Second Life: In the NEWS – Week 17

Business Insider March 2014

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? by Christina, on Flickr

I am not sure why some things come up so late in Feedly, like 4 weeks… This is a decent article about Linden Lab starting development on the Next Generation Platform. See: This company was 13 years early to virtual reality — and it’s getting ready to try again. Quoting:

Linden Lab is marshaling its expertise and experience in building immersive, functional virtual worlds to make a proper successor to the Second Life platform and take advantage of the bold new world of immersive VR. Specifically, Linden sees a huge opportunity in making it easier for people to build and share cool virtual reality experiences.

Another part of the article reminds us of the Lab’s priorities.

Which is why the next version of Second Life has a few clear priorities, Altberg says:

  • Make it easier for people to find cool, relevant stuff.
  • Make it possible for more people to attend and experience that cool stuff (Duran Duran did a free concert in Second Life once, but only 50 people could fit in the room for technical reasons).
  • Make it possible for people to make money in new ways from their stuff (like letting people who run virtual classrooms rent out the technology to other universities).

If you follow Ebbe, you know he has said more about the Lab’s priorities. But, I won’t rehash those again.

Another point I think a number of people forget. The Lab has more experience with virtual worlds and user created content than any other company. I and others think this is going to give them an immeasurable advantage over companies like Facebook.

Free Speech

On another topic… Most of the world does not have a the freedom to speak their thoughts. Even asking questions can get you in trouble. America is joining the list of the world’s countries suppressing speech. Ask Scott Lees formerly a coach at the Fryeburg Academy. Reference: Conway Daily Sun, Fox News, BizPac Review, The Right Scoop.

We see more of the chilling effect on speech by the Obama administration going after whistle-blowers, who are technically protected by law. Oddly both the Right and Left are taking the same side against the administration. See: Huffington Post, and Mother Jones.

What are you doing to defend free speech?

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