Open Cobalt is a free and open-source software platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual worlds both on local area networks or across the Internet , with no need for centralized servers.
98-509: The technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems . By using a peer-to-peer -based message passing protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in-world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people to hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form
196-420: A hyperlink , or simply a link , is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided to by clicking or tapping . A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is known as anchor text . A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system , and to create
294-550: A "one-to-many" link, an "extended link" or a "multi-tailed link") is a hyperlink which leads to multiple endpoints; the link is a set-valued function . Tim Berners-Lee saw the possibility of using hyperlinks to link any information to any other information over the Internet . Hyperlinks were therefore integral to the creation of the World Wide Web . Web pages are written in the hypertext mark-up language HTML . This
392-411: A "trail" of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel. In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush's concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to
490-547: A 'prohibited game' which cannot be streamed on the service. There is no charge for creating a Second Life account or for making use of the world for any period of time. Linden Lab reserves the right to charge for the creation of large numbers of multiple accounts for a single person (5 per household, 2 per 24 hours) but at present does not do so. A Premium membership (US$ 11.99 monthly, US$ 32.97 quarterly, or US$ 99 annually) extends access to an increased level of technical support, and also pays an automatic stipend of L$ 300/week into
588-629: A Christian church headquartered in Edmond, Oklahoma , and with eleven campuses in the US, created "Experience Island" and opened its twelfth campus in Second Life . In July 2007, an Anglican cathedral was established in Second Life ; Mark Brown, the head of the group that built the cathedral, noted that there is "an interest in what I call depth, and a moving away from light, fluffy Christianity". The First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Second Life
686-620: A Resident's email when the Resident is logged off, although message length is limited to 4096 bytes. Identities in Second Life can relate to the users' personality or creating their own character. It is based on their decisions on how to express themselves. Most avatars are human, but they can choose to be vampires or animals. Sometimes, what they choose does not relate to their offline selves. In Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores
784-479: A combination of object semantics along with a modified version of David P. Reed 's TeaTime peer-based messaging protocol as a distributed message transactional system enabling replicated computation (synchronization) across multiple peers. This makes replicated computation as easily as replicating data - and makes synchronization of all events across multiple peers a fundamental property of the system. Owing to these properties, software developers can use Open Cobalt as
882-561: A document, e.g. a webpage , or other resource, or to a position in a webpage. The latter is achieved by means of an HTML element with a "name" or "id" attribute at that position of the HTML document. The URL of the position is the URL of the webpage with a fragment identifier – "# id attribute " – appended. When linking to PDF documents from an HTML page the " id attribute " can be replaced with syntax that references
980-431: A graphical user interface, the appearance of a mouse cursor may change into a hand motif to indicate a link. In most graphical web browsers, links are displayed in underlined blue text when they have not been visited, but underlined purple text when they have. When the user activates the link (e.g., by clicking on it with the mouse ) the browser displays the link's target. If the target is not an HTML file, depending on
1078-718: A hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link ). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext. The document containing a hyperlink is known as its source document. For example, in content from Misplaced Pages or Google Search , many words and terms in the text are hyperlinked to definitions of those terms. Hyperlinks are often used to implement reference mechanisms such as tables of contents, footnotes , bibliographies , indexes , and glossaries . In some hypertext, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both ends act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links. The effect of following
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#17327806560661176-421: A hyperlink may vary with the hypertext system and may sometimes depend on the link itself; for instance, on the World Wide Web most hyperlinks cause the target document to replace the document being displayed, but some are marked to cause the target document to open in a new window (or, perhaps, in a new tab ). Another possibility is transclusion , for which the link target is a document fragment that replaces
1274-534: A large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing , voice chat , text chat , and access to remote desktop applications and services. Open Cobalt uses the Squeak software environment, which is an open-source Smalltalk system freely available for Windows, Mac and Unix. As
