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US Congress in SL

Adam Reuters, the Reuters correspondent dedicated to Second Life reported on Tuesday of the new build by Clear Ink of the US Congress. It appears to be affiliated with the Democratic Party, but when the space is open it will be intended to serve as a non-partisan place for open discussion and information about the 110th Congress.

UPDATE 05 Jan 2007: Democratic Representative George Miller showed up in-word to talk about the goals of the House Democrats. There was also some video streamed into the virtual House of Representatives of the real-life House proceedings before Representative Miller appeared. More about the event can be found at NetworkWorld.

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When Are Computer Simulations the Right Tool?

Gene Koo, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society as well as Director of Online Training at Legal Aid University, lists three criteria for which computer simulations add value in an educational context:

1. The subject is best learned through role-playing
2. The subject must be modeled using complex data and formulae
3. The subject is amenable to learning through exploration

His full post expounds on these thoughts further.

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Virtual Performance Art

JustVirtual has posted  a fantastic recap of the ZeroG Sky Dancer’s performance, produced and directed by DanCoyote Antonelli the other night. By all accounts this even was a huge success - even in the face of a buggy grid upgrade just hours before. Great images!

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Phillips Entering Second Life

Phillips Design is planing to develop a space in Second Life, in cooperation with the design studio Rivers Run Red, to present concept products to residents and gather feedback about them. They see this endeavor as an opportunity to interact and collaborate with consumers - an interesting proposition to say the least. To that end, I am curious how they may develop their future products to enable more seamless integration of virtual worlds, the traditional internet, and consumers’ digital identities into everyday appliances and objects.

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The Value of Virtual Money

The folks at Terra Nova have figured the value of the inworld currency for a number of virtual worlds - and Monopoly and put it all in a nice little table. I feel I have to mention Monopoly separately as I have a hard time considering it a virtual world - by my definition only. I guess an argument could be made for it though.

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Sorting Through the CopyBot Conundrum

Ralph Koster has written one of the more well thought out articles about the emergence of CopyBot and some of the implications for Second Life. The conversation following this article is also very thought provoking and worth a scan to get a big picture of what is going on. The hundreds of thousand or so freaked out comments to the issue on the Second Life blog are simply impossible to get through.

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Make Your Next Vacation Virtual

Synthravels wants to be your virtual travel agency the next time you plan a vacation. The company, based out of Milan,

“is the first organization to offer a complete guide service to all the people who want to make a tour in virtual worlds without knowing these new realities, even if they have never put their feet in these strange, synthetic grounds. The tours and the destinations are chosen by the staff of Synthravels, composed by programmers, architects, experienced video gamers.”

If you’re not sold yet, that is fine. This sounds fun, but maybe not inspiring…or relaxing. I mean, that is the main objective when you are planning a vacation, right? For those who have a more difficult time suspending your belief, I recommend you never try this. Virtual worlds, at this stage in their development, still require participants to have highly developed imagination, and let’s face it, there are some of you out there who are simply not very imaginative.

For all others inclined to adventure, exploration and discovery, this promises to be right up your alley, with an impressive list of destinations. From Albatross18 to World of Warcraft and 24 worlds in between they offer a view of these amazing environments that usually only the most devoted players would ever get to see.

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A Tsunami of New Users in SL

Linden Lab is celebrating their 1M account today. Though I am still a young resident, watching the exponential growth of SL over the past six months is nothing short of amazing. LL is forecasting 50,000 new accounts in a single day this week - ALT accounts or not, it is hard to dispute how rapidly things are growing. Kudos to the LL team of their heroic efforts as they stand in the path of such a large wave. Pull out the surfboards!

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Play an RPG in an MMORPG

Scripted dice now make it possible to play D&D in the virtual world of Second Life. How many virtual steps can one take from “reality”?

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Fabjectory

Fab-ja-wha? Print your virtual creations to the real world with Fabjectory’s service that will print your SecondLife avatar as a 3D tangible thing. Definitely a vanity purchase, but I would be tempted if I wasn’t afraid of discovering that my real-virtual self isn’t really what I imagine it to be.

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