3pointD.com

Sparkle Dale models the TELUS Motorola i833 ‘Baby Phat’ Edition

During a recent flight around the Second Life mainland I had spied a strong candidate for an upcoming Virtual Suburbia review, an exquisite modern structure articulated in a delicate monochrome palette, embellished with soft lighting and shadows, and punctuated with purple and green colored glass that looked pleasantly fresh and yet oddly familiar to me. I soon found out why.

Although the land was off-limits to visitors, some alt-zooming found signage identifying the build with TELUS, Canada’s second largest telecommunications company and the name that happens to be printed on my monthly phone bill. There was obviously a larger story here than just a captivating work of virtual architecture. At first glance it seemed to represent the first major Canadian corporation and the first major Telco to appear in Second Life. (more…)

3pointD is still trying to find time to get Glitchy Links into the main thread here instead of just letting them sit on the sidebar, but in the meantime we’ve gone ahead and recruited our first proper contributor! Second Life resident Chip Poutine is the author of the Virtual Suburbia blog, where he covers “the product and practice of architecture in the online world of Second Life.” And covers it well, I might add. Chip’s insights into SL builds and builders have been fascinating me for some time now, and his tone seems well suited to the more analytical moments of 3pointD.com. (more…)

Virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red is busy these days. Having recently announced they’d be bringing hit pop band Duran Duran to the virtual world of Second Life, the news is now that they’re bringing the metaverse back home, so to speak, by working with publisher Penguin to create a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, to be distributed in Second Life, a world largely inspired by the book. Virtual copies of a portion of the book should be available starting next week. (more…)