Danton Sideways just posted on his blog the result of his tour of the current offerings of OpenSim-based grids and how he evaluated the “state-of-the-art”. All look promising… in a future to come. He was quite honest about his evaluation, and did his best to be in touch with the OpenSim community and understand their [...]

Not so long ago, I commented on the future of music distribution via virtual worlds like Second Life®. It is still my belief that we’re assisting at the end of an age where music distribution via records/tapes/CDs and earning an income from royalties is coming to an end. While “free information activists” have long since predicted [...]

The Sojourner is one of the oldest residents I’ve been honoured to know — she was one of the many Mentors that always was available to give everybody a hand. She was of the “old school” generation of Mentors — when you had at least to give a class every month — and Soj (as [...]

 
At this quiet corner of the world, projects from RL companies continue to enter the Second Life® world, no matter what. The gallery shown below the break comes from the launch of SEAT’s virtual presence in SL, the leading Spanish car manufacturer, done by Spanish Metaverse Company Mosi Mosi in Barcelona; and from the Dolce Vita “Best [...]

One fun aspect of Second Life® was that very early on it attracted its share of tabloids — the old veteran from The Sims Online days, the Second Life Herald, and a bit more recently, the AvaStar, which is published by Axel Springer AG, one of the largest German publishing houses who also publish several RL tabloids.
The [...]

I’m reading Snow Crash for the first time (please, no spoilers!) but I’ve already seen the many references that ‘inspired’ some of Second Life®’s quirks.
One of them are the “low resolution avatars”. Well, the fun is that SL sometimes loads avatars with a slow connection with “grey textures”. Sometimes, missing images.
And most of the time, the [...]

Editor’s note: Once more, Extropia DaSilva has finished another of her mind-provoking essays, and it’s time to give her the floor! — Gwyn 
“Listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door. Let’s go”-E.E Cummings.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS ‘NORMAL’ ANYWAY?
In online worlds the everyday concerns that define real life coexist with experiences that can only be [...]

Slowly recovering from a bacteriological infection which leaves me almost unable to focus on anything for more than a couple of hours at a stretch due to high fever, something which is terribly frustrating for me, it’s those special moments from friends that cheer me up.
My good friend Gwen Carillon, RL artist and masterful jewellery designer in [...]

You all saw Jon Stewart’s parody of the Second Life® world shortly after Philip Rosedale was at Congress debating virtual worlds, “Avatar Heroes“. Jon Stewart’s style of humour, of course, is legendary, and the sketch is really lovely to watch and laugh at — but it’s also clear that nobody at Comedy Central had ever [...]