• NMC Campus Observer: View a 3D World in 3D! University of Michigan SL Viewer – “We’ve just gotten word from NMC Member University of Michigan’s 3D Lab of a new development using the open sourced Second Life client. They have connected a modified version of the client to the platform developed under the GeoWall project — off the shelf hardware that powers a set of paired computer projectors to create stereoscopic views.“

• Linda Zimmer: Second Life: Tips for Business – “Create guidelines for your group or employees while operating in world under your organization’s name. The breadth of activities available within Second Life is rather robust. Some may not be consistent with your brand image.“
• epredator: Metaverse Evangelist on Official Public Record – “The registrar asked my occupation so I said Metaverse Evangelist.“
• Eric Rice: What Clay Shirky isn’t Saying in His Valleywag Dissertation – “People are doing the same stuff they do in Second Life as they do blog or make a podcast or videoblog.“
• Millions Of Us: Learn Valuable Skills and Customize Your Scion – “Starting this week and through February 8th, we are launching a series of open classes scheduled throughout the day and tailored at helping newcomers to Second Life learn valuable skills. Participants in these classes are then invited to apply their knowledge to customizing a Scion xB and driving it away into the beautiful sunset of Scion City.“
• LibSecondLife: Basic Sandbox Server – “I’m currently writing a basic server which uses libsecondlife. It is currently at the stage that the official secondlife client can log into it (using a proxy for returning a xml-rpc response to the client so that it uses my server as the sim to connect to). “

• TDavid: Advertising at VTOReality.com – “Want to advertise your real world or virtual word products and services here at VTOR? Currently we are offering the following plans using the open source PHPadsNew program and third party publically available Site Meter stats. The Second Life Linden Dollar (L$) is preferred, although PayPal is also accepted.“
• CafePress Developers Network: Content APIs – “The domain objects consist of images, designs, merchandise and products. For example – assume that you have an image that you want to put on a t-shirt and purchase for yourself. You can either apply the raw IMAGE or manipulate it further using open standard: SVG to create a DESIGN. Once your design is complete, you can select a piece of base MERCHANDISE, such as a t-shirt or a mug and apply the design to it to create a buyable PRODUCT. “
• Alan James Dean: The Workflow of HTTP – “A flowchart of the HTTP specification of headers and status codes. “
• Free Games News – “The mission of FreeGamesNews is to be the home and community for people looking for the best free online games.“
• Web Worker Daily: 27 Tips for Teleconferencing – “Whether you call them conference calls or telecons or excruciatingly dull time-wasters, multi-participant phone conversations are as important to most web workers as email” They forgot my tip: Skip the call, meet in a virtual world!

• Ex-Amazon Bloggers Updated – I added two more blogs authored by former Amazon employees.
• TDavid: Create yourself as an M&M – “What kind of M&M would you be?“
• Sweden to Set Up Embassy in Second Life – “The embassy would not provide passports or visas but would instruct visitors how to obtain such documents in the real world and act as a link to web-based information about the Scandinavian country. “

• Chris Clarke: Social Media at Work – “If you don’t know what RSS is yet, there’s still hope. “
• Meg Pickard:Musings on Twitter – “The thing I like about Twitter is the light touch – small nuggets of people’s lives: what are YOU doing/thinking right now?“
• Rich Skrenta: The Joy of the Hack – “The essence of the hack isn’t just realizing you can use a system in a new, unexpected way. It’s getting a disproportionate effect from your effort. It’s catalyzing potential energy stored in the system.“
• Scott Kirsner: Getting Paid: Sites that Help Video Producers Make Money – “On this chart, I’ve tried to list all of the Web sites that enable independent video producers to make money from their work. I’ve ranked the sites subjectively, based on how much traffic and buzz they’ve been attracting, and also how likely it seems that a video producer would actually manage to earn a significant return by posting a video to them.“

Late last night I was walking the dog and listening to C.C C.hapman’s Managing the Gray podcast.

He mentioned that he was conducting an informal “Coffee With Crayon” get-together in Second Life today. At 6 AM this morning I logged in and located Crayonville, and joined in the conversation. It was a lot of fun — C.C. would throw out various topics related to PR, blogging, and podcasting, and the discussion moved smoothly from topic to topic. I did learn that there’s a Podcast Camp (PodcampSL happening this weekend).

The fact that everyone was virtual certainly broke down barriers to conversation, as did the fact that many of the people were drinking the free virtual coffee!

