Not that we were huge fans of Lively to begin with, but I'm sure someone out there loved it. Right? No? Perhaps that explains Google's announcement that, "despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year." So grab those screenies before 2009 and your avatars and rooms go dead.

One or two of you may cry out in anguish as a few million vertices are silenced with the click of a mouse: "why Google, why?" Well, I'm sure it wasn't the fact that it was PC-only (and Firefox or IE7-only). Or that it wasn't the most stable thing Google has produced. Or that it was, ya know, like Second Life Lite but for chat. Because, clearly, the world needs a few zillion more Second Life-style chat clients, right?

If you are to believe Google, it's because they want to focus on their core business. You know, search and ads and apps that don't look like Animal Crossing. Besides, they can always roll this into Sketchup, so you could have a virtual barn raising. We can dream, can't we?

IBM workers went on strike this morning in Second Life marking perhaps the biggest (if not the first) virtual strike in history. Italian workers are upset over a new contract deal that canceled their performance bonus costing them each 1000 Euros (close to$1400) a year. The pay cut came at a time of big profits for IBM, and right after the workers asked for a small pay increase.

Workers took their strike to the IBM islands of Second Life this morning carrying virtual picket signs. The employees online protest coincides with a real-life picket line outside of the IBM offices in Italy also taking place today. 900 avatars have signed on to protest in Second Life, representing more 18 different countries.

If you're not on Second Life but still want to get in on the action you can sign the petition to IBM and follow the protest today online.

The popularity of Second Life, once thought by many to be a booming new center of commerce, is fading and new regulations, scandal and outright theft are taking their toll on the virtual world.

The recent gambling ban caused a US$2 million dollar drop in spending within Second life the day it went into effect. To make matters worse, shady stock deals going on among the upstart in-world stock exchanges.

So, virtual resident beware. A lawless land isn't a panacea, and adding new laws and regulation is sure to upset the apple cart a bit.

After a friendly visit from the eff-bee-eye, Second Life and the Linden Labs studio behind it, have begun to crackdown on in-world gambling, something that's pervasive in the virtual environment, almost everywhere you go.

So far, Linden Labs have been unclear as to what degree the ban will be enforced, saying only that "Second Life residents must comply with State and Federal laws pertaining to applicable to regulated online gambling."

So, hit those slots while you still can. Soon, you may not even be able to win cash playing SLingo.

The virtual world of Second Life has many uses; This one caught our eye. A virtual model of Dante's seven circles of hell, constructed entirely in bits and bytes. The recreation contains teacher's notes and allows a student, or just an interested party, to delve into the seven circles and glean information from the text in ways that have never before been attempted.

Just watch out for Cerberus.

Second Life is becoming all the rage for first world tech companies. Microsoft has recently opened Visual Studio ISland within the world of Second Life to promote their Visual Studio product, and to offer some much needed rest and gaming for Visual Studio developers.

The Island is stunning, but what is far more interesting is the game designed to engage visitors to Visual Studio Island. Hovering far above the main building you'll find a giant blimp, and the end object of the game. Players gain access to whatever wonders may lie inside this huge floating orb by solving ten puzzles spread throughout the Second Life world.

Check out the Gallery below to see what you're missing on the visually humbling island of Visual Studio. In world, search "Visual Studio" to teleport in and begin playing the game yourself.

If you've spent more than a few minutes in Second Life, you've no doubt realized that money makes the virtual mare go. It may be the wild west in every sense of the phrase, and the virtual fortunes being made inside the sims of SL rest on the precarious notion that the virtual world will continue to expand and grow at alarming rates but still, you've got to admire the cha-ching sound that's ringing in the ears of an elite few Second Life residents.

Business Week compiled a list of the virtual world's top 10 money makers -- mostly designers, corporate image consultants and land barons -- and it's a sobering testimony to anyone who thinks the virtual economy is all just fun and games.

Anshee Chung rides at the top of the list with a total net worth of over 1 million real-world dollars, but the rest of the list may come as some surprise to the casual SL observer.

The process of making movies by using video games to create raw footage has been around for a while. Red vs Blue -- a popular series filmed inside Halo -- helped put the concept, called machinima, on the map. Second Life was instantly a hit with the tiny but burgeoning sub-culture of machinima producers and, "My Second Life", Douglas Gayeton's ambitious series filmed entirely inside the Second Life universe may just be the 'next big thing' that makes machinima a plot driven guilty pleasure watchable by the mere mortal rather than the domain of the super-geek.


The first episode -- shown above -- introduces us to Molotov Alva, a man who "disappeared" from his southern California home in January of 2007. Molotov is stuck in his Second Life now, and is nostalgic for his past in First Life. It's simple, elegant and brilliantly shot inside the game. I'm chomping at the bit for episode two.

