The Save the Internet coalition has collected more than 1 million American signatures to their petition urging Congress to "preserve a free and open internet." Mmmmm, freedom. The coalition held an event in DC to officially deliver the petition to the Senate. According to Free Press campaign director Timothy Karr: Our real grassroots Coalition called…
Rik’s re-mixed art on display in SL
So this evening I happened to be checking into Second Life when I get an instant message from a Genevieve Junot, asking me if I’m going to show up to “introduce my art.” I replied that I had no idea what she was talking about. Genevieve then reminded me that tonight was the official showing…
Virtual Net Neutrality Tees available
As my extremely modest contribution to the Save the Internet cause, I just created a “Support Net Neutrality!” tee-shirt in Second Life, which I am giving away to all who desire them. So whether you are a cyborg, flying monkey or fairy princess, you can now proudly show your support for a free and open…
Tell the US Government to democratize the Internet
Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project has sent out an alert to internet activists that the US Government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has recently asked for public comments about its supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In response, the IGP has launched a call for emails to…
Organizational Democracy: Linden Labs listens
e-Democracy guru Steven Clift passed along a very helpful set of recommendations for non-profits on how to respond to online criticm, written by Jayne Cravens at Coyote Communications. In a nutshell, what she says is, respond respectfully and promptly to online criticism. I couldn’t agree more. Giving someone with a complaint more than a fortnight…
Splogs: improving the noise-to-signal ratio
Just got an email from an ad rep for a company called Point of Impact Inc. an “e-business company, focused on the promotion and development of internet properties.” Which I guess is another euphemism for for “disseminator of spam.” The rep wanted to pay me up front to put up some text ads on my…
Where did all the residents go?
Ok, now this is just getting silly. Second Life’s front page now shows them as having 243,671 residents. As opposed to the 256,336 residents shown proudly on their site yesterday. Clearly all the hub-bub on NWN, the SL Forums, Clickable Culture, and www.raphkoster.com about the fishy statistics have caused the Lindens to start purging old…
Vegas, Baby, Virtual Vegas!
I finally got a chance to visit the Second Life Las Vegas sim last night, launched not long ago. It’s a fun simulation of the real thing, at least in its current family-friendly incarnation. I.e. lots of opportunities for shopping, theme park rides, and photo ops rather than drinking, whoring and gambling. My first stop…
Second Life Statistics Debates
My posting (and others) about Second Life reaching the "quarter million residents" figure has generated quite a lot of discussion and debate about the meaning, if any, of this statistic. On the Second Life forums [viewable by registered SL residents only], most of this debate is centered on the proliferation of "alt" accounts by residents…
A quarter million Second Life residents can’t be wrong
Sometime between 1AM and 7AM EST today, we reached a major milestone in Second Life development: a quarter of a million residents. That’s a nice achievement to celebrate during Second Life’s third anniversary coming up at the end of the month. While 250,000 residents might seem like a pretty small figure compared to World of…