Corporations, non-profits, and educational institutions will welcome this official guide that shows how to establish and maintain a successful virtual presence in Second Life. Written with the full support of Linden Lab, this is the perfect resource for organizations entering Second Life. Topics discussed include the technical and social issues of participating in Second Life, including integrating corporate culture into Second Life, in-world marketing techniques, selecting a solution provider, and how to conduct real-world business in Second Life. Plus, you’ll get hands-on solutions, smart tactics, and practical techniques, such as setting up useful meeting spaces and planning and moderating events. The book is filled with actual case studies of how top organizations have leveraged Second Life and offers analysis of their SL presence.

This text on Second Life, the virtual world with more than 240,000 residents, will help all residents fully enjoy the metaverse. The guide explores every aspect of this multilayered world, including scripting, building objects, buying and selling items, and socializing.

Live your Second Life to the fullest! Create Your Virtual Life in an Incredible Online World...Right Now! Imagine a virtual landscape where everything is created and owned entirely by residents like you. Imagine a place where you can enjoy sunsets, ride a jet ski, buy land, plant a garden, get a tattoo, go sky diving, spend an evening dancing the night away, or relax at home by the fire. Picture a world vividly developed, socially dynamic, and strikingly real where you can bring previously unimaginable things to life with friends from around the globe. This is Second Life®, the hottest Internet phenomenon in years…maybe ever! Now, there’s a totally real, totally independent guide to Second Life. This full-color book is as rich as Second Life itself! It’s packed with insider tips, easy step-by-step techniques, and interviews with dozens of SL residents telling you what they wished they knew when they started! Brian White pulls no punches: You’ll learn exactly what’s great and not so great about SL...how to thrive in its unique culture, and how to create your dreams! The more time you spend in Second Life, the more useful this book will become...teaching you more advanced skills; everything from vehicle construction, Linden Scripting Language, particle systems, to creating custom animations and the new sculpted prims! Visit the companion site in Second Life to find all the textures and objects from this book as well as the contributor’s gallery and other goodies: http://slurl.com/secondlife/humuli/222/123/29

When a virtual journalist for a virtual newspaper reporting on the digital world of an online game lands on the real-world front page of the New York Times,it just might signal the dawn of a new era. Virtual journalist Peter Ludlow was banned from The Sims Onlinefor being a bit too good at his job--for reporting in his virtual tabloid The Alphaville Heraldon the cyber-brothels, crimes, and strong-arm tactics that had become rife in the game--and when the Times,the BBC, CNN, and other media outlets covered the story, users all over the Internet called the banning censorship. Seeking a new virtual home, Ludlow moved the Heraldto another virtual world--the powerful online environment of Second Life--just as it was about to explode onto the international mediascape and usher in the next iteration of the Internet. In The Second Life Herald,Ludlow and his colleague Mark Wallace take us behind the scenes of the Heraldas they report on the emergence of a fascinating universe of virtual spaces that will become the next generation of the World Wide Web: a 3-D environment that provides richer, more expressive interactions than the Web we know today. In 1992, science fiction writer Neal Stephenson imagined the "Metaverse," a virtual space that we would enter via the Internet and in which we would conduct important parts of our daily lives. According to Ludlow and Wallace, that future is coming sooner than we may think. They chronicle its chaotic, exhilarating, frightening birth, including the issue that the mainstream media often ignore: conflicts across the client-server divide over who should write the laws governing virtual worlds.

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

Step into the world of virtual reality with your newly created avatar and begin to experience the tools that make this world interactive! During their infancy stage, virtual environments were largely based upon the gaming community and over time have been adapted to meet the growing number of users and educators. The Virtual Worlds Handbook, with CD-ROM, provides a user-friendly approach that will help trainers and educators create an effective and interactive environment within the Second Life virtual world. This book was written to help the novice user tackle the natural learning curve while providing the experienced user with tips, tools, and tricks to help any educator or trainer meet their professional goals faster. The opportunities using virtual reality are limitless and provide online students with a unique opportunity to connect both physically and educationally to one another, to faculty, to university, and to a worldwide market.

Millions and millions of people from all over the world have discovered the new virtual universe of Second Life. There you can meet new people, make friends, conduct business, build empires, whatever your imagination can conjure. This easy to use Beginner's Guide takes you step-by-step through the process of going from embarrassingly unprepared "Newbie" to a seasoned resident in no time. Learn how to design an Avatar for your new appearance. You can look like anyone or anything you desire. Buy land, build a house, a fortress, or even an entire city. Buy and island. Create new products and services and sell them to other residents for Linden Dollars, which can be converted to real US dollars. This book shows you how, with step by step exercises, examples, loads of illustrations, everything you need to get started and having fun.

This book examines the convergence of media in the largest residential virtual community to date in the gaming world: Second Life. This user content-driven platform has brought media makers and audiences together in interactive environments where news, entertainment, and art have become programming for virtual media networks with implications for traditional mainstream programming and distribution. New media moguls are emerging from Second Life and expanding to the larger Metaverse. This book explores media's role in reporting and reflecting the social, political, and economic issues within Second Life and beyond, and includes more than a dozen interviews of active Second Life residents.

Whether your second, virtual life has just begun, or you’ve been “in-world" for a long time, a successful and rewarding experience depends on your mastery of design. Everything from your avatar to your home, your clothes to your behavior says something about who you are and the way others see you. In this book Rebecca Tapley—“Mera Luan” in SL—shows you how to design everything from bodies to earrings, cars to castles, for improved appearance, function, and usability. Real-world topics such as urban planning, color theory, user experience, interior design, and landscaping are mapped to SL conditions. Learn how to spot the best skin and hair, clothing, architecture and construction, property for sale, and more. In addition, Rebecca’s insights and observations on Second Life etiquette, manners, customs, and other subtle socio-cultural realities will help you make your way through this new and sometimes baffling world. Have a more rewarding second life by learning how to: Create a realistic or fantastical avatar Make gorgeous clothes and other luxury goods Build impressive homes and planned communities Develop whole islands Establish a social community and career Life.

Enrich your virtual existence by mastering the techniques and tactics the experts use to create jaw-dropping SL content—everything from buildings and vehicles to clothing, landscapes, and animations. This official, exclusive guide from a team of Second Life content-creation experts was written with the full support of Linden Lab and features in-depth instructions for creating beautiful content and putting it to work in-world. It’s both a practical, step-by-step guide and a creative session with some of the most artistic and talented minds in the Second Life community. CD included.