Second Life

I was actually a little excited about this assigment. I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I am not a gammer, I tend to be outdoors as much as possible; wakeboarding, biking, hiking, running etc. It really is not in my nature to sit behind a computer and play. I think playing should be outdoors. I had read about virtual worlds and never really had a desire to check them out. So with this assignment I was hoping to understand this "other world".

So my adventure began. Creating an account was easy and creating my avator was easy. I named my avator Trisha Hazelnut. Here is a picture of Trisha Hazelnut.

I was feeling pretty confident by this time. Getting on the first island was easy but that was the end of the easy part for me. It took me a long time to figure out how to move and fly. It took me a much longer time to figure out how to get to the different islands. The first couple of island I went to were very scary. I was not sure what was going on. It took me two days to figure out how to get to better islands.

The first island that I went to that I actually liked was Dive World. This island taught you about SCUBA diving. Since I am certified I was naturally interested. There was a lot of information about scuba diving. The graphics were interesting. You could do a different dives, purchase equipment, learn about the different levels of SCUBA. Below you will see a couple of screen shots from the island.

The second island I went to was IBM Green Data Center. It was very interesting. I found this site to be very user friendly. The poster along the sites had a lot of useful information.

I tried to talk to a couple of other avators in Second Life. I unfortunatley did not have any luck. There was someone who said hello to me and stated they would answer any of my questions when I was in the IBM Green island - however they did not speak with me after the one question.

I will probably never return to Second Life. After I was more comfortable in this "world", I could see how businesses and universities could benefit from this world. However, I like the real world better.