Somnium Photo Art Gallery invites artists in SL to take part in a free, open and non-commercial exhibition - C.A.L.L. (Creators against Linden Lab)
Create a piece of art that expresses your point of view on the Linden Lab terms of service section 2.3. - create a piece of art which property rights you will gladly grant on your own free will to Linden Lab.
Somnium Photo Art Gallery will host an exhibition with these pieces of art throughout November and December. There will be a vernisage first week of November - details about date and time will be announced in the groups.
Pieces of art should be not more than 2 prims and 4 x 4 meters. They have to be set for sale at 0 L$, as the content you have uploaded to SL is not yours anyway with the current LL TOS.
All pieces should be submitted to Walt Ireton, as a prim or texture (full perm), until October 31st.
If there will be more entries as there is available space in the exhibition room, I will select which pieces will be in the exhibition.
Remember that Linden Lab "owns Intellectual Property Rights in (...) Linden Lab trademarks, service marks, trade names, logos" - as it is stated in the same document which grants full property rights to LL for all YOUR creative content. Don't use anything that violates legal property rights of LL - don't be insulting or (too) vulgar. The theme of this exhibition is a serious topic, concerning the legal rights of all of us .. but hey, lets keep cool anyway!
Contact Walt Ireton if you wish to be a part in this exhibition or if you have any questions.
Give us your tired, your poor, your house-bound, your transportation challenged— your huddled masses yearning for the playa. Burn2 is the International Regional that happens in the virtual world called Second Life, and though it might sound new to some people, we've been Burning the man there since 2003.
Burn2 is accessable 24/7 to anyone with a computer and internet connection! If you cant make it to an RL burn (that's "Real Life" in virtual-world jargon) you can probably make it to one of ours. The software is free to download, and access to the virtual Playa is free as well. When you teleport into virtual Gerlach, Nevada for the first time, many of you will feel instantly at home.
BURN2 hosts five main events yearly and a number of smaller events, get togethers, parties, trainings, and performances. Our big Burn event in October is an echo of Burning Man itself, with thousands attending throughout the week. Check the Calendar for more information.
Veronica Weksler, or V as her friends call her, is a soulful musician with a heart of gold. The songstress was born into a family of virtuosos. Both her parents sang for well-known bands such as Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, and Benny Goodman. By the age of three V had begun to sing and play the piano making her natural talent obvious. As she grew her ear for music strengthened and she developed a taste for music outside the gospel and contemporary Christian rock genres.
The Body Modification Expo will be a SIM Wide accessories fair offering shoppers a wide range of items designed exclusively for the event by our participating designers. Each designer will be required to create and display at least ONE new, exclusive item and that item will be for sale for 50% off its normal selling price.
Sponsored By: Adrenaliyn, AITUI, Auxiliary, bubble, cStar Limited, deeR, Epic, Fusion, Insanya, Lapointe & Bastchild, Legal Insanity, Milk, n-creation, Remarkable Oblivion, SAKIDE, SCRUB, S H O C K Factory and Razor!
This is NOT a “fashion” fair. It’s important to keep in mind this fair will not be centered around clothing. The content for this fair will be accessories (piercings, handbags, belts, scarves, glasses, etc. etc.), tats, skins, hair, body paint / make-up, you get the idea.
The Guild of Gloom is thrilled to announce that Horrorfest 2013 is on!
Dates: October 18th – November 8th
Horrorfest is a fortnight long horror themed event to be held the last two weeks in October showcasing all that is on the darkside of SL. It will feature all sorts of good stuff, a hunt, burlesque dancers, DJ events, and much much more
Two of our creative team were the organizers of the Zombiefest events which cumulatively raised 700,000L$ for charity and saw traffic of 50,000.
Proceeds from Horrorfest for your items will for the most part go to you the vendor, however, something we do stipulate for participation is that you must have one exclusive item for a charity vendor, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this item will go to our chosen charity. This item must have not been sold before and only available at Horrorfest for the duration of the event, after that you are free to do as you please with it.. Of course you are free to do this with as many items as you like, the more we can raise for charity the better.
