3pointD.com

The YouTube video above is a very cool way to leverage the expressive capabilities of the virtual world of Second Life, if you ask me. It describes the Second Chance Trees reforestation project, which was designed and built out by social media communications company Converseon, in partnership with Plant-It 2020, a non-profit whose business it is to plant and maintain indigenous trees around the world. For each virtual tree planted »on Second Chance Trees island« in Second Life (at a cost of L$300, or about US$1), Plant-It will plant one tree in the real world. Now, the Second Chance Trees project has a chance to be funded to the tune of one to five million dollars (and plant a corresponding number of real-world trees) through the American Express Members Project, where Second Chance Trees has made it into the round of 50 finalists. Vote for the project if you dig what you see.

I couldn’t get this to work yesterday and I still can’t today, but one of the Electric Sheep got it working and it sounds fascinating. Someone (said to be a teen) has created an Ajax-based client for the virtual world of Second Life. Is this the start of browser-based SL use? That’s a potentially revolutionary idea. From the original post describing AjaxLife:

Due to some combination of boredom, wanting to talk to people in SL, and inspiration from a vague memory of something Interfect Sonic did, I decided to start work on an AJAX based SL client.

It’s still under heavy development, but the result so far is an application/page/site called AjaxLife.

It now works on the MG (I think!)

Features
* Basic map
* Teleports
* Accepting/declining teleport offers
* Local chat, instant messages (partially — you can’t start them except with online friends)
* Inventory received notifications
* Friend on/offline notifications
* Balance change notifications, etc.

It also correctly logs you in and out, and notifies you if you were disconnected for any reason.

Let us know if you get it going. [Via Vint Falken.]