The University of Texas system has added Second Life to the curriculum across all 16 of their campuses. The U of T is experimenting with using Second Life to find out how to lower the cost of undergraduate interactions between faculty and students. The initiative was funded by The Transforming Undergraduate Education Program at the U of T.

Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life made the announcement on their blog. The University of Texas has 9 university campuses and several medical and health campuses. The University will collect data on how Second Life is used by students and faculty.

The last time I recall Second Life being used by a college is when Bryant & Stratton hosted their commencement ceremony on the virtual world.

This year marks the first time that a graduation ceremony will be taking place on Linden Labs’ Second Life online virtual character software.  Second Life founder Philip Rosedale will even be the guest speaker at the Bryan & Stratton College commencement.

“These graduates are pioneers, overcoming life’s obstacles to pursue their educational goals through online education and start a new life,” stated Bryant & Stratton’s Director of Admissions Scott Traylor. “It is particularly fitting and gratifying that they celebrate their achievement with Philip Rosedale, the man who pioneered a whole new virtual world through Second Life.”

There are about 40 graduates that received online degrees at Bryant & Stratton.  On June 17th, there will also be an open house on Second Life for the event.

Lisa Best woke up one night to see her husband playing around on Second Life with another man, being gay in a virtual dungeon.  Second Life is web-based software where you can choose to represent an avatar in a virtual world.  Scott Adams, cartoonist behind Dilbert used Second Life to promote his new book by having other avatars beat his avatar up [video here].  John Best, Lisa’s husband is a van driver and was sitting besides her at 4AM when he was having the online gay affair.

“I saw John’s little person having it off with another man in a dungeon on the screen,” said 28 year old Lisa. “I just froze with my head on the pillow, silently watching what he was doing. I felt sick to my stomach.”  Lisa could not just sit around and ignore what her husband was doing next to her.

“After a few minutes, I could bear it no longer and sat up in bed demanding to know what the hell he was doing. He quickly folded the damn machine shut.  I went off the dial but John just brushed it away. He said it wasn’t real life so what was I doing my nut about?  I couldn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night wondering whether this meant he was betraying me or not—that he’d rather have gay sex on Second Life than have sex with me,” added Lisa.

I don’t blame Lisa for doing this, but she decided to log in to her husband’s laptop the next day while he was at work.  But she totally regretted doing so.  Her husband had been taking pictures and postcards of his avatar and e-mailing it to his gay online avatar buddy.

“There were shots of his character having gay sex and wandering round a nudist beach with a whip in his hand blindfolded.  There was another of him on a sun lounger with a woman and a man. It was sick. He called himself Troy Hammerthall and hung around at a place called the Bondage Ranch. I can’t believe it. He’s not Troy Hammerthall—he’s John Best, from Derby.”

John was told to leave the house when he got back from work.  After four years of marriage, Lisa decided to divorce John even though he claims he was just messing around.  “I was just messing about on there. I’m the world’s least gay man. There’s not a gay bone in my body,” John pleaded with his wife.  ““I just found it funny. I only went on for a laugh. I can’t believe it’s ended up destroying my marriage.”

What’s the moral of the story here, kids?  It doesn’t matter if you are on Second Life or playing The Sims, don’t get too addicted to avatar love-making.

Linden Lab, the parent company of Second Life is making a strategic move into the enterprise world by partnering with Rivers Run Red.  Rivers Run Red is a company based in London, England that styles a web version of Second Life to build 3D meetings.  Rivers Run Red also allows users to store multimedia, build news feeds, and hold 3D meetings external of Second Life.

While many customers want to run these meetings on their own servers, Linden Lab has built a custom version for IBM using Second Life.  As companies continue to cut costs in the tight economy, Second Life just might become a normal alternative for traveling across the world.

Rivers Run Red does not work exclusively with Linden Lab to provide virtual world offerings.  This past July, Rivers Run Red signed a deal with Google to build a custom 3D spaces for Lively.  Other Rivers Run Red clients include Adidas, BBC, Coca-Cola, Heineken, HarperCollins, The Guardian, Unilever, and Vodafone.

Rivers Run Red’s core services are Immersive Workspaces and Immersive Brandspaces.

Some good quotes from the clip:
Susan Tenby (mini-clip): “I’ve submitted my full statement to the committee to be part of the permanent record. And my avatar name is Glitteractica Cookie.”
Jon Stewart (responding to the mini-clip): “All this time I’ve wondered why I had to settle for GlitteracticaCookie-2. DAMN YOU, TENBY!! DAMN you!! But not only was this the first Congressional hearing held about virtual world, it was also the first one held in one. The simulcast live video of the event in a virtual Second Life hearing room. As you can see the distinguished company included a winged goth nympy, a business man with giant lizard hair, and the distinguished Congress woman hooker in a red cocktail dress (D) California.”

Information Source:
[1] ValleyWag: Jon Stewart mocks Congress for discussing Second Life by Jackson West

Philip Rosedale is the creator Second Life and is now the former CEO.  Rosendale will become their chairman of the Board, but will not be responsible for hiring the team to maintain Second Life’s scalability.  This will be the job of the new CEO.

“I bet this will be the most interesting job opening in the technology world,” wrote Rosendale on his blog.

Rosendale will be responsible for the product strategy and become an evangelist about Second Life.  There currently isn’t a timeline for when Second Life plans to bring in a full-time CEO.

On the blog post, one of the funniest comments I saw was by Bobo Decosta, who said “Does this mean anarchy brakes out until a new ruler steps up?”   It’d be funny to see all these virtual avatars start freaking out.  It probably wouldn’t look any different than when Scott Adams decided to make an appearance on Second Life.

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is makin’ moves online.  In August 2007, the Mickey Mouse and “It’s a small world” creators acquired Club Penguin, a kid-friendly social network for $350 million.  And now the company announced that they will be creating virtual worlds with online games.  As a matter of fact, they hired a team to focus on these specific jobs.  This new team will be part of the Walt Disney Internet Group and will be called Disney Online Studios.

Disney Online Studios will be managed by Steve Parkis.  Parkis studied at Michigan State and Northwestern and then started his career working at Kimberly-Clark.  AFter that, Parkis became a MD at Windhorst New Technologies.  Today Steve serves as the Vice President of Premium Products for Disney Online.

The new Disney Online Studios team will also include Disney Online’s Virtual Reality Studio, Toontown Online, and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.  Disney is also creating a virtual world where kids can control Disney Fairies and characters from the Disney film, Cars.  Club Penguin will continue to report to the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Disney is taking over the market-share for virtual worlds made for children, a market that Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, could have easily done.  Second Life had about 1.3 million users log in around March 2007 [clickz].  I’m not sure what the current number of users are.

[Information Source:  socalTECH]