Have you ever wanted to get away from your hectic life, but lack the time or money to be able to? Just about everyone I know has had this issue at one time or another. One company has come up with a solution for this need, and has spawned a whole list of other options to its users.

Second Life is a virtual online world where users can log in and quite literally live a second life. The service is totally free to use, though there are options if you wish to pay money for a subscription that allows you to own more land and have more money in the world. (more…)

Imagine a world where, instead of walking around Penn’s campus, you could fly like an eagle, or instead of merely observing the ducks and koi at the BioPond, you could dive in and swim with the fishes. What if you found out this world really does exist?

Not in real life, but in Second Life, a three-dimensional, online virtual world where users, through avatars, can socialize and interact.
In 2009, Deke Kassabian, senior technology director in the Office of Information Systems and Computing at Penn, and staff began building a virtual Penn campus in Second Life, including College Hall, Houston Hall, the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, the BioPond and Kelly Writers House. (more…)

Almost every week for the last few years, it seems, I’ve gotten a press release or a pitch touting some company’s great new Facebook games network or kids’ virtual world.

And why not? Companies like Zynga and Playfish are making money hand over fist with their collections of massively popular social games, and 2D Flash games aimed at children like Club Penguin, Webkinz, Habbo Hotel, and others have garnered vast amounts of virtual world investment dollars in recent years.

But to someone who cut his virtual world teeth on more immersive, 3D environments like There and Second Life, these never-ending announcements of new companies trying to jump on the social gaming bandwagon have left me with one nagging question: Where is the innovation? (more…)

Second Life blogfather Wagner James Au weighs in on Viewer 2.0 He loves it — or at least he loves parts of it — but he says it won’t drive Second Life mainstream adoption. He’s right. Second Life has several barriers to mass adoption. Ease of use is only one of them, and it’s not even the biggest one.

The first barrier is that you have to register. That’s a barrier for all social media sites, but other social media sites have boiled the registration process down to e-mail address and password. In Second Life, registration is a lot more than that. In Second Life, you have to choose an avatar name. That confuses newcomers. They want to use their real names, or the nicknames they use everywhere else. (more…)

Today Richard Garriott, former part-time astronaut and founder of Origin, announced his latest company: Portalarium. Portalarium, according to the site, was founded in September 2009 to develop and publish ” online social games, virtual worlds and related services and products.”

There’s not much to the company publicly yet, but its initial release is a Torque2D-based plugin for Windows PCs (Mac support is coming in Q2 2010) allowing developers to work within social networks, but outside of traditional Flash-based environments. The Portal Player is currently in beta testing with Portalarium’s first title, Sweet @$! Poker, on Facebook. Virtual worlds are on the way. (more…)

The platform, which has received both praise and criticism from journalists in the past, enables users to create and sell content to other users. And indeed they do, if the figures are anything to go by. Arguably the most popular virtual world out there, Second Life’s users have created billions of objects, thousands of Second Life blogs and have hosted hundreds of ‘real world’ meet up events.

However, as high profile fortune 500 businesses have set up in Second Life and later left, the platform has received its fair share of scrutiny over its viability as a business tool. With no more than 85000 users logged in at a time, the audience for a company setting up in Second Life is small. But its virtual economy lends itself well to home creatives looking to increase their own personal income and many do. (more…)

If you’re a marketer who has steered clear of Twitter, your (non)strategy may be paying off. It’s possible that this Twitter thing may just take care of itself.

In the middle of last year, Twitter’s growth slowed from 7.8 million new users a month to 6.2 million, according to a recent study from RJ Metrics. That report also found that only 17 percent of Twitter users updated their accounts in December — an all-time low. An earlier study by the Nielsen Co. revealed 60 percent of Twitter users do not return from one month to the next. Taking that into account, it’s tempting to conclude that Twitter is following in the footsteps of another social-media ghost town, Second Life. (more…)

A Frank Lloyd Wright Museum has been in operation in Second Life for six months [SLURL]. Now, though, it’s officially working in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation under the new name of the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum, incorporating in the U.S., and seeking official non-profit status.

Four months ago the Foundation approached the Museum and expressed a desire to work together. While other real-world organizations have approached virtual counterparts and sought to compete or simply shut them down through legal proceedings, the Foundation has taken a tack of cooperation in order to build out the virtual presence of Wright with passionate people already doing the work. (more…)

The Cleopatra Water Courts project in Cairo, Egpyt is a build created in Second Life, which Los Angeles-based architect David Denton (known in SL as DB Bailey), showed his client, an Egyptian tycoon who funded the project. On that score, this is almost certainly the most expensive, ambitious real world project using Second Life as a platform.

