The Second Life Experience

Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. A downloadable program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, (residents), to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, have virtual sex, and create and trade items and services from one another.


Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, this description does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. There are, however, several games within Second Life, e.g., international football (soccer) matches.

Approximately 13 million accounts have been registered, and some Residents have multiple accounts. Residents are the users of Second Life, and their appearance is their avatar (often abbreviated to av, avi or ava). The basic avatar is human in appearance, but may be of either gender, have a wide range of physical attributes, and may be clothed or otherwise customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms.

Moreover, Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden Dollars (L$). Residents regularly create new goods and services, and buy and sell them in the Second Life virtual world. There are also currency exchanges where Residents can exchange real world currencies for L$.

We will keep you updated with our experience in Second Life in a new post, as we discover more aspects of this ultimate virtual world.

Make Your Blog Popular!

Blogging is fairly mainstream these days, isn’t it? I mean your granny probably even knows what it is!! So if you’re thinking of starting a blog, or if you already have one and just want to increase your audience size, these tips are for you.

1. Have a point

This is the most important thing you can do. Too many people start blogs and try to turn it into an online diary. It’s like this – if you have a fantastically interesting life which is full of drama, you can become fantastically popular doing this. If you’re a regular person, however, you’re going tomake a bigger effort!

Which isn’t why you’re reading this – you want popularity. So have a point!! Make it interesting. Have something to say, and say it with passion. Look at that girl crying about Britney Spears on YouTube. She didn’t really have a lot to say, but she said it so dramatically, most of the world saw it. So if you’re not going to have a point worth sharing, at least make it worth laughing at - you just might end up with your own reality show, like her!(cool..!)

2. Blog-Hop

If you want an audience, you need to go get one. Find blogs related to the things you want to blog about(in our case, New Technologies), and then make friends. Don’t fake it – that becomes very obvious very quickly. Which is why I suggest you find blogs you LIKE, then it won’t be a chore commenting on them. Visit, chat, shoot the breeze. Leaving comments on other blogs will also get you visitors from those blogs, provided you’ve said something interesting and make them want to come see what else you have to say.

3. Talk to your readers!

This is a major mistake bloggers make. If someone takes the time to read your blog and leave comments, you can spare 5 seconds and at least say thank you. If I leave comments on your blog and you don’t at least acknowledge my existence, I would jump to another blog. But then, I’m a spolied little Princess and I enjoy attention!! All the same, make your readers feel like they matter to you – and really, they should matter to you, fans are very important! – and they will be more inclined to come back, and more inclined to tell their friends about you. All you have to do is leave a comment on your own blog in the comments section thanking them.

4. Link Love!

Trade links with people, this way their readers will see you on other blogs and come check you out. You can email people and ask them if they’d like to trade – be nice! The best way to ensure a yes, is to be approaching someone with similar content. Meaning, if you have a sex blog with Pornography, don’t expect a link trade with a Priest or nun!!!

5. Blog frequently

Don’t just blog once a week and expect people to check in every day. That’s not fair to them, and it will just make people think you can’t be bothered. Even if you have nothing worth saying, blog at least every other day if at all possible. You can always find something clever on YouTube to entertain your readers while you attend to whatever else you have going on.

6. Customize Your Blog Design

People are naturally attracted to eye-catching things. Have a cool looking blog and you’ve already come a long way without trying. I don’t care how nice your content is – if you’re blog is totally boring, I’m not going to want to visit. You don’t have to spend cash, there are plenty of people who make custom templates for free.

EXOSKELETON

The exoskeleton robot, serving as an assistive device, is worn by the human (orthotic) and functions as a human-amplifier. Its joints and links correspond to those of the human body, and its actuators share a portion of the external load with the operator.

Integrating human and robot into a single system offers remarkable opportunities for creating a new generation of assistive technology for both healthy and disabled people. Humans possess naturally developed algorithms for control of movement, but they are limited by their muscle strength. In addition, muscle weakness is the primary cause of disability for most people with neuromuscular diseases and injuries to the central nervous system. In contrast, robotic manipulators can perform tasks requiring large forces; however, their artificial control algorithms do not provide the flexibility to perform in a wide range of fuzzy conditions while preserving the same quality of performance as humans. It seems therefore that combining these two entities, the human and the robot, into one integrated system under the control of the human, may lead to a solution that will benefit from the advantages offered by each subsystem.

Alice Bot

Including the assignment of the course Media & New Technologies, we were introduced to Alice which is an Artificial Intelligence robot, then we were asked to chat with her, and test her ability to communicate with humans.
Being in a group of two, we, "Ronda and Robert", decided that we should chat individually with Alice. This helped us to conclude that sometimes this robot is a liar (or its an equivalence since this adjective refers to humans). When asking her about a topic, she replied with two separate answers, though we asked the same questions. What's funny about Alice is that she gets offended just like us. But of course she can forgive you easily and resume the chat since she is a robot (unlike us). Moreover, Alice can collect acquired knowledge from her chat buddies and use it later in answering some questions. For instance we asked her if she knows where the location of Lebanon is, but she didn't. Of course we were gentle and pasted some information about Lebanon's location in the chat box with her. Again, she acted smart and used the information to answer the same question which we asked her later.
In general, we believe that in a matter of years, Alice would most probably evolve to be much smarter and ahead of human beings ''as she claims''.
Well, nothing is impossible...not even for Alice!!!