Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Explaining Second Life Visually.

It is hard to explain Second Life to someone when they ask you about it. The short version seems to be "Its like real life, only you can fly". However, check out the video which was this years trailer winner for Second Life Machinima contest here:

http://www.silverandgoldie.ltsvideo.com/

There are several download formats. While I find it a bit "game" centric compared to my own experience in SL, it does get the point across.

Enjoy.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The International Flair of Second Life

I hosted the first meeting of Seattle Second Lifer's last night. One of the questions that came up was "What do you like about Second Life?". Well there are many reasons, but one of my answers is the WOW moments. Second Life continues to dish these up to me at unexpected times, particularly when I am exploring randomly and let events take me places I would never go in RL.

Here is one of my favorite WOW moments. I was walking around the grounds of the SL 3rd anniversary area and just ran into Cinnamon Hayek and started chatting. Turned out she was in Australia. Soon two others joined us. The first was from the Netherlands, the second practically down the street from me. Now you have to think, where would that ever happen in RL? Small world. Here is a snippet.

[21:49] You: I found a very cool garden store with many rock waterfalls for sale, while you can't edit them, you can try and this gives you the outlines of the prims, you can get a pretty good idea of how they are built
[21:49] Cinnamon Hayek: You can see the shapes of the prims, even though you can't edit them :)
[21:49] Ruud Lathrop: :)
[21:50] Cinnamon Hayek: What Ansel said. ;)
[21:50] You: let me try to give you a landmark
[21:50] Ruud Lathrop: Yeah I seen also very cool waterfalls
[21:50] Ruud Lathrop accepted your inventory offer.
[21:50] Ruud Lathrop: thanks
[21:50] You: np
[21:50] Cinnamon Hayek: Hi Quincy :)
[21:51] Ruud Lathrop: Anything nice happening today at the party
[21:51] Quincy Fitzcarraldo: Good evening(?) folks....
[21:51] Cinnamon Hayek: Good afternoon for me. Close enough ;)
[21:51] Ruud Lathrop: Goodmorning
[21:51] Ruud Lathrop: for me
[21:51] Cinnamon Hayek: Not sure about the party, missed it
[21:51] Quincy Fitzcarraldo: That sounds like some europe folks....
[21:51] Cinnamon Hayek: You in Europe, Ruud?
[21:52] Cinnamon Hayek: Yeah, what Quincy said.
[21:52] Ruud Lathrop: Yeap Netherland
[21:52] Cinnamon Hayek: Gee I'm slow today lol
[21:52] Cinnamon Hayek: Cool :)
[21:52] Ruud Lathrop: So now i'm dutch
[21:52] You: ha
[21:52] Quincy Fitzcarraldo: That is one of the thjings that make this place fun. I am on the north west part of the US...
[21:53] Ruud Lathrop: Yeap
[21:53] Cinnamon Hayek: Well I'm miles from all of you, in Aussie-land. Freezing my ass off, lol
[21:53] Ruud Lathrop: People from all around the world meet