Second Life Chat

I find it very strange that when we talk about something in class, I end up doing it in second life with co-workers. I'm sitting in a meeting right now and we are talking about real chat in Second Life and i'm the only one in the group who can't voice chat, its almost as if i'm deaf in second life! Looks like i'm going to have to buy a mic!

Group Project

As a reminder-Group project is composed of individual papers that you present in a group. Our project is Wiki's. Our team name is wiki racers. Our topics are Wiki's in the work place, the ways people use wiki's and the technology involved in wikis. Ok, the end.

Dr. Dobbs SL Quarterly Symposium

Life 2.0 Summit, produced by CMP Technology/Dr. Dobb's Journal, is a quarterly conference on metaverse technology and best-practice for software developers and business stakeholders seeking to understand and use Second Life and other metaverse environments for customer engagement, commerce, collaboration, education, simulation and research.

CHECK IT OUT, FREE TO REGISTER http://www.life20.net/registernew.php
Schedule of Events: http://www.life20.net/program.php

Taking place September 15-21, 2007 on Dr Dobbs Island in Second Life, the Life 2.0 Fall Summit program will commence with a two-day, eight-hour weekend bootcamp on LSL application building, SL-to-web integration, opensource client (libsecondlife), developer tools and new SL features like atmospheric effects, voice, and sculpted prims -- everything professional developers need to become productive in the fast-evolving Second Life environment.

Thereafter, our four-day (M, T, Th, Fr) program will include tracks on:

• The Opensource Grid: Technical and business implications of opensourcing the Second Life server and scaling the existing grid. Sessions will cover the role of HPC, cluster-computing and backbone network architectures in the private and corporate grid, security, the scope of business opportunities around opensource server, and other topics.
  
• The Extended Metaverse: How will 3D environments like Second Life play with fast-growing Geospacial worlds like Google Earth, applications like Microsoft Virtual Earth, and other MMORPG, buildable-metaverse and flat-web platforms and communities?
  Alternative Worlds/Virtual Workplaces: Sun's MPK20, Forterra, Metaverse, Gaia, The Lounge, IBM Virtual Workplace and other platforms are providing a continuum of diverse options -- flat web to 3d -- for professional and business collaborators, application and asset creators. Learn from the platform-builders how these metaverse systems work, where they're aimed, and how it's all, ultimately, connected.
  
• Second Life metrics and analytics: More sophisticated understanding of traffic, audience qualification and behavior are essential for earning long-term ROI on metaverse investments. This track covers current Metrics products, best-practice tips from users and developers, SL analytics for ROI, the controversial emerging field of 'engagement metrics,' privacy and anonymity, and more.

Group Project

For our group project, we are going to tackle wiki's. Focusing on wikipedia, corporate wiki's and one other we as a group haven't identified yet. I'm in a group with Dave Weber and Mike Current. We haven't selected a name for our group yet either.

In other news, my beloved Mac crashed today, i'm starting over technically with my case study and will not be able to get into second life this week, unfortunately. I should have my new harddrive by friday.

For the Case study, I'm a bit confused about the question that relates to business model. Technially when Zuckerburg started facebook, he had no business model. He was just creating a social utility. Now he relys on venture capitalists that align with his goal of improving the facebook product and working to expand the capability of social networks around the world.

Learning something new every day...

So this morning I participated in my first meeting for the Second Life Pilot program that I'm involved in at work. One our members is a guru and gave our group quite a show. We all met at a specified location in second life. As we are all getting accliminated, he pronounced "Avada Kedavra" which in harry potter is the "unforgiveable" spell, which in the books and movies, kills whoever the spell is cast at. Suddenly my avatar was laying face down! he chuckled and told me how to stop the script that was forcing my avatar to play dead. I was amazed, no only did he know harry potter, but he scripted himself a wand and figured out how to use it in second life. Amazing. The sky is truely the limit.

I also learned how to create objects and manipulate objects. I've also noticed that the Window's Second Life application is easier for me to use than my mac's Second Life application. I explored Cisco's presense (which was empty) and IBM's which had a few stragglers, but at 8:00 am EST I didn't expect a crowd.

Overall, the more you venture In Life, the more you want to learn. Until next time...

Strange Coincidence

So, Monday morning I get this phone call regarding an innovation pilot study on Second Life. In casual conversation I mentioned that I had experience "in life" and that my final class at GV is using many virtual tools like Second Life. Now i'm able to be a part of what my company may use in the future to create a "presence" in Second Life....very interesting. Thought i'd share that little nugget of information :)