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Time to take out the intellectual trash?

December 6, 2007 By

Malcolm King is a former media adviser to the ALP and Australian Democrats. He’s written a piece on virtual worlds and it’s fair to say he’s scathing of their potential.

Once you wade through the hyperbole King himself engages in while condemning the excesses of virtual worlds, there are some valid points made. However, one point that seems totally over the top is the claim that virtual worlds are “not the place for serious dialogue”. I doubt Mr King has ever had any involvement with some of the health and education projects in Second Life if he believes that. The fact he called Linden Lab ‘Linden Corp’ tells me direct familiarity with Second Life is limited at best.

Filed Under: Education, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: ,

Second Life property gets mainstream attention

December 4, 2007 By

Last Saturday, The Age ran a story on real estate in Second Life. I received a call from the journalist who wrote the article, Adam Turner, a few weeks back and it’s obvious he did some research. Aussie residents Juko Tempel and Earnest Candour are interviewed to name but two.

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The striking thing for me is the fact that a mainstream newspaper’s real estate section is running stories on property in virtual worlds. It’s also a story that isn’t looking at the issue from just a novelty viewpoint. In small steps, virtual worlds are gaining mainstream credibility.

Filed Under: Australian News Tagged With: ,

Australian Federal Police to establish Second Life presence?

December 1, 2007 By

The Australian ran a story last weekend alluding to the Australian Federal Police setting up shop in Second Life. AFP Assistant Commissioner Andrew Colvin is quoted as saying the organisation is “considering” Second Life as a base of operations for its High Tech Crime Centre.

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I’m taking the whole story with a large grain of salt as it’s written by Natalie O’Brien, who has some serious bad form in reporting on Second Life. If the AFP do establish a presence, it’ll be interesting to see what they offer as a public face in-world.

We’ve contacted the AFP for confirmation of the claims made.

Filed Under: Australian News Tagged With: ,

The Wonderland saga – ageplay focus increases

November 1, 2007 By

Over the past day, the ageplay investigations by UK authorities has well and truly hit the mainstream media. WIth gambling now gone from SL, sex was always going to be the issue that piques the media’s interest, particularly when it potentially involves children.

At SLOz we’ve been contacted today by a couple of mainstream media outlets including one of the national TV news services. NineMSN has a perfunctory story on its site. Our comments to the media matched those we’ve made here: any efforts to remove child pornography are to be applauded, determining the actual age of SL users is fraught with difficulty and Linden Lab have a significant issue on their hands.

Linden Lab’s response response today is a re-hash of its previous position i.e. ‘tell us when you see it happen and we’ll investigate’. We’re assuming this is an initial response – there’s a momentum growing in a number of countries now and the status quo probably isn’t going to be good enough.

Update: there’s a sizeable discussion on the saga at TechCrunch.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed Tagged With: ,

‘The Office’ covers Second Life

October 27, 2007 By

With the massive blog coverage on CSI New York’s episode on Second Life, another TV appearance has been overlooked. The US version of The Office had an SL cameo. One part of it can be seen here:

There’s a reason for mentioning this – one of SLOz’s sponsors, Encore Design Group (EDG), was responsible for the build “The Hanging Gardens of Ancient Babylon”. EDG helped us with our modest SLOz HQ earlier this year.

Other info from the press release:

“I have never been more excited than when Dwight and Jim were shown near the welcome center at the Hanging Gardens,” says Kat Claxton, co-founder of Encore Design Group. “I have been a fan of The Office since it first aired, and I watch it every week. When we were informed that the producers of the show had been capturing footage in Mesopotamia, we had no idea how much would actually make it into the show. When it aired and both Dwight and Jim were shown in easily identifiable areas of the Hanging Gardens, we just couldn’t believe it. It’s like a dream come true for us at EDG, and we’re very proud that our build was chosen to represent all of Second Life to a nationwide viewing audience.”

As a side story, the episode of “The Office” that aired on Thursday October 25 had Jim making fun of Dwight for Dwight’s involvement in Second Life. When Jim calls Second Life a game, Dwight corrects him by saying that SL is not a game since it has no end goals, winners or losers. “Oh, there are losers,” says Jim while staring pointedly at Dwight.

But later in the episode, Jim creates his own SL avatar to monitor Dwight’s in-world activities, and his character’s love interest Pam (Jenna Fischer) points out how much attention Jim had spent in making his own avatar look exactly like his real-life self.

The last SL-related scene in the episode has Dwight standing by a kiosk in Mesopotamia near a sign advertising something he’d made called “Second Second Life”, which the show’s other characters deride as being yet another step removed from Dwight’s reality.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: ,

News.com.au – Terrorists in SL

July 31, 2007 By

Mainstream media reporting of Second Life in Australia has a mixed track record, and one of the biggest low points would have to be in this article on the news.com.au website published today. It can also be found on The Australian website.

The article starts off regurgitating the (never confirmed) accusation that the 22nd May issues with ABC Island were due to a ‘bomb’. Then it goes further downhill from there, describing how “landscapes are razed and residents are wounded or killed” after an attack by the SL Liberation Army.

It seems doubtful that the article’s author, Natalie O’Brien, has spent more than ten minutes in SL given the range of other factual errors contained in the story. Here’s one more example to get you worked up: “This terror campaign, which has been waged during the past six months, has left a trail of dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars’ damage”.

The sad thing is, the shoddy premise of the article overshadows the legitimate concern about the power of virtual worlds for use in criminal pursuits. Yes, terrorists groups COULD use streaming video in SL to broadcast propaganda or training. But why would you bother? I suppose potential terrorists may believe the misinformation about being able to wound or kill people in SL and decide they’ll register for some killing fun. My, how they’ll be disappointed.

Filed Under: Australian News, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With: ,

ABC Awards and a Denton groundswell?

July 23, 2007 By

The ABC have taken home a ‘C+T Award’ at a ceremony at last week’s SMPTE conference. The award was in the Rich Media category for ABC Island.

The ABC’s announcement of the win was as follows:

” ‘We are delighted to receive the inaugural C+T Award for Rich Media as recognition of ABC Innovation’s strategic approach to virtual worlds,’ said Abigail Thomas, Head Strategic Development.

‘ABC Island is the ideal place for us to work with our audiences to discover what they want in this environment and to tailor our presence accordingly.’

In March 2007, the ABC became the first Australian broadcaster to establish a presence in Second Life. Since then a number of events have taken place on the island including a simulcast of a 4 Corners program exploring virtual worlds and an open forum in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts.

ABC Innovation also received a nomination for the Broadband Production Template in the Rich Media category.

The C+T Awards were devised by Content+Technology magazine to recognise innovation in products, production and projects throughout Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.”

On ABC-related news, a voting box at the ABC Island Sandbox is showing some support for an Enough Rope interview with an SL theme.

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Thanks to Wolfie Rankin for the heads-up.

Filed Under: Australian News Tagged With: ,
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