1372-436: A last name from a pre-determined list of options. Boellstorff describes this mentality as being in direct contrast to the one held by other mainstream social media websites, where anonymity is shunned and users are encouraged to make the link between their online and physical presence clear. The ability to create content and shape the Second Life world is one of the key features that separate this from online games. Built into
1470-407: A new window to be created. It is especially common to see this type of link when one large website links to an external page. The intention in that case is to ensure that the person browsing is aware that there is no endorsement of the site being linked to by the site that was linked from. However, the attribute is sometimes overused and can sometimes cause many windows to be created even while browsing
1568-541: A page number or another element of the PDF, for example, "# page=386 ". A web browser usually displays a hyperlink in some distinguishing way, e.g. in a different color , font or style , or with certain symbols following to visualize link target or document types. This is also called link decoration . The behavior and style of links can be specified using the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language. In
1666-417: A pilot program in the college's computer lab in spring 2011. The Maldives was the first country to open an embassy in Second Life . The Maldives' embassy is located on Second Life's "Diplomacy Island", where visitors will be able to talk face-to-face with a computer-generated ambassador about visas, trade and other issues. "Diplomacy Island" also hosts Diplomatic Museum and Diplomatic Academy. The Island
1764-471: A profit in Second Life in February 2009, of whom 38,524 made less than US$ 10, while 233 made more than US$ 5000. Profits are derived from selling virtual goods, renting land, and a broad range of services. Second Life comprises the viewer (also known as the client ) executing on the user's personal computer, and several thousand servers operated by Linden Lab. Linden Lab provides official viewers for
1862-514: A region, and provide communication between avatars and objects present in a region. Every item in the Second Life universe is referred to as an asset . This includes the shapes of basic 3D polygon objects formally known as Primitive Mesh (commonly known as primitives or prims for short), the digital images referred to as textures that decorate primitives, digitized audio clips, avatar shape and appearance, avatar skin textures, LSL scripts, information written on notecards, and so on. Each asset
1960-473: A regular window , but in a special hover box , which disappears when the cursor is moved away (sometimes it disappears anyway after a few seconds, and reappears when the cursor is moved away and back). Mozilla Firefox , IE , Opera , and many other web browsers all show the URL. In addition, the URL is commonly shown in the status bar . Normally, a link opens in the current frame or window, but sites that use frames and multiple windows for navigation can add
2058-409: A rich network of end-user created interlinked virtual worlds. It is more extensible than the proprietary technologies behind collaborative worlds such as Second Life , and before that ViOS . This is because: Unlike most other virtual world platforms (with the exception of OpenSimulator 's Hypergrid architecture), Open Cobalt uses a method of hyperlinking , known as "space-linking", which resembles
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#17327806560662156-562: A single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968), with NLS . Ben Shneiderman working with graduate student Dan Ostroff designed and implemented the highlighted link in the HyperTIES system in 1983. HyperTIES was used to produce the world's first electronic journal, the July 1988 Communications of the ACM , which was cited as the source for
2254-542: A single site. Another special page name is "_top", which causes any frames in the current window to be cleared away so that browsing can continue in the full window. The term "link" was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu . Nelson had been inspired by " As We May Think ", a popular 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush . In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex ) in which one could link any two pages of information into
2352-465: A special "target" attribute to specify where the link loads. If no window exists with that name, a new window is created with the ID, which can be used to refer to the window later in the browsing session. Creation of new windows is probably the most common use of the "target" attribute. To prevent accidental reuse of a window, the special window names "_blank" and "_new" are usually available, and always cause
2450-400: A successor to Second Life , a VR experience called Sansar , launching a public beta in July 2017. Uptake was low and Linden Lab halted development in 2020 to focus their attention fully on Second Life . The rights to Sansar 's assets were sold to Wookey Search Technologies, who are expected to continue development on the title without Linden Lab. Second Life , the usage of which peaked in
2548-484: A summary of the current status of US copyright law as to hyperlinking, see the discussion regarding the Arriba Soft and Perfect 10 cases . Somewhat controversially, Vuestar Technologies has tried to enforce patents applied for by its owner, Ronald Neville Langford, around the world relating to search techniques using hyperlinked images to other websites or web pages. Second Life Second Life
