The Alphaville Herald

Invasion of the Virtual Body Snatchers

Most sorry for the delay in reporting this, but I was up at the Herald duck blind in Canada when the story broke and only just found it. Many of you will recall Chipsen Queso’s highly positive review of Asri Falcone’s fashion show. Now it seems that her account was hijacked and another mystery typist [...]

Big Brother Linden is Watching You!

Big Brother — more demonic and horrifying than even Orwell could have imagnied. (pic stolen from Pirate Cotton’s site) There’s been some buzz on the forums lately about the extent to which the Lindens monitor convos in SL. I’ve always just assumed that in-game communications are unsafe, but perhaps that is a bit of paranoia [...]

Post Six Grrrl: Kirsten Mullen

The Herald is happy to bring you this week’s Post Six Grrrl, Kirsten Mullen! Kirsten is a pretty recent SecondLife addict who works in the SL tattoo business and loves to go around to clubs, especially the new Club Fantasy. My thanks go out to Marilyn Murphy, the publisher of Players Magazine for these wonderful [...]

Bad Bots! Computer characters mugged in virtual crime spree

There is a really interesting article in New Scientist about a guy in Japan using bots to mug other players on Lineage II and then of course selling the loot for RL currency. The culprit running the bots — a Chinese exchange student — was arrested. By RL Police. Cool.

Text Rulez!

Richard Bartle paid a visit to the SL Future Salon last week, under the sponsorship of Salon Host with the Most, SNOOPYBrown Zamboni, and of course the usual salonistas. I was busy fishing for walleyes at the Herald hunting retreat in northern Minnesota, but there is a transcript on Terra Nova, and a review by [...]

Post Mortem: A Brief History of the Simcast Project

One year ago, tired of the usual diet of naked bingo, scripting classes and fetishware malls, I was flying aimlessly in SL when I happened upon a castle on a large island in Quat, with what looked like a gigantic spoon out front — no it was half spoon and half spatula and was resting [...]

Herald Phunnies #3

Post Six Grrrl Susan Deckard

The Herald is happy to bring you this week’s Post Six Grrrl, Susan Deckard! Susan works hard as the manager of the ManHunt Mall, which is owned by another recent Post Six Grrrl, Elaine Marlowe. My thanks go out to Marilyn Murphy, the publisher of Players Magazine for these wonderful pictures and those of all [...]

Protest Continues as Former Gigas Officer Removed from Ouranos. By Lindens.

by Prokofy Neva Hank Ramos, a former GIGAS Group mall investor battling other GIGAS officers in a dispute that led to Linden Lab’s seizure of their land, continued his protest in the Ahern Welcome Area last night about a new development in his land-grab saga — his summary removal from the officers of Ouranos group, [...]

The Messenger’s Message: There’s A New Newspaper in Second Life

No, the Herald hasn’t gone to a broadsheet format. The picture above is cropped from the positively newspaper-sized new entrant into Second Life’s fourth estate, the Metaverse Messenger, which launched today. A weekly that will start at six pages, the Messenger is the brainchild of Katt Kongo , an SL avatar with RL journalism experience [...]