This is the 16th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I bumped into Olmia while I was doing some photography at the ABC Island sandbox tower. She was fun to talk to, and I was able to talk her into telling us a bit more about herself.

The Community Standards say: "Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M)." (My emphasis)

Robin Linden, on what is appropriate to be flagged as adult content which was still to be permitted in Second Life: "adult content is that which is overtly, graphically, or explicitly sexual in nature or intensely violent." (May 10)

Daniel Linden, on what is forbidden content: "Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life." (May 31)

In an email interview with Hamlet Au, Daniel Linden says: "There is no new policy in yesterday's blog posting-- our Community Standards have always prohibited broadly offensive behavior." (June 1)

Except that's not what they say, Daniel. What they do expressly prohibit is intolerance.

Tell me, gentle readers. Do you feel that Linden Lab has changed stance? Or do you agree with Daniel Linden that Linden Lab's position remains unchanged. If the latter, do you think Linden Lab's position was never adequately communicated in the first place?

South by Southwest, or SXSW for short, is rapidly approaching. Scheduled for March 9th-18th in Austin, Texas, it is an annual festival that celebrates music, movies, and web development. Attended by over 10,000 people from all over the world, it is a staple of Austin tourism. It is known for giving bands their big break and panelists major credibility.

Some of our very own Second Life residents will be speaking on panels there, including Spin Martin, Aren Mandala, Hamlet Au, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, Zero Grace, SnoopyBrown Zamboni, Reuben Tapioca/MillionsofUs, qDot Bunnyhug, Walker Spaight, RC Mars, and Jade Lily. The topics they are covering vary wildly, such as Your Video Blog Can Save the World, Terraforming the Internet: When 3d Models Meet Business Models, Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds, On the Edge of Independant User-Creation in Gamespace, Sex and Computational Technology, Web 2.0 to Web 3D, Gamers Games: Microcontent and User Creation, and American Cancer Society: Applying Technology for the Nonprofit Sector. Other residents rumored to be attending are Max Case, Jeremy Neumann, Glitchy Gumshoe, and myself.

There is a group in Second Life, appropriately named "SXSW'ers". If you are interested in attending and would like to hear about meetups, join that group. For now, I'm just askin' if you're going! Well ... are you?

For those of you living under a rock as far as Second Life news is concerned, there's a new media firestorm about Second Life: Resident numbers. The smoking gun starts a grass fire as journalists scramble to acquire credibility by jumping onto the bandwagon of questioning numbers. Everyone loves a good scandal.

This begs the real question, though. The media circus is obfuscating a more important issue with the numbers.

The debate rages. Clay Shirky, Wagner James Au and others going backwards and forwards about what all the numbers mean. Signups, active residents, paying accounts, free accounts, verified accounts, unverified accounts and alts.

And why all the big running around with numbers like one million? Two million? Are those arbitrary and essentially meaningless milestones, or do they actually have some particular meaning?

Yes. To both. That's not as confusing as it might seem, if you think it through a little ...

Aimee posted about this before, and it looks like it's that much closer to being a reality. Michael Rymaszewski, along with Wagner James Au (that's Hamlet Au to you), Mark Wallace, Catherine Winters, Cory Ondrejka, and Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham have written the Official Guide to SL. This is available on Amazon for $23.09, and the " ... CD includes special animations, character templates, and textures created by Linden Lab exclusively for this book. The disc also guides new users through the installation and includes a code that grants a special object the first time they enter the metaverse."

This is mighty intriguing ... special object? I'm dying to get my paws on a copy of this book, and I congratulate the authors on its completion, though I notice that its actual publication date seems to vary between websites that offer it for sale. Wiley.com ($34.99) offers a date of December 2006, and bookpool.com ($18.95) says November. Perhaps the printers are experiencing update issues?