A new group recently appeared on YouTube in order to promote and showcase artwork in SL.

The group description states: “Art and culture are thriving in Second Life. Much of the time a simple photo isn’t enough to capture the kinetic and performance elements of this virtual art.”

This group is an excellent opportunity to present much of the incredible work in Second Life, which is mostly not seen or simply not captured by the still imagery that makes up much of the collective view of Second Life. This group will hopefully give people a new window into SL.

Check out the group by clicking here.

After weeks of voice testing on the Beta Gird, Linden Labs announced today that Voice is Live on the main grid. The voice client is going to revolutionize the way avatars interact with each other in Second Life — yet another component of Second Life which is blurring the lines between reality and virtual reality.

[IMG of the voice client found in the lower right hand corner of SL applet]

As quoted from the Second Life’s blog, they present a few key points regarding the voice client:

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Voice is an optional feature. Though Voice is part of the main viewer now, it is turned off by default. You must explicitly choose to enable voice in order to use it, and can turn it on and off as you wish. Voice can be enabled and disabled in Edit > Preferences > Voice Chat. A voice set-up wizard will also appear once, during “first use” or “first Resident login to a voice viewer.” You can use it to set-up voice if you wish.

Voice is available everywhere. Please note that voice is available throughout Second Life, and all regions have been enabled. Estate owners can disable voice on their estates if they choose.

Voice is controlled by you. Parcel owners can control how voice is used on their parcel via the “About Land” dialog. Also, individual Residents may be muted via the Active Speakers window or by right-clicking on their avatar. Read more in the Voice FAQ:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Voice_FAQ

Voice is open source. For anyone interested in contributing to open source voice development, we have released the tarball for voice here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Source_downloads#ver_1.18.1.2

Voice is hosted on separate servers. Many Residents have expressed concern and confusion as to why voice would be released when Second Life periodically has performance issues. Voice is intentionally designed to run on systems completely independent from Second Life as not to impair performance.

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What’s next for the first look viewer? It seems that Linden labs will be releasing a client with new atmospheric rendering, but more on that later.

Chronos Laval

Wheelies is the first disability themed nightclub within Second Life, located on Second Ability Island.

[Photo of Simon’s Avatar at Wheelies]

The nightclub is owned and operated by Simon Walsh, a disability consultant, trainer and researcher. As quoted from his blog, he states that he has two ventures in SL: “The first is Wheelies, a virtual disability themed nightclub [and the] second is Stevens Centre which is a training centre which is still in the development stage.”

Newsweek ran a video on Wheelies and Second Life last week; Click here to see it. While Newsweek’s video is informative it is also quiet fascinating.

Second Life builds, such as Wheelies, where RL convalescent communities are able to thrive despite their conditions is a growing phenomena in Second Life. A variety of builds from both an educational as well as user oriented perspective are on the rise. Check back soon for SLing’s post on Health in Second Life.

Chronos Laval

Welcome to SLing; the Combinedstory Blog!

This blog will cover news related to Second Life and Virtual Worlds. Check back often for our aggregation of information as well as our opinion on what’s happening in this domain.

Happy Reading!

Chronos Laval