-Event- Candy fair is an event created for the love of Candy & Sugar. We all love candy! So we decided to feature all the sweetness that goes along with it. The Event will take place October 4th -18th 2013
-Theme- Anything featuring Candy, (candy Colors) (example: clothes, jewelry, skins (makeups count too), furniture, home & decor, poses, kids items, anything with candy or featuring candy.. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sweet%20Surprises/164/126/23
* Residential Mansion in detailed 18th century style that has 11 rooms incl. a secret room.
* Rezzable haunted house interior fully furnished with Ghosts, creatures & sound effects.
* Built in game for up to 10 players to solve the riddle of the house with a prize given if they succeed.
(provided by us but can be replaced by you with a prize of your own)
- This awesome haunted house is unique in its design and is perfect for anyone who loves ghost stories, appropriate scene or simply want to use for Halloween.
- There is a game included in the house where people can join the game by touch of a sign and then hunt through the house for the Clue cards we have hidden inside.
When all five cards have been found they are able to Solve the riddle of the house and win a prize we have included but you can just as easy replace that with a prize of your own.
- You can also use the house as a residential house if you like the 18th century style but is also perfect for vampires, werewolves or gothic use and so very suitable for clan use.
* 594 prims - Residential use.
* 1728 prims - Haunted, with game & fully furnished.
Total Price: L$6000
Once you have seen this no other haunted house is going to be enough.
Enjoy..
T&C Design Team:
Iga Clawtooth
Jer Straaf
TranquilMoonDancer Timeless
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” ~Stephen Chbosky
There are those moments in life when things suddenly shift from a deep, sad shade of blue to a lighter shade of sky, and then eventually the beautiful reds and pinks and oranges of a sunrise.
When a light bulb snaps on in your head and you see something that you’ve been missing for days, months, maybe even years, though it doesn’t change what caused the sea of blue, it makes it look more like a calm lake than a raging ocean.
I had one of those moments not too long ago. I had been stuck in a sea of blue for almost two years. After the breakdown my first “real” relationship I vaulted into a deep dark ocean where I could only tread water, and I stayed there for what felt like an eternity.
I didn’t want to go out, happiness seemed like a fleeting feeling that left me as quickly as it took me over, and I felt like I would never feel better. I had fallen into a depression that would come and go, and a false sense of healing.
But what I failed to realize is that I hadn’t addressed the real problem yet. And then, after treading water for a long time, I met someone else, and he was like someone I had never been with before.
He was gentle and really cared for me, and I honestly didn’t know what to do with him.
I didn’t know how to handle someone who didn’t want to use me. I was completely confused and unsure.
One night, after a particularly tense time with my current love interest, I broke down, and I couldn’t understand why I resisted a real relationship so fiercely.
I couldn’t understand why this was so hard. I couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t let myself be cared for by someone. I was treading water again, the same water as I had been for so long, and I was frustrated.
I just kept asking myself: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be whole again? Why do I feel so empty and unloved?
I stayed that way until a friend of mine asked,“Do you think you deserve something so good?”
This was something I had never asked myself. I was so caught up in what I was feeling that I never had the courage to truly look inside and see why this was so hard for me.
It was because I was afraid. All I had known was the deep dark blue of abuse, and I had fostered the false belief that I didn’t deserve anything better.
For years, I found myself and put myself in situations with people who didn’t mind using me. I was used and hurt and thrown away, like an old Kleenex, and after a while that’s who I thought I was. A washed up, old person, stuck in the body of a young girl, spinning wildly in the same circles over and over again.
I had kept that feeling as an integral part of who I was, and how I related to people. I had created my whole self-image around the belief that I didn’t deserve love.
And because of this I had attracted people who didn’t want to love me, and I seemed to repel people who truly cared about me.
I realized that in order to reverse this flow of people and energy I had to redefine how I see myself.
