Seconds

CHICAGO--One of the predictions in the lead-up to this weekend's Second Life Community Convention here has focused on the potential for lots of talk about organization.

There are plenty of critics who claim, however erroneously, that Second Life is a mess both structurally and technologically. And Linden Lab's decentralized and laissez-faire approach to the largely user-created virtual world, it could be argued, has allowed its identity to be shaped by its most prominent and press-worthy residents--who are, on occasion, blowing up buildings, stealing identities, and barraging lectures with oversized flying man-parts.

We won't really know until tonight … Read more

CHICAGO, Ill.--They call it the Windy City, but I don't think travelers to this weekend's Second Life Community Convention in Chicago were expecting tornadoes to get in their way.

The Midwest was smacked with thunderstorms and flooding on Thursday, with winds in one storm hitting 70 miles per hour, and a tornado (albeit not a very big one) running amok and even entering the grounds of Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

I, for one, was scheduled to take a 4:25 flight out of New York's JFK Airport that would (allegedly) touch down at 6:15 … Read more

In a couple of hours, I'll be off to Chicago to cover a different kind of social media: the third annual Second Life Community Convention (SLCC), a gathering of over 800 enthusiasts of the virtual world. It's a phenomenon that saw a dramatic rise and subsequent backlash in the past year, touted by media and business first as a revolution in communications, marketing, and socialization and then as an enormous three-dimensional ghost town.

So what's going to happen at the first SLCC to take place in Second Life's "post-mainstream" age? We'll see. I'… Read more

I first heard of Christian alt-rock band Switchfoot in late 2005, when Sony Music came under fire for including a copy-protection technology on some CDs.

The issue wasn't so much the copy-protection itself, but rather that the software installed itself surreptitiously, hid itself from view, and usurped user control of some OS functions (qualities that led security experts to call this software a "rootkit"). In theory, malicious software (viruses, spyware) could attach itself to this copy-protection software, making it extremely difficult to detect and remove the malicious software.

At any rate, Switchfoot's CD Nothing Is Sound (… Read more

If you're like me and Second Life and Burning Man are centerpieces of your existence, then Burning Life is just your thing.

This year, for the fifth-straight year, Second Life publisher Linden Lab is devoting some of the virtual world's land for an homage to Burning Man, the annual countercultural arts festival.

The idea is to create a temporary zone in which residents can create fantastical works of art that will last for a short period of time and then disappear forever. There's a big sculpture of a man, and a big temple, and at the end, … Read more

On Wednesday at Siggraph, I attended an interesting panel (details here) on the subject of "The Potential of End-User-Programmable Worlds."

In addition to the two organizers, the panelists included Paul Hemp of Harvard Business Review, Asi Lang of Linden Labs (the company that runs Second Life), and Vernor Vinge. Vinge is a faculty alumnus of San Diego State University, but better known as the author of "9 or 10 science-fiction novels," as he says. (I asked about that uncertainty; he said it's more about the definition of a novel than his ability to remember what he's written.)

You may have seen some of the recent news about Second Life. Last week, Linden Labs shut down… Read more

There may be an excess of social-networking sites starting up these days, but the concept seems to be a permanent fixture on the Web landscape. Whether it's MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, or your own network, people love connecting with old friends and finding new ones online.

Most social-networking occurs via Web-based software in your browser, but there are several cool downloadable tools that you can also use to connect and communicate with friends and strangers online.… Read more

OMG! If this isn't the funniest thing ever, I'm not sure what is.

Following on the lovely "Get a First Life" takeoff of the virtual world Second Life, some crafty folks have produced a YouTube video that shows a real-world take on what life in Second Life is like.

You have to watch it, and if you've never been in Second Life, you might not get it. But if you've ever spent even a minute in that virtual world, you'll probably snort your milk out your nose. Check it out.

In the cyberworld, Web customization is king--just as the millions of user-centric YouTube videos and MySpace Web pages attest. It's little wonder, then, that avatars, digital representations of you, are growing in function and form.

This collection of downloadable and Web-based avatar generators ranges from the more cartoon-like engines to three-dimensional architectures where users give life to their pint-size replicates. Be sure to tune into the video and photo gallery on my adventures with avatars, with CNET News.com's Neha Tiwari, for a personal take on the highlights and lowlights of some popular avatar builders.… Read more