What awaits you in the great SL beyond

By Victoria Wheeler

I have a strong interest in death. Not a morbid interest, just curiosity. I’ve long wondered how it could be possible that we highly complex human beings could simply ‘go away’, shut off like a lamp. Surely there must be more to death than, well, nothing. The ‘spark of life’ is too glorious to simply dissipate at death.

After the loss of a couple of grandparents when I was a child, and a near death experience from a severe bout of nephritis when I was 17, I decided long ago not to fear death, but to research the possibility of life after death. I’ve had other personal experiences (which I won’t go into here) that piqued my interest further and colored my assumptions and conclusions. I’ve read about ‘the after life’ and found lots of information on the Internet, joined groups and discussed the subject with my fellow human beings.

So it was no big stretch for me to look for my fellow avatars’ expressions of interest in life after death in Second Life. When I have the time (lots of that lately since I was laid off in May), I make like Kolchak:The Night Stalker and on the basis of keywords like death, after life, reincarnation, I teleport to various destinations. I found the ‘Death By Design’ exhibition in Zarflabbo that way, and made the acquaintance of its creator, VirLucis Hush.

This past week I stumbled upon a sim called AfterLife. After a few [ironic?] attempts to land there, I succeeded. AfterLife is a well-made interpretation of ancient Egypt, of perhaps how ancient Egyptians would picture their after life, with many-columned, colorfully decorated buildings, statues of Isis and Bast, Nile river barges, mysterious trap doors, and even an underwater temple. I was completely alone there, and took that opportunity to explore it’s nooks and crannies.

I was very impressed by the beauty of the AfterLife sim. It is obviously built with care and concern for design and detail. I was all alone there, so I realized it was a ‘work in progress’. As I sat in one of the temples enjoying the solitude, what I thought was a sign caught my attention. As the ‘sign’ came into full rez for me, I saw it was a vendor for women’s clothing, a decidedly un-Egyptian outfit, at that. It then occurred to me that this AfterLife might have a purpose other than to be a place one would visit in a lucid dream. It’s a shopping mall!

Needless to say, I was stunned, if not a little disappointed. In restrospect, I should have seen it coming. I knew the sim to the north of AfterLife was a large commercial venue, and the owner of that sim also owns AfterLife. Rattled at my naiveté, I wandered over to the retail sim. There I purchased an ancient Egyptian princess costume and lots of matching jewelry. After all, I want to be ready for my AfterLife.

The Dawn of Two New Virtual Chat Worlds

Just in case you were getting bored with SL, two new virtual worlds appeared on the Internets this week (July 7, 2008).

By Victoria Wheeler

LIVELY UP URSELF
Google premiered Lively (http://www.lively.com), an online chat application, where the user, disguised as an avatar, can participate in text conversations with other members in a virtual world. What a novel idea! Lively is administered by Google’s R&D venture, the imaginatively named, “Google Labs”.

Lively requires Windows Vista/XP with Internet Explorer or Firefox, it’s not [yet?] available for Mac or Linux. Being a Mac user, I have thus not been able to demo Lively.

While it’s not clear if their target audience is children (Lively was ‘field tested’ by students at the University of Arizona for several months, perhaps some of them were minors), Lively intends to reel you in by offering a line-up of intentionally cartoonish avatars.

Lively avatars are less realistic than SL’s general issue avi’s. Some are bug-eyed anime-ish, others remind one of Looney Tunes characters, and some are downright scary (think Nightmare Before Christmas and Tyrannosaurus Rex) – if you’re three years old.

Chat world marketing execs apparently believe that cuteness is a highly desirable avatar trait. No one told me that when I bought my Scarlett Johannsen SL shape. Perhaps that’s ‘cuteness’ of a different order, and I won’t even mention those cute Furrries, who, as everyone knows, take themselves very seriously. IANK.

Some lively, er, avatars

A feature that Lively offers is the ability for users to create chat rooms for up to 20 of their fellow Lively members, which can be linked to from any web page. This is handy if you have a blog, Facebook, myspace, personal or a special interest site. These custom chat rooms can have their own ‘environments’ (sorry, I can’t be more informative about that), with streamed-in videos from YouTube, and static images from Picasa (two other Google enterprises).

