Web Worker Daily

As an active resident in Second Life as part of my Web work, I am fascinated by the exploration of virtual world environments as platforms for “wikitecture” which essentially is collaborative planning and design. The process is being tested by architects and urban planners, but for anyone building in 3-dimensional spaces, wikitecture could be the next wave of collaboration.

One of the companies exploring wikitecture is Studio Wikitecture, creator of an open-source, 3-D Wiki plug-in for Second Life in partnership with i3dnow that facilitates the creation of a “wiki-tree” to design objects such as building models.

In June, the company’s entry placed third in an international competition hosted by Architecture for Humanity on the Open Architecture Network. The company demonstrated their application by bringing together dozens of web workers from around the world to collaboratively design and build a 3-D model of a medical center in rural Nepal.

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Just read Mike Gunderloy’s post Times: Looks Aren’t Everything. One thing he said really stuck out for me…

Times is worth looking at, though, if you’re trying to gently introduce someone new to a few RSS feeds.

He’s talking about me, I thought, as I read that line. He knows my secret. And now you will know it, too.

I am terrified of RSS feed readers.

You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I have no problem saving feeds to my reader of choice - Google Reader - but have no idea how to get started with actually reading any of them. And using Google Reader is nothing more than a knee jerk choice based on using several other Google applications and finding them to be useful. But actually reading something in Google Reader?

(Cue the horror movie music - you know, the one that plays when the mutant serial killer is coming up behind the heroine.) Read the rest of this entry »

When people ask what I do, I usually say “I’m a writer.” But I do so much more than writing articles and posting content on blogs. Since I first got online in 1987, I’ve been using the Internet (or at that time, Bulletin Board Systems) for not only communications but for community building - for my own projects and for clients. Today, there are so many ways I’m building online communities and although the tools have changed over the years, the rules haven’t.

Here are some of my thoughts on rules of online communities:

1. You can’t own a community. A lot of people who start and build communities immediately assume ownership. They get lawyers to craft a Terms of Service that says that they own everything posted within a community. They set the rules in stone and police the community. While I understand why companies want to “protect their assets,” ultimately, online communities can be fickle and rebellious. They do not want to be owned. Trying to turn a community into a commodity is ultimately a recipe for failure. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a serial entrepreneur in a virtual world. How did a nice girl like me end up being such a geek? Was it because I read science fiction as a young girl while all my friends were reading romance novels? Did it happen when I played Space Invaders on a neighbor’s Atari? Was it because I watched Star Trek every day after school? I have no real answer for why my brain is wired the way it is, but it’s no wonder I love Second Life.

Part of my online work has migrated over into the virtual world Second Life. Yes, I said work, and no, Second Life is not a game. I actually run several businesses in SL as we residents call it, as Cybergrrl Oh, entrepreneur, producer and host. Some of the businesses in the virtual world are adjuncts to what I do in my First Life, others are completely unrelated and probably things I could never do in “real life.” However, when you’re a freelancer, you take the revenues wherever you can get it!

If you’ve ever wanted to know what a day in the life of a serial Second Life entrepreneur looks like, here’s your chance.

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