(Yes, I am starting to use my blog as whore for someone else’s PR.)
Dear Solution Providers,
Today we announced the Second Life Brand Center, featuring our new inSL Logo Program and Guidelines for Using Linden Lab’s Trademarks. We invite you to check out the Brand Center at http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand.
The inSL Logo Program offers a new community logo that you can display with your company names, product or service names, and brand names to show their association with the Second Life world. By using the inSL logo, you can make sure customers know that your business is involved in the Second Life world. For more on the inSL Logo Program, visit http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/insl.
The Brand Center also provides guidelines on proper use of Linden Lab’s trademarks, including the brand names “Second Life,” “SL,” and “Linden” as well as the Eye-in-Hand logo. Visit http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/trademark. Recognizing the importance of Residents’ contributions, Linden Lab has allowed certain uses of the words “SL” or “inSL” with your company names, product or service names, and Internet domain names to show their association with the Second Life world. For the details of this special permission, check out the License To Use SL or inSL at http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/trademark/sl_insl.php.
The Trademark Guidelines give lots of specific examples of the allowed uses of Linden Lab’s trademarks, those uses which require Linden Lab’s written permission, and the proper way to refer to Linden Lab’s products and services in text. Following these Guidelines is important to ensure that others aren’t misled or confused about the products or services that Linden Lab stands behind. For example, you must not use the “Second Life” brand name or Eye-in-Hand logo in your own branding because that’s likely to create confusion about your relationship with Linden Lab. However, it is OK to simply state in plain text that your business “is listed in the Second Life Grid Solution Provider Directory,” as long as you don’t imply any endorsement by or relationship with Linden Lab.
Please review the Trademark Guidelines carefully. If after reading them, you realize that you’re using a Linden Lab trademark in a way that’s not allowed, please use the next 90 days to change your use to comply with the Guidelines. For more about this, see our FAQs at http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/faqs.php. If after reading the FAQs, you still have questions, please feel free to send us email at sldevelopers@lists.lindenlab.com.
In the upcoming months, we plan to include in the Second Life Brand Center a new logo licensing program for certain participants in the Solution Provider Program. We’re still working out the details, but look for exciting things to come from the Brand Center.
Glenn & Madhavi for the Solution Provider Program team
Politics, ownership, and rights… I think Cory was right in saying there’s something wrong with saying credit and digital rights are fully supported in a global virtual world where people can freely take photos of your creation and claim credit for the photo (and indirectly and sometimes directly) for your 3d piece.
In other news, I can seriously see WW3 happening because of virtual world “digital millennia” disputes. I mean, drama can only come from only so few things. It’s always the same story, essentially. And it’s all so proverbial… it goes straight to family life and custody of a child which both parents “created.” When you have international collaboration done informally, everyone can essentially claim credit. Those with big guns would want to assert dominance. And since many people have big guns, a whole bunch of people would bring in their guns to fight. Voila — WW3!
(Don’t comment — comments are closed on this blog. Posting it now with vague hopes of becoming a historical prophet… or to brag to obscure people about obscure matters from antidiluvian days… assuming I survive ww3!)
The SL Shakespeare Company’s Miniproduction #1 is *finally* over after the press-only show earlier today! LOL, for the first time in a looong time, I got to take a break to check out the various other live events on SL. Fun!
And in other news, I really have to start finishing Skin City and Shakespeare. Hmm, so why am I not hiring out? Well, I bought 4 sims… and now I’m broke… and not just that, I almoooost forgot how much I love building!
Come one, come all! Here’s a schedule of some of the Linden-hosted events held during the Concierge Party. There will be five islands available for meeting, greetings, and hanging out. All times are SLT (or Pacific Daylight Time).
00:00 ~ 01:00 Big Game Hunting With Leo
01:00 ~ 02:00 Maggie’s Global Dance Party
02:00 ~ 03:00 Crazy Chariot Races With Kosmo
03:00 ~ 04:00 Host Ask the Oracle With Kyle
04:00 ~ 05:00 Crazy Chariot Races With Kosmo
05:00 ~ 06:00 Primtionary With Guy
06:00 ~ 07:00 Hosted by Harmony & Jay
07:00 ~ 08:00 Hosted by TJ
08:00 ~ 09:00 Let’s Make A Dee(l) — part 1 of 2
09:00 ~ 10:00 Spike & Izzy’s 80s Bash
10:00 ~ 11:00 Spike & Izzy’s 80s Bash
11:00 ~ 12:00 House Party with ethan 
12:00 ~ 13:00 House Party with ethan
13:00 ~ 14:00 Host Ask the Oracle With Kyle
14:00 ~ 15:00 Host Ask the Oracle With MJ
15:00 ~ 16:00 Maggie’s Global Dance Party
16:00 ~ 17:00 Let’s Make A Dee(l) — part 2 of 2
17:00 ~ 18:00 Jump, Jive and Wail With Belinda
18:00 ~ 19:00 Jump, Jive and Wail With Belinda
19:00 ~ 20:00 Hosted by Rowan
20:00 ~ 21:00 Primtionary With Guy
21:00 ~ 22:00 Hosted by Rowan
22:00 ~ 23:00 Big Game Hunting With Leo
23:00 ~ 23:59 Big Game Hunting With Leo
Leo is actually Leo the Lion. So Cute!
I am signing off to cry.. and maybe to sleep.
What can I do? I’m just a girl.
INTERESTING!!!
Association of Virtual Worlds Names August 20 First Annual Virtual Worlds Day
Jacksonville, FL. (PRWEB) March 11, 2008 — The new AssociationOfVirtualWorlds.com in recognition of the rapid emergence of virtual worlds has named August 20 the first annual Virtual Worlds Day and applied to Chase’s Calendar of Events for inclusion.
