wether for the growing interest in virtual spaces. Here, founder Philip Rosedale talks to the BBC News website about the past and future of the parallel world he is helping to create.

These are interesting times for Second Life. In the four short years it has existed, it has seen media coverage go from hysterical to hectoring. It has been hailed as both a harbinger of the next big thing and a brake on the burgeoning development of virtual worlds.

Speculation about its future has intensified as news emerged that chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka, who helped design and build Second Life, has left the company.

But said Philip Rosedale, one of the founders of Linden Lab which oversees the running of Second Life, the departure will not dent the vision all the original engineers had for their creation.

"Cory is a fantastic guy, he's fantastically capable and we will miss him a lot," said Mr Rosedale.


Philip Rosedale and his Second Life avatar Philip Linden
"Our differences are more about how to run the company and how best we organise ourselves as a company going forward," he said. "We really do not have any differences in strategic direction."

"There's not a shift in direction in the company that I wanted to make or Cory wanted to make that was incompatible," he told the BBC News website.

"We are a core of technologists in our heart," he said. "The first 10 people that joined, there are only two that have left, they are all engineers."

For the near future, Linden Lab is looking at ways of making the technology behind Second Life much more open and easy to use.

Web worlds

"We are still in the early days so the things that are wrong are still wrong," he said, "It is still hard to figure out how to use Second Life and how to find things."

In many respects, he said, online virtual worlds are at the point now that the web reached in the early 1990s.

"We have often had fun in the office finding quotes from the early 90s that map exactly to what they say about Second Life now, " he said, "that it's disorganised, you cannot find anything and there is a lot of crap."


Despite the scepticism from many quarters he is fervently convinced that virtual worlds are the future of online life.

"Virtual worlds are inherently comprehensible to us in a way that the web is not," said Mr Rosedale. "They look like the world we already know and take advantage of our ability to remember and organise."

"Information is presented there in a way that matches our memories and experiences," he said. "Your and my ability to remember the words we use and the information we talk about is much higher if it's presented as a room or space around us."

Equally important, he said, was the visibility or presence that being in a virtual world bestows on its users.

By contrast, he said, when visiting a website people are anonymous and invisible.

Shopping on Amazon might be much easier and enjoyable if you could turn to one of the other 10,000 or so people on the site at the same time as you and ask about what they were buying, get recommendations and swap good or bad experiences.


Many firms are using Second Life to collaborate
Many firms and educators were starting to use Second Life as an online collaboration space that helps them work together like they do in the real world but to which is added the malleability of a wholly digital space.

For virtual worlds to be able to extend this usefulness to the mass of people a lot of work has yet to be done, said Mr Rosedale.

What it might take, he said, was software that would let people browse virtual worlds like they do webpages. Built in to that software would be an identity management system that re-drew yourself to match those different spaces.

"I think it is going to happen, that kind of portability of identity is important but I could not hazard a guess right now about how quickly it will happen," he said.

"But," he said, "with a sufficiently open platform then people will move into it quite rapidly."

It might, he speculated, one day outstrip the web as a means for people to communicate and work together.

"Because virtual worlds like Second Life do not impose language barriers like the web does - that almost certainly means their ultimate utility range is larger," he said. "We are at the very early stages of something very big."

Pick-pockets, Phone-calls and sex ed?

Hail, second lifers!!
Your Intrepid librarian has been combing the web looking for new and tasty tid-bits to pass along and she thinks she may have a few to share.
First I would like to report that the new windlight viewer is absolutly stunning and I spent the first three nights on my roof just watching the sun rise and fall. So if you haven't seen it yet by all means go download it!!

Second Life Residents To Get Calls From The Real World
Avatars will be able to sign up for phone numbers and get phone calls from the physical plane -- one of a series of new voice and chat upgrades planned for the virtual world.

By Mitch Wagner
InformationWeek
December 7, 2007 09:20 AM


Linden Lab is working on upgrades for voice communications in Second Life, including the ability for avatars in-world to receive phone calls from people in the real world, as well as Linux support and moderator controls.


Linden Lab is also working on a standalone desktop client for chat.


In the first quarter of 2008, users in Second Life will be able to get real-world phone numbers assigned to their avatars, and receive calls from real-world phones, said Joe Miller, vice president, platform & technology development for Linden Lab. Users will be able to get voicemail, which can be e-mailed to the user or listened to when in-world........(read more)

click.......Herbert....you on that second life again?.......well we need you down at the office......I had a feeling that call in sick thing was fake.....

Academic to host sex ed class on Second Life

Anthea Lipsett
Thursday December 6, 2007
EducationGuardian.co.uk


A senior Salford University academic is to venture on to the social networking site Second Life to bring sex education to teenagers online.
The move follows Tuesday's Youth Parliament report that criticised the poor quality of sex education being given to teenagers in UK schools.

Barbara Hastings-Asatourian, a senior nursing lecturer at Salford and managing director of Contraception Education, will host the first live seminar on sexual health on Second Life next week.....(read more)

Virtual Learning, Inworld Support and Kool New Water!!

The virtual university
SAN JOSE STATE JOINS INTERNET-BASED WORLD OF SECOND LIFE
By Kara Andrade


One day Professor Jeremy Kemp entered his classroom and found himself next to a student dressed as a gigantic monarch butterfly.