Pop! The light bulb snapped on in my head, the waves of emotion started to calm down, and my sun started to rise.
I could understand why I felt like this, and though I can’t undo years of this type of thinking right away, at least I am able to see it for what it really is.
I have a long journey of recreating myself ahead of me. That is something that I probably should have done a long time ago, but I needed to tread water for a while to truly understand. And that’s perfectly okay.
I know how easy it is to unconsciously repeat patterns, and how scary it is to break them.
I know that I am not out of the water yet, and the sunshine hasn’t completely bathed me in its enlightened glow. I know that it may take years to understand why I do the things I do in relationships.
But I will try to take baby steps because no one should feel like they don’t deserve someone who can love them for exactly who they are.
Because everyone deserves to love, even if that means they have to tread water for a while first.
Elora Nelson is a student and a uniquely candid writer, poet, and pen pal. Her experiences in a diverse set of circumstances influence her to write what she can't say. Her words demonstrate a distinctive tone and view of the world that is conscious of life as an ever-changing journey.
This month we are turning the Dreams Contest area into one big swamp. There will be plenty of water and land. A swamp is spooky enough, but with added touches it can scare the wits out of you.
As with last month’s contest, this one is going to be viewed from the inside of the build. The building sites are connected with a path so guests can walk from one swampy area to the next by predetermined walkways. The ground will not be flat and there will be water and land on each site.
THE CHALLENGE: To design and build a spooky swamp (taking advantage of the site’s land formation).
October 1, 6 pm SLT Competition Starts (If I get home from Texas earlier, I will start earlier)
October 20, 1 pm SLT Building Phase Ends
October 20, 5 pm SLT Voting Begins
October 31, 1 pm SLT Voting Ends
October 31, 5 pm SLT Awards
RULES AND REGULATIONS
PRIM COUNT: 130 (Land Impact)
SITE SIZE: 20 BY 20 meters
WHAT YOU MUST DO
1. Purchase the number block for 50L. (No early sales).
2. Stay within the boundary of the framework, (the outside edge). Branches may hang over if the prims do not intersect with another build.
3. Enter as an individual (NO teams)
4. Design and build a spooky swamp.
5. Entrance and exit to the swamp must be done at the predetermined walkways.
6. Incorporate at least one interactive part in the build.
7. Keep fences, walls to a height of 3 meters or less. Arches over the entry or gates may be higher.
8. Take advantage of the natural land formation. (In other words don’t set out a platform.)
9. Conform to the PG/General rules of the sim.
10. Use only NEW prims created on the site by you.
WHAT YOU MAY NOT DO
1. NO enclosed builds (no “tops” on the builds or scenery backdrops.)
2. NO temp rez prims.
3. NO physics
4. NO looped sounds
5. NO items set for sale
6. NO advertising
7. NO objects made prior to the start of the contest or premade objects from your inventory or objects made by someone else.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Use sculpted prims, if you make them from a sculpted map (texture)
2. Use mesh, if they show you as creator and are created during the contest
3. Use hover text, but sparingly
4. Use poofers or particle emitters as long as they do not excessive or interfere with other builds.
5. Use the light feature as long as the light does not intersect any other build.
6. Use the glow feature on the texture tab if you use it very cautiously, 0.10 or less.
7. Use scripts, but if a script uses too much of the sim’s resources, it will have to be removed.
JUDGING CRITERIA
1. Fits the theme
2. Building skills
3. Texturing skills
4. Creativity
5. Overall appearance
PRIZES (cash prizes)
There will be judged and popular vote winners.
Entries not complying with the rules are not eligible for prizes.
CONTACT PERSON: Golda Stein
FAQ
1. What were the infractions that disqualified people in the past? Using old prims, using prims made by someone else (often as in a pose ball), having the prim count way over the maximum and overuse of the light feature.
2. How can I keep from being disqualified? Read the rules. Review the rules. All builds are checked for compliance prior to judging. You are responsible for checking your own build prior to the end of the building phase before considering it complete. Suggestion: have someone check out your build while you check out their build.