Second Life was hailed by many as a panacea of online life, the coagulation of years of sci-fi into a grand distributed game that's not really a game. Business Week's May 2006 cover story on the economy in the Second Life universe made many people step up and take notice, including a healthy cross section of big name First Life companies. That rush of popularity may have done more harm than good say some, still others argue that all communities are destined to take similar turns. What's for certain is a rush of corporate presence has changed the virtual world in serious ways over a rather brief period of time.

Are all online communities destined to suffer from similar decay once the corporate interests move in? Youtube, Myspace and others have all met with similar challenges as their scope and scale made them impossible to ignore. For Second Life those changes may be felt by users in some unfortunately pervasive and disruptive ways.

Interestingly, dirty campaign tactics are now de rigeur for virtual communites as in real life. The blogosphere is all a twitter about a recent defilement of John Edwards 08 headquarters in Second Life. It seems a group of Republican marauders vandalized the Edwards' campaign headquarters and even went so low as to put the candidate in blackface. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. When will those Republicans ever learn? This is going to ensure huge media exposure for the Edwards campaign for this week and maybe into next and might even replace poor Anna Nicole.

[via digg]

Second Life, the popular 3-D online virtual community created by Linden Labs, is adding voice to its social grid. In addition to the current IM and chat functions, now Second Life residents will be able to speak to one another if they wish. Amazingly, with the speech technology employed, your little avatar's voice and figure can become animated so you won't sound like a robot or worse, like the grown-ups do in Charlie Brown.

A private beta program on a test-grid for 1,000 users will be launched next week, and the formal launch is expected for the second quarter 2007. Core voice capabilities are provided by Vivox, under the terms of a service agreement with Linden Lab, incorporating 3D voice technology from DiamondWare.

Don't you dare dance the Electric Slide in Second Life or upload those videos of you breaking out a mean 'Lectric Slide in front of your webcam. Aside from making yourself look rather silly (or, in rare cases, highly co-ordinated) you'll be running afoul of copyright law and opening yourself up to some hot Digital Millenium Copyright Act action.

Richard Silver, who copyrighted the dance in 2004 (he claims to have created the dance in 1976) has had enough of lame imitations of his original dance. Wikipedia reports a completely different origin for the Electric Slide but that hasn't stopped a possibly delusional Silver. He's enlisted the help of the DMCA to force Electric Slide animations to be removed from Second Life and videos of people performing the dance deleted from YouTube. CNet quotes EFF lawyer Jason Schultz, attempting to make some sense of all this, "Someone who performs [The Electric Slide] non-commercially or adds their own artistic flair to the dance has a pretty good fair-use argument that their performance is non-infringing."

I'd caution Mr. Schultz on his analysis, we once thought video and audio sampling was fair use too, but look what happened to that.

I don't care if you dislike Second Life, think it is stupid, or whatever, the fact that they will open source their client is a bold and smart move. This means people can and will be able to create the system they want and make the kind of software they want it to be. Developers will be able to do infinitely more than they could before now that the Second Life client will be their to tinker with. If you want to breathe fire into your software, give it away and let the developer community loose on it. Second Life's creators think this move on their part will help the community grow faster than ever before. The main idea behind Second Life is a user-generated world, and now this paradigm extends to the client itself.

This is a recent in-world IM interview I had with Akela Talamasca who blogs for Weblogs, Inc's own Second Life Insider (SLI). Since Second Life is a free software download, an online world that is user-created, and is very much web-based social software and 3D tool, I thought an interview would be very interesting to those who haven't heard of SecondLife or experienced it. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think of the interview. While you're at it, check out SecondLife Insider as well.

Ryan Carter: Akela, you blog over at Weblogs, inc's Second Life Insider (SLI), what is that all about?

Akela Talamasca: It's a blog designed solely to cover Second Life, in the same way that WoW Insider solely covers World
of Warcraft. I have a team of bloggers: Caliandris Pendragon, Mast Penguin, and Aimee Weber, who gets a ton of coverage for her own work in SL.

RC: You've got a great team, I enjoy reading everyone at SLI.

AT: Hey, thanks! I read DL Squad everyday!

RC: So, for anyone who hasn't heard, what is Second Life (SL)?

AT: Second Life is an online virtual world, created entirely by its residents. It has a working economy, with thousands of real world dollars being traded for goods every month. Currently, registration for an account is free, but to own land requires a paid monthly account. There are numerous benefits to owning land, including being able to build more objects, own a home, and stream music from your computer. SL is rapidly approaching one million residents, which many predict will occur between October and November.

RC: Why do you think DLS readers might be interested in SL? Is there something for everyone? Programmers, geeks, business people, students, corporations even?