virtual

An employee of Second Life publisher Linden Lab has apparently backed off demands that a blogger was told she'd be banned from SL if she didn't remove from her site chatlogs copied from conversations in the virtual world.

That's what Second Life Herald blogger Prokofy Neva told me late Monday night after Neva earlier that evening had posted an entry on the Herald claiming that Linden Lab had made the demand of Second Life blogger Honey Wendt (warning: this links to a blog entry containing nonexplicit banter that suggests sexual behavior involving people claiming to be minors). … Read more

If you've followed media reports about virtual worlds, this site among them, you might think the only one that exists is Second Life. But, of course, there are many others.

Now, Mario Gerosa, an Italian journalist, is planning to show the world just that.

He is planning to put on, next month, the first "world's fair" of virtual worlds.

The event will take place in Second Life and will give other titles, such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe and others, an opportunity to present themselves.

"A dragon will be in the World of Warcraft … Read more

Amid a healthy dose of skepticism, Second Life publisher Linden Lab held a town hall meeting Thursday to address some of the concerns raised last week in an open letter complaining about many of the most severe performance issues suffered by users of the popular virtual world.

Among the issues raised in the letter were regular issues with grid stability, inventory loss and build tool problems.

During the town hall meeting, which took place in Second Life, Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka answered questions for more than an hour. Many were unrelated to the specific issues raised in the letter, … Read more

Designers of Second Life objects have some good news to cheer about this week, namely the implementation of what are called "sculpted prims."

A prim is the basic building block of Second Life, a virtual world that lets anyone create just about any kind of content they want. Until now, all prims began as cubes. You could stretch them to be bigger or smaller or more rectangular, but it was always a cube.

Kind of a Lego of sorts.

"A sculpted prim is a prim whose shape is determined by texture--its 'sculpt texture,'" Second Life publisher … Read more

VMware has released a public beta version of a virtualization speed test. Called VMmark, it enables people to see how well server hardware runs software using virtualization, which lets multiple operating systems run simultaneously on the same machine to increase efficiency.

The test runs various virtual machines--a database server, file server and Web server--using Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server. But it's not for the faint of heart--it requires a server with at least 5GB of memory, and those running Windows tests will need to be members of the Microsoft Developer Network, according to a blog posting by VMware's Bruce Herndon. … Read more

Nintendo has figured it out: Why should it let others take all the glory for the Wii's supposed health benefits? Tech Digest says the company is developing a game called Wii Health that will "test your fitness and send the results off to an unspecified UK hospital for analysis."

Not everyone is on the Wii's fitness bandwagon, daring to suggest that real-life exercise is better for kids than playing games regardless of how serious they are about them. But at least one personal trainer has created a workout routine based on Wii play, and others say … Read more

Several exhibitors at next week's Web 2.0 Expo are recreating the desktop workspace experience by using new Web technologies such as Ajax and Adobe Flex. This isn't a new idea, but what is interesting is how many of them have forgone creating their own tools and stuck to integrating existing Web services in a stylized portal platform.

Zcubes attempts to emulate a desktop workspace with nearly 30 different tools that mimic desktop applications. With most of the tools relegated to things like casual drawing, comic strips, and Web browsing, the emphasis of the suite is fun.

G.ho.st (… Read more

Peepel is a new Web-based office suite that's managed entirely within one browser window to emulate the feel of a desktop workspace. Included is a word processor, a spreadsheet application, and a calculator. Multiple instances of each application can be run at the same time, and all share the same tool bar (which takes design cues from the ribbon in Office 2007). The idea is to emulate the desktop experience, which is aided with the equivalent of a central start button to launch the applications.

To help you work within the confines of your browser, there are a few handy tools, like a workspace "save" feature that lets you organize and save a group of files, so you can open and save them as a group. The function is similar to Adobe Photoshop's custom workspace feature. There's also a button to cascade and group together applications according to their type.

Files are saved in the OpenDocument format, which will work with OpenOffice (but not Microsoft's Word or Excel applications). Each file is limited to 2MB, and files can be saved to your hard drive or to a virtual drive on the service. (We couldn't track down information on the storage limit. ) If you're crafty, you can also save as a PDF file by using the print function.

The one thing missing from the otherwise slick interface is the capability to collaborate with others--one of the benefits and standard features of major Web based word processors and spreadsheet tools like Zoho, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets. According to the site's FAQ (PDF file), sharing will be enabled later.

The Peepel creators have put together an explanatory video (sans audio), which I've embedded below. For some screenshots of Peepel in action, click the "read more" link.

[via Startup Squad]

… Read more

Who knew that roll-up musical instruments would be so popular? Even more surprising is that virtual percussion seems to be a particularly hot area: Just a few days after we ran an item on the "Portable Electric Drum Set," for example, Everything USB has found yet another roll-away set. The "USB Drum Kit" has two fewer pads, but they're positioned to more closely resemble a real-life setup. No matter what, either either version is better than the mouse pad drums.