3. How do you know when things were built and who built them? Do this – right click on object, from the pie menu choose more, then more, then inspect. All prims are listed here with who owns them, who made them and the date created. (This date reflects your computer date, not the SL date.) I use Firestorm for my inspection and am not familiar with other viewers.
4. Why are there limitations on light and glow? Not all people can see glow or lights. Clients can only see 6 sources of lights at a time. (If you have a face light or two or three on, your computer has to choose which 6 to see.) To check for light bleed: In tools, select “Show Light Radius for Selection”, put the prim in edit. This will show you how far the light extends from the central point. In the past, builders in our contest often used colored lights that bleed over into someone else’s build. That is not good. Please use light sparingly. Too much glow on a prim will overpower the texture on a prim. With glow, less is better. Also, many people who come to Dreams have neurological problems and the glow on their computer screens can affect them.
5. What about mesh? I am not going to disqualify people who use mesh, as long as the mesh prims qualify with the rest of the rules. Many of the people who come to Dreams do not use a viewer that sees mesh, so the use of a lot of mesh is going to look ridiculous. Prim counts for mesh are high because of their land impact.
6. What plans are there for future builds? November and December we will be having our annual winter build.
7. How can I be included in a group to receive notices? Contact Golda Stein and she will send an invite.
LA COSTA — When Fran Swenson visits Creations Park each day, she takes tai chi classes, swims, ice-skates and goes ballroom dancing.
Although Parkinson’s disease and macular degeneration have reduced the 86-year-old La Costa resident’s ability to walk, see and leave her one-bedroom apartment, she has no such limitations in the lushly landscaped Creations Park — a “sim,” or virtual reality world, in the online universe known as Second Life.
Shortened from Creations for Parkinson’s, the sim island is an online community where people with Parkinson’s can interact through digital avatars to share stories, exercise, shop and enjoy activities that are no longer possible with their physical bodies. Through her avatar “Fran Seranade," Swenson said she has found a great hobby, friends, a support group and relief from some symptoms.
“It’s a place that gives me great satisfaction,” said Swenson, who lost her husband to Parkinson’s in 2003 and was diagnosed with the same disease a year later.
Swenson said her physical restrictions are less frustrating to her now with the fantasy world of Second Life that she can explore on her 42-inch computer monitor. “I’m dancing now and I can run, hop, jump and have fun. I’m not just in my apartment, I have the whole world now. It’s thrilling.”
Second Life has about 1 million subscribers worldwide, most of them in Europe, with an average of 60,000 active users daily. There are hundreds of Second Life support groups for people with disabilities, many of them accessible through Virtual Ability (virtualability.org), a user-friendly gateway “island” where people with disabilities can find others who are similarly abled.
Tom Boellstorff, an anthropology professor at UC Irvine who wrote the 2008 book “Coming of Age in Second Life,” said virtual reality worlds are a great social and emotional outlet for disabled people who can no longer drive, leave their homes or perform their old jobs.
“Almost all disabilities in Second Life are invisible,” said Boellstorff, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University. “That’s liberating for some people because they’re not being judged for the first time in many years. They’re not immediately equated with their disabilities.”
Creations Park was developed by Swenson’s daughter Barbara "Barbie" Richards, who said she barely knew how to send an email four years ago when her brother Ken, a computer programmer in Florida, came to visit. He proposed building a family island in Second Life where their three avatars could interact. At first, Richards said she was turned off. The learning curve was steep and virtual reality communities like Second Life are known as a haven for sexual and violent fantasy role-playing.
Fran Swenson and her daughter Barbara Richards setup an online virtual reality world called Second Life where they both have virtual characters. photo by Bill Wechter
“There was a lot of negative stuff out there, and we would make fun of the poor people on Second Life because we didn’t think they had a real life,” Richards said.
But on their private island, the family enjoyed meeting daily for wholesome activities and long conversations (Second Life users speak for their avatars through headsets). Richards, a former fashion designer, also found a new artistic outlet.
