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Cory Linden, aka Cory Ondrejka, chief technology officer at Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, has sent along what looks like a nice SL-del.icio.us mashup that works as a kind of SL-centric “GPS” location-tracker and has the potential to become a piece of social networking software for SL as well. The slice of Linden Scripting Language code (aka LSL, pasted after the jump) goes in an attachment worn on your avatar, and periodically posts your location to del.icio.us under the “SLurlTrack” tag. If you want to monitor someone’s movements or track your own, just subscribe to the del.icio.us feed for the right user and the SLurlTrack tag. While Cory’s codeslice is a bit crude at the moment (codeslice? did I just coin that?), it contains the fundamental seeds of some interesting possibilities, and could easily be reworked to do some powerful stuff. (more…)

The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences is once again holding its annual Machinima Festival and Machinima Awards (known as “the Mackies”), on November 4-5 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. In recent years the festival has had a bit of trouble finding a home, so it’s great to know that the recent rise in interest in films made within 3D online worlds has given machinima enough cachet to once again land at the very cool Museum of the Moving Image. “Throughout each day, attendees will be able to view Machinima works, interact with Machinima demos, as well as speak with the artists themselves,” according to the announcment. The Academy will begin accepting entries on July 24th, so get in your favorite game and start shooting. And check out what’s probably the best collection of Machinima on the Web at the Academy’s sister site, Machinima.com. [Via Clickable Culture.]

Second Life resident Quirky McArdle, who in real life is executive producer of The Infinite Mind, a popular public radio show on health and science, sends along news that the show will soon open a virtual headquarters and broadcast facility in Second Life, where its episodes will be broadcast, including live guest appearances. Launching August 3, a series of live tapings are scheduled to be broadcast in-world, hosted by John Hockenberry, including a visit from Suzanne Vega, who will be the first major recording artist to perform live in SL avatar form, according to the press release; an interview with novelist Kurt Vonnegut (who is notoriously interview-shy); and a chat with cool futurist Howard Rheingold. The interviews will be broadcast nationally starting August 9 in a two-part series on virtual communities. (more…)