2646-424: A theoretical proprietary worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Though Nelson's Xanadu Corporation was eventually funded by Autodesk in the 1980s, it never created this proprietary public-access network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer ) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within
2744-437: A typical web browser, this would display as the underlined word "Example" in blue, which when clicked would take the user to the example.com website. This contributes to a clean, easy to read text or document. By default, browsers will usually display hyperlinks as such: When the cursor hovers over a link, depending on the browser and graphical user interface, some informative text about the link can be shown, popping up, not in
2842-582: A way of creating deeply collaborative applications without the effort needed to understand how replicated applications work. This reduces the programming overhead needed for widespread deployment of deeply capable collaborative virtual spaces. It also makes it possible to deploy and coordinate the activities of virtual worlds on multiple machines without the need to maintain central server resources (other than those needed for specialized data and institutional middleware services). Open Cobalt's implementation of TeaTime includes: Hyperlink In computing ,
2940-966: A wide variety of virtual commodities. Second Life also quickly became profitable due to the selling and renting of virtual real estate. 2006 also saw Second Life ' s first real-world millionaire; Ailin Graef, better known as Anshe Chung (her avatar), converted an initial investment of US$ 9.95 into over one million dollars over the course of two and a half years. She built her fortune primarily by buying, selling, and renting virtual real estate. Major tech corporations have tried to use Second Life to market products or services to Second Life ' s tech-savvy audience. IBM, for example, purchased 12 islands within Second Life for virtual training and simulations of key business processes, but has since moved on to other platforms due to maintenance costs. Others, like musicians, podcasters, and news organizations (including CNET , Reuters , NPR 's The Infinite Mind , and
3038-484: A window frame or portal and, when revolved, shows a 360-degree real-time view of one region to a user in another region; such portals can also be walked through by users. Space-linking is an alternative to teleportation, a more common means of traversing between regions or spaces, and is also a primary means of travelling between whole grids. Like MediaWiki 's redlinks , such portals are also used to link to uncreated spaces or regions (colored in black) in order to indicate
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3136-579: Is a distinction between the mere act of linking to someone else's website, and linking to content that is illegal (e.g., gambling illegal in the US) or infringing (e.g., illegal MP3 copies). Several courts have found that merely linking to someone else's website, even if by bypassing commercial advertising, is not copyright or trademark infringement, regardless of how much someone else might object. Linking to illegal or infringing content can be sufficiently problematic to give rise to legal liability. Compare for
3234-476: Is a high level of entrepreneurial activity in Second Life . Residents of Second Life are able to create virtual objects and other content. Second Life is unique in that users retain all the rights to their content which means they can use Second Life to distribute and sell their creations, with 2.1 million items listed on its online marketplace. At its height circa 2006, hundreds of thousands of dollars were changing hands daily as residents created and sold
3332-401: Is a multi-user virtual world, because its virtual world facilitates interaction between multiple users. As it does not have any stipulated goals, it is irrelevant to talk about winning or losing in relation to Second Life . Likewise, unlike a traditional talker , Second Life contains an extensive world that can be explored and interacted with, and it can be used purely as a creative tool set if
3430-503: Is a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for personal computers and owned by the San Francisco -based firm Linden Lab , it launched on June 23, 2003 and saw rapid growth for some years; in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users. Growth eventually stabilized, and by
3528-463: Is a purely object-oriented programming system that allows for significant flexibility in its design and implementation. Within Open Cobalt, programmers may edit the source code of the 3D world from within the world, and immediately see the result while the world is still running. The running program does not have to be ended, and there is no compile-link-run-debug development loop. Any part of
3626-623: Is added. In certain jurisdictions , it is or has been held that hyperlinks are not merely references or citations , but are devices for copying web pages. In the Netherlands, Karin Spaink was initially convicted in this way of copyright infringement by linking, although this ruling was overturned in 2003. The courts that advocate this view see the mere publication of a hyperlink that connects to illegal material to be an illegal act in itself, regardless of whether referencing illegal material