“I felt like an artist who had never found her medium. The mouse became my paintbrush,” said Richards, whose avatar is “Barbie Alchemi.”
After seeing how much joy it brought to her mother, Richards decided 2 1/2 years ago to build Creations Park, a much larger sim for Swenson and other people with Parkinson’s, where they could form a support group and raise money for Team Fox, a grass roots fundraising division of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. (Second Life users can shop for online homes, clothes, land and material goods and make donations using “Linden dollars,” where 250 LDs equate to $1 U.S.). She also recruited 30 Second Life fashion designers and several visual artists who agreed to sell virtual clothing and paintings in the Creations mall and donate half of their profits to Team Fox.
Last year, Creations visitors raised $4,000 for Team Fox, enough to earn Richards two tickets to the foundation’s annual gala in New York City last March, where she met the actor, Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991. This year, her goal is to raise $12,000.
Richards said one of the biggest challenges now is finding enough people with Parkinson’s to visit Creations Park (the Thursday group sessions average 6 to 15 people). There’s a negative stigma associated with Second Life, many adults get frustrated trying to learn how to create and move their avatars through virtual space and others don’t want to spend the money (it’s free to join, but most users spend at least $10 to $20 a month on purchases). Also, some Second Life people with Parkinson’s say they don’t want to talk about their disability online because it’s the one place they can escape it, Richards said.
Maintaining and building Creations has become Richards' full-time, unpaid job but it's worth it for the satisfaction it brings her mother.
“I feel so close to the people there with Parkinson’s disease because we know what we’re experiencing and other people don’t,” Swenson said. “We know what it’s like to deal with rigidity, we all walk like ducks and we laugh about it and tell Parkinson’s jokes.”
Swenson said she has also experienced some improvements in her physical mobility as a result of Second Life. Two weeks after starting her avatar in tai chi classes, Swenson said she began walking better and now she can stand up from her chair without needing a motorized lift (something she hadn’t been able to do for five years).
Boellstorff said Swenson’s belief that she has improved physically through her avatar — which he calls “the Fran Effect” — may be triggered by mirror neurons, where neurons in the brain trigger the mind into imagining it is performing the same action the eyes see someone else doing. He has been investigating Swenson’s experience with Donna Davis, a strategic communications professor at the University of Oregon, who wrote her dissertation on relationships in Second Life.
Davis said she was so intrigued by the “Fran Effect,” she built an adjoining island called Frantastica where she now hosts the weekly Parkinson’s support group sessions, in hopes of learning more about how the avatars can help patients. So far, no other member has reported a similar experience but all report that they’re less depressed and more active socially.
“Fran has a really compelling story on the power of the mind by embodiment in a virtual space,” Davis said. “If we can prove that’s real, that would be pretty profound.”
Boellstorff said virtual reality simulations have been used with positive results by stroke patients (computer use improves hand-eye coordination) and people with phobias and post-traumatic stress syndrome (they can confront their fears in a safe online environment). Parkinson’s is the next frontier.
Last month, Davis met Richards and Swenson for the first time in the flesh when the Carlsbad women flew to Portland for a visit. They also met another support group member in San Francisco. Mother and daughter said that forming real-world relationships with virtual world friends has been one of the greatest gifts of their Second Life experience.
“When I first got Parkinson’s nine years ago, I wondered ‘why me?’” Swenson said. “But now I believe there’s a reason why it happened — so I could reach out to others with Parkinson’s and offer them some form of relief. Now I tell people I have Parkinson’s, Parkinson’s doesn’t have me.”
Sixty-five-year-old Ann Linsey was starting to worry about how easily she got distracted from whatever she was doing. “As you get older, it seems harder to do more things at once,” she says. Then she enrolled in a study to test whether playing a game could improve fading cognitive skills in older people — and was impressed by what it did for her. “I was frustrated because I felt I was losing my faculties. Now I’ve learnt how to focus my attention.”
