The first Warren Adler chat in Second Life (announced here) was quite successful, with a total of 15 avatars in attendance. If you were not able to attend you may enjoy reading the transcript.

You can read Balaji’s review of the chat to get a flavor for how it went. You may also enjoy a look at the two collections of pictures posted on Flickr.

The next chat will take place on Thursday, February 28th at Noon SLT. You can find the landmark in the original post. Sadly, I will be in the air en route to Philadelphia and won’t be around to help with teleport requests this week.

Thanks again to Cruxy for their help with this series of events.

A developer asked me to post some information about an alpha-level release of the Second Life viewer for the Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems. The developer is “corporate” and has been asked to keep his Second Life activities separate from his official job duties. While I can’t vouch for the actual bits, I can say that this person does work for a Fortune 500 company (verified by round-trip email and by the way in which he was referred to me) and that his Second Life alter ego is named Clark Dastardly.

Here are the URLs:

• Solaris 10
• Solaris Nevada / OpenSolaris

And here’s what I was told:

• The snv build supports GStreamer and streamed audio while the s10 build does not.
• This viewer does not contain Voice support because Linden Labs does not supply a Vivox client for Solaris.
• The snv version may give people problems if they run with OpenSolaris build 75 or earlier. If it does, they should install the s10 version instead.

• To install a package, simply download the file to a local directory, change into that directory and do the following as superuser (root):

  bunzip2 SecondLife_i686_1_19_0_3-2008Feb25-snv.pkg.bz2
  pkgadd -d SecondLife_i686_1_19_0_3-2008Feb25-snv.pkg
  

• The viewer is then run using:

  /opt/secondlife/bin/secondlife
  

• These packages are made available as alpha.
• I’ve run the snv version for hours without a single crash, burp, or hang so I’m confident they should run without issue.

I’m posting this only because I was approached for help in getting these loaded into Amazon S3 and because I am a big (6′ 1″, 240 lb) Second Life fan. I can’t help you in any way with these bits.

• PicLens – “PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again.“
• Virtual Worlds News: IBM Launches 3-D Data Center in OpenSim – “The companies hope that the collaborative, multi-user nature of the environment will also make data center management more efficient, allowing multiple users to work together and analyze usage in real-time.“
• IBM Press Release: Made in IBM Labs: IBM 3-D Data Centers Show Virtual Worlds Fit for Business – “The 3-D Data Center allows experts to manage data center resources regardless of where they are or when these resources need attention, giving both employees and corporations enhanced productivity and freedom. The globally-integrated enterprise can deliver enormous economic benefits to both developed and developing nations, and new technology like this one can help companies seamlessly operate in such a distributed model.“
• Ugo Trade: The Wizard of IBM’s 3D Data Centers – “Virtual Operation Centers or more generally all manner of 3D information machines, have the potential to transform our wasteful industrial society, and eventually, together with 3D fabbers, will play a vital role in ending the unsustainable consumption of energy and natural resources. This kind of innovation will make virtual worlds fit for business.“
• SL Data Viz Wiki – “Welcome to the Second Life Data Visualization wiki!“
• Orange County Register: Second Life as a Simulation Tool – “She discovered that the simplified physics of Second Life are close enough to the physics of the real world that Second Life can be used as an inexpensive simulation tool by small- to medium-sized companies. It’s a low-cost alternative to the sophisticated simulation programs in use by industrial designers at big-bucks enterprises such as NASA and the military, as well as Boeing and other aerospace contractors.“
• Ponoko – “Got a great idea? Use our digital tools to make it real – then sell it to the world.“
• Melanie Swan: Data Visualization in Second Life – “The idea would be to use unique virtual world properties (real-time updating, data-streaming, camera zooming, interaction, 3d world aspects) to make data display and interaction tools that are complementary to traditional data visualization software.“

My wife was out of the house on Sunday afternoon, conducting an open house.

Of course, she expected the kids and I to spend a little bit of time cleaning house in advance of a homeowners association meeting planned for later in the evening. My daughter Grace noticed that the backyard water fountain looked a bit dirty and asked me if it would be OK to use some dishwashing soap to clean it. Knowing full well that this might result in some bubble action, I agreed that she could put one tablespoon of soap in the upper tier of the fountain. After 10 minutes we didn’t see too much action so she put in another tablespoon. That did the trick and here’s what it looked like when I checked back around 11 PM:

Fortunately, Carmen thought that it was pretty fun too. I’m not yet sure how clean it is underneath all of those bubbles though!

• Accordion Guy: What Happened to Me and the New Girl – “New Girl: I did that! I proved P = NP! I placed near the top of the class, and the professor used my paper as an example!“

• Funaticus – “Rate. Share. Have Fun!“
• Venture Capital Wear – “Clothing for the top 2/20% of the population.“
• PuttyTabs – “Implementing the most important missing feature of PuTTY” – Via Jeremy’s Link Blog.
• How to Abuse Rollercoaster Tycoon3 – Ouch!
• Lest We Remember: Cold-Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys – “Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images.” – Scary!

• Pete Stevens: Upside-Down Ternet – “My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun.“
• Virtual Worlds Management: Industry Forecast 2008 – “This Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008 brings together 45 virtual worlds industry leaders, including CEOs of developers, platforms, and agencies, analysts and thinkers, and lawyers and government representatives to offer their thoughts on and predictions for virtual worlds in 2008. “
• The Atlantic: The Next Slum? – “If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban communities, families may find that some of the suburbs’ other big advantages—better schools and safer communities—have eroded.“
• Scobleizer: Can Anyone Stop This Man? – “So, I ask you, can anyone stop Jeff Barr and Amazon from totally taking over the corporate data infrastructure market?“
• SageCircle: Are you guilty of monologuing and death by PowerPoint? – “One of the easiest ways to improve the effectiveness of a briefing is to dump the 64-slide, 153-build PowerPoint presentation and engaging in a real and candid dialogue.” – Via James.

• Robert Reich: Totally Spent – “The only lasting remedy, other than for Americans to accept a lower standard of living and for businesses to adjust to a smaller economy, is to give middle- and lower-income Americans more buying power — and not just temporarily.“
• Housing Tracker – “Collecting, Interpreting and Disseminating Real Estate Data.“

• James Governor: 7 Tips To Run a Great Analyst Event: Dos and Don’ts – “Tell stories and have no more than about three key narratives you want the analysts to leave with.“