• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CHAPTER 01 ou probably have a lot of questions about the YSecond Life Grid. What is the SL Grid? How many people use it? Are a lot of businesses, educators, nonprofits, and government agencies getting on the Grid? How do they use it for their projects, and why? What sorts of projects work best? Is the SL Grid right for your project? Read on for answers! WHAT YOU CAN DO ON THE SECOND LIFE GRID What IS THE SECOND LIFE GRID? You've probably read articles about Second Life, heard about it from a friend or colleague, or maybe you've even tried it yourself. A lot of people aren't clear on just what Second Life is and what it can do, but they know it looks like a game, which seems to conflict with the stories of government agencies and universities and corporations using it for serious and definitely nongame projects. So let's start with an overview of the Second Life Grid and the features it offers that might be useful to you for a project for your business, educational institution, nonprofit, or government agency. The SL Grid is a platform that offers users the ability to create public or secure 3D online virtual spaces or to visit and use spaces created by others. The same technology is the framework of the popular virtual world Second Life, but the SL Grid contains the Second Life world, not the other way around. A convenient comparison: your space in SL is to the SL Grid as your company's website is to the World Wide Web. Additionally, while the SL Grid and world aren't games, they contain some games . along with classrooms, offices, auditoriums, and more (Figure 1.1). Again, compare this to the Web, which no one would consider a game, but where you can find games if you want them. 1.1 This doesn't look like a game to me! You can keep your own space on the Grid private and allow only your own staff or students to access it, or you can locate your space in the Second Life world and allow community members—known as Residents—to visit and participate. It's easy to use the SL Grid's tools to control access to your space. You can even decide whether to allow your own staff or students to access the Second Life world within the SL Grid, and create a custom signup and orientation experience for your staff, students, or customers. Additionally, a new offering on the horizon will allow you to set up stand-alone virtual spaces, even behind your own firewall. Still other tools in the works will facilitate participation in your virtual meetings, classes, and other activities via a web interface or an instant-messaging client, or by calling a phone number. And, of course, the SL Grid includes powerful tools for content creation, so you can develop what you need WHAT IS THE to make your space attractive and functional. Additionally, you can tap into the wealth of Resident-created SECOND LIFE GRID? content, which you can purchase from shops in the Second Life world using Linden dollars, the convenient 006 microcurrency of this virtual world. Once you're on the Grid and have your space set up, you can use it for all sorts of projects, or even at any time repurpose the space with surprising ease and speed and at a reasonable cost. SL Statistics Here's some food for thought. As of January 27, 2009 There were 16,785,531 SL Residents (accounts). 522,526 accounts were logged in during the last 7 days. 1,444,530 accounts logged in during the last 60 days. Average daily peak concurrency (number of accounts logged in at the same time) was up 31 percent since 2007. Highest peak concurrency was 82,653 on January 25, 2009. As of the first week of February, 2009, the exchange rate was between L$260 and L$270 to the US dollar. The average exchange rate in 2008 was about L$268 to the dollar. Residents made L$21,192,712 worth of transactions during the month of December 2008. At the end of 2008, Residents owned over 1.76 billion square meters of virtual land on the Grid. That's about 1,093,613 square miles (1,760,000 square kilometers). For comparison, note that Alaska is 587,878 square miles, Texas is 266,874 square miles, and California is only 158,648 square miles! Compare that to Japan (234,776 square miles), the UK (152,124 square miles), or Spain (313,657 square miles). As of April 7, 2008, an average of 2,040,000 square meters of virtual land is traded between Residents each day. Residents logged almost 400 million hours in 2008, a 61 percent increase over 2007. Features OF THE SL GRID In Chapters 2 through 5 we'll look closely at how educators, nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses use the Grid for their specific needs. But first let's consider the possibilities. Here's a high-level overview of what's in store on the Grid. MAKE YOUR SPACE PUBLIC OR PRIVATE When you set up a space of your own, you can control it via in-world tools (which you'll learn to use in Chapter 9). You can purchase virtual land from Linden Lab or from another SL Resident, or rent anything from a small shop all the way up to whole islands and continents. Terraform and landscape your land, or hire a developer to do it for you, and you can have a tropical paradise, a mountain retreat, or just about any other sort of terrain you like. You can locate your space on the SL world's mainland, where things are especially crowded and busy, or on a private island where you have more control, or you can maintain a presence in more than one location. As mentioned earlier, you can even control who has access to your space: allow members of the SL com- CHAPTER 01 WHAT YOU CAN DO ON munity to visit it, or restrict access to only avatars you choose. (You can easily switch this setting, if you want THE SECOND LIFE GRID to be "open" only some of the time.) Using the Registration API, you can create a custom SL account-creation 007 web page and have new avatars logged in directly to your location in-world. You can decide whether you want those avatars to be restricted to your island or if they'll be free to visit the rest of the SL world. If a visitor is causing trouble, you can quickly and easily eject them from your space, and even ban them from returning. You have options for age restrictions, as well. There's a special place for SL users age 13 to 17, called Teen Second Life, which is separate from the rest of the Grid and has plenty of rules and technical restrictions in place to make sure that it's a safe space for teens to interact. For the ultimate control over access and communications, the upcoming offering I mentioned earlier will allow you to run your own stand-alone virtual space, behind your organization's firewall if you wish. At press time, little information was available, but it should prove very useful, particularly for organizations that are concerned about keeping private conversations private. REPRESENT LOCATIONS AND THINGS Want to make a scale model of your office, part of a real-life city, or your product? With the Grid's built-in tools, a few assets imported from external programs, and some skill, you can do just that. Want to put your favorite chair on the lunar surface? No problem! Would it be useful to you to re-create long- gone places, like an ancient Egyptian village or a Roaring Twenties speakeasy? You can bring the past to life in 3D and, if you wish, invite others to visit and explore, or you can give away or sell copies of these assets or even rent spaces to tenants. You can even develop—or have developed for you—things that don't yet exist, such as a prototype of a hotel you envision. And of course you can create places and things that aren't possible in real life, like undersea cities, magical flying furniture, crystal trees, and floating castles. Some SL Residents create works of art entirely within the Second Life world, display them in galleries, and sell copies—or originals. BE YOURSELF OR YOUR OTHER SELF Your representation on the Grid is called an avatar. This 3D character can have almost any appearance you choose. You can use photos to create an avatar that looks just like you (but maybe a tad thinner or younger, if you like!). Or maybe you want to look a bit different. Be an elf, an Inca, or a space pirate, or model yourself after a celebrity or historical figure. It's easy to change what your avatar wears, so you can have a businesslike avatar that looks like the real-life you for a meeting, then turn into a talking bird, a robot, or Abraham Lincoln—within seconds. Artists create all sorts of clothing and accessories for avatars to wear or carry, and animations so that your ava- tar can dance, take a bow, shake hands with a client, or fly like a superhero. You can have custom work created for you, or you can shop the amazing array of existing user-created content.

Load more

  20

Copy Link