As traffic in the real-world museum is somewhat limited, the museum's curator, Avnet's Director of Multimedia Services, Bryan Carter, suggested an experiment with recreating the museum experience, down to the minutest detail, in the virtual world to bring it to more people, or avatars, as they're called in Second Life. "The result is a real geek-fest," according to Carter. "Visitors to Avnet's space in Second Life tell us they're fascinated with the in-world freebies on our giveaway table, with the ability to zoom in on objects in the museum and with the speedboat trips they can make around the Avnet island."

Highly interactive, the Avnet Second Life experience gives in-world visitors the opportunity to talk to the receptionist, an artificial intelligence greeter named Samantha, and also to ask for more information about Avnet, inquire about job openings and find out who the trading partners are that Avnet works with in the real world.

Carter says one of the recent visitors went giddy when he experienced the virtual recreation of the Leak Amplifier in the museum. "I had one of these!" the nostalgic visitor noted on his guest comment card.

"Resources allocated to Second Life are considered R&D investments, since the platform is new and many of the sales, marketing and training possibilities it offers haven't even been thought of yet," said Jan Jurcy, Avnet's vice president of digital communications. "We look at this as another piece of the social media revolution. In fact, all of the buzz we've created so far with Avnet's presence on Second Life has come from word of mouth among visitors. Wow. We've come full circle in the communications arena - all the way back to people simply telling other people. Well, ok, they're probably telling each other via their BlackBerrys."

Virtual New York City is all decked out for the holidays. A festive window display in a downtown department store stunned early morning shoppers when they saw a trail of broken snowflakes leading to a beautiful blonde angel drowned in a life-sized snowglobe.

The virtual CSIs have been called in to investigate, and they need your help. Visit the crime scene and gather evidence. Then analyze it and track down the angel's killer!

HBO said on Tuesday it has acquired the rights to a short-form documentary shot entirely within Second Life, as entertainment companies increasingly turn to virtual worlds as a source for new content.

"My Second Life: The video diaries of Molotov Alta" purports to tell the story of a man who "disappeared from his California home" and began issuing video dispatches from Second Life. The popular virtual world, which has its own currency and a growing economy, has drawn millions of users who create alter egos called avatars and interact with people from around the world.

HBO, the premium channel owned by Time Warner Inc, paid a six-figure sum for the rights, Douglas Gayeton, who made the film, said in an interview. Gayeton, who uses the avatar Molotov Alta in Second Life, said the documentary is scheduled for release in 2008.

Second Life has hosted dozens of real world companies in the past year, usually as a means of promoting products like cars or movies. However, Hollywood has been increasingly interested in using worlds like Second Life as virtual movie sets, a process known as machinima.

The MetaCard works in the same way as a normal first life credit card works. Applicants are provided with a credit limit and present the card when purchasing goods at merchants who accept the card.

MetaCard comes in two flavors: Basic and Gold. The Basic card is subject to a avatar check and provides a credit limit of L$5000 ($18.60) per month. A Gold MetaCard offers a credit limit of L$10,000 ($37.20) per month and can only be obtained by providing real world credentials and a real life credit card for automatic payments. Interest is charged at between 0.13% and 0.15% per day, which would we roughly 54% per annum, but compounding. Payments are 2% of the total amount used plus fees outstanding at the end of the month, and users have 21 days to make their monthly payment. MetaCard holders must also spend L$500 ($1.86) per month or face a monthly maintenance fee of L$300 ($1.12).

FirstMeta also offers MetaCard holders a savings account under the MetaSavings brand, offering interest rates of between 0.06%-0.09% daily.

People controlling animated avatar members of a self-proclaimed Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) have set off computer-code versions of atomic bombs at virtual world stores in the past six months -- with their own manifesto.

The SLLA claims to be an "in-world military wing of a national liberation movement" devoted to replacing the rule of Second Life creator Linden Labs with a democracy representing the nearly four million residents.

"As Linden Labs is functioning as an authoritarian government the only appropriate response is to fight," the SLLA said in a message on its website at http://secondlla.googlepages.com.

"When the SLLA succeeds in its aims it will disband and hand power back to the political wing of the movement."

Creative dissent is welcomed in Second Life as long as it doesn't interfere with the ability of other residents to enjoy the virtual world, according to San Francisco-based Linden.

Second Life said it stopped charging a tax on items created by residents after avatars fashioned in the images of American revolutionaries recreated the Boston Tea Party in the virtual world about three years ago.

The virtual bomb blasts in Second Life explode in hazy white balls, blotting out portions of a screen and battering nearby avatars, animated figures that are residents' proxies in the virtual world.

The project is being run by the Swedish Institute - a promotional body which works alongside the foreign ministry.

Institute director Olle Waestberg said the virtual embassy would reach many young people and provide information about Sweden.

Second Life has about three million users worldwide, who create and develop virtual characters - called "avatars".

