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.

A Job Interview You Don't Have to Show Up For 
From the Wall Street Journal Business Section

You don’t go to the interview, you just send your Avatar.  A number of companies, such as Microsoft and Verizon, are using Second Life to interview potential hires.  Remarkably this article is not the usual smear job.  No sex and violence.   Reasonable coverage.  The article is two years old and written when Second Life had not introduced voice, but is otherwise informative. I looked around for information to update the story and develop content for newcomers,  

The Avatar Repertory Theater held the first of its weekly playshop events this past Friday.  These regular Friday events, officially called “ART Plays Around,” start at 5 pm, Second Life time.  They are held at the Archon Theater on Cookie and are open to the public.  

The events will consist of performances by the talented company of ART players.  There will be readings of parts of plays being considered for performance by the troupe.  Some will be recognized plays like "Anthony and Cleopatra", "The Seagull", and "Lysistrata."  Others will be plays written by people in Second Life specifically for performance in Second Life, as described in a recent blog Playreading Workshops join Writers and Actors