Second Life Polska by Servicetek

I love, LOVE experiencing what’s happening all across the wonderful world of Second Life — including when people doing great things are connected across many miles to begin with. As SL expands internationally, community gateways are coming together for not just more common languages like German and Japanese, but smaller cultures which are beginning to thrive, blending their offline experience with virtual customs.

Recently, Katrin Linden got me connected with Malwina Dollinger. Malwina, Magnus Balczo, and Villemo Inglewood are collaborating on translating video tutorials I created earlier so that Polish Residents can understand and benefit from them.

It’s not just a one-pass dubbing: certain issues like lengthening passages to fit the language need to be considered, and I’ve been corresponding with technical guidance. They’ll have more soon but I wanted to share an early look at one vid from the

Polish Community YouTube Channel:

These videos are part of a bigger project — Polish Community, complete with smile, have their own orientation island. In what I hope will inspire leaders in other SL communities, the Polish Community team have put not just a lot of thought, but a lot of action into their introduction to Second Life. They’ve done necessary fundamentals like translating Viewer text into Polish, but they also impart a sense of humor, as I found out firsthand when I was exploring and fell into a hole. (It’s actually a lesson that teaches you how to fly.)

As I’ve grown to be an unofficial ambassador of Second Life culture over the ages, I appreciate the thematic touches that Polish Community have invested. Combining deep philosophy with simpler lessons, they’ve paid special attention to the psychological bridge between one’s “real” identity and how they perceive themselves as an avatar. Take this lush field, for example, representative of “the old country” and meant to help someone relax after they’ve learned basic lessons or had a particularly thought-provoking discussion. Wide open spaces buttressed by hills and narrow pathing, even represented in pixels, can have a profound effect on our unarticulated selves.

And oh, Polish Community have even got a special section for WindLight; I’m inherently biased, but teaching how to change the atmosphere and affect emotional state always goes over well with me.

Polish Community, in their own words:

“Polish Community is a project focused on promotion of creativity and cooperation between Residents in Second Life®. The main aim for the project is to increase the level of integration and accommodation with Second Life interface of Polish-speaking Residents. By using semantic solutions of the technology of new media, Polish Community opens the possibility of realization and participation in panels of education, business and community programs for every Resident of the Second Life. Taking into consideration the polysemous nature of Second Life platform, Polish Community successively contributes to cultivation and promotion of Polish culture, tradition and art on the international arena.

The essential idea of the Polish Community is collaboration and participation of all Residents for whom support and help are rudimentary targets of existing in Second Life world. Thus, this world – fully created by people and for people, in which human imagination is a sole border is a place to which Polish Community welcomes everyone.”

Anyway, it’s pretty awesome.

Visit Polish Community WyspaStartowa in Second life

to check it out for yourself — do note the orientation areas are restricted to newcomers, so if you’d like a more involved tour, express interest to Malwina.

More info on the Polish Community beta website

Finally, you can see more pictures I took along the way. Thanks to Malwina and Magnus for the highly enjoyable tour!

Know a lovely use of adapting Second Life knowledge resources into another language or for differently-abled people? Do share in the comments!

Earlier this week I had the pleasure to speak with two attorneys with the Federal Trade Commission who are engaged in a report on virtual worlds to Congress, due this December. The researchers are tasked with looking at the environment virtual worlds present to children and, specifically, the access they present to explicit content and measures taken to prevent that access.

