This NWN post, Rosedale leaving, does not surprise me. It seems a major management shift in parallel with a strategy shift was underway. I have been meaning to see more about the content policy, the class-action lawsuit against LL by content creators, and anything about new strategy.
All of these actions seem [...]

BlogHUD : Get a Second Life Blog

BlogHUD : Get a Second Life Blog – Second Life blogging community network and tools
what is a blogHUD?
The ‘blogHUD’ is a tool to let you blog from Second Life and crosspost your text posts or image postcards to your own blog or photo-sharing account.
This looks like it oculd be a useful tool for undergrads doing [...]

What happens in SL stays in SL

I was thoinking about the businesses that people start up in SL or other virtual worlds.  That got me thinking about this word again that I invented (as far as I know). Digital + Indigenous= “Digindigenous.”  Prounced as “dij-in-dij-en-us.”  It is growing on me.  For example, a norm that emerges in SL (as opposed to [...]

Civics, Politics in SecondLife

I wa slooking for a project for my undergraduate research studnet to work on.
The SL researchers listserv had a good suggestion.
Request:

He is interested in politics or civic discourse in virtual worlds.
Ideally, it would be a sim, island, community with either robust internal debate, or an explicit goal of being a forum, an agora of [...]

Politics inside or outside the magic circle?

The magic circle seems a key concept in virtual worlds and gaming.  For origin of the term from Huzinga, see here.
The wikipedia article, in summarizing Castronova’s arguments, states:
Even though there are political activities inside synthetic worlds, it is interesting to note that “debates, which really do involve legitimate political interests, almost always occur outside the [...]

Practicing trust and VWs

Terra Nova: Practicing trust
Here it strikes me that MMOs sit in a sweet spot between being different enough as a practice to externalize, among other thing, acts of trust and kindness. Yet familiar enough in terms of the generic nature of what’s going on for those acts to have emotional impact – at least some [...]

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Wow ! Welcome Hal 2000! Or the Oracle. Or agent Smith.
RPI: News & Events – Bringing <i>Second Life</i> To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Thoughts on SL Banking ban

I know I’ve talked to people about virtual worlds and when they point out that it is “odd” or somehow “wrong” for people to adopt other identities, I sometimes repsond that the ability to do so, or at least, the ability to do anything meaningful as your alter ego, will be limited by how porous [...]

Serious Play… A Title for Paper on Second Life

Here is the abstract Ted and I are working from. I am not sure whether to go for the Organization and Management Theory division or the Organization and Communication Information Systems division of AOM.
Titles?
The Influence of Economic and Social Incentive on the Evolution of Virtual Worlds
OR
Serious Play in Synthetic Worlds: [...]