Commercial companies have claimed for years that computer games can make the user smarter, but have been criticized for failing to show that improved skills in the game translate into better performance in daily life1. Now a study published this week in Nature2 — the one in which Linsey participated — convincingly shows that if a game is tailored to a precise cognitive deficit, in this case multitasking in older people, it can indeed be effective.
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Led by neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley of the University of California, San Francisco, the study found that a game called NeuroRacer can help older people to improve their capacity to multitask — and the effect seems to carry over to tasks in everyday life and is still there after six months. The study also shows how patterns of brain activity change as those cognitive skills improve.
NeuroRacer is a three-dimensional video game in which players steer a car along a winding, hilly road with their left thumb, while keeping an eye out for signs that randomly pop up. If the sign is a particular shape and colour, players have to shoot it down using a finger on their right hand. This multitasking exercise, says Gazzaley, draws on a mix of cognitive skills just as real life does — such as attention focusing, task switching and working memory (the ability to temporarily hold multiple pieces of information in the mind).
Gazzaley and his colleagues first recruited around 30 participants for each of six decades of life, from the 20s to the 70s, and confirmed that multitasking skills as measured by the game deteriorated linearly with age. They then recruited 46 participants aged 60–85 and put them through a 4-week training period with a version of NeuroRacer that increased in difficulty as the player improved.
After training, subjects had improved so much that they achieved higher scores than untrained 20-year-olds, and the skill remained six months later without practice.
Improved mental skills that come from playing a video game are mirrored by increased brain activity.
GLOBE TV
The scientists also conducted a battery of cognitive tests on the participants before and after training. Certain cognitive abilities that were not specifically targeted by the game improved and remained improved — such as working memory and sustained attention. Both skills are important for daily tasks, from reading a newspaper to cooking a meal.
That is significant, says Gazzaley. “NeuroRacer doesn’t demand too much of those particular abilities — so it appears that the multitasking challenge may put pressure on the entire cognitive control system, raising the level of all of its components.”
The team also recorded brain activity using electroencephalography while participants played NeuroRacer. As their skills increased, so did activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with cognitive control, in a manner that correlated with improvements in sustained-attention tasks. Activity also increased in a neural network linking the prefrontal cortex with the back of the brain.
The industry that has grown around selling brain-training computer games has polarized opinion about the effectiveness of brain-training packages, says cognitive neuroscientist Torkel Klingberg of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “Some companies are not based on real science, and have made unrealistic claims,” he says. “On the other hand, some psychologists have claimed that working memory and attention are fixed and can’t be trained up.”
But Gazzaley’s study confirms that cognitive function can be improved — if you design training methods properly, says Klingberg, who is a consultant for Cogmed, a company he founded in 1999 to market computer-based training methods, particularly for people with attention-deficit disorders3.
Last year, Gazzaley also co-founded a company, called Akili, for which he is an adviser. It is developing a commercial product similar to NeuroRacer, which remains a research tool, and will seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to market it as a therapeutic agent. A ‘games’ approach might also help people with particular cognitive deficits, such as depression or schizophrenia, adds Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who develops computer games to improve brain function and who also advises Akili.
Gazzaley cautions against over-hyping: “Video games shouldn’t now be seen as a guaranteed panacea.” But Linsey, for her part, is happy with what the game did for her and about her own contribution. “It’s been exciting to discover the older brain can learn — and I’m glad my own brain helped make the discovery.”
SEPTEMBER FAIR DAY AT WHOLE-BRAIN HEALTH FAIRGROUNDS
Date: 09/28/2013
Time: 12:00pm - 6 pm
Location: (M) WBHF Entrance Down
Don't miss this! Six full hours of performances, workshops,
classes and dance designed to holistically stimulate mind,
body and spirit! Come be edified, entertained, engaged and expanded by such wonders as:
ChangHigh Sisters Fireshow (1pm),
Campbell's Hero Walk (12pm),
Simply Impossible Free-energy Machines (2pm),
Physical Exercises at Your Computer in SL (3pm),
Increase Your Inner Harmony through Music (4pm),
Salsa dancing (5pm).