3724-443: Is an object-oriented semantics based on active objects that have the capability of temporal reflection . Each object is aware of, and in direct control, of its behavior in time. Open Cobalt also directly supports replication of computation, allowing computation to be moved close to the point of interaction on demand, while maintaining a consistent view of behaviors that can scale to include thousands of nodes. It does this by using
3822-736: Is derived from the Croquet software development kit (SDK) that was publicly released under the MIT License by Hewlett-Packard and the Croquet Consortium in early 2007. In early 2008, and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation , Julian Lombardi and Mark P. McCahill , at Duke University , launched the community-based software development effort to build Open Cobalt as an open-source virtual world browser application and construction toolkit. In May 2008, Lombardi
3920-572: Is established by DiploFoundation as part of the Virtual Diplomacy Project. In May 2007, Sweden became the second country to open an embassy in Second Life . Run by the Swedish Institute , the embassy serves to promote Sweden's image and culture, rather than providing any real or virtual services. The Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt , stated on his blog that he hoped he would get an invitation to
4018-746: Is fully customizable. Second Life culture consists of many activities and behaviors that are also present in real life. A single resident account may have only one avatar at a time, although the appearance of this avatar can change between as many different forms as the Resident wishes. Avatar forms, like almost everything else in Second Life, can be either created by the user, or bought pre-made. A single person may also have multiple accounts, and thus appear to be multiple Residents (a person's multiple accounts are referred to as alternate character ( alts )). Avatars can travel via walking, running, vehicular access, flying, or teleportation. Because Second Life
Open Cobalt - Misplaced Pages Continue
4116-463: Is illegal. In 2004, Josephine Ho was acquitted of 'hyperlinks that corrupt traditional values' in Taiwan . In 2000, British Telecom sued Prodigy , claiming that Prodigy infringed its patent ( U.S. patent 4,873,662 ) on web hyperlinks. After litigation , a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom 's patent did not cover web hyperlinks. In United States jurisprudence , there
4214-411: Is intended for people ages 16 and over, with the exception of 13–15-year-old users, who are restricted to the Second Life region of a sponsoring institution (e.g., a school). Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab in 1999 with the intention of developing computer hardware to allow people to become immersed in a virtual world. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of
4312-443: Is not allowed without permission. Contentious in particular are deep links , which do not point to a site's home page or other entry point designated by the site owner, but to content elsewhere, allowing the user to bypass the site's own designated flow, and inline links , which incorporate the content in question into the pages of the linking site, making it seem part of the linking site's own content unless an explicit attribution
4410-434: Is only about US$ 14, depending on the currency exchange rates. However, the vast majority of casual users of Second Life do not upgrade beyond the free "basic" account. Avatars may take any form users choose (human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or a combination thereof) or residents may choose to resemble themselves as they are in real life. They may choose even more abstract forms, given that almost every aspect of an avatar
4508-434: Is referenced with a universally unique identifier or UUID . Assets are stored on Isilon Systems storage clusters, comprising all data that has ever been created by anyone who has been in the Second Life world. Infrequently used assets are offloaded to S3 bulk storage. As of December 2007 , the total storage was estimated to consume 100 terabytes of server capacity. The asset servers function independently of
4606-422: Is such a vast virtual world, teleportation is used when avatars wish to travel instantly and efficiently. Once they reach their destination, they may travel in more conventional means at various speeds. Avatars can communicate via local chat, group chat, global instant messaging (known as IM), and voice (public, private and group). Chatting is used for localized public conversations between two or more avatars, and
4704-427: Is to move everything to open standards by standardizing the Second Life protocol. Cory Ondrejka , former CTO of Second Life , stated in 2006 that a while after everything has been standardized, both the client and the server will be released as free and open source software. In January 2021, Linden Lab completed the migration of all of its services and databases to AWS servers. In January 2007, OpenSimulator
4802-505: Is treated as a physical object so that it may interact with physical objects in the world. As of 9 July 2014 , Second Life simulators use the Havok 2011.2 physics engine for all in-world dynamics. This engine is capable of simulating thousands of physical objects at once. Linden Lab pursues the use of open standards technologies, and uses free and open source software such as Apache , MySQL , Squid and Linux . The plan
