Given that we’ve just passed into a new year, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some Second Life stats. The only stuff I’ve analysed so far is the log-in data. For each day (in theory anyway), Linden records how many users logged during the 7, 14, 30, and 60 days, …
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I don’t know how many times I wrote this post. Maybe three, four, five times? I’m really not sure. The problem is, there’s not a good way of writing it. Too many potential readers could take it to heart and be hugely offended. So instead I leave you with just the haiku that inspired it …
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I’ve been reading quite a lot of blog posts on the topic of copybotting recently. For those who don’t know, copybotting is the blanket term used to cover Second Life piracy. Its name comes from the process where an automated avatar (bot) systematically inspects and then replicates an in-world item — although it now tends …
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One of the most important things when it comes to doing Second Life research is having somewhere to do it (d’uh XD). I guess interviews could feasibly be done in public places, or at the humble abodes of your participants, but more experimental stuff really needs its own dedicated lab. So for this post I’m …
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When I bought my Tablet PC, one of the main things I wanted to do with it was read PDF articles. It quickly became apparent however that although there were loads of programs out there designed for reading eBooks on the desktop — none of them really allowed for finger-based browsing on the Tablet’s touchscreen. …
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From time to time, I’ve had a genuine reason for needing access to Second Life on the move. Normally this would involve carrying my laptop around, or just going without. Sparkle, a Second Life chat client for the iPhone, offered a bit of the Second Life experience, but it was very bare bones — offering …
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I’ve made no secret of the fact that my avatar, Az Afterthought, was made especially for my Second Life research. His predecessor, Aaron, was born some eight months earlier when a friend managed to convince me to sign up. Since creating Az however, Aaron has barely been used at all — I still login as …
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‘I, Avatar’ is a book I took a chance on. I’ll be honest, the price and the fact that it was vaguely Second Life related is what sold me — the description itself didn’t leave me with a lot of hope — the mention of ‘an examination of avatars through the lenses of sociology, psychology, …
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It’s times like this when I realise that maybe I’m actually getting somewhere with my research. Last year Cisco announced that they were working on an automated translation service for their Telepresence video conferencing product. The service could apparently transcribe a user’s speech, accurately translate it, and then ‘read’ the translation to the user’s remote …
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