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Second Life resident Tao Takashi Rik Riel recently stumbled on a very cool build in the virtual world, a re-creation of ships and other gear from the short-lived but disproportionately excellent television series Firefly, which was created by Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. (The TV show was created by Joss Whedon, not the SL build.) You can visit a huge replica of Serenity (the ship after which the movie of the series was named) in Burnet (128, 144, 46) [<–SL link]. The ship is so big (I’m floating just at the trailing edge of the blue panels in the pic above) that there’s plenty of room inside for various locations to have been re-created in striking, shiny detail. If you loved this show, it’s definitely worth a visit. Even if you didn’t, it’s a great build. And if you’ve never seen Firefly or Serenity, get thee to a video store. Now.

Johnny “Jazz Hands” Ming is back, with the latest episode of Second Life’s favorite podcast, SecondCast. In Episode #30 we talk to Mark Barrett, who created the SLStats.com site, which has caused no small amount of controversy among SL residents. SLStats, until Mark altered the site, tracked how much time you’d spent in Second Life, where you’d been and who you’d met there. But community pressure over privacy concerns led Mark to scale down the functionality. It’s an interesting discussion over privacy concerns in general, and how they manifest themselves in virtual worlds in particular. We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus lately, but stay tuned for more — including SecondCast’s first taping in front of a live audience, at the recent Second Life Community Convention. Fun stuff.

Add terrorism and politics to the list of world-historical factors now driving people into the metaverse. Several links in this VRoot post discuss “how travel restrictions have given a boost to telepresence and effective visual collaboration as alternatives to physical travel.” Add to that high fuel prices that may simply make it cheaper to hold a meeting at your desk, rather than at someone else’s desk across town, and even environmental concerns about the pollution you’re pushing into the atmosphere to get there.

As IT Week executive editor Martin Veitch puts it, “The old model of business collaboration is broken.” Of course, that doesn’t mean a 3D virtual world is the perfect place for every meeting. But it does mean that people are increasingly looking for alternatives to physical meetings that might more efficiently be held elsewhere. Seek and ye shall find. (more…)