Business as Usual?

Second Life has released the Beta Version of its Enterprise tool. This allows companies such as IBM and other organizations such as governmental agencies and educational institutions to use Second Life for virtual meetings behind their own firewalls. The use of virtual spaces and avatars for meeting and communicating with others, who are not located near you, gives a greater sense of being there which is effective for collaboration and learning.

You can read more about this in the recent Information Week Story, "Second Life steps into the Enterprise" and also in a recent CNN article, "Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life."
~Laurel

Second Life, one of numerous virtual worlds, provides a unique way to bring stories to life. Creating community through storytelling is the motivation behind the Virtual Worlds Story Project. The two creators of the project, Jena Ball (Jenaia Morane in SL) and Marty Keltz ( Marty Snowpaw in SL), have a background in writing and journalism and in film and television. The latest Story Quest event was the October 1st premiere of the machinima, "The Life and Times of Uncle D", with the theme of someone living with HIV/AIDS.

If you want to watch the film it is a bit long (8 minutes) as well as sad and poetic, and so I recommend it for viewing at home or on your meal break. It is an excellent example of the potential of virtual worlds as a platform for telling the stories of our lives.

~Laurel

Mindboggling Stats

A Massively feature article (Massively: Daily News About MMO's) reports mindboggling stats from Linden Labs, the producers of Second Life. A sampling of the stats include: virtual landholdings in SL are the size of the state of Rhode Island, 250,000 user generated items are created daily and 109 million text messages are sent in SL each day. For more read "Linden Labs shows Second Life Numbers are Huge."

While digital content created by SL residents includes everything from buildings, dragons, vehicles and food, virtual clothing is a huge industry in the virtual world. The photo above (click on photo for a larger view) was taken in one well known Second Life clothing store, Paper Couture.
_Laurel

Read Posters

Hello!
As a librarian, I am always attracted to all things library, and to my delight I discovered the ALA island in Second Life. Filled with information and displays covering so many different topics, I spent quite a while exploring. One of my favorite ALA items are the READ posters (confession: the Sean Connery poster accompanied me through college), so I was delighted to be able to create my own. I think this first one shows my old fashioned librarian persona, you can just see me glaring at a noisy reader over my book!


I’ve also always imagined myself as a librarian extraordinaire, and finally, I am in the spotlight here:


But this last one sums up my feelings all too well! Enjoy your travels, and I hope to see your face on a Read poster soon!
Best wishes,
Bibliobabe Valeska

A few words from Nik

Hello all! Nik Mortenwold here. I am very excited that we have finally completed our first two machinima videos for Central Florida Memory. When I began working for the Orange County Library System I had no idea I would have the opportunity to utilize my degree in film, particularly in a less conventional medium like machinima. When I was approached about making these videos I jumped on the opportunity to explore and be apart of this burgeoning new art form.

It is exciting to think of all the innovations in film and video that have laid the groundwork for the freedom in creation we have today. From the Lumière brothers and their cinématographe to the home video camera. From VHS, to DVD, and now video on demand through the web. The ability for a single individual with a computer to tell a complete story is one of the beauties of machinima and is providing an independence to filmmakers like never before.

I look forward to producing future videos for Central Florida Memory. With each video our team’s skills and workflow improve. Within the coming months I hope to contribute several articles detailing our hurdles and successes so that other libraries and organizations can participate in this exciting new frontier.

- Nik Mortenwold

The second Central Florida Machine is ready and available to be viewed on the Library web site. At the bottom of the Central Florida Memory in Second Life page you can see both the first video, "An Introduction" and the newest one, "A Look at Daily Life." Can you guess which staff voices are used for recording the glimpse into the life of Helen and Bill?

Machinima!

Woo Hoo, the Library's machinima has been posted on the library website and even on YouTube. Pretty Cool. Read about the Central Florida Memory exhibit and see the video here. The machinima is largely the work of Nik Mortenwold aka OCLS staff member Nick Martinolich.

~~Sunny Farshore

Virtual Worlds are Big Business

In a 5 quarter period (I believe overlapping parts of 2007 and 2008), 1.5 billion dollars were invested in Virtual Worlds. Obviously some investors are seeing a big money making potential. Yesterday Linden Labs announced that as part of their strategic innitiative they are acquiring two companies that have been selling digital content created by Second Life residents through the web. In 2008 Second Life residents sold 360 million dollars worth of digital goods and services and the global market for digital goods was estimated at 1.5 billion a year.