Category: Virtual Worlds

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Relay For Life in Second Life Smashes Previous Records

I’ll probably blog about the Google Plus nonsense later, but food for thought for those who feel you can’t social network without using real names, this year’s relay for life has so far raised 74,622,658 Linden dollars, that comes out at around USD$371,670, the figures aren’t finalised yet but you can follow them on the official relay for life in Second Life site.

This smashes last year’s total of USD$222,804 and also smashes the previous record total from 2009 of USD$274,000.  This brings the total amount of money raised for Relay For Life smashing through the One Million US Dollar mark since people started raising money for relay for life in Second Life back in 2004.

The figures from previous years and the history of relay for life in Second Life can be found on the wiki.

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RFL 2011 – About The Track

Whereas Linden Lab won’t give me a press pass, other people rather foolishly will! Therefore I have had a sneak peek at the Relay For Life sims, with the opening ceremony tomorrow and Linden Lab advertising this worthy cause it’s a good time to take a look at the track and the events in general. Jezebel Bailey is currently writing a blog about the general info so we’ll see who blogs first!

Now the best place to start is the welcome centre and I say this because there is so much going on, to get there inworld follow this SLURL:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/RELAY%20FOR%20LIFE/97/136/22

I decided to take a look at the track, if you’re wondering what that is, here are the rules of the road:

*** The Track – Rules of the Road ***

The track is the circulatory system of our relay experience. It is both a means to get from cool place to cool place and the main focus of many relayer’s participation as they dedicate their time to walking laps and honoring those that survive and those they have lost.  Please remember these things as we ask for the following rules to be adhered to:

1)  The track is one way. Please follow the arrows as you make your way around the track.

2)  There are two lanes, please stay to the right if you are moving at a normal walk speed to allow faster traffic to pass on the left.

3) If you need to go AFK or stop to chat with someone along the way, please move off the track to avoid being run into.

4) No Vehicles.  This is to minimize the  phsyics effect on the regions and the frustration by walkers of being hit by a vehicle.

5) NO “pets” that are not worn attachments (dogs, cats, whatever that follow you or have random motion).

6)  HAVE FUN!!!

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Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Busy

Before Jezebel and I go Relay For Life crazy, I thought I’d blog about abandoned land in Second Life. I was pondering the other week about the sheer amount of abandoned land in one of the mainland sims I have land in, some of it was set for sale but plenty of it wasn’t.

I found a plot I liked, my land didn’t border it on three sides but it was adjacent to plenty of my land, but alas it was merely owned by Governor Linden, not set for sale. I decided to chance my arm and put in a support ticket anyway. However I had heard nothing back, which was frustrating as I could make use of this land. Then today I received a response.

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Identity Not Labels

The fuss about Google + and pseudonyms is based largely around issues of identity, rather than anonymity. There have been quite a few posts about this, Hamlet Au over at New World Notes makes the observation that Hamlet Au brings more results in Google search than James Wagner Au, I nearly always call him Hamlet, Hamlet is an identity.

Tateru Nino has a few posts on the subject, one of which discusses why it’s difficult to prove the name you go by on a daily basis. However this discussion in itself proves the folly of social networks encouraging people to social network with names that aren’t as widely known online as pseudonyms.

Google haven’t really given any convincing reasons as to why Google + is following Facebook down the anti pseudonym route and for Google, this is extremely disappointing considering how they tailor adverts to content, they absolutely do not need a database full of real names to make Google + work whereas Facebook came from a different angle and whereas I don’t see why today, they still insist on real names, it evolved from people knowing each other at University.

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Google + Doesn’t Look Second Life Friendly

Opensource Obscure, Italian blogger, sometimes pain in the bum, sometimes extremely insightful, currently suspended from Google + for calling himself Opensource Obscure! So the question whether Google + would be pseudonym friendly and then by extension, Second Life friendly appears to have been answered on Opensource Obscure’s Flickr account.  This is extremely disappointing.

I don’t have a Google + account, I don’t have a Google profile either, however Google have plenty of information on me, some of you may notice I have Google Adsense running here, to make that worthwhile I provide Google with my real information, it’s needed at that stage. This is how we normally act as humans, we part with information when we deem it necessary. One of my beefs with Facebook is that they try and push humans into acting in a manner that isn’t natural, I’ve mentioned this before but I know people down my local pub by their nickname only, I’ll buy them a pint, they’ll buy me one back, we don’t need to know each other’s full names, indeed if we did know them they wouldn’t sound right because we know each other by nicknames!

So enter Google +, with different values apparently, different groups of friends in different circles. However this still isn’t natural ordering or filtering, there’s generally crossover, but Google + has moved into the do not touch with a bargepole territory with their moves to suspend Opensource Obscure because it means that we can’t, as Second Life users, use our Second Life names, even though that’s how plenty of people know us!

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