Meet Jillianna Suisei, Jill’s avatar in Second Life. Listening to Jill Hurst-Wahl the other day talk about Second Life (SL) and give a tour of InfoIsland was great. I learned many things that I didn’t know. For instance, although there are 13 million residents who have avatars in SL there are only 93,000+ premium residents who can own land. There are many other virtual worlds that are directed to kids (webkinz, whyville), and software for virtual worlds , like Sloodle, a learning system for virtual worlds. Jill pointed to several videos about SL:
Introduction to SL (SusiSpicoli)
NOAA’s Virtual Island
Ohio University SL Campus
Okay, I’m fascinated by flowers as well as Google pics — must be because spring is very, very slow to come to my hometown this year…… Anyway, don’t you love the bunches of tulips in today’s first day of spring Google pic? Reminds me of seeing, last October, Google’s real garden on their campus in CA.
Going green is a real theme these days and I love Google’s contribution today for St. Patrick’s Day! I’m hoping that going green will also be a theme this year at conferences I’m involved with. Just think, less paper — bring on the USB’s instead of binders & books! Or maybe password protected websites like the Internet World conference had in the 90’s, yes eons ago in web time!
So much is going on with Second Life these days and if you want to know more about what is happening and why so many organizations are playing with it, then Jill Hurst Wahl’s web conference for the Education Institute on Tuesday March 18th is just for you. Entitled, Tour of InfoIsland, Second Life, this informative session by an experienced ”second lifer” will give you a great base to understand all the activities and excitement around Second Life. Jill is part of the Tech Tuesdays: Talking with Techies series hosted by the Education Institute. Sign up here.
This will definitely be an interesting year for search. Our favorite evangelist, Gary Price, has left Ask.com and Stephen Abram has speculated that by the end of 2008 there will be two major search engines. And here’s an interesing article about Microsoft opening the doors to it’s research labs and showcasing new search technology, specifically SearchTogether, SearchBar and CoSearch.
“… A prototype operating system for the computer science research environment, was made available … free of charge for non-commercial and academic use. The program is geared toward improving software dependability and specifications. Rick Rashid, senior vice-president of Microsoft Research, said, “It fosters innovative ideas on operating system structure and interconnection, and makes more guarantees on behaviour, and predictive and reliable systems.”
Yes, an intersting year, especially with search engine watcher, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, moving back to California where much of what happens in search engine land is visible. I hope Danny will come back to Internet Librarian, (October 20-22, Monterey CA) and once again give his briefing of what’s to come in “Search Engine Land”.