The report was prompted by the FTC appropriations bill passed by Congress in March 2009, which noted, in part, that ”[c]oncerns have been raised regarding reports of explicit content that can be easily accessed by minors on increasingly popular virtual reality web programs.”
The bill went on to dictate that ”the FTC shall submit a report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations discussing the types of content on virtual reality sites and what steps, if any, these sites take to prevent minors from accessing content.”
The FTC has since begun prepping its study of virtual worlds with plans to report to Congress later this year.
We’ve seen some fear-mongering from government officials before, most particularly when Representative Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) called out Linden Lab for letting children access rape rooms in Second Life and pushing for a ban of the virtual world in schools and libraries. Of course he didn’t point to specific evidence of children accessing adult content in the virtual world, but Linden has recently made a strong effort to separate adult-oriented content and activities from the rest of its population.
That push was noted by the researchers, who, I’m happy to say, seem much more open-minded and cautious in their approach than Representative Kirk.  They’re on a fact-finding mission, not a witch hunt. They told me they wouldn’t necessarily be pushing for a law enforcement hike, just making general recommendations.
Still, Congress is worried that virtual worlds that set a minimum age of 13 (for COPPA purposes) or 18 (to keep out all minors)  don’t adequately screen out younger users. And, of course, they’re often right. Linden is moving to require age verification for adult content, but usually all it takes to access an adult or teen world is supply a date of birth that meets the requirements and, maybe, a parental email address.
Obviously, that’s not 100% effective for any site, whether that be a virtual world, social network, or straight up adult content like pornography or violent videos.
I’m not sure how that will play into the final report or actions that the government may choose to take. Virtual worlds are meeting the requirements set out for general online properties. It’s just that those requirements are also generally ineffective at baffling anyone older or less dedicated than the most casual 6-year-old user.
Limited Risks?
However, I explained that while Second Life has been the media darling (and punching bag) for the last few years, it’s far from the most populous virtual world–and likely less appealing to younger users who are confronted with options aimed at them and (for tweens) their older siblings like Habbo, Gaia Online, Meez, WeeWorld, IMVU, etc., etc., etc. And while there’s certainly the possibility of adult or explicit content in those worlds, it’s limited by both moderation and technical freedom afforded to users.
My ultimate argument was that you’re more likely to see a 12-year-old sneaking into a teen world than a teen sneaking into an adult world like Second Life. And then they’re more likely to be confronted by cyber-bullies or adult predators (and even that’s not been shown to be incredibly likely) than graphic depictions of sex or violence, especially compared to the broader Web. In other words, they’re more likely to encounter a cartoonish version of a skimpily attired avatar with a bit more sex appeal than Charlie Brown in his underwear and some censored (usually) flirting in a virtual world than the hardcore material they can get anywhere else.
That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate concerns and that more companies should follow Linden’s example and take proactive measures, but I think I’m right that the danger of virtual worlds is minimal compared to other online properties.
But as I explained to the researchers, I’m more of an outside observer than an industry roleplayer. So what do you all think?

source: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/05/ftc-reporting-to-congress-on-virtual-worlds-kids-and-explicit-content.html

Student bodies: Medical trainees with a virtual patient in the simulation

Allowing an unqualified medical student to get to grips with a patient could be risky – after all, they don’t get a second life.

Well, that’s all changed for trainees at one medical school – who can now practise their craft on virtual patients in a hospital on Second Life.

Students are able to treat patients, check their pulses and take blood samples before consulting with colleagues.

hey can diagnose a patient in a safe environment. If they make a mistake and kill a patient then it does not harm anyone,’ said Maria Toro-Troconis, of Imperial College London, which has set up the online hospital.

‘They learn from their mistake and hopefully do not make it again.’

In the Second Life hospital, nursing and medical students are taught strict rules on cleanliness.

If they fail to wash their hands, the simulation stops.

Ms Toro-Troconis said the virtual hospital was a fun way of learning and also a valuable aid, allowing students to practise newly learned skills.

source:  http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Students_get_a_Second_Life_in_medicine&in_article_id=656192&in_page_id=34

 

Mark Kingdon comes from a user experience background, and so is keen to make Second Life a lot easier to use. Photograph: Ivor Prickett

The following correction was printed in the Guardian’s Corrections and clarifications column, Monday 6 April 2009.

In the article below we said that Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world Second Life, had created a new version of Second Life that allows companies to run a private, protected Second Life server while still connecting to the main Second Life world. In fact, the current release does not allow these users to move from their private area into the public one, but an experimental version being jointly produced with IBM can.

