Estonia, a small member state of the European Union with 1.3 million inhabitants living by the Baltic Sea, has since the 1990s been labelled as one of the leading “Information Age” countries, having a surprisingly high penetration rate of computer use and Internet. They’re very strong supporters of e-voting and e-government and known for their leading projects in those areas, as an example throughout Europe. It is thus not surprising to see that they’ve fully embraced Second Life and launched the official site of the Estonian Embassy in our virtual world. Estonia’s limited budget only allows it to maintain diplomatic relationships with about 40 countries, so the building in SL is planned to allow Estonia’s government to further these relationships at a very low cost.

Appropriately named “Virtual Estonia”, it does feature a huge and geometrically complex ultramodern building made by the architect Scope Cleaver, famous for his unique style that has given him the fame of being the “Calatrava or Leary of Second Life”. According to Scope himself, quoted by Distant Signals (who was one of the managers responsible for Estonia’s official presence in SL), “he thinks it is possible to create this building in real life ‘by some very angry architects’”. It features shiny, modern rooms with complex intersections of glass and concrete, dividing the space in interesting ways. An art/photography exhibition commemorates Estonia’s 90th anniversary as a Republic. The very interesting “Technology Room” appeals to Estonians’ high-tech know-how by proposing some creative devices that give SL residents a glimpse of the near future. There are also a few meeting rooms (featuring Scope’s amazingly detailed and realistic furniture), an amphitheatre, and some chilling out areas, which were being used by several members of the organisation to do informal meetings here and there.

Perhaps unlike other “embassies” in Second Life, Estonia’s is interesting because of its focus: they’re not here to show off the natural beauty of their lovely country and attract tourists. Instead they have settled to invite the visitors to experience a very high-tech country which is at the forefront of the computer and Internet revolution. It’s very likely that they’re planning to attract similarly-minded individuals, organisations, and governments from other countries to learn with Estonia how to expand and develop the roots of e-government and an information society inside a democratic country — Estonia having been ranked by “Reporters Without Borders” as having the fourth highest index of press freedom (the US ranks at #44) and by the State of World Liberty Index as the country with the highest level of individual and economic freedom and limited government (the US ranks at #8).

I just wished to thank all my friends that so nicely wished me a Merry Christmas!

For all of you and your families, my sincere wishes of a wonderful holiday!

Last year, American Apparel, a popular US clothes brand, opened a shop in Second Life with a lot of positive press. Avatars could get for a few L$ relatively faithful replicas of their clothes in SL. Their project lasted almost a year or so, and then, as they finished their experiment, it was shut down (with a promise to return in the feature).

The media interested in reporting all sort of doomsday predictions about SL was obviously eager to know the reasons why American Apparel went away. Was the experiment a failure? Didn’t they reach their goal? Were they really expecting to sell more SL clothes than the popular SL-only brands? What, in fact, was their purpose?

We won’t probably know more than what was officially announced. Still, although I visited the SL shop, I never thought much about it. It was “just another brand”.

For about half a year, we also have Bershka in-world, a similar clothes brand, popular in several European countries. What is the difference in their approach? Will they also go away like American Apparel did?

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The SLogosphere has been busily trying to “interpret” the meaning of the Electric Sheep Company’s layoff of about a third of their workforce and since some of their projects are being shut down, there have been all kinds of wild speculations. There isn’t a real official press release about the layoff, just some comments from some of ESC’s representatives and an explanation by a former employee, so this is a good background for rumours, on a week where all we read is how companies are leaving SL or other virtual worlds are growing like crazy.

So it’s time for a new round of metahype and doomsday predictions? You bet!

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Prokofy Neva has released his predictions for 2008  which make for very interesting reading, even if his predictions for 2007 were actually not close to the mark, but made for interesting reading nevertheless.

Sadly, Typepad (the software his blog runs under) thinks that my comments are “spamming” (well, who knows…) so here follow my answers. Make sure you read his excellent article first, though.

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In part one of this essay, we examined that most infamous of dystopian nanotech outcomes, the ‘grey goo’ of self-replicating machines. In this second part the view shall be widened as we examine how molecular manufacturing might affect society as a whole. I am obviously not the first person to attempt such a thing. In fact, ever since Drexler established the field with his books ‘Engines Of Creation’, ‘Unbounding The Future’ and ‘Nanosystems’, there have been no end of speculations regarding how society will adapt to this paradigm shift in engineering. Some of these speculations are decidedly dystopian, others defiantly utopian but if there’s anything their authors share in common it’s the fact that none of them have had first-hand experience of a society built on widespread access to molecular manufacturing. This is simply because the technology is still very much in the theoretical stage of development and no practical nanosystems currently exist. (more…)

Ana Lutetia tagged me!

