Viewer 2.0 arrives.  And with it, prims that can display live web pages.   Pages that show any video – not just Quicktime.  Flash.  Probably any video that will play on a browser   All of YouTube is now in our hands.  Web links that you can click on.  Web pages you can scroll through.

 Just like your browser.  But wait, there’s more!   On the web, there are millions around you but you are always alone.  In Second Life, you can call in your friends to look at that same page. 

• To watch that video you just made. 
• To look over your new web page design.
• To share an old move, spiced with new comments.
• To talk to an audience from web content that they share now and can access later.

Slaton Linden sent me some sample prims  and instructions on how to make a web prim on my own.  I found the instructions easy to follow and made my own web-prim.  It is at the Hobo Helpers Headquarters at Rockcliffe

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010 conference.  That’s the official name.  Dates, 12-13 Mar. 2010. 

I reported on it before, when the call for papers was announced:
Virtual World, Real Education in Second Life

Now all the papers are in and the conference planning gets underway in earnest.  The Lindens are giving us 20 sims for the conference-- to be available about now.  So the builders can get busy on the design.  And the Program committee can get busy on reviewing the papers. 

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference is a community-based project, with meetings held entirely inworld (in a virtual reality).    It is by nature multilingual.  That means we have to accommodate newcomers with many different languages.  In the next section I describe our efforts in that direction.

The other night I went to the Greenie's dance and frolicked with a teal-green tentacle-monster. As we danced, I looked around the crowd and pondered how we all envisioned the concept "futuristic." Everyone looked sexy; that was my first thought. This is Second Life, however, and avatars have to TRY to not be. Sexy aside, I saw a lot of new ideas about shape and structure and fabric. In the future, fabric doesn't have to be cloth, and clothing doesn't have to cover the epidermis; sometimes it's embedded within, sometimes it takes the physical form and twists it entirely. I'd love to see a Galliano show in 3050 (if we cryogenically preserve him or something) -- would he make clothing out of dry ice and foam?

Last I reported, I left with the sorrowful prospect of sentience thrown away. But with the dark, there is light, and with a negative outlook of the future, there is an optimistic one awaiting. As current issues ask what we throw away, they also pose the question, "What will we grow in the future?"

As humanity races forward to the future, we have run smack into challenges that threaten to overthrow us. Over the past decade, the issue of environmentalism has swelled with our expanding global connections and consequences for past generations' actions come to the forefront. Therefore, when we look at is yet to be, it is not just relevant, but critical to consider the question, "What will we throw away?" 

Location: Travel Hub, Heritage Key Before Viv gave me my recent tour of the Heritage Key Valley of the Kings, I bumbled about the new welcome areas for avatars. The ability to select better avatars (I'm sticking with Ron Glass' clone, however) makes HK worth a repeat visit. Here's Iggy/Ron looking at the new HK avatars and accessories:

Newcomer’s first question in SL: Why do I want to be here? That’s the same question as with any other software.  Do I really want to climb this learning hill?  (We geeks call it a learning curve to make it sound easy.)  The answer comes by exploring what you can do.  If you like what you find, you will probably want to climb that learning hill. 

The Hobo Helpers group is developing the HH Travel Service to make it easy for newcomers explore the parts of Second Life that appeal to them.     We want to help the newcomers will find what they seek.  

Who would be interested in HH Travel Service?

1.  Community Gateways, the Lindens and others who want to help newcomers find their Second Life destinies

2.  Destinations -- places that want to attract people, especially newcomers.  That would include

• Music venues
• Malls
• Role-playing estates
• Educational estates
• Business estates
• Museums
• Art galleries
• Others (TBD)

3.  People interested in rail and other transportation models in SL.

Sleek, metallic urban centers with cybernetic details is one predominant perspective of what our world will look like the in future, along with the bleak outlook of a battered dystopia blanketing the planet. There is another major view, however, inspired by when we cast our eyes upward. The cosmic bodies of the universe have been researched and mundanely explained over the past century, yet still their wonder endures...

The opposite of the grungy cyberpunk neko dystopia is a sterile, 2001-style future, clean-lined and vaguely modernist, as if it were forever in a 1960s flick. This kind of future is mirrored in the beautifully made skybox from C&D Designs, the Sky Bar. The couches were a cheeky take on Scan Design or Aems, and the small sections of vegetation definitely rang of contact with alien lifeforms. I walked into this skybox expecting company… Then I realized that they were still on Martian time! Not even the drink-serving droid was there to knock me out a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.