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Two years ago, the virtual world Second Life was everywhere, as pundits and press alike rushed to proclaim it as the Next Big Digital Thing. Inevitably, the backlash began soon afterwards. The company behind it, Linden Lab, lost focus and fans; key staff left. Finally, last March, Second Life’s CEO, creator and visionary, Philip Rosedale, announced that he was taking on the role of chairman of the board, and bringing in fresh leadership. But against an increasingly dismal background, who would want to step into his shoes?

Mark Kingdon, apparently. For seven years he had been chief executive of the leading interactive marketing company Organic, founded in 1993, but was attracted to the job for two very different reasons. “From the time I was six, I wanted to be a fine artist, and I only decided to get into business when I figured I’d be a starving artist. So I look at it through the lens of the designer, and I see [Second Life] as just an incredible platform for creativity.”

More pragmatically, he adds: “I see what a phenomenally brilliant business model Second Life has. If you’re a social media property today, your biggest challenge is figuring out how to monetise it. Because the experience and the economy are so closely linked, Second Life doesn’t have the problem that other social media properties have.” As a result, Linden Lab “is a company with an extraordinary balance sheet, a great and profitable revenue stream.”

Engineer a solution

As well as Kingdon’s general experience in running a large company, Rosedale was interested in one aspect in particular: “I come from a user experience background,” Kingdon says. “In order to make Second Life a more broadly accepted experience, we have to make it a lot easier to use.” Kingdon is addressing this problem by bringing in top engineers from companies such as Adobe, Intuit and Pixar. Altogether, he’s hired 100 people since joining Linden Lab last May. He claims that the results are already showing.

“We reduced the hours lost to downtime by 50%, and I think we’ll do the same again,” he says, an important issue when many users were frustrated by the frequent non-availability of the service.

Engineering improvements have also led to a growth in the number of concurrent users. When Kingdon joined last May, the maximum was 60,000. “It’s 86,000 now,” he says, “and we’re projecting that it will be 100,000 concurrent by the end of the year.” He also has ambitious plans for the total number of active users – defined as those who spend more than an hour a month using the service: “I’d like to see a Second Life that, instead of 640,000 active users” – today’s figure – “has 6 million active users.”

Alongside these expansion plans, Kingdon is also reshaping the in-world experience, perhaps most dramatically with a plan to fence off “adult” content. He explains: “Our residents were asking for a more predictable experience.” Or, as the official announcement put it: “Some residents are interested in pursuing certain ‘adult’ activities in Second Life that others would rather not casually encounter.”

One increasingly important group of users looking for more “predictable” experiences are companies, and it is here that perhaps the biggest turnaround in Second Life’s fortunes has taken place. In 2006 – well before joining Linden Lab – Kingdon was recommending businesses explore Second Life as a marketing tool. Today, he sees things differently: “What has changed in my perception between 2006-07 and now is that I see Second Life more as a tool for collaboration and virtual meeting, and less of a large-scale branding tool.”

Kingdon cites two main reasons for companies’ renewed interest in Second Life. “One is that a younger generation of worker is very tech-savvy, accustomed to using very flexible tools to communicate, collaborate and share. Then there’s the tremendous pressure on businesses to be eco-friendly, not to travel as much and not to build physical buildings.”

One major technological improvement may also have contributed to the growing use of Second Life as a tool for collaboration. “Voice was a major accelerant for business and education,” Kingdon says, referring to the capability of Second Life users to talk to each other in-world, using a headset. This was added in August 2007, in the teeth of some opposition. Today, more than 50% of Second Life participants are using this free service at any one time. “We’re doing over 1bn minutes a month of in-world voice.”

Linden Lab is now aiming to build on this enthusiasm for communications: “There’s been a huge amount of interest in Second Life as a collaboration and learning tool, to the extent that we’ve created a new product that’s a behind-the-firewall product.” This allows companies to run a Second Life server on their own intranet: they can still connect to the main Second Life world, but it provides them with a virtual space where confidential discussions can take place.

Unreal estate

This approach seems to have supplanted Linden Lab’s original idea, which was to make its server code open source to let others create compatible worlds (the Second Life viewer is already open source). Perhaps that fits in better with Kingdon’s more pragmatic approach, as it ensures that Linden Lab retains full control of land sales – its main source of income – and provides it with a new revenue stream.

