3pointD.com

Vivox, the voice-over-IP startup that provides voice services to virtual worlds, is giving away a million minutes of voice time free to residents of the virtual world of Second Life. The giveaway will let SL residents make calls from within Second Life to any phone, including mobiles and landlines, in North America, as well as take advantage of Vivox’s unique proximity services in Second Life, where up to five avatars standing near a Vivox virtual microphone are automatically conferenced together if they’re running the Vivox client. The giveaway [<-- details] starts October 4. Vivox is also the company that's bringing integrated voice services to the EVE Online client. Second Life phone home.

Second Life resident Pixeleen Mistral, the latest star correpondent to grace the pages of the Second Life Herald, has a great interview in the Herald today with Linden Lab code jock Andrew Linden, in which he talks about new security measures being “locked and loaded for emergency deploy” after a series of denial-of-service attacks brought the Grid to its knees in recent days. Required reading for anyone interested in just what Linden Lab is doing to stop future attacks, and how they’re prioritizing the work.

Snapzilla, the Flickr-like site for the virtual world of Second Life, has released a two-volume “Best of” coffee table book set to celebrate a recent milestone: as of Tuesday, SL residents had uploaded more than 100,000 Second Life screenshots to the site. The books are available only in-world at the moment, but here’s hoping there might one day be a way to see hard copies. It seems inevitable; if Second Life continues to grow, we’ll doubtless be thumbing through A Day in the Second Life on the tables at Barnes & Noble at some point. Can’t wait. For now, head to the ANOmations store [<-- SL link] in Second Life to pick up your virtual copies. (more…)