The Alphaville Herald

Hiro Quits Meatspace Job, Becomes Full Time Secondlifer

Hiro Pendragon, co-organizer of the Second Life Community Convention and Charter Member of the Feted Inner Core recently sent us news about the appearance of Make editor Phillip Torrone at the most recent SL Future Salon. That’s news to be sure; we always raise a glass to fello media giants who join us in world. [...]

Spotted in the News: That Other Book on Virtual Worlds

The Economist gets down with Ted Castronova this week, calling his new book an “illuminating guide to these new synthetic worlds.” We agreed back in October. If you haven’t already bought your copy, now’s the time — you only have three more months to read it before the Doomsday Book appears.

A Merry Denominational Xmas to You!

Happy Hannukah! Joyous Kwanzaa! Lovely Diwali! Have a nice Ramadan! Merrrrrry Christmas!!!!1! That’s what Blizzard Entertainment, the corporate cog behind World of Warcraft, is saying to their 4 million-plus players this holiday season. A new holiday patch released this week adds some fun new content to the game, in the form of a big Christmas [...]

Is Rathe Sniffing Our Packets?

By Dow Jonas While the story this week is FBI agents possibly coming to sniff round Second Life to see if charges of denial-of-service attacks can be filed, another story about possible land-baron packet-sniffing is percolating up through SL-related blogs and the official forums. Rathe Underthorn, a long-time resident and land dealer, has been quietly [...]

Extra!!: Philip Calls the FBI. W-Hats Shit Themselves

by Dow Jonas Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, announced at a resident virtual winter holiday party in Second Life’s Wengen today that he is turning to real-world authorities to investigate Monday’s deliberate crashing of his virtual world’s grid. When the party was bombed today by a griefer with pixelated C-4, Rosedale, whose avatar is [...]

Gone in 60 Seconds

Even the Herald is bored with global attacks and grid crashings these days, there are so many of them. But the cleanup from Monday’s attack had an interesting side-effect. Many objects were wiped from the grid. Here is how the Lindens described what happened: Tonight started as a run-of-the-mill gray-goo style attack. We had essentially [...]

Lessig Coming to SL?

Portrait of Lessig stolen from http://www.globalhome.com/paintings/2003/lessig.html Hammie Linden is reporting that Lawrence Lessig is coming to Second Life in avatar form. Wow. That is huge. In my humble opinion Lessig is the most important legal figure alive, since he is working on issues that have maximal impact on our future — issues ranging from intellectual [...]

Let the Island Wars Begin

by Dow Jonas No sooner did Linden Lab put an island + frills up for sale on eBay (apparently to show Project Entropia they ain’t all that), but now Anshe Chung has raised the stakes, challenging with an island of her own for sale on eBay, and she has sweetened the pot with additional perks. [...]

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Entropia Envy Leads to Island Auction with Frills Attached.

Thanks to Zero Grace/Rat Boy/Tony Walsh for this pointer. I’ve often wondered if it didn’t chafe Philip’s behind to see the eminently lame Project Entropia score big publicity for its island auctions. I guess it did, because now LL is gunning for similar publicity (and observe: we enable them in the enterprise!). Here is the [...]