But Linden Lab isn’t the only one making real money from virtual worlds. One figure that Kingdon looks at every week is “cash-outs” – how much people take out of Second Life by cashing in the Linden dollars they make from in-world e-commerce, expected to hit $450m (£318m) this year. “It’s a sense of the health of the [Second Life] economy if people are able to generate a profit,” he says. “I can tell you that the users generate more revenue out of the in-world economy than Linden Lab does. And we’re a very nice and profitable company.”

After all the hype, maybe Second Life is finally starting to deliver.

A couple kiss on Second Life, the virtual world where people can play out fantasies

For its many devotees, the Second Life virtual world is a place where the everyday constraints of normal life drop away and vivid fantasies can be played out.

But fact and fiction have collided in heartbreaking fashion for a British couple who are divorcing after the wife discovered her real-life husband’s online alter-ego, a goatee-bearded, medallion-wearing hombre called Dave Barmy, with another – virtual – woman.

Amy Taylor, who in Second Life is club DJ Laura Skye, said today that as far as she was concerned her husband, David Pollard, was having a real relationship with the human controlling her love rival.

“It may have started on-line but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much,” she said. “His was the ultimate betrayal. He had been lying to me.”

The brainchild of American company Linden Lab, Second Life players can create a virtual alter ego, an avatar. This avatar can move around the imagined world, meet people, socialise, buy land and property with the game’s virtual currency and set up businesses.

Role-playing games have won plaudits for connecting people, academics and businesses, but the British charity Relate said tonight that its counsellors were coming across an increasing number of people whose real-life relationships were falling apart because of what was happening in their parallel, unreal worlds.

Second Life players have spotted the trend and some have set themselves up as virtual private eyes who check on the fidelity of suspected cyber cheats – or as virtual relationship counsellors.

Appropriately enough, Amy Taylor (she has already changed her name by deed poll), 28, and David Pollard, 40, met in an internet chatroom. She moved from her home in London to be with him in Newquay, north Cornwall, and at first they had fun together in real life and cyberspace.

In Second Life she liked to wear tight-fitting cowboy outfits and lived by the motto: “Never give your heart easily.” He set himself up in a winter chalet with a Cobra helicopter gunship parked next to it.

Their avatars became partners in Second Life – until Taylor woke from an afternoon nap and found Pollard at the computer watching his Dave Barmy character having sex with a prostitute.

Horrified, Taylor ended the online relationship between Skye and Barmy but stayed with Pollard in real life.

It was then that fact and fiction really began to collide. Taylor decided to test Dave Barmy – and thus Pollard’s loyalty – by turning to a virtual female private eye called Markie Macdonald.

A “honeytrap” was set up in which an alluring avatar chatted Barmy up. He passed the test with flying colours, talking about Laura Skye all night.

Barmy and Skye got back together in cyberspace, marrying in a ceremony held in a pretty tropical grove. In real life at their flat in Cornwall, Taylor wept as she watched the service and in 2005 – real life again – the couple married in the less glamorous surroundings of St Austell register office.

But Taylor sensed something was wrong and eventually found Dave Barmy chatting affectionately to a woman who was not Laura Skye. She found it even more disturbing than his earlier tryst as there seemed genuine affection in it and – in real life – she filed for divorce.

Taylor said she realised the saga sounded “bizarre” but added: “People find love in lots of different ways.”

She said she still played Second Life – and there was a chance that her alter ego would bump into her former partner’s. It would be awkward but they would survive.

Pollard admitted he was having an on-line relationship with an American woman. “We weren’t even having cyber sex or anything like that we were just chatting and hanging out together. It was nothing really major. I don’t think I was really doing anything wrong.”

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/13/second-life-divorce

Episode three: full of sand and furries — signifying nothing

“In a flaming crash / Like a falling star / Heading straight for the dive / Gonna make some cash / With the avatar…” — Duran Duran, Zoom In

Gosh, what an epic week of news. If rumours of a 2.5% VAT cut, or allegations that a TV chef was having an affair, or a man in Scotland being jailed for three months for singing the Spiderpig song at a policeman, weren’t enough to make your brain explode, then came the earth-shattering news that Reuters has — hold on to your hats — pulled its reporter out of Second Life.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right — as news weeks go, it knocks that one in 1997 when Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died two days apart into a cocked hat.

