Archive for 'Opinion'

Commodify Me! Chapter 2

Thanks again to Clickable Culture for reporting on this little gem — A breakdown of the way Massive Incorporated‘s in-game advertising works. Seems that not only are the ads placed in the game, but the marketers collect information about the amount of time the ad is viewed by individual players, the size at which they [...]

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Uri Chills with the Salonistas!

A Future Salonista shows us what we will all look like in 2020. Last night’s Future Salon had its usual share of technical snags, but it was interesting – more interesting for me perhaps, because I had an opportunity to be on the other side of the discussion. It certainly gave me lots to think [...]

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Games, Learning, and Second Life

Terra Nova has a preliminary report from The Games Learning and Society conference, with notes from the talks by Henry Jenkins and James Gee. Almost on cue, there is an interesting related post by Zero Grace on Clickable Culture. It does seem like games are promising environments for learning, but Second Life seems disappointing in [...]

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Editorial: Sympathy for Prokofy Neva

Prok, then Dyerbrook, delivers a lamp to an SSG property in Alphaville. The Herald has long been familiar with the antics of Prokofy Neva. We first encountered him in his incarnation as Dyerbrook on TSO where we witnessed his campaign against the Sim Shadow Government, which he perceived to be a kind of virtual aristocracy, [...]

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FICtory Dance

In the wake of Prok’s banning from the SL forums, the Feted Inner Core is having a virtual victory dance on the Linden supervised forums. No comment really, just one of those things that make ya go “hmmmm…”.

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Prok/FIC Wars Lead to New Forum Policies

The repercussions of the board war between virtual agitator Prokofy Neva and the Feted Inner Core (the SL denizens who have allegedly found favor with Linden Lab and constitute an in game Aristocracy according to Prok) has led to the announcement of a new policy governing behavior online and in game. Of special note is [...]

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One Life is Not Enough

by Budka GroshommeThe brains behind Linden Lab? See below. Three months ago somebody whispered “Ever tried Second Life?” When I hesitated he added, with a knowing smirk, “Come on, the first week’s free.” Since then I’ve become a regular, but I’m not particularly worried about it. I’ll make certain that it doesn’t start controlling my [...]

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Back to the Future Salon

The line-up for the next SL Future Salon has been announced, and it features media empire builder Urizenus Sklar (semi-retired publisher of the Second Life Herald) and up and coming cyberlebrities Amanda Congdon, vlog anchor of Rocketboom, video blogger, and actress, and Keith Halper, CEO, Kuma Reality Games, makers of KumaWar. Date is June 30, [...]

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Interview with the Anthropologist

Tom Bukowski (no relation to Charles) We know they are here. Philosophers, journalists, sociologists, anthropologists, proctologists… And worse! But what are they up to as they skulk around the grid? In this interview our intrepid reporter Montserrat Snakeankle talks to Tom Bukowski, who by day is an anthropologist at UC Irvine and an avid shopper [...]

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Another Meeting. Another Post-Literate Future.

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the SL Future Salon, organized by Jeffrey Paffendorf (SNOOPYbrown Zamboni ) of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. The idea of the SL Future Salon is to bring clever futurists (and presentists?) together in SL to discuss the shape of things to come. This round the speakers were Betsy Book (Skyllar [...]

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