3pointD.com

• Bandology: A social web game about bands
  if u want to try to bridge the casual/hardcore gap - join my band “zombies 8 my brain”
  (tags: design education games gaming music online research school simulation technology teens videogames)

On May 19, Romania will hold a referendum on whether to impeach its suspended president, Traian Basescu, who has been charged with violating the country’s constitution. Before that time, members of the Romanian community in the virtual world of Second Life would like to hear from him and other Romanian political leaders in a virtual venue that’s been built out for the purpose. The two-minute video above provides a tour of a nice build that’s apparently designed to host a debate between real Romanian political leaders, should they care to put in an appearance. The »debate hall« looks fairly accomodating, and comes complete with voting mechanisms and a press room that’s apparently wired to provide television feeds. The video cites 20,000 Romanian Second Life users, and says around 800 a day are visiting the in-world location. Of those polled, 95 percent say they’d like to participate in an electoral meeting in SL. (more…)

British carmaker Vauxhall is entering the virtual world of Second Life with the creation of a user-generated guide that will be assembled over the next month, according to a press release. The Corsa Guide site for SL provides a fairly long list of locations (”as diverse as wonderful water parks, awesome fantasy gardens and crazy nightclubs where anything is possible”), complete with teleport links. SL members can visit the locations and vote on them using Corsa kiosks located there. The top ten results will be “unveiled” (in what form the press release doesn’t say) in Mid-June as the Corsa Guide to Getting a (Second) Life. Besides being a mildly interesting way to have a Second Life presence, Vauxhall’s project — as well as the many other guides to SL now appearing or in the works — also points up the continuing need for better search tools for the virtual world. But that’s a subject for another post. As well as the continuing need for an SL presence for those little guys in the Vauxhall ads, who so clearly belong in Second Life. Why weren’t those guys included in the project? That’s what I want to know.