Several real-world companies have created virtual shops in Second Life.

The Swedish Institute says the embassy will not issue passports and visas, but it will inform users how to get them in the real world.

Virtual world Second Life just surpassed two million registered users, exactly two months after it hit one million residents. Yes, the churn rate is high and only 829,537 have logged on in the last two months, but that is still phenomenal growth.

The question is, Can Second Life get enough people to come back a second time or more? If $850,000 is truly changing hands every 24 hours and that money can be taken out of Second Life, then I think the answer will be yes.

The self-replicating worm planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world, which is inhabited by more than a million users.

Players treated the attack with a mixture of mirth and anger.

"Can this game get any more unpredictable and exciting?" asked one user, Loretta Lurra on the official Second Life blog.

As users interacted with the rings they replicated, resulting in a slowdown on the servers used by Second Life's creators Linden Lab, in California.

Mr. Pasick's avatar, Adam Reuters, was modeled after the reporter, and sports a press pass so others know he buys his pixels by the barrel. He will set up shop in a virtual building made to look like a hybrid of Reuters' London and Times Square buildings.

While players who drop in (flying is one of only a few superhuman aspects of Second Life) can access Reuters news from the real world, the articles Mr. Pasick files will be strictly about - and addressed to - Second World players. One of his first examines Second Life's biggest lender, who charges 40 percent annual interest. His dispatches will be posted at secondlife.reuters.com.

"I've been playing in Second Life since it was a relatively small community," said Thomas H. Glocer, Reuters' chief executive. Mr. Glocer allowed that some might question the wisdom of parachuting the legendary 155-year-old news agency into such a geekfest.

"This is a very serious, old brand that stands for things and has principles, but that doesn't take itself so seriously that it wouldn't play in a gaming space," Mr. Glocer said. "This appeals to a younger demographic. Even for people who don’t go in and play in Second Life, it shows Reuters has a certain with-it-ness."

Congratulations to the whole SL community and all of us at Linden Lab on reaching 1 Million residents signed up!! Second Life is growing because together we are all building content, welcoming new people, expanding the community, and adding new capabilities to the system. It is amazing to be a part of such an experience - I can't possibly imagine any job I'd more love coming to every day. We’re trying hard to find a moment here at the office to celebrate...

Now, on the not-so-mushy side, our performance and experience right now for new users is not good! We’ve been able to handle 10,000 new residents or more every day (which is a mind-altering 10x increase since April of this year), but right now the media coverage we are getting is taking us to unreal levels of new users - we will probably sign up more than 50,000 new people today. The new user system is fairly scalable, but it will take us a few days at least to adapt to this level of load. As a result we’ve got slow website performance, way too many people on the orientation islands, and an overloaded set of new user landing points in the main grid.

The system works by way of dozens of scripted reporting stations dotted all over a map of the United States. These stations retrieve METAR data from NOAA every eight minutes which they then decode and render into models of the appropriate weather phenomenon for the area. All sorts of cloud cover and precipitation models are available as well as special weather conditions such as thunderstorms and tornadoes. Temperature is represented by warmer and cooler shades of color. This 3D composite is great for giving visitors a visceral feel for the weather around them.

Anecdotally, while I was working on the partially completed map, I watched a storm system slowly crawl up the east coast over the course of a day. At one point in the evening it began to rain on the map in the New York City area (that's where I live). Just as I was about to take a closer look, rain started pelting my window!

To date, Linden Lab has doled these real names out on a very selective basis. Many "Second Life" residents have been asking about the company's policy, but to date it has been mum, largely because it didn't seem to know what it planned to do.

Now, according to an internal source, Linden Lab has finally settled on its plan for real names. And if you're a single mother on a budget, you probably won't be benefiting.

That's because the company has decided, CNET News.com has learned, to charge individuals who want a real last name a $100 setup fee and a $50-a-year maintenance fee. Companies that want their corporate name can have unlimited accounts for a $1,000 setup fee and $500 a year.

That means that we'll be seeing more instances of companies like Sun populating the world with last names like "SunMicrosystems."

More than 7 million avatars play "World of Warcraft", and approximately a half million players are within "Second Life" and the "Entropia Universe."

"A few of those people are going to die unfortunately," Jacobs said.

And sometimes those in the virtual community can be left in the dark about the real-life fate of a fellow gamer.

"If a gamer dies in the real world, no one in the virtual community has a way of knowing what happened to their online friend," said Spaight, vice president of game developer Rapid Reality. "Does it just blink out of existence? Gamers will eventually need to think about what should happen to their avatar if they die in real life."

"Well," Nancy Mandelbrot (RL info here) explains, "we were sitting in our offices one day and kind of goofing around, just geeking out about social technologies, gaming, that sort of thing, as we're wont to do. Someone made a joke about how great it would be if we brought an avatar of Governor Warner into Second Life.