4900-794: Is true of almost any Smalltalk application, Open Cobalt has identical functioning on any supported platform. As a Smalltalk system, it can usually be updated while the system is running without needing a restart. Open Cobalt is designed to enable the deployment of secure virtual world spaces that support education, research, and the activities of virtual organizations . By leveraging OpenGL -based 3D graphics , Open Cobalt supports highly scalable collaborative data visualization , virtual learning and problem solving environments, 3D wikis, online gaming environments termed Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), and privately and securely maintained multi-user virtual environments. The Open Cobalt application leverages peer-based messaging to eliminate
4998-436: Is visible to any avatar within a given distance. IMs are used for private conversations, either between two avatars, or among the members of a group, or even between objects and avatars. Unlike chatting, IM communication does not depend on the participants being within a certain distance of each other. As of version 1.18.1.2 (2007-Aug-02), voice chat, both local and IM, was also available. Instant messages may optionally be sent to
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#17327806560665096-741: Is what a hyperlink to the home page of the W3C organization could look like in HTML code: This HTML code consists of several tags : Webgraph is a graph , formed from web pages as vertices and hyperlinks, as directed edges. The W3C recommendation called XLink describes hyperlinks that offer a far greater degree of functionality than those offered in HTML. These extended links can be multidirectional , remove linking from, within, and between XML documents. It can also describe simple links , which are unidirectional and therefore offer no more functionality than hyperlinks in HTML. Permalinks are URLs that are intended to remain unchanged for many years into
5194-511: Is why a link to a fragment is called an anchor link (that is, a link to an anchor). For example, in XML , the element <anchor id="name" />" provides anchoring capability (as long as the DTD or schema defines it), and in wiki markup , {{anchor|name}} is a typical example of implementing it. In word processor apps, anchors can be inserted where desired and may be called bookmarks . In URLs ,
5292-457: The BBC ), have all had a presence within Second Life . Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna , and works of art. Services include business management, entertainment, and custom content creation (which can be broken up into the following six categories: building, texturing, scripting, animating, art direction, and
5390-796: The Second Life Grid, including both traditional sports and video game–like scenarios. Second Life is used as a platform for education by many institutions, such as colleges, universities, libraries and government entities. Since 2008, the University of San Martin de Porres of Peru has been developing Second Life prototypes of Peruvian archeological buildings, and training teachers for this new paradigm of education. The West Virginia University (WVU) Department of Special Education has used Second Life widely in education, and it provided teaching certification and certificates of degree in seven different distance education programs. WVU started
5488-705: The Second Life economy generated US$ 3,596,674 in economic activity during the month of September 2005, and in September 2006 Second Life was reported to have a GDP of $ 64 million. In 2009, the total size of the Second Life economy grew 65% to US$ 567 million, about 25% of the entire U.S. virtual goods market. Gross resident earnings are US$ 55 million in 2009 – 11% growth over 2008. In 2013, Linden Lab released an info graphic that showed that over 10 years $ 3.2 billion in transactions for virtual goods had exchanged between Second Life residents, with an average of 1.2 million daily transactions. There
5586-509: The file type and on the browser and its plugins , another program may be activated to open the file. The HTML code contains some or all of the five main characteristics of a link: It uses the HTML element "a" with the attribute "href" (HREF is an abbreviation for "Hypertext REFerence" ) and optionally also the attributes "title", "target", and " class " or "id": To embed a link into a web page, blogpost, or comment, it may take this form: In
5684-493: The " Linden dollar (L$ )". L$ can be used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other users. The "Linden Dollar" is a closed-loop virtual token for use only within the Second Life platform. Linden Dollars have no monetary value and are not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab. A resident with a surplus of Linden Dollars earned via a Second Life business or experiential play can request to refund their Linden Dollar surplus to PayPal. Linden Lab reports that
5782-413: The "beta grid" consisting of a limited number of regions running various releases of unstable test server code. Each full region (an area of 256×256 meters) in the Second Life "grid" runs on a single dedicated core of a multi-core server. Homestead regions share 3 regions per core and Openspace Regions share 4 regions per core, running proprietary software on Debian Linux . These servers run scripts in
5880-572: The Interim CEO position. It was announced in October 2010 that Bob Komin, Linden Lab's chief financial officer and chief operating officer, would take over the CEO job for the immediate future. With the platform's failure to continue its high rate of growth after 2009, Linden Lab announced layoffs of 30% of its workforce in 2010. Some 21.3 million accounts were registered by this point, although
