3pointD.com

Whew, I just finished uploading several dozen pictures to the 3pointD Flickr pool. Heavy lifting! But you can now browse all 262 photos there, pretty much every image that’s appeared on the blog and then some, since the pool is open for anyone to upload images to. The coolest thing about it is that more than 40 of those images have been contributed by people other than myself. All the pictures I’ve added come complete with a “3pointD link” that takes you to the blog post from which the picture was drawn, so you can have a nice tour of the site just by clicking through the images that interest you. And if you really dig your 3pointD, you can follow this link to build a Flickr badge like the one in the middle column here and slap it on your own Web page. Have fun!

Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, have been having a hell of a time over the last several weeks defending against the metaversal version of denial-of-service attacks: When users add objects to the Grid that are able to replicate themselves, dividing and redividing exponentially, LL’s servers are soon choked by the processing power required to maintain all these objects, and the world grinds to a halt. Now, Linden Lab is contemplating a solution that would create a privileged class of users with access to the full range of SL scripting and object-creation abilities on the Grid, with everyone else limited as to the functions available or the locations in which their scripts and objects will work. I’d suggest that a solution like this will kill Second Life rather quickly, or at least prevent it from becoming what CEO Philip Rosedale and SL’s most optimistic boosters believe it can become: a kind of 3D extension and next generation of the World Wide Web. (more…)

Amil Husain, Global Youth Coordinator for the United Nations’ Millennium Campaign against poverty, sends along news of an October 14-16 event in the virtual world of Second Life being held as part of the UN’s broader effort to improve living conditions in poor countries around the world. Rockers Sugarcult will be playing a concert that day in California, and will have it replicated within Second Life at SL designer Aimee Weber’s »Midnight City« at 1:00pm SL time (4:00pm Eastern). In addition, SL avatars will stand up against poverty over the next two days — and be counted toward a Guinness Book world record that the organization is shooting for. (For more, listen to Aimee’s appearance on the latest episode of SecondCast.)

Will this help? It’s impossible to quantify the effect of such consciousness-raising exercises. But kiosks are being set up around the virtual world that will hand out the white wristbands that have become an international symbol of the fight against poverty. (Contact Aimee if you want one.) Similar (real-world) wristbands have done much to help the fight against cancer. In any case, it doesn’t seem like it can hurt. Stand up and be counted.