Literature Alive! (disclosure: I am an owner of this group and have been involved in these developments) is running two events over the next few days.

On Saturday at 8am SL Time students from De Sales University will be judged on their material for the "Literature of the Progressive Era" display in a funfair on land contributed by Finger Lakes Community College. From tomorrow you can judge which of the elements you find meets the criteria best - you are not judging the build (most of it is bought from in-world or created by people other than the students), but the content in terms of how well it teaches you about the era in question - a era of significant social change. You have the chance to vote for the best group, who will win a RL cash prize and leave feedback for the groups via an anonymous web-form.

Literature Alive! has also converted the British Gothic Literature classroom into a haunted house, with some help (and extra prims for a while) from out hostess, the Alliance Library, on Eduisland 3. As well as giving you the chance to learn more about gothic literature and the British authors, there is a hidden red cauldron. Find this to win a small L$ prize. There are other games and activites too, and no commercial activity, just fun for Halloween.

You may remember Harvard Law School's extrusion into Second Life, via the Harvard Extension Program, particularly the Evidence at Large subject on trial advocacy and evidence that took place in January this year, exploring the Bragg vs Linden Lab case. It was certainly one of the more interesting and fascinating things I've seen and done in Second Life so far.

Tomorrow (Wednesday), at 4PM SLT (US Pacific), there will be a second mock trial. This one will be exploring the case/charges against Paul Addis - the man who allegedly set fire to the Burning Man ahead of time. Second Life users are invited to attend and observe, or to serve on the jury. If you're interested, get on down to Harvard's Berkman Island with a little time to spare.

Incidentally, if you haven't looked at this course (lectures and office hours are open to at-large participants - no fees and no enrollment) you really should take a good look at what they've got going on. It really is a treat.

(Thanks to Madison Kotobide for the heads-up)

A Virtual Museum Tries out the Real World

The International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), a non-profit, volunteer-run educational facility in the virtual realm of Second Life, takes its exhibit sponsorship auctions to eBay to attract the attention of more real-world bidders. The sponsorships for full-scale models of two lunar vehicles are up for auction -- the "Apollo Lunar Module" (built by Lora Chadbourne) and the unflown Russian "Lunniy Korabl" (built by Helori Pascal). The auctions will run from October 1 to October 21, and sponsorships will begin on November 1, 2007 and end on January 31, 2008. Winning sponsors will have their names prominently displayed on the exhibit's display signage. They may also elect to have a logo displayed for an additional fee.

Kat Lemieux (SL name, Katherine W. Prawl in real life) is co-founder of the museum and CEO of the nonprofit ISM Corporation. She said, "The exhibit sponsorship auctions allow us to give individuals as well as organizations the opportunity to support the museum, and get some recognition for their contributions at the same time. We are very interested in seeing whether eBay auctions are a viable approach, since this might permit us to reach a much larger donor pool than only holding silent auctions within Second Life."

"I'm curious to see how this sponsorship auction turns out," Troy McLuhan (Troy McConaghy in real life), Vice President of the ISM, added. "Like many things we've done at the museum, it's an experiment."

The museum is the principal activity of the ISM Corporation, a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Kansas, USA. The ISM hopes to raise enough money to cover the monthly usage fees owed to Linden Labs for the maintenance of virtual land, and contribute to the corporation's operating costs.

Sunbelt Software (a data and network security firm that handles everything from the end-user to the enterprise) has an island in Second Life. You may not have heard a ton about them, other than seeing a few folks wandering around with the Sunbelter last name, courtesy of their registration/orientation system - but they've been working hard on their Second Life presence for some months, catering primarily to their own community.

We got word today that they're starting up a series of Seminars on Sunbelt Software Island, targeting end users and home-office users. How people try to get at your stuff, and the security tips you need to prevent them, titled "How to keep the bad guys out of your PC". Each seminar series will be four sessions. The first session will be in the Sunbelt Auditorium on August 21 at 6PM SLT (US Pacific) - that's tonight - or repeated on August 25 at 6AM SLT.

The full announcement is here, on Sunbelter Software's blog. [Note: The seminars are in text, not voice]

If you've ever had to post transcripts and share information from a meeting/event, you know how much pain it is to come up with a structure that is still readable later. I usually end up spending hours concatenating sentences to make chat less shattered by random interjections. Well, no more pain!

I was extremely happy to see the new, little tool from Kisa Naumova - Chatlogs. Not only does it render your boring text-only transcript in colors, but it also has a neat graphical way of indicating speakers by pulling their SL profile picture into the web document. In addition, it allows you to use the Leeds Metropolitan University server to deposit your logs and tag them appropriately. This has the potential of creating a neat repository of open knowledge from all sorts of events.

(more after the break)

Now, some downsides:

1. It does occasionally take a long time for your chat to load. Even the one where I interviewed Kisa and only the two of us were present took about 3 minutes to come up.

2. Your profile pic may or may not be found. Mine wasn't initially, although I do have one in SL. Kisa was kind enough to do some back magic to help the system along.
   
   

3. You cannot edit your post once it's up. You can, however, bother Kisa and she will perform the edit for me until chatlogs gets an upgrade. Naturally, this approach doesn't quite scale.

Kisa plans on improving the current service and she appreciates your feedback. Another future direction being considered is a way for people not in SL to parse the chat taking place at an inworld event while it's happening.

While raw transcripts are not a replacement for those where a human being edits out the irrelevant content, this rendition at least makes them easier to consume. As far as I'm concerned, I plan on posting full interview transcripts connected to my posts on the Chatlog page from now on, in addition to my version of the story on SL Insider. Right now, here's the full conversation I just had with Kisa.

• Studio Sessions - self-paced, hands-on studio sessions in machinima, fashion, sculpture/modeling, and virtual photography with access to expert instructors;
• Breakout Sessions - highly interactive 90-minute sessions on topics like basic and advanced building concepts, avatar design, scripting, machinima, photography, creative teaching techniques, and more;
• Featured Sessions - keynotes, panel discussions, tours;
• Learning Exposition - a showcase of easy-to-learn techniques, links to educational sites, and video learning;
• Parade of Sims - a set of tours led by the people who built and created some of the most sophisticated islands in Second Life;
• Social and Arts Events - a special series of exhibitions and performances, including DanCoyote and his talented ZeroG dancers