5978-662: The Linden Lab 'Official' client, target other platforms or cater to specialist & accessibility needs. The main focus of third party development is exploring new ideas and working with Linden Lab to deliver new functionality. An independent project, libopenmetaverse, offers a function library for interacting with Second Life servers. libopenmetaverse has been used to create non-graphic third party viewers. There are several Alternate Viewers published by Linden Lab used for software testing by volunteers for early access to upcoming projects. Some of these clients only function on
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#17327806560666076-481: The Virtually Human , anthropologist Tom Boellstorff notes that the interface of Second Life is designed with the purpose of disconnecting a player's virtual identity from their physical identity in mind. As of 2015 Second Life has made it possible to display one's legal name in the player's profile or as their screen name, but when Boellstorff first published the book in 2008 users were required to select
6174-476: The collaborative, creative potential of Second Life . As a result, the initial objective-driven, gaming focus of Second Life was shifted to a more user-created, community-driven experience. Second Life ' s status as a virtual world , a computer game, or a talker , is frequently debated. Unlike traditional computer games, Second Life does not have a designated objective, nor traditional game play mechanics or rules. It can also be argued that Second Life
6272-563: The company did not make public any statistics regarding actual long-term consistent usage and numbers of dormant accounts. Despite speculation as to the actual size of the user base, Second Life continued as a commercial success. In 2015, Second Life users cashed out approximately $ 60,000,000 (60 million US dollars) and Second Life had an estimated GDP of $ 500,000,000 (500 million US dollars), higher than some small countries. Recognizing improvements in computing power and particularly in computer graphics, Linden Lab began work on
6370-548: The development of online sites with user-generated content in 2008, adding to the media attention. Rosedale accepted the award, although he had announced plans to step down from his position as Linden Lab CEO and to become chairman of Linden Lab 's board of directors instead in March 2008. Rosedale announced Mark Kingdon as the new CEO effective May 15, 2008. In 2010, Kingdon was replaced by Rosedale, who took over as interim CEO. After four months, Rosedale abruptly stepped down from
6468-629: The end of 2017, the active user count had fallen to "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing video games ; nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective." The virtual world can be accessed freely via Linden Lab's own client software or via alternative third-party viewers. Second Life users, also called 'residents', create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars , and are able to interact with places, objects and other avatars. They can explore
6566-447: The first decade of the 21st century, has been cited as the first example of the metaverse , a concept which has been taken up by other major corporations such as Facebook in 2021. As a notable precursor (which retains a small and loyal following), it provides several examples of virtual reality social issues and lessons learned. During a 2001 meeting with investors, Rosedale noticed that the participants were particularly responsive to
6664-485: The full linked content is not needed, as is the case when rearranging a page layout . An anchor hyperlink (anchor link) is a link bound to a portion of a document, which is often called a fragment . The fragment is generally a portion of text or a heading, though not necessarily. For instance, it may also be a hot area in an image ( image map in HTML ), a designated, often irregular part of an image. Fragments are marked with anchors (in any of various ways), which
6762-621: The future, yielding hyperlinks that are less susceptible to link rot . Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as friendly URLs, so as to be easy for people to type and remember. Permalinks are used in order to point and redirect readers to the same Web page , blog post or any online digital media. The scientific literature is a place where link persistence is crucial to the public knowledge. A 2013 study in BMC Bioinformatics analyzed 15,000 links in abstracts from Thomson Reuters' Web of Science citation index, founding that
6860-690: The grand opening. In September 2007, Publicis Group announced the project of creating a Serbia island as a part of a project Serbia Under Construction. The project is officially supported by Ministry of Diaspora of Serbian Government. It was stated that the island will feature the Nikola Tesla Museum , the Guča Trumpet Festival and the Exit Festival . It was also planned on opening a virtual info terminals of Ministry of Diaspora. On Tuesday, December 4, 2007, Estonia became
6958-412: The hardware, known as "The Rig", which in prototype form was seen as a clunky steel contraption with computer monitors worn on shoulders. That vision changed into the software application Linden World, in which people participated in task-based games and socializing in a three-dimensional online environment. That effort eventually transformed into the better-known, user-centered Second Life . Although he
