3pointD.com

Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, which has nurtured a few of the biggest country and western music stars to emerge in the last 25 years, will start streaming video of its shows into the virtual world of Second Life this evening, 15 May, 3pointD hears. The Bluebird Cafe SL, located in the »Nashville Music City region« of Second Life, replicates the tiny music club in Nashville, and was built out by a firm called Sansoft. The club will apparently be streaming its shows into SL six days a week, beginning tonight with Fred Eaglesmith. This is pretty cool. Most of Second Life’s native musicians who’ve seen the most success are small acts that play intimate venues like the Bluebird. How cool would it be to tie the two types of gig together, so that the venue became a place to see not only emerging talent from Nashville, but emerging talent in a similar vein from Second Life. Who knows, it might even get some SL musicians in front of the ears of the talent scouts lurking at Nashville’s Bluebird.

[UPDATE: One interesting aspect about this project is the fact that the virtual Bluebird will charge an admission charge of between L$1,000 and L$2,500, or about US$3-9. (This information wasn’t apparent until a press release appeared after my earlier post.) Most SL establishments don’t dare charge anything for admission, so it will be interesting to see whether the Bluebird is both brave and shrewd (quite possible) or just foolhardy. The question is, are these acts you’d pay that kind of money to watch on the Web? The SL experience is enhanced, but audiences aren’t used to being asked to pay. This is an experiment to watch, in any case.]

I am not sure if there has been much ballyhoo about this, but Autodesk have at last opened »their island« in the virtual world of Second Life, a project that’s been in the works for some time. Autodesk is the company behind what is arguably the world’s leading 2D and 3D modeling software, and so it seems a natural fit for them to be in Second Life. Indeed, Autodesk’s Maya product has recently been highlighted by Linden Lab as an appropriate tool for the development of the soon-to-be-launched sculpted prims. The island would appear to be the work of design firm Clear Ink, though they have made extensive use of the Canadian designer and builder, Second Life resident Scope Cleaver. (more…)

This year’s iCommons Summit, the annual gathering of 300 leading thinkers working toward a free Internet for all, will be held in parallel in the virtual world of Second Life, according to the summit’s Web site. The summit, which takes place this year in Dubrovnik, “will be run in parallel in Second Life,” according to the site. In addition, “all iSummit keynote addresses will be streamed into Second Life, and video and artwork from the Summit’s Artists in residence programme and some parallel sessions will also be available on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy’s »Annenberg Island« in Second Life,” where the summit will be hosted. (The USC site also has an announcement regarding the event.) Held this year on 15-17 June, the summit is a three-day meeting of “300 of the world’s leading intellectuals, authors, lawyers, artists and technologists on the cutting edge of Internet policy” who meet to talk about “the importance of a free Internet for free culture, new rules to keep the internet free, how to build free culture communities and the lessons we can learn from pirates.” I’d say this is valuable stuff to make available through Second Life. Last year’s summit, held in Rio, was apparently quite the hot event. What will be more interesting is when the organizers bring the two realities together, so that the virtual event isn’t held in parallel with the real-world event but is simply another part of a single whole. This’ll do for now, of course. Anyone planning to attend, in either reality?

A small raft of news emerged from the virtual world of Entropia Universe this week, including tie-ups with MasterCard and a real-life bank, and a new awards show being put on by virtual entrepreneurs Anshe Chung and Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs.

First up, MasterCard. Entropia has been trying to implement a real-life card for some time. A year ago, it gave its customers the ability to deposit real money to their game accounts via a bank card used at an ATM. Cash was withdrawn from your real-world account, converted on the fly into PED, Entropia’s virtual currency (which is fixed at 10 to the U.S. dollar), and deposited into your Entropia account. Entropia also has a reloadable debit card that you can deposit your PED to, which is then available as real-world cash at ATMs. Now, the company has struck a new deal with a financial institution that can give its cards MasterCard branding, Entropia says: “The new card will be cheaper to use for our customers, and have more functions including MasterCard branding which will allow the card to be used in retail outlets as well as traditional ATMs.” [Via RCEUniverse.] (more…)

SecondCast #60 is now on the air, featuring an interview with podcaster C.C. Chapman and Steve Coulson (aka Second Life’s Cleon Goff and Gideon Television) of Crayon, the new media marketing firm that launched last year. The pair relate their experience designing Coca-Cola’s Virtual Thirst contest, in which Coke drinkers (or anyone, for that matter, whether you’re a member of Second Life or not) can submit their ideas for the coolest, most fantastical virtual thirstquencher. There might be some news thrown in there as well.