VIVATY IS IN UR FACEBOOK, SELLIN’ U STUFF
The second, similarly named chat app offering on Monday was Vivaty (http://www.vivaty.com), designed for use with Facebook and AOL Instant Messenger (aka AIM). I’ve also only read about Vivaty, since it’s also only available for Windows Vista/XP. Although I’m a Mac user, I’m not anxious to try it, largely because of Vivaty’s plans to foist in-world product placement on its users. For instance, Facebook Vivaty-ites can decorate their virtual dorm room with ‘real’ furniture from the aptly named Target. SL has some product placement, but at least you can avoid it.

Vivaty will also be linkable from your favorite web page. I hope they get a catchier, more pronouncable name, though (Viv-a-tee? Vye-vah-ee? Vie-vat-tee? I give up).

At least Vivaty has better avatars than Lively. On second thought, they’re sorta nerdy looking, in a homogenized, zombie kind of way, but that may just be my brain dead perspective.

Reanimated human corpses of the Caucasian kind are yours for the asking on Vivaty.

These two brave new chat realms promise to give SL and other existing virtual worlds a run for your money. They’ll be easily accessible from already popular venues, they’re commercially viable and marketably cute. Plus, with such active sounding names, they’re bound to be big hits with the young, hip, high-energy crowd. Join them, join them!

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In other virtual world news, IBM and Linden Labs have successfully teleported an avatar between virtual worlds – from Second Life to IBM’s OpenSim (see: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/). I guess the Lindens won’t be fixing my inability to teleport between sims now that they’re playing with the big boys. It is heartening to know your avatar does not have to die in order to visit the next virtual world, although there’s no question of what it will want to eat after it’s been there a while…
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Contact Victoria Wheeler in SL for a free tin foil hat. It just may save your avatar’s life.

SL THRU THE WEB IS HERE!

By Victoria Wheeler

Yah, BIG HEADS UP – There is now a way to get into SL via a web browser. It’s not a full SL client, but it’s good enough for you to have an IM or Chat convo with a friend or two, and do some minor Inventory ‘maintenance’.

You get there via http://ajaxlife.net  which switches to an IP address, so don’t panic. Then just log in as you usually would with a SL client. All you’ll see is one screen. Here’s what the main screen looks like, note the disclaimer:

The Ajaxlife login page

You log into your last location (and see those coordinates) or one you can specify, and you’ll get the ‘Message of the Day’ from the Lindens. You can see the Map and although Teleport is shown as an option, it did not work for me even after several attempts.

Ajaxlife SL Map, with standard background image shown behind it.

Other limitations include not being able to move or see your avatar, you also can’t see other avatars, either. But hey, you’re there, and others logged in ‘normally’ can see you and IM you. 

You can see which of your friends are online, and be notified as they come and go. You can see the names of all avatars on the sim on which you are located. Oh, and your Friends and other avatars can see you, too. You’re ‘live’ and online in SL with Ajaxlife.

Click the Inventory tab and see, Wear and remove individual items and Textures – a right-click on an Inventory item will get you Properties, Delete and Rename, and change some permissions. You can create, edit and pass Notecards, too.

You also can see how many Lindens you’re carrying.

You can Search, but only for People. When you open an av’s Profile by double-clicking on its boldfaced name, you only see their 2nd and 1st Life tabs, but you get their pictures, and you can Pay, Offer Teleport. There is an Instant Message button that’s not supposed to work, but “Drop Inventory Here” definitely works.

There’s a Stats window but I doubt if the casual user will have much use for it, I sure don’t.

This web interface can be a little bit slow, but that it exists at all is worth the minor wait. 

Here’s the blurb from the Ajax info site located at: 

Ajaxlife Second Life Your Web Browser

Katharine Berry, a student in the UK, has created an in-browser AJAX application that allows you to log into the virtual world of Second Life, but without all of the laggy graphics. This is a great way to pop in-world for a moment if you just want to chat with other residents, and as far as anybody else will be able to tell your avatar will look just fine (although mostly immobile).

<They say the following, too, but I found the reverse is true (you can intiate IMs, but can’t Teleport)>

While you can’t yet initiate new IM sessions or use the Search functions (these are coming), you can reply to any incoming IMs and participate in local chat wherever your avatar happens to be. You can also teleport your avatar to other locations via an on-screen map, although once there you can’t really walk around.

The interface is really simple, really fast, and works in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and newer versions of Safari.

All in all, I think this is a very cool application, and if it’s to be considered a work in progress, even at this stage, it’s worth using. Two thumbs up (that’s all the thumbs I have).

Our gratitude to Tenshi Vielle for informing us about Ajaxlife.