Fireworks are traditional on American Independence Day, July 4, and so when my sister was unable to see first life fireworks yesterday, I bought her a set of Henry deCuir’s Second Life® fireworks and we spent the evening on her waterfront land in the Second Life mainland with a friend watching fireworks. The fireworks were…
Religion, Robots and a Second Life: Apocalyptic AI
“One thing that really surprised me is that there are people in Second Life who think of their personalities in that world as distinct from and potentially severable from their personalities in conventional reality. Some of the folks whom I interviewed think (or at least talk) in terms of identities that are separate from their…
Burning Life 2009 preview – part three
You’re walking in a desert through an extravagance of imaginative builds on all sides, but then you see something strange, a rectangular build, orange and yellow in color, with some spheres and other shapes inside. If you enter the property and hit the "Play Media" icon on your Second Life viewer, the magic begins. Music…
Ancient Mayan city in Second Life
Let’s agree upfront that visiting a virtual Chichen Itza can’t come close to visiting the real thing, but few of us will visit the real Chichen Itza even once in our lives. A virtual Chichen Itza has the advantage of being available to us every day to visit whenever we want. This writer has so…
Greenlife Emerald Viewer – radar, teleport history, and build options
A few days ago I gave my first impressions of the Greenlife Emerald Viewer, an alternate Second Life viewer; today I’m examining a few more of its features. Bianca Kendall reported two particularly useful features of the viewer: radar and teleport history. In this article, we’ll explore these along with some useful build options. The…
Burning Life 2009 preview – part two
While taking pictures in the Burning Life-Limbo sim, I met two builders who exemplify one of the things I like best about Second Life: it’s global nature. We come from all over the globe, nearly every country, and speaking a wide array of languages. Without a virtual world such as Second Life, we’d be unlikely…
Greenlife Emerald Viewer – first impressions
I’ve been using the Greenlife Emerald Viewer for Second Life recently and I like it, although I’ve only begun exploring its features. The first thing you notice is the different login screen. The photos are different – and I think better – than with the standard Second Life viewer, and you’re given several additional choices…
Burning Life 2009 preview – part one
Burning Life 2009 is coming! It will be open October 17-25, but beginning today I’m publishing a series of previews of what you’ll see. Based on the famous Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, Second Life‘s Burning Life festival adheres closely to the spirit of the Burning Man. A cooperatively built city arises in…
Virtual Goods Panel
Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale and Chief Product Officer Tom Hale were joined recently by Second Life residents Harper Beresford and JeanieSing Trilling in a mixed reality panel at the Virtual Goods Conference in San Jose, California. Hale and moderator Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University were in San Jose while Rosedale, Beresford, and Trilling were…
A billion hours in Second Life
Linden Lab announced in a press release last week that Second Life users have logged over a billion – that’s 1,000,000,000 – hours in world. That’s the equivalent of 114,000 years! Users came from over 200 countries – over sixty percent are outside the United States. User hours grew 33% in the 2nd quarter of…