I mean, Jesus, Second Life? The only thing in any way surprising about this news is that a major news organisation kept a full time reporter in there this long. What the hell did “Eric Reuters” do all day?

Wandering around Second Life today is like visiting Blackpool in February; all sad empty shops, deserted car parks and the stench of loneliness — and the opportunity to buy a fake cock for two quid. Occasionally — very occasionally — you’ll chance upon another depressed lump of sub-humanity, wandering aimlessly and wondering what wrong junction they had taken off the M6 motorway of their life to end up somewhere so desolate. At least Blackpool has Cannon and Ball — Second Life couldn’t even book the wife out of the Krankies (I mention that just so you’ll imagine the Krankies having sex. And again.)

Presumably Reuters had to make the decision to withdraw because they could no longer guarantee their reporter’s sanity. Certainly Second Life today is a one way ticket to depression-town. Which is why I feel the need to admit to something: its demise is all my fault.

Less than two years ago — the start of 2007 — Second Life was booming. Barely a day passed without some big name unveiling a ludicrously ambitious virtual presence. Starwood built an entire hotel to promote its new “aloft” boutique hotels; American Apparel opened a store selling virtual clothes; Jimmy Carr did a “live” stand-up set; Suzanne Vega, Jay Z, Ben Folds and Duran Duran performed gigs — in fact, Duran Duran wrote an entire song, Zoom In, about the experience. It included the lines… “Na na na na na na / I know you know / I don’t want you to go / Na na na na na na / I’m zooming in and out on you”, a fact I only mention to underline how ridiculous Duran Duran lyrics look written down. Mainsteam media started to pay attention too, with episodes of The Office and CSI:NY featuring major characters using Second Life. New users were signing up in their millions in the hope of being able to punch Gary Sinise in his virtual face.

And then came the call. It was an editor from Boxtree wondering whether I’d be interested in co-authoring a book about Second Life. The Unofficial Tourist’s Guide To Second Life, it would be called — a travel book exploring the weird and wonderful sights the metaverse had to offer. “But I hate Second Life,” I started to protest. “In fact, I hate all virtual worlds aimed at grown-ups. They’re just videogames with terrible usability and anyone who thinks they can do actual business there is delusional. I mean, have you seen the people who use these things? Fat American adulterers to a man. They don’t leave the house, let alone stay in boutique hotels…” That’s what I started to say — but I knew I was being unfairly hasty. “How much?” I asked.

The book came out in mid-2007 and in the intervening months, like a tsunami of sanity, the the whole world has come to its senses. Marketing departments have stopped spending money building virtual stores that no one will ever visit; the company’s CEO Philip Rosedale has stepped down to concentrate on his career as a professional Ze Frank look-alike (Google Image Search: Ze Frank; Rosedale) and now Eric “Reuters” Krangel has abandoned his post saying that “the buzz is gone”.

Coincidence? I’d like to say yes, but I can’t. You see, and here — for the sake of Rosedale and Krangel and all of the fat American adulterers who, if Second Life continues to wither, will soon have to be winched out of their houses for the first time in years — is what I wish I’d told Boxtree when they called: my keyboard is cursed. The very moment I write about something, its fate is sealed. Consider the evidence: Second Life? A ghost town. Almost all of the sites listed in my series of web guide books, published days before the web 1.0 crash? Dead. The business plans for all of the companies I’ve started and subsequently been fired from? The list reads like a Little Book Of Trainwrecks.

At the start of 2007 Orion commissioned me to write a memoir about my life as a successful dot com entrepreneur; by the end of that year, when I filed the manuscript, I was unemployed, broke and had been dumped in spectacular — and public — style by not one but two girlfriends. Then there’s this column. Week one: how much I wish the UK had a Valleywag. The following day? Nick Denton decides to close Valleywag. If I were Jerry Yang, I’d be giving owls a wide berth after last week’s instalment.