Denton, who was previously a managing partner of legendary architect Frank Gehry, told me about the project at last August’s Second Life Community Convention, but only recently did his collaborators in Egypt send along the photo above — tangible proof that the build he showed me last year in Second Life is well on its way to being constructed. (It’s expected to be complete in three years.) (more…)

The data center tour is an integral part of the sales process for colocation and hosting space. But in a difficult economy and tight budgets, traveling around the country to scout data centers isn’t as simple.

So the developers of Phoenix NAP decided to bring the data center to the client. The company has created a data center virtual tour that allows visitors to “walk through” a full 3D visualization of the layout for the data center, which is scheduled to open this spring with a first phase of 45,000 square feet and will eventually include 160,000 square feet of data center space. (more…)

Marshall University has created a virtual campus in the online world of “Second Life” that allows visitors to check out the school without leaving their homes.

Marshall said Thursday that its “Second Life” island, MUOnline, will allow visitors to explore campus attractions such as the climbing wall and the recreation center. They also can buy textbooks online at the school’s virtual bookstore and find information about online courses.

In the virtual world of “Second Life,” users create avatars of themselves that live, work and play in its 3-dimensional landscape. (more…)

When you look at the welcome bonus and all the other benefits from joining an online casino, playing online has real advantages over the real world alternatives. Because the virtual operation does not need a major building and significant number of people to run the games, all that saving can go into financial benefits for members. If you play regularly enough and qualify for VIP membership, you can find the casino more financially generous than through the real world comps. Nevertheless, you still need to play smart to give yourself the best chance of winning more than you lose.

How can you improve your chances of winning? Well, the bad news is you have to study. Even though every spin of the wheel is an independent event and what has happened has no bearing on what will happen, you still have to know all the rules and what the odds are on each bet. This is a game of chance, but which game you decide to play and how you bet can affect the outcome.

As you know from the information contained on other parts of this site, there are two versions of the game. The difference between the two lies in the number of zeros, i.e. if the ball lands on a zero, the house takes some or all of the bets depending on the local rules. In the European version, there is only one zero. This makes the house edge 2.63%. In the American version, there are two zeros. The house edge doubles to 5.26%. Thus, if you have the choice, always play the European version because this gives the house the lowest advantage. Always check the local rules. If the house plays the en prison rule, all even money bets stay on the table for the next spin of the wheel if a zero comes up. This has the effect of further reducing the European house edge to 1.35%, i.e. this version of the game gives you the best chance of winning. Now learn how to calculate the odds and always play the bets giving you the best chance of winning and avoid the bets with the worst odds. The following is a simple guide:

• single number bets including zero and double zero 35:1
• two neighboring numbers 17:1
• any three numbers in a row 11:1
• any of the four touching numbers in a corner 8:1
• five numbers, e.g. 1,2,3,0,00 6:1
• any six numbers in two rows 5:1
• any twelve numbers in a column 2:1
• dozens 2:1
• red/black, odd/even 1:1

Now the choice is yours. If you are playing roulette for “profit”, set yourself a limit on the amount your are prepared to lose. Then play the bets with the bigger returns. If your luck is in and you hit one or two times, take your winnings. You can enjoy the rest of the evening at the casino’s expense. The worst mistake anyone can make is to be seduced by the idea of a hot streak. The reality is clear. If you keep on playing roulette, you will lose all your winnings.

There is nothing more awesome in an opinion then Second Life, we are going to learn how to make an avatar for this game.

First go to the Second Life website www.secondlife.com and find the download requirement for that of your computer, there is one for Linux and then one for windows such as XP or Vista. (more…)

The aughts have brought plenty of gaming failures—Dreamcast and Gizmondo come to mind—but for every step backward, there have been two forward. Here are the top 15 milestones—from the PS3 to Second Life, Halo 2 to Zynga Poker—in the last 10 years.

Whatever you want to call it, an open-ended, online homage to The Sims or a sad remnant of the VR craze, Second Life is still drawing attention for its virtual marriages, financial scams, political protests and housing crashes. “Residents” can roam this computer-generated world as a version of themselves, or, if they prefer, as a giant carrot. (more…)

Once the presents have been opened and Christmas dinner devoured, many tech-minded people may have the urge to get online and see what’s going on in cyberspace – and Second Life could well be one of their ports of call.

Bearing this in mind, silicon.com has trawled through the virtual world to find what festive fun you’ll be able to have if you pay a visit.

As you would expect, you can buy various souvenirs and decorations to give your virtual land a Christmas twist. (more…)