Bee Boy — Mon, 11/14/05 6:44pm

I've only scratched the surface of Second Life (which, for the uninitiated, is a sort of online "virtual Earth" in which you can own property, buy and sell goods, customize your avatar, and walk around talking to others). It seems like the modeling is very simple – you can build whatever you want out of the shapes they give you, but you can upload customized textures, so theoretically a texture map designed in Maya could be imported into Second Life. (My introduction to Second Life was through an interview with a woman who designs and sells virtual clothes in exchange for virtual money which she can then convert into real dollars. So I have a more developed sense of that process than anything else.)

In terms of thoughts and comments, my brief experimentation within Second Life quickly made it clear that it wasn't for me. You could make your avatar into a hot chick and quickly get her naked (a plus), but it was hard to find people to interact with, and hard to see what I'd really get out of it if I did. I'm sure it's somewhat better with a paid membership (and more time devoted to it), but my chatroom days are mostly behind me, and this just seems like a 3D extension of that.