Oh no! This means I now have to write eight things about myself, and tag another eight people to do the same. This is almost like spamming. Help!

Well, let’s start with the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Now the bit that hurts!

1. I hate talking about myself. Really. I can deliver a 5,000-word-essay from one day to the other, including some research, but then the editor/publisher will ask me “for a short bio” and I’ll be stuck. For. Ever. I truly don’t like that. It sounds like bragging. Anyway, who cares about what people are, what matters is what they do and say, right?
2. The more times goes on, the more I hate phone calls. Or VoIP calls. It’s hard to explain. Back in 1996 or so I started compulsively abandoning phone calls, which took too much of my (work) time so that I needed to focus on real work. There is no such thing as a 30 second call to deal with something quickly and efficiently. They all take 30 minutes and are a waste of time. If you’re not able to write what you want to do convey, unless you’re dysgraphic (and that’s a disease), you really have nothing worth listening to.
3. Old age is when you start losing patience with people that turn from “clueless” into “stupid”. When you’re young, you’re more tolerant about human stupidity and tend to shrug it off as “merely uninformed”. I’m 104 years old.
4. I’m the worst driver in history. All people around me claim to “drive better than the average”. Since this is statistically impossible, I have to be the one that compensates for all the rest. I’m the singularity of bad driving. To prove it: I think I’m the only person that had an accident while driving the car to do some repairs — inside a garage!
5. I don’t own a TV since 2000. Really. I thought we should move on with the times. Some things should be discarded as we plod along into the 21st century. I don’t miss it a bit. The day gained a lot of extra hours!
6. Never underrate reading. When all else fails (power, computer, your CD player or TV if you’re into it), a book is still portable, lasts a few hundred of years, doesn’t use any power, and is always a source of pleasure for several hours.
7. As a teenager, I worked very hard to become an artist, since that’s what everybody else was doing. I failed at painting, sculpture, playing any kind of instrument (I learned the flute, the violin, and the piano), singing, acting, and writing — all were attempted, several times, and simply never worked out. Frustrated, there was only one source of creativity for me: computers, which are not demanding on the kind of crap you do with them. I’m now too old to be called a computer geek, but I guess that’s what I was as a teenager — and still, I failed at programming, computer-created design, modelling, or music composing! I’m the only resident of Second Life with over three years that can’t build, can’t script, can’t do textures, and can’t do animations. When I tell that to newbies, they ask me how I spent over 1300 days in SL! My answer: having a lot of fun
8. People are the most fascinating things in the universe. Really! I hope to become a sociologist, anthropologist, or even a psychologist in my next life, and study human beings for a living, because it’s the most entertaining activity in the universe. For this life, I content myself in meeting a lot of people, chat with them, learn from them, and hopefully keep a few good friends along my journey in this world.

And finally, the people I’ve tagged, in no particular order:

Tao Takashi, Extropia DaSilva, Hiro Pendragon, Onder Skall, Tara5 Oh, Hamlet Au, Lem Skall, Frank Koolhaas. I didn’t tag Eloise Pasteur,  Tateru Nino, or Prokofy Neva, who were already tagged, but definitely at the top of my list! I would have tagged a lot of more people, but I’m afraid they’ll kill me slowly! (The ones above will probably only roast me in a slow fire, but after I’m dead!)

I found this very interesting blog entry, thanks to my friends: http://youthedesigner.com/2007/11/30/20-horrible-habits-of-clients/

It’s done by a web designer, but it applies exactly to Second Life as well.

Customers are customers everywhere!

In my never-ending quest of looking for fashionable improvements (believe me, it can entertain me for ages ) I found out a cute thing about some fancy shoes: they have nice, realistic-sounding, heel-clicking sounds.

Sure, I know it’s a “novelty” item — it scares people off the first time you start nagging them with the clicking sounds, then they begin to make silly comments, so it’s also a great way to break some ice!

In any case, this was one of the many things that I imagined that it would be immensely popular, and that after a few months, every shoe I bought had heel sounds.

Alas, it didn’t happen. Only a few designers give that as an option! Why? I investigated…

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Every girl who tried a flexiskirt once (how can you resist not buying them…?) knows about the problem: they look fantastic when standing up, but completely nasty when sitting down.

The image here shows what happens. Flexiskirts, unlike mesh-based skirts (also known as ugly Linden skirts) simply don’t follow your avatar’s skeleton, but gravity. There is nothing you can do about it: the skirt will always be “inside” the chair where you sit on.

Or is there a solution?…

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