“How better to recognize virtual worlds than to give them their own day? People everywhere work and play inside of virtual worlds and the number of users is growing dramatically. Whether you enjoy on-line games or simulating real life events for training or connecting with colleagues around the globe inside a virtual workspace, this day is for you,” says Dave Elchoness, Executive Director.
“I am very excited that the Association of Virtual Worlds is, to the best of my knowledge, the first to not only identify the need for such a day of recognition and celebration for what is rapidly becoming the future of the Web, but to take action and apply to have this very special day included in such a respected source as Chase’s.”
Chase’s Calendar of Events owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies has become one of the most comprehensive and authoritative reference available on special events and holidays and is a trusted reference source for thousands of libraries across the country, broadcast and print media, speakers, meeting planners and more according to a description of the company.
The Association of Virtual Words is a global industry association for the rapidly growing virtual worlds industry. It serves as a resource for those wishing to experiment and explore virtual worlds for work or play. The Association’s mission is to educate, network, recruit, and further the membership’s collective goals.
Live theatre is — by nature — temporal. Although it’s guided by the playscript, as implemented in the director’s vision, what goes on during showtime is quite often spontaneous, and in some cases filled with so many surprises of serendipity or misfortune that nothing appears like anything the director had in mind. But, the magic of it all is that even if the theatre burns down or if a backdrop collapses on an actor’s back… everything always ends up “right”… from one POV at least!
Virtual theatre in a MMOG is all that — and more. You have the advantage of a potentially infinite and globally unrestricted theatre, but technical issues on serverside, clientside, and yourside make the combination something of a blender jumble.
In a virtual theatre set in a platform like Second Life — which, because of its general nature and free-range customization appeal, suffers from significant performance issues when more than two dozen avatars are in the same locality — issues such as sim crashes, viewer crashes, ruthing (when an avatar’s appearance reverts to the default avatar), attachments being misplaced, textures not loading, prims not loading, local lighting being too local, collisions going berserk, and lag… often occur!
Although my test system should be more than sufficient to view Second Life, the actors all appear horribly ruthed for every single performance (even the ones where we didn’t pack the house). I can only imagine that the audience might end up suffering a different or worse POV due to system differences — but, then again, our strategy thus far has been to keep publicity inworld… such that those who visit are well aware of the quirks of Second Life, and would understand that it’s the platform collapsing as we all attempt to gather there at one point.
In a Second Life theatre set in the intersection of four-sims (currently, that is the only way to hold a large event on one location, as each sim is limited to 100 avatars), there are also problems with simcrossings. For a round theatre like the Globe, audience members may get “eaten by prims” as they cross sim borders, due to physics oddity. This bug should really *not* be an issue, as a virtual world whose “safe lands” to walk on spans only 256×256m2 … is a small world indeed! (Please vote here.)
The SL Globe Theatre is set on the intersection of sLiterary, Primtings, Skin City, and Shakespeare, and is home to the SL Shakespeare Company. It has an entire sim dedicated to the stage (and VIP audience members), and thus has an audience capacity of up to 300, supporting up to 400 local avatars.
Now, when a sim crashes, it basically looks like 1/4 of the Globe is gone. And it’s not always obvious that that’s what happened. You’d think it’s because your viewer spontaneously derezzed the view further than a certain viewdistance, but when you see ocean instead of land — the vast emptiness of an area once teeming with green map dots on the minimap makes it evident that the region has crashed.
Time is an interesting complication to get straight and universal for a medium accessible to an international audience. Daylight Savings Time, especially, becomes confusing when different regions of the world observe it differently or not at all! We had scheduled 10 runs starting on “SLSC Thursday,” but skipped Wednesday (assuming it might be downtime Wednesday), but I’d forgotten that the 10th and closing show occurred on DST… until the day of the show.
Second Life Time is actually PST or PDT, when DST is observed. But, those across the pond apparently don’t observe DST until more than two weeks after California switches over. Interestingly, we had a crowd arrive at both the 3 PM PDT and the 3 PM PST. We thus ended up doing an “encore finale” at 4 PM PDT (the old 3 PM PST), where we had the voice director do a speaking cameo for Francisco, after spontaneously upgrading the old Francisco to Horatio (who could not make it to the 4 PM). We also had a missing Francisco for the 3 PM, and had the Ghost voice out the role of a visual truant Francisco.
Chaos? No, but there does exist method in the madness… The only sane way to accept it all is to keep an open mind — and to take it all… passively, as accepting of everything as you can.
And, of course, we didn’t get to sign a restrictive license from DPS where we aren’t allowed to deviate from script. The advantage of performing a play written by a guy who’s so set for posterity there are (literally!) busts of him ubiquitous… and especially when we’re not certain if the plays we have are accurate per se, and when we’re pretty sure his players improv’ed their way through… is that when all else fails… the play is free to become truly live… temporal and spontaneous as the spoken word.
In closing, I’d like to address the cynics who believe that this endeavor is in vain, both because of platform and nature of the medium. While I’m well aware that there are plenty of greenscreening technologies that interface, in real time, real actors with virtual sets, the beauty of having a theatre in a virtual world is that… the theatre is actually *in* a world. I think that distinguishes a play from something seen on a 2d screen — you can see it at various angles if you tilt your head a bit… or a much wider angle if you become restless and start pacing through the seats. And, when it’s over, you can continue to “live” in the virtual world knowing that you’ve just attended a major Shakespearean production… perhaps with your virtual family or with friends separated by great spans of space and time. Although you’d view it using a technological interface (and, perhaps, with your view limited by this interface), it’s immersive, and you’re a part of it.
(Cross posted at Hamlet Production Blog - Ina Centaur Blog doesn’t allow commenting, but feel free to comment on the other blog)