"When we all quit laughing, we kind of looked around and said, 'Hey, that's not a bad idea.'

"One of Governor Warner's operating principles is to go where the voters are," she continues, "not make them come to you. We saw how rich an environment [SL] was. I mean, you can sit next to someone's avatar, strike up a conversation, and forget that you're not in the same room. We started to see that in Second Life, people can get together and talk politics with other folks without the obstacles of real life."

I ask her if she's concerned about skeptics who may wonder why Governor Warner would spend his time in something that seems like an online game.

Ms. Mandelbrot is undeterred. "The Governor likes to tell how when he decided to get into the cell phone business-- he co-founded the company that became Nextel-- his friends said he was crazy. 'No one's going to want a phone in their car!' So he doesn't have a lot of time for people who will write off new technology without trying it. There's nothing trivial about social technologies. They connect people together, we need more of that. Why waste time trying to second guess innovation? Let's try it out, see if it works... He's used to giving speeches, answering questions, in the physical space. This will be a new experience for him."

The NOAA's sim is called Meteroa, which is derived from the Greek adjective meteoras which means 'suspended in the air' (Full disclosure, I'm Greek). On this lovely island sim you can find fully interactive educational demonstrations about the ocean and weather. Examples include a sea life submarine ride created by The Magicians, and two different tsnuami demos by Aimee Weber Studios and Electric Sheep Company. Other fun stuff includes a demonstration of a real-time temperature map powered by Yahoo, narration by Exploratorium Chief Scientist Paul Doherty, an airplane ride into a hurricane, and a melting glacier demonstration.

If you already know a little something about the surname Linden, you should check out our shiny new blog just for you: Second Life Insider. If you haven't tried Second Life, you might want to check out the blog anyway, as it made me try the game. Here's a sampling of the posts so far:

Virtual ride sold for $2k USD

Wanted: Second Life Tour Guides

Suzanne Vega to Perform Live in Second Life

Slash Fiction Comes to Second Life

"The aloft brand is about providing an escape from the ordinary and reinventing everyday experiences," said Brian McGuinness, vice president of aloft brand development. "Our debut within Second Life will give digital travelers a chance to dream in another dimension, and unwind their virtual selves in our social spaces, such as w xyz, our aloft bar. They will be able to provide feedback on our designs and self-service features like the re:fuel grab & go gourmet food area - all before the first groundbreaking."

Created in 2003 by San-Francisco based Linden Lab, Second Life is a virtual online world where trendsetters are flocking to exchange ideas, egos and virtual property using "avatars," or highly-customized 3D representations of themselves. The act of placing a real-world entity, such as aloft brand, into the fantasy realm of Second Life has becoming a growing trend. Most recently, American Apparel became the first retail chain to open a virtual store in Second Life. Major League Baseball also created a "Baseball" island on Second Life, which hosted live television coverage of this year's MLB Home-Run Derby on virtual stadium Jumbotrons while the event was simulated on the virtual field.

Through Second Life, the aloft brand is educating thousands of potential customers about its differentiated lifestyle brand. In the same way W Hotels broke through the clutter of conformity in the upscale hotel arena, aloft will raise the bar in the select-service category, offering loft-style guestrooms, bright, airy environments with 9-foot ceilings, oversized windows and energetic social centers. By the time the real-life hotels open, aloft hotels will already feel like home for many.

In addition to the aloft brand's debut inside Second Life, the new brand's technology focus includes large, HDTV ready flat-panel televisions, plug & play (the aloft brand's one stop connectivity solution incorporating power and audio/video connections for multiple electronic gadgets), and Wi-Fi internet access throughout the hotel.

The store, located on a private island in Second Life, is set to open as soon as this weekend. The news has SL residents considering what it means that the first real-world fashion brand has made an entrance to Second Life. Fashion is one of the virtual world's biggest industries, and the fashion business in SL is extremely competitive. So it's not a surprise that the first real-world retail brand to set up shop in SL is a fashion retailer.

The fashions themselves are patterned after American Apparel's real-world clothes, and were designed by several designers, including Aimee, though she wouldn't say who else was involved. The clothing will be priced "high-priced reasonable" compared to other SL fashions, Aimee says. No comment either on where the revenue from clothing sales will go — which leads me to believe it will go to the designers as part of their compensation

Schionning says that it's just an experiment and that the company is not trying to make money with the venture. A token sum will be charged for clothing, but the prices are not yet set. This is "not a profit-making venture," he says.

Its real-life retail outlets typically feature racy, disco-era photographs of scantily clad girls and have been at the center of controversy over the kitschy decor, which has used 1970s Penthouse magazine covers. The 6,000-square foot virtual store is modeled after the hipster brand’s bi-level Tokyo outlet.