Landmarks Sign and more detailed Fair Info at Main Entrance
Join Whole-Brain Health group or our Subscriber kiosk at the Entrance for more up-to-date information and valuable resources, or contact Lissena
5th VIRTUAL CONFERENCE ON COUNSELING (5VCC) November 20-22, 2013 CESL Conference Center, Second life
About the conference: 5VCC is an opportunity for Counselors, Counselor Educators, and allied professional to present on topics of their interest to an international audience. The conference is hosted in a virtual environment (Second Life) and this allows presenters and attendees to attend the conference at minimal cost and disruption. Continuing Education Credits will be available for attendees. Call for Proposals:Each presentation slot is 50 minutes. You can submit a conference proposal here Registration:In order to participate in 5VCC you must have 1. a (free) registered account with Second Life (go to SecondLife.com and Join), 2. You should have downloaded and setup the Second Life (free) viewer software (http://secondlife.com/downloads), and 3. Logged in with your avatar name through the viewer software.Register (free) for the conference will become available soon.
Counselor Education in Second Life is pleased to be working again this year with Onlinevents.co.uk who will be webstreaming the conference at their site for those unable to join the conference through Second Life avatars. We had so much success with last year’s counseling conference that we are going to try to expand it this year to include a wider range of clinicians and scholars from around the globe. This opportunity to share and learn with interested individuals worldwide is just one of the strengths of presenting and attending this conference. This conference provides a vehicle for you to share your knowledge and experience with interested attendees without the time or expense of travel. For those unfamiliar with Second Life and wanting to experience presenting in this environment full training will be provided. Mastering a new technology can be intimidating yet the conference coordinators have developed training methods to help any interested party successfully deliver dynamic and engaging presentations for this conference.
Presenting in a virtual environment such as Second Life allows for presentations that are as simple as a PowerPoint or as complex as a 3 dimensional immersion in a topic. This medium offers an opportunity to stretch your creativity on your topic.
The 2013 edition includes the theme “Learning with simulations”. Special panels/
workshops will convey this theme. The use of simulations in learning is now an
important field of research in education and professional development, and
virtual worlds/metaverse platforms play a significant role in this context. So join
us for Slactions 2013, for the fora where researchers can present and discuss
developments in simulations aiming to assist learning in science and technology
education.
Virtual worlds and metaverse platforms have evolved from their text-only MUD origins to
fully graphic massive locales, such as World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Second Life, Minecraft, Habbo Hotel, IMVU, League of Legends, and many others. Alongside these ready-to-use environments, many technological
platforms support do-it-yourself creation of virtual worlds, such as OpenSimulator, Open
Cobalt, Open Wonderland, and more. Social media has recently also presented itself as a
channel for virtual worlds such as Cloud Party or The Sims Social.
This increasing use of virtual world technologies that act as platforms for end-users to
create, develop, and interact, is expanding the realm of human cooperation, interaction,
and creativity. Slactions is looking to present selections from submitted research, focusing on
both basic research and applications of the aforementioned metaverse platforms and others, including MMORPGs and social media virtual worlds, providing a forum for the research community to present and discuss innovative approaches, techniques, processes, and research results. Multiple disciplines meet at Slactions, enabling a global perspective on
research topics and concerns: Slactions has been contributing to the creation of a
worldwide research community of virtual worlds / metaverse researchers. Slactions unique in its format too, as an event conducted both in a metaverse platform and on-site in multiple countries throughout the world. It contributed to
the current redefinition of the way we think about hybrid online and on-site scholarly
collaborations.
Format
Slactions has the format of a hybrid online and physical conference. All paper presentations
and plenary sessions by guest speakers will be held in an online virtual world (instrucions will
be provided in the conference website), and projected locally at local chapters, for
participants attending physically. Physical participants can interact with the online
participants via a “physical chapter avatar” and microphone.