It was definitely peer to peer conversation and networking at its best. We talked a lot about identity, branding, and self-promotion. One participant, a self-described supermodel, asked why we all didn’t have our URLs floating about our heads like she did.

Here are a few pictures from this morning:

C.C. didn’t ask the attendees for permission to post their comments as part of a transcript. I neglected to save it for my own use before logging out.

By the way, C.C. has a lot of other cool stuff on his site, including this presentation on Marketing in Second Life. Of course, I would also recommend his podcast.

• [Dilbert: Comic for 25 Jan 2007](Comic for 25 Jan 2007) – “I fired him before he stared yammering about Linux.“
• Renee Blodgett: On Silicon Valley Male Fashion – “Step above the crowd, wear colors and wear them proudly and hell, be creative. “

I had my first post-surgery checkup yesterday, and the doctor said that everything is looking good. I can no longer use “doctor’s orders” as an excuse for not walking the dog or taking out the trash.

I started back at work this past Monday, catching up on a ton of email and getting my final plans in place for February trips to Utah, London, and Vancouver BC.

I was hoping to say that I was back to 100% when I was thinking about writing this post, but the truth is that I feel like I am at 120%. Because I can now breathe properly, I have a lot more energy. I don’t fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and I managed to stay awake through an entire movie this past Saturday. This may sound silly or trivial, but for years I was known as the person who could fall asleep at a movie, meeting, or even a live concert. I am sleeping well which gets me off to a better start for the day, but I am also breathing better during the day, so I don’t get drowsy anymore. My voice sounds a bit different (and hopefully better) too.

I would like to take this time to thank all of my friends and blog readers for the get-well wishes that they have sent me over the last couple of weeks. I really, really appreciate each and every one of the links, emails, and blog comments. Those gestures really made a difference. Thanks, from the very bottom of my heart.

I’d also like to send a special note of thanks to my friends at Bungee Labs. Not only did they send me a copy of John Woods’ cool book about Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, but they also made a nice donation to his Room to Read program in my name. I saw this on my Blackberry while stopped at a traffic light this morning and it brought tears to my eyes. This looks like a very worthwhile program and I was happy to add my own donation as well.

On a somewhat humorous note, the fact that I had some extra time to read blogs and to write comments set of a somewhat improbable chain of events. I was reading Matt Mullenweg’s note that Sun Isn’t Relevant to Startups and left a very short comment. James Governor from Redmonk picked up on it in his post Every Blog a Potential RFP with the very amusing comment “Trigger pulled. Blammo! Establish business relationship and obvious responsiveness.” From there, Isabel Wang kept the RFP 2.0 theme going,and even called on a few other folks to chime in with responses to Matt. From there she completed the circle with an old post by my friend Kevin Burton who had talked about using S3 and EC2 late last year. Of course I had also responded to that one.

• Dave Olson: Blogging for Retailers White Paper – “With all the noise surrounding blogs and social media, this white paper sets out to guide marketers and executives into the blog o’sphere, step-by-step, with a focus on online retailers.“
• Dave Winer: More Advice for RSS Developers – “You have a lot more power than you realize. Me, I’m just trying to make things work better. Really.“
• Peter Coffee: Apex and Pure Value – “I should have been sending the data to the code, not the other way around. The ratios were just all wrong. It was a timely reminder that developing and deploying an application in an on-demand model makes literally thousands of times more sense.“
• Digital Photography School: 4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop! – “If you look at the before and after, you can see that this method makes the light tones lighter and the dark tones darker while softening it a touch. Basically, it softly boosts the contrast“

• David Cohn: Internet Multitasking Disorder — Why Make it Up? – “I tend to surf the web with 20 or so tabs at a time. I have three regular emails (down from four) and a slew of log-ins to I don’t know how many social networks.“
• David Cohn: Internet Multitasking Disorder — And How We Read the News – “Although Internet Multitasking Syndrome is not a known medical disorder (I just made it up five minutes ago), it is not uncommon for people to become so immersed in their online activities that their cognitive abilities wane.“
• Janet Meiners: I Saw Phil Burns and He’s Alive – “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between guts and insanity. I hope he succeeds.“
• Shopbot Tools – “We’ve simplified CNC technology to allow more shops to take advantage of the power of CNC automation and benefit from the precision of CNC cutting, milling, and machining.“
• Comfile Technology Cubloc – “Experience Real-Time processing powers of PLC and BASIC all in one chip. Now you can process complex math, graphic capabilities, and communication using BASIC language.“