The initial fashion selection will offer 20 styles of American Apparel’s signature logo-free casual wear: basic T-shirts, tank tops, undergarments and swimwear. Second Life residents may be privy to real-world promotions and discounts from American Apparel, and the marketing tactic may boost actual sales with a link to the online store, the company said.

A two decade veteran of the UK music and game industry, Laukosargas recently left work for family reasons, mostly. "The main reason I stopped is because I had a child," as she puts it, "but I was also getting very disapointed with the lack of inspired work in the games industy." As it happens, she worked for a time on Black & White, the classic "god game" from legendary British designer Peter Molyneux.

"It was an experience that gave me a real insight into how great games can be," she says. "It was a truly brilliant idea but it lacked play testing, I think." She's referring to the constant micromanagement required by the player, acting as a tribe's god, to provide a steady stream of resources to survive on. "It required TOO much attention." She nods to her island. "It's a balance I'm still working on here."

So while she raises a child at home, she takes creative respites to nuture a self-sustaining ecology in Second Life, adjusting variables here and there, working for the moment when she can stand back like Newton's clockmaking God and let her world unfold on its own. And, well, have her Sunday of rest.

Even this early into its creation, she's noticed some limited forms of emergence (the holy grail of artificial life developers) particularly in the development of her plant life.

Indeed, Philip Rosedale, chief executive of Linden Lab, tells us he wants to make the game more mainstream, so that people can make money by doing or selling whatever they want. Second Life now boasts 165,000 residents, and of those around 20,000 people are using it every day, he said. Players are spending $5 million on goods and services per month, on things like clothing and jewelry that they can buy from others. You multiply that by 12 months, and you have an annual economy of about $60 million at Second Life. Not bad.

He said about 180,000 distinct items were bought or traded last month, which makes the selection on Second Life about the "size of four WalMarts,'' he said. He said the next challenge is to draw people who have less free time on their hands, which means allowing them to find things and places by giving them more sophisticated search technology, for example.

70,000 residents

240,000 items created

$6.5 million internal economy

75 million IMs

Players spend 25% of their time creating virtual objects

In a revolutionary first, the Resident-made game that swept Second Life will be commercially licensed to sweep the world-beginning with the Game Developers Conference. It began as a simple, multiplayer board game with elements of Bingo and a fast-action jigsaw arcade game, created by Australian Resident Kermitt Quirk. Since its appearance in Second Life this year, however, the addictive gameplay of Tringo has dazzled Residents beyond all expectations. In recent weeks, for example, one in four Resident-run events were based around Tringo matches.

One Resident took particular interest in Tringo, but he wasn't just a fan. He also happened to be Sean Ryan, former CEO of Real Networks, now founder of Donnorwood Media. After some heavy in-world negotiations, Kermitt sold the worldwide licensing rights for Tringo to Donnorwood, and in the process, business history was made: a game originally created in an online world had been sold by its designer for commercial distribution outside it.

Nimrod Yaffle, a resident of the virtual world Second Life, has revealed details of a bizarre and dark prison Second Life's maker Linden Lab is now using to lock up criminal avatars. Dubbed the "The Corn Field," the moonlit environment contains only rows of corn, two television sets, an aging tractor and a one-way teleport terminal allowing no escape. It exists as an alternative to standard disciplinary measures, which traditionally prevent access to Second Life completely.

After breaking Second Life's rules, Yaffle was informed via email by Linden Lab that he was being sent to The Corn Field. "I thought it was a joke," Yaffle told me in-world. "I never even knew it existed before I went there, and by the looks of it, a lot of other people didn't either." Rumour and speculation about the prison has been running amok in the Second Life community since word of The Corn Field spread, but until recently the prison simulator hadn't been officially confirmed.

"Sometimes when someone is suspended for a short time they are sent to the cornfield," Linden Lab's Senior VP of Community and Support wrote on the official Second Life discussion forums yesterday, adding that building the cornfield didn't require any significant development work and reassuring the community that "Once someone is permanently banned they are no longer welcome in Second Life, anywhere, including the cornfield."

Rosedale said the company hopes a lot of new members will buy Linden Dollars, the online game's in-world currency, which ultimately ends up in the hands of members who create vehicles, buildings, clothing and other virtual goods. Some of that money, in turn, would then be spent on land, further bolstering Linden Lab's bottom line.

"Second Life" is a completely open-ended virtual world in which members can create nearly anything they can imagine and have the 3D modeling skills to build. Anything they create in-world can be sold, often for significant amounts of money.

The company said there are more than $18 million worth of virtual "Second Life" goods sold each year.

Falk Bergman, that is, winning the NWN Book Expo yesterday by a handful of votes, thus earning the right to publish the "official" Second Life edition of Cory Doctorow's new novel. All the entries were admirably ambitious in their own way, but in the end, Falk's more traditional prototype won out. Guess it's hard to escape the appeal of a solid book open in front of you.