The in thing in the workplace these days, the big headache generator for IT Support departments is bring your own device, or BYOD as it is affectionately known, or pain in the arse bloody devices (PITABD) as it is unofficially known. I was in a meeting this week discussing how wonderful it is that people want to link their own devices to our work network, how cost savings can be made on our own hardware purchases and how we need to have a list of policies as long as both arms to deal with issues such as data leakages, insecure devices, unprotected devices, authenticators to login, acceptable use policies yadda yadda yadda .. several cups of coffee later I came away with a headache and a feeling that the more control we seem to pass to the user, the more control we need to get back by investing in even more security and polcy documents
Which brings us to Second Life and what some see as it’s insular approach to the wider metaverse. Hypergrid Business is a great site to get the lowdown on other virtual worlds, collaborative projects between owners of different grids, sims. There are examples of great business and education projects using worlds other than Second Life. However I can appreciate why Linden Lab have been reluctant to join the party. The wider metaverse has been discussed at Linden Lab, Robin Linden discussed others joining the Second Life grid back in the day when she was here and running office hours. However controlling access is a problem and the bottom line really is, Second Life is not the right project to join other grids. However that doesn’t mean Linden Lab could never engage.