But Kemp was not startled in the least that one of his students had sprouted wings. Since he started teaching at the virtual campus of San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science, students have also appeared as robots and giant bowls of Jell-O.

"I am looking at representations that they create, and that's just as valid as real life," said Kemp, assistant director of the virtual campus, which opened in May. "I have a sense of being there and being with the person."

San Jose State is one of a skyrocketing number of colleges and universities across the country to make the leap into the virtual frontier using Second Life, the Internet-based world created by Linden Lab of San Francisco.......(read more)

"Next fall, Main said, the department is going to make it a requirement for students to include a Second Life component."

Awesome!! As ususal Second life is growing around us by leaps and bounds

Transgender Day Of Remembrance Observed in SL
by Penny Sautereau

Every year thousands of innocent people are murdered around the world for their beliefs, for who they are. Hatred kills people every day somewhere. Muslims are murdered for being Muslims. Jews for being jewish. Gays and lesbians for being gay and lesbian.



Every year a few hundred of those are Transgendered people, and of those only a handful get reported or noticed. Transsexuals, crossdressers, hermaphrodites. To the haters it doesn't matter. You're different, and to them that's enough. The transgender umbrella holds a lot of different kinds of people under it, but to those who murder them, they all have one thing in common; They blur gender lines in ways that make many people uncomfortable. In the last 12 months alone, 17 TG murders have been reported in North America and Europe. Imagine how many weren't........(read more)

YYYAAYYY GWEN!!!! Its great work you all do!! although I have been personally guilty of some rather non-groupish behavior just last night I was proud of our group as they rallied and stood behind a member with a greifer/stalker problem. So don't tell the girls and guys I said so but KUDOS to them all and to you too Gwen....love ya baby!!

WindLight First Look Viewer update!Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 5:07 PM PST by: Pastrami Linden
Download It Here!!!
Hello all! As a last minute treat before Thanksgiving (also known as Thursday and Friday to the rest of the world :)), we’ve managed to get in an update to the newly released WindLight First Look!

Issues fixed in this release (r74061):


Torley.....You are sooooo kool!!! I fall in love every time i see ya!! Love those eyes!!!
OK........peace and Turkey to all from RPI second life!!! Use your flight feathers to stay above the drama and I'll see Y'all in world!!

/me scampers off to download windlight with fingers crossed it will run for hir!!

Tolerant

Zoe Hana writes.....

"I have been a child avi for over a year now, and i am REALLY REALLY glad that LL have put their foot down about those who are not appropriate with this. For one, because of those people, I am discriminated against. Thats like me saying all adult avis are having sex… thats just not true lol.

What i would like to see next, is the side of having a child avi on sl, that is innocent. Normal semi realistic families. I would really like some light shed on that side. So People can see not all of us are pervs, or pedos. In fact when i run into someone who has wrong things on their mind and choose to share them with me, they are reported and muted within seconds and banned from my land. We all know about the side thats wrong.

And I have to disagree with the person who said ageplay has to do with submission…. lol ask anyone that knows me, i am FAR from submissive. And most of my child avi friends are far from submissive as well.

LL knows us innocent ones are out there, which is why they are not ridding sl of us, and for that i am grateful. Thanks for everything LL!"

......and this is why I must learn to be tolerant. Thank you Zoe.

Clarification......of one issue.

Today Linden labs posted a Clarification of Policy Disallowing “Ageplay”

I hate child avatars.
I don't even need to see them engaged in questionable behavior to hate them.

That makes me pause to think a moment.
That makes me intolerant.
I am, and freely admit I am intolerant to child avatars.

as an experiment.....if you haven't already.....type these words into your second life search engine.....
Rape
Murder
Kill
Blood

I have seen tables soaked in blood to strap victims on.....white aprons covered in blood for that uber real serial killer look. knives.....hatchets.....you name it.
I hate these things too.
These are the evil elements of our society following us into our virtual world.
But then who decides what is evil and what isn't.....
And can we really define evil.....put a label on it and ban it as well.
If me and 'Avatar A' go to my payed for sim and have go at the pose balls I feel its my business and my right.
If I tie 'Avatar A' to the bed, with consent mind you......I still feel I am within my rights.
If 'Avatar A" is a furry does that mean i dabble in bestiality?
When 'Avatar A" discovers I am not a biological female will there be a "second life beareu of gender authenticity" to report me to?

lets face it...
yes .....second life is an incredible teaching platform that can change the way we learn on a global and unprecedented scale.
yes....second life stands to change the way we do business and shop online in that same global capacity.
But what has hooked the vast majority of us is the social aspect we experience. The people we meet.....fall in love with.....have sex with.
We are pioneers in a new frontier.
There are no laws to govern this new frontier. Like the wild west of the 1800s we learn and make the rules as we go along.
Who decides what is acceptable and what is not in this new world?

It is us....the pioneers.

It must fall to us to decide what is wrong and what is right.
which fetishes (and intolerances to fetishes) we allow to follow us into that frontier.

Kudos To the Lindens for attempting to tackle this emotionally charged issue.
They do their part in trying to clear the ethics of this new world.
Its up to us to be tolerant and strong on our convictions and our neighbors.

The future of our second lives demands it.