But Second Life is the last straw. No more innocent victims of my keyboard curse. From now on, I’m only going to use my powers for good — writing only about people, companies and things that I actually want bad things to happen to. And that’s why for next week’s column, myself and Jodie Marsh will be flying to Austria to interview Josef Frizel about his hopes of becoming a Scientologist and his upcoming appearance on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here (sponsored by Angus Steak House).

I’m available for private commissions, too. Tana Ramsay — you’ve got my mobile.

Paul Carr is author of Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. He blogs at bringingnothing.com. His Unofficial Tourist Guide To Second Life is available in all good pound shops.

When you think of virtual worlds, the first one that probably pops into your head is Second Life, but in reality, there are a number of different virtual worlds out there. There are worlds for socializing, worlds for gaming, even worlds for e-learning. But one thing that most virtual worlds have in common is that they are places for play, not practicality. (Yes, even the e-learning worlds are designed with elements of “fun” in mind). Outside of some reports that virtual worlds will replace web conferencing in the enterprise, we haven’t seen a lot of innovation in this space which would make businesses sit up and take notice. However, that may be about to change thanks to new software that lets you perform data visualization and manipulation techniques within the virtual world environment.

Sponsor

About Glasshouse

The software, Glasshouse by Green Phosphor, lets you take data from either a spreadsheet or database query and place a 3D representation of it into a virtual world environment where it can then be explored interactively. Users are inserted into the virtual world as an avatar which can then manipulate the visualization of the data by drilling down into it, re-sorting it, or even just spinning it around to see it from all angles.

The benefits to working with data in this way don’t really need to be touted too much – many businesses already perform data visualization, often using expensive software and powerful computers to do so. What makes what Green Phosphor does so interesting is not that they’ve come up with a way to visualize data – it’s that they’ve come up with a way to leverage the platforms of virtual worlds to do so.

How it Works: CICP (Think HTTP for Virtual Worlds)

Some of the company’s solutions involve using a proprietary virtual world, “Glasshouse,” for data visualization, but for Second Life, Sun’s Wonderland, and other virtual world users, they’ve developed adapters that project graphs from Glasshouse into whichever virtual world you’re using. The only requirement is that the virtual world be CICP-enabled.

CICP, or Content Injection and Control Protocol, was developed in-house by Green Phosphor CEO Ben Linquist and released to the public domain. The standard, cross-platform protocol essentially serves as HTTP for virtual worlds where it works as a communication mechanism that the Glasshouse gateway can use to generate temporary artifacts in the worlds. Already it has been added to Sun Wonderland and released under the GPL license there. It has also been implemented in Second Life with the help of a Java servlet and released under a BSD license. The company is currently working to add it to other virtual worlds, too.

Data Viz for Anyone: From Spreadsheets to Biotech

Depending on company size, there are three different levels of service available. First, a spreadsheet world lets you upload Excel spreadsheets that can then be visualized in a web interface. Next, there’s a workgroup appliance that delivers data visualization and virtual conferencing needs to small or medium-sized businesses. And finally, enterprise solutions designed especially for virtual markets like bio-technology have also been developed as more customized solutions.

As Linquist explains in this YouTube video, the technology is even advanced enough to produce a virtual laboratory where researchers can perform model-based drug development.

If you have Java installed, you can test their web-based virtual world demo by clicking here (launches Java window). For more information about their solutions, visit GreenPhosphor.com.

Discuss

link do pełnej wiadomośći na stronie autora: http://feedproxy.goo(…)d_life.php

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves.

This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of ‘405′. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

comments from Bodeha Zapedzki:

i Say no comments:)… or.. this is f.. AMAZING!!

Choć “World Builder” Bruca Branita nie jestzwiązany z tematyką Second Life to uważam, że warto go zobaczyć. Nie tylko ze względu na świetne efekty specjalne, nad którymi autor pracował 2 lata. Warto zobaczyć go również ze względu na jego temat, o efektach estetycznych nie wspomne:)