Those who can't do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most fervent journalistic promoters, like Reuters and Wired. It's now pitching itself as an online schoolhouse.

Google has shut down Lively, a service where people log on to chat and explore 3D virtual spaces, after a few short months. The MBAs of Silicon Valley have a pat phrase for the arrival of a competitor on the scene: They say it "validates their space." What does it say, then, that Lively is gone? It means that Second…

A boilerplate statement from Linden Lab confirms yesterday's rumor: "We've had to make some hard decisions about resources and as a result we eliminated four positions out of our headcount of nearly 300." That's not as bad as the "9 or 10" we'd been told were cut. In a statement sent to Silicon Alley Insider, Linden…

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Does Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek have trouble with basic numberwork? At MIT's EmTech conference, she asked the audience how many people had "avatars" — digital characters for virtual worlds like Linden Lab's Second Life. From what I saw, half a dozen people out of some 300 attendees raised their…

Chadrick, Chadrick, Chadrick. Most of all, we loved saying his name. Chadrick Baker, the virtual-worlds enthusiast Valleywag plucked from obscurity to be our mascot, has been fired from his day job. We think. He should have known better than to bite the digitally furry hand that feeds him. After Chadwick called a…

With support for Mac users, a new Facebook widget and an instant messaging application, There.com is hoping to breathe some life into its 3D virtual world which has gone largely unnoticed for years since its launch in 2003. If publicity could support a business model, Second Life might not be the largely empty…

Virtual worlds are endlessly mutable. As are the wildly implausible schemes their boosters concoct for making money off them. The latest idea Linden Lab has for Second Life: Profit, in some vague, unspecified way, from the world's free 3D design tools. The perpetually gullible BusinessWeek bought this story,…

A 52-year old man from Claymont, DE was surprised in his home by a taser-wielding Kimberly Jernigan, whom he had dumped months before shortly after they first meet in an attempt to flesh out a Second Life love affair. Jernigan fled, leaving her dog Gogi gagged with duct tape in the bathroom, but was arrested shortly…

Lively, Google's entry into the 3D-avatar chat market, has been neutered before its time, writes the Economist. But in the midst of the starchy business newspaper's tour of the service, its editors hit on the solution: "Although some popular rooms—“Love Sweet Love” and “Sexy Babes Club”—have had thousands of…

Like every other brand seemingly desperate to court the dressing-up-as-animals-to-have-sex market, the Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns have purchased lots in Second Life. The virtual world's few active users aren't bothering to visit. Which is probably a blessing, because the best chance for the projects to…

Has Second Life, the weird, clunky virtual world, ever been good for anything except strange computer sex and time-wasting? For about a year there, you couldn't pick up a magazine without seeing 2L touted as the next big thing for business. For business! Yes, why wouldn't an imaginary land packed with flying monsters…

Lively, the latest experiment from Google Labs, is yet another part of cyberspace where the Mountain View search company has decided that exploring sexuality is officially verboten. The 3D virtual world is Web-friendly, but sex-hostile. The no-sex-please-we're-Googlers policy began with Web search, where, by…

Further confirmation that if you build a virtual world like Google's new Lively, it will be instantly populated by anthropomorphised animal avatars — also known as furries. In the future, all cats will be bipedal and wear pirate outfits with cowboy hats. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new…

Second Life, the 3D virtual world favored by furries and the digital departments of ad agencies desperate to convince clients how cutting-edge they are, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. In that time, little has changed — the same poorly-rendered polygons and textures move through the same largely…

Mark Kirk, the Illinois Congressman who wants Second Life banned from schools and libraries, has more than a passing familiarity with virtual reality, illusion, and the construction of self. In 2000, Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison, then known as Julia Baugher, worked for Kirk, a family friend, as a…