Wk 3 chat on Immersive Worlds

Some interesting sites in Second Life include these:

http://slrul.com/secondlife/Cisco%20systems%202/121/144/24(Cisco)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/NBC@201/145/123/43(NBC headquarters)

I didn't know that many companies are already using Second Life - for selling virtual equivalents of real life products, selling real world products through virtual stores, using the platform for prototyping,R&D and other kinds of collaboration, to holding meetings, and conferences virtually.

In addition, you can do a private chat if necessary with someone on SL, but you can't do that in a video conference. Managers can meet in certain rooms to discuss sensitive stuff too, and access could be restricted to some people.. In a video conference, you cannot "travel" to websites together, or work on prototypes together but SL allows one to do that. Hm.... apparently, only of the affordances of VW is the level of immersion that participants experience. You can also do streaming audio and video in SL, show Powerpoint slides and use collaborative document editing tools.

Some others things I learnt :

Griefing - that's an activity that causes someone else grief. Avatars cannot get killed but thre are other kinds of griefing including harassment, throwing obsence pictures,etc. Even financial scams.. Perpetuators can be punished by temporary or permanent bans. The abuser can be reported to Linden Lab by going to the Help > Report Abuse menu

Rez - second life term which means "come into being" or "come into focus". Quite often if the words on signboards in Second Life appear blurry because chances are the sign texture has not finished downloading into the computer yet. So, a little patience does it!

Local chat vs IM window:

The IM window allows everyone to communicate with each other in the group no matter where our avatars are in SL. The local chat is only visible to avatars who are standing nearby (20 virtual meters)

Some technical bits:

1. To teleport to home location, World > teleport home menu

2. To do a private chat, right click on another avatar, and select "Send IM" from the pie menu.

3. World > Create Landmark menu (find landmark in inventory)

4. To find a friend and teleport him/her right next to you, click on the Communication tab at the bottom of screen, highlight the required name and choose teleport.

5. To offer someone the gift of friendship, just click on their avatars.

6. To find your friends online in SL, click on the Edit tab right on top, Search, people, Find XXXX and then ofer teleport.


I am looking forward to learning more about how virtual worlds are used in business. It would be nice to attend a virtual seminar on SL too.