Steve’s Tech Journal

NYTime this morning ran a piece about SecondLife, joining the throng following a a number of high profile announcements I’ve seen in the last week (and no less than 5 slashdot articles):

• Sun held an in world press conference, and talked about how they plan to use the world as a platform for training and discussion with the Java community. Melissinos said Second Life isn’t a game. “It’s an amazing platform for global communications.”
• Reuters, CNET, and Wired have started reporting from Second Life and in the Wired case have created property and are offering a travel guide for visitors
• Intel has a campaign promoting the Centrino Duo
  
• Vivox has set up phone booths, so virtual world avatars can make phone calls to and from the Real World.
  
• And the others are really getting too much to mention. Sony is launching a major property. Adidas is selling virtual sneakers. American Apparel sells virtual versions of their latest clothing styles. Starwood Hotels is trying out new hotel designs. Martin has a scoop that Vodafone is launching something major.
  
• On the scary side, the US government is starting to notice, their first impulse being to state that all in world transactions could be subject to taxation and that they are “looking into the matter”
  

Dang, and this all in just the last week. It’s clear that Second Life has caught on and is “crossing the chasm”. Mostly I welcome this, in that I think SL is a virtual world that stands a fair bit of chance to do some good. And hey, maybe my property value will go up. But, inevitably with all the corporate interest the place will become a bit less quirky, which is part of it’s charm.

It also looks like, as usual, Jeff Pulver was prescient with his development of the Pulveria in world conference facility.

Technorati Tags: SecondLife, VirtualWorld, Wired, Vivox, Pulveria, Jeff Pulver