Workshops and other events may also take place locally in specific chapters or in mixed
SJSU Virtual Worlds Colloquia Ran Hinrichs, CEO of 2b3d, an immersive web solutions company, and on faculty at the University of Washington's iSchool, will present a virtual worlds colloquia on "Immersive Information Environments" in Second Life at the SJSU SLIS campus on Tuesday, September 24, at 6 pm pacific. VirtualWorlds are blending into a broader field known as Immersive Information Environments in which the 3D features of virtual worlds combine with the immersive features of computer mediated communication and collaboration technologies to bring people together in various venues: conferences, classes, clinical sessions, coaching, etc. Participating in a virtual world is not passive. It requires immersive communication skills and interpersonal relationships for it to be effective. Ran has been in the software industry for twenty-five years with positions in Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Sun Microsystems, Unisys and the University of California. He has several patents in learning science and data
His new book, The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, is due out in 2014. Ran teaches Immersive Information Environments all in virtual environments.
SLURL for program: SJSU SLIS (39,74,33)
The third annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference (IDRAC 2013) sponsored by Virtual Ability will occur Friday and Saturday, September 27 and 28.
The theme of this year's conference is "Let Me In."
We have speakers and panelists from all around the world. Please add these dates and times to your calendar so you can learn more about how rights for persons with disabilities are addressed in other countries.
If you have questions, please ask iSkye Silverweb (the conference organizer) or Gentle Heron.
"Moore's Law means that at some point the richness and detail of virtual and augmented reality experiences will rival and surpass the real world," Rosedale says.
High Fidelity and Second Life founder Philip Rosedale
(Credit: Dan Farber)
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Philip Rosedale's second act could be a 3D virtual world that will feel like real life in terms of the speed of interaction, use body tracking sensors for more life-like avatars, and apply the compute power of tens of millions of devices contributed by end users, rather than tens of thousands of servers, to power the world.
Rosedale, who created Second Life in 2000 and which still has about a million users, spoke at the Augmented World Expo here Tuesday. He declined to say exactly what his new company, High Fidelity, is up to, but gave several hints about what he is obsessing about as his new virtual world environment evolves.
"We have to capture enough data to make the connection between two individuals work," Rosedale said, regarding the virtual interactions. He is counting on Moore's Law, which posits transistor densities doubling every 18 months, continuing, which means more horsepower and bandwidth available to reduce latency.
"Moore's Law means that at some point the richness and detail of virtual and augmented reality experience will rival and surpass the real world," he proclaimed. "With millions of computers, not even the rainforest can hold off what we do."
Surpassing the real world has its limitations Rosedale admits. "There are aspects of the human experience and thinking, and one-to-one interaction, that we will never capture. Smell is hard to do, but sound and visuals...if the latency is low enough, we can make it as good as or better than the real world. There are all kinds of problems with sound -- the way it bounces off walls or if people turn away, and I can fix that," he said. By low latency, he means 50 to 100 milliseconds. By comparison a cellphone has about a 450 millisecond lag between speaking and receiving.
Rosedale expects that within five years, any mobile device will be able to interact with massively detailed virtual worlds in real time. "The impact of the virtual world and fusion with real world...all of this stuff is early and its not small. There are so many places to push hard on," Rosedale said.
High Fidelity is pushing hard and Rosedale is eager to see what becomes of his new creation, and who or what becomes the first "winner" in the new virtual world. He pondered whether the colonizers who survive and thrive in the new world will be like the pilgrims of Williamsburg in America, or will they fashion a more simplified version of earth. "It's a fascinating question. The future [of virtual and augmented reality] is infinite and almost completely unexplored," he concluded. Early High Fidelity demo of avatar controlled by sensors
Rosedale doesn't have a timeline for introducing his new virtual environment. "We have 10 people and we are experimenting. It depends on how successful we are with the sensors and servers," he said. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57587672-76/philip-rosedales-second-life-with-high-fidelity/
