It looks like plans are moving fast in preparation for the first multi-verse YearlyKos Convention taking place both in Chicago and in Second Life in August. YearlyKos is an annual convention gathering a thousand or so people from "the Netroots community," a non-partisan grassroots political action community that uses the Internet and blogs for political…
Category: Virtual Worlds
Visiting Linden Lab and Techsoup
At Hamlet’s instigation, today I got a chance to visit the San Francisco offices of Linden Lab and Techsoup. Along the way I smet (There, you happy, Hiro?) a couple of prominent residents who I had only known in-world prior to today: Jeska Linden and Glitteractica Cookie. Jeska was kind enough to give me a…
Your World, Your Music: a study of music diversity within Second Life
Last month I announced that I was doing a quantitative study of Second Life music format diversity. I have completed an exploratory study of 838 Second Life music events that occurred over July 2006. Please find here my research, entitled "Your World, Your Music: An Exploratory Study of Music Diversity within the Virtual World of…
The New New York: makes me almost miss the graffiti in the subway stations
I just popped over to the New New York sim (teleport SLURL). It’s not quite finished yet, but I love the design motif so far. Sort of a mix of cartoony garishness and gritty realism. I swear I saw a virtual rat scamper down the street.
The portable Quaker meeting
We had a beautiful Quaker meeting for worship in Second Life this morning with about 16 or attenders filling the benches . I had recently discovered that if you put your computer to sleep without logging out of SL, the program sort of freezes the last scene in place. When you re-open your computer, it appears…
Lunch with Hamlet
I had the pleasure of meeting Hamlet Au of New World Notes today over burritos at Papalote’s on Valencia Street in San Francisco. It was cool chatting with him about Hamlet’s forthcoming book with Harper Collins that I can’t wait to read. We also discussed political action in SL, whether in-world voice chat is a…
Don’t stand so close to me: Thoughts on gendered behavior in virtual worlds
I just finished reading the fascinating study "The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments" led by Nick Yee of Stanford University, with Jeremy N. Bailenson, Mark Urbanek, Francis Chang, and Dan Merget. Yee et al. were interested in examining if norms about social space in the…
Second Life Protest against US intervention in Iran
Just popped into SL to catch a possibly spontaneous protest against any US military action against Iran. There are twenty-some avatars gathered at the Capitol Hill sim holding signs and shouting slogans at each other. Apparently this protest was a reaction to Iran’s defiance of the Security Council resolution calling on them to stop their…
Video tour of Roma (ancient Roman Second Life sim)
In January, I posted some comments about and pictures of the impressive "Roma" ancient Rome build created by Torin Golding (teleport SLURL). Since then, I've received a request to create a video showing the historic sim for those who aren't in Second Life. I threw this video together over the weekend. (The video might take…
The 13 most beautiful avatars and Einstein’s critique
Last night I dropped by the opening of the 13 Most Beautiful Avatars exhibition at The Postmasters Gallery in Manhattan. It was the typical hip arty crowd standing around with plastic cups of white wine. It was worth venturing out on an ass cold winter’s night just to chat with Mark Wallace (who tipped me…