Ciaran Laval

July 15, 2015

Draxtor Despres Shows The Second Life Related Parts Of The Dr Phil Show

Draxtor Despres has published a video on YouTube of the Second Life related parts of The recent Dr Phil show. I’ll embed the video under the cut, if you’re already under the cut, then the video is at the end of the post!

I blogged about this episode of Dr Phil on Monday, the day before the episode was aired. I have not seen the full episode but the show featured the extremely serious issue of gaming addiction. The first thing to point out is that the young man who was the subject of the episode of the Dr Phil show is not a resident of Second Life. This isn’t to say that Second Life can’t prove to be addictive, but I feel it’s worth pointing out that Second Life wasn’t his game of choice.

The parts of the show that do relate to Second Life feature Dr Phil inworld with an avatar that looks like the real life Dr Phil.

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July 15, 2015

Investors Appear Nervous Regarding VR Funding

Eric Johnson over at Re/Code has reported : At Investor Event, VR Startups Brace for Slow Growth. The article centres around venture capitalists who seem a tad reluctant to buy into the Virtual Reality hype cycle at this moment in time.

UploadVR co-founder Nick Ochoa told the venture capitalists that they looked nervous and a report being prepared by his site backs this claim up. 164 venture capitalists have invested in VR companies until now, but 142 of them have done so only once.

Caution does seem to be the order of the day, Eric quotes High Fidelity’s Philip Rosedale as saying :

We will probably see lower adoption than everyone expects in the next year or so, but it will pick up,……My advice is, don’t overspend right now. Stock up for three or four years.

This seems to be a very sensible stance to take. VR has a lot of potential and a lot of exciting scope, but it has not yet delivered.

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July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

Tottering Biped Theatre Take Cyberspace To The Stage With A Performance Entitled The Second Life

I was googling news about Second Life today when I stumbled across articles about Tottering Biped Theatre. One of the issues regarding googling Second Life is that you get a lot of results that are not related to the virtual world. There are plenty of articles about recycling and television shows that are getting a Second Life, but not so many about Second Life the virtual world.

This is sort of the case with Tottering Biped theatre itself, with the exception that they have a performance entitled “The Second Life“, which is about :

The online virtual world of ‘Second Life’ stretches thousands of kilometers and millions of visitors. While searching for her lost sister, Jessica struggles to find out what – and who – are real. Life and its double are at stake in this multi-media exploration of loss in the digital age.

‘The Second Life’ was developed over a 3 year period after winning honours at Ontario’s professional playwright development centre, Pat the Dog. After a sold out run at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius, The Second Life is coming to Burlington’s Performing Arts Centre Oct 21-31, 2015.

Now one would assume that this isn’t about Linden Lab’s Second Life, but it’s inevitable that due to the proximity of the subject matter, people will make that link.

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July 14, 2015

Ebbe Altberg And Other Lindens Brave The Second Life Forum For Q&A Session

At SL12B Ebbe Altberg was interviewed live on stage by Saffia Widdershins and Jo Yardley. The fact that it was live inworld was emphasised when gremlins struck and delayed the interview, but Ebbe stayed past his allocated time to answer questions. The video of the interview was recorded by Chakat Northspring and can be found here. Inara Pey, posted a transcript of the meeting, which can be found here. I posted a hot off the press summary of the meeting, which can be found here.

However there were some unanswered questions and it seems a feeling that there may be some follow up questions. Linden Lab have now blogged that further questions are welcome in a blog post entitled An Interview and Q&A with the CEO :

The interview ended with some audience Q&A, but there wasn’t time to get to all of the audience questions, and of course not everyone was able to watch the interview live in the auditorium and ask their questions.

So, today we’re opening up a new Forum thread to address some of the questions we didn’t get to and to give everyone an opportunity to ask their own. We’ll answer some of the frequently-asked questions we spotted in local chat at the “Meet the Lindens” interview at the top of the thread, but feel free to add your own questions to the forum thread and Ebbe and other Lindens will endeavor to answer as many as we can. Join us in the Forums, here.

The forum thread, which I’ll link to again, is entitled Ask The CEO. Whereas it’s not quite a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, it does give Second Life residents the opportunity to ask question of the CEO, with other Lindens likely to answer some questions too.

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July 14, 2015

The University Of The Arts In Second Life

The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) is an artistic program in Second Life with a very noble mission :

The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) was established to help create a center of arts activity in Second Life. It is a collaborative venture between Linden Lab and the arts community. Guided by a dedicated board of renowned Second Life artists, the LEA is committed to providing access to engaging experiences in the arts for the Second Life community. Through its exhibitions, programs, and events, the LEA fosters awareness of artists’ contributions to our virtual world and encourages others to get involved and be inspired.

The LEA is run and organized by users of Second Life, with resources generously donated by Linden Lab.

Applicants put forth proposals for an exhibit and those who are selected by a committee get six months use of a sim for their project. In the latest round (round 9) one of the successful applicants was Carla Ives, who is creating a University of The Arts project.

The project will have exhibition space, with a young artist having a permanent exhibition there. There are also plans to incorporate a learning space within this project which will be designed to teach people how to make a dance show in Second Life. This will go through the process of building a set, choreography, use of particles and animations.

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