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The excellently named Fabjectory is the latest service offering to produce a physical model of an object that exists only in the virtual world of Second Life. For $75 and up, you can get a 3D model of your avatar, complete with detailed color textures applied. The project comes from one Michael Buckbee (aka SL’s Hal9k Andalso), who also runs Second411, a third-party search site for Second Life. I’m guessing the Fabjectory will produce better results than the other 3D milling service that was offered to SL residents, only because that one more or less withdrew its offer in the end for artistic reasons. I’m not sure of the exact 3D printing technology being used here (an email is out to Michael), but the site says the models “are built from a plaster material that is built up in layers to form the right shape.” Tao Takashi has a good roundup of the situation on his blog, and Amazon’s Jeff Barr has more. Order today.

If you’re in New York on Friday, September 22, and you want to talk metaversal shop, come meet up with us in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at Zabloski’s Bar at 6:30pm. The meetup is being arranged in the wake of the Metaverse Roadmap summit and party, “for people actively working on or in virtual worlds who want a place to get together with metaverse colleagues to talk shop, work, opportunities, creative ideas, anything on your mind,” according to Jerry Paffendorf, who’s organizing it. I’ll be there, so feel free to drop by if you want to get involved in anything 3pointD, or chat about the in-world meetup for 3pointD readers that’s in the works (if vaguely). Brooktown, of course, is the official capital of the metaverse, so you won’t want to miss this one. See you there.

The Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) have a new beta project going on over at Sheep Labs that offers you an email notification as soon as the surname you’ve been waiting for in Second Life becomes available. [Via Clickable Culture and eSheep Christian Westbrook.] The service is useful because SL residents get to choose their own first names, but surnames must be chosen from a constantly changing list. New names are opened, remain open for a matter of weeks or months, and then are closed, making it possible to get a rough idea of when an avatar was “born” by looking at their name.

The Sheep now offer a service whereby you can watch the namespace to see if a name you’ve been waiting for becomes available. Innocuous enough, except that there’s been talk from various quarters lately of the fact that Linden Lab may change its naming conventions at some point in the not too distant future. As I blogged a month ago, one idea that’s reportedly been bandied about is to let users purchase unique last names that they would then be able to parcel out to new residents on a controlled basis. This may or may not go hand in hand with the idea that third parties may soon be able to sign up new members through their own sites. Either way, it’s an idea whose drawbacks may outweight its benefits. (more…)