7056-438: The hash character (#) precedes the name of the anchor for the fragment. One way to define a hot area in an image is by a list of coordinates that indicate its boundaries. For example, a political map of Africa may have each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in
7154-456: The link anchor within the source document. Not only persons browsing the document may follow hyperlinks. These hyperlinks may also be followed automatically by programs. A program that traverses the hypertext, following each hyperlink and gathering all the retrieved documents is known as a Web spider or crawler . An inline link displays remote content without the need for embedding the content. The remote content may be accessed with or without
7252-586: The link concept in Tim Berners-Lee 's Spring 1989 manifesto for the Web. In 1988, Ben Shneiderman and Greg Kearsley used HyperTIES to publish "Hypertext Hands-On!", the world's first electronic book. Released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh , the database program HyperCard allowed for hyperlinking between various pages within a document, as well as to other documents and separate applications on
7350-412: The median lifespan of Web pages was 9.3 years, and just 62% were archived. The median lifespan of a Web page constitutes high-degree variable, but its order of magnitude usually is of some months. A link from one domain to another is said to be outbound from its source anchor and inbound to its target. The most common destination anchor is a URL used in the World Wide Web . This can refer to
7448-426: The member's avatar account, and after 45 days that resident will receive a L$ 700 bonus, making it L$ 1,000 for that week. This amount has decreased since the original stipend of L$ 500, which is still paid to older accounts. Certain accounts created during an earlier period may receive L$ 400. This stipend, if changed into USD, means that the actual cost for the benefit of extended tech support for an annual payment of US$ 72
7546-750: The need for virtual world servers/commercial services and makes it very simple for end-users to create and securely share deeply collaborative virtual worlds that run on all major software operating systems. Users moving through and interacting within Open Cobalt worlds simultaneously participate and collaborate in a dynamic, concurrent environment where they can work, explore, and learn at a level of integration and extensibility not easily achieved through commercial virtual world technologies. With no licensing fees, users and developers can also freely build and share highly capable multi-user virtual workspaces, game-based learning and training environments, or even just create places to meet and interact with friends. Open Cobalt
7644-470: The need to create newer spaces. Open Cobalt is an application built using the Open Croquet software developer's toolkit. Its relationship to Open Croquet provides it with a number of powerful capabilities. Open Cobalt's software development environment enables programmers to enjoy the capabilities of a true late bound , message sending language. Because it is built on Squeak / Croquet , Open Cobalt
7742-516: The operating systems Windows , macOS , and most distributions of Linux where the more known ChromeOS has been excluded so far. The viewer renders 3D graphics using OpenGL technology. The viewer source code was released under the GPL in 2007 and moved to the LGPL in 2010. There are now several mature third-party viewer projects, the most popular being Firestorm, that contain features not available in
7840-571: The position of producer/project funder). L$ can be purchased using US dollars and other local currencies on the LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab. Customer USD wallets obtained from Linden Dollar sales on the Lindex are most commonly used to pay Second Life ' s own subscription and tier fees; only a relatively small number of users earn enough profit to request a refund to PayPal. According to figures published by Linden Lab, about 64,000 users made
7938-418: The program may be edited, down to the virtual machine (VM) and OpenGL calls. Open Cobalt's reliance on Squeak's generalized storage allocator and garbage collector makes it highly efficient in real-time and allows reshaping of objects to be done safely. As with Squeak, Open Cobalt supports many non-English languages and fonts such as German , Spanish , French , and Japanese . Underlying Open Cobalt
8036-553: The region simulators, though the region simulators act as a proxy for the client, request object data from the asset servers when a new object loads into the simulator. Region simulators areas are commonly known as sims by residents. Each server instance runs a physics simulation to manage the collisions and interactions of all objects in that region. Objects can be nonphysical and non-moving, or actively physical and movable. Complex shapes may be linked together in groups of up to 256 separate primitives. Additionally, each player's avatar
8134-479: The same computer. In 1990, Windows Help , which was introduced with Microsoft Windows 3.0 , had widespread use of hyperlinks to link different pages in a single help file together; in addition, it had a visually different kind of hyperlink that caused a popup help message to appear when clicked, usually to give definitions of terms introduced on the help page. The first widely used open protocol that included hyperlinks from any Internet site to any other Internet site
8232-474: The server and client provide simple digital rights management (DRM) functions. However, Linden Lab changed their terms of service in August 2013 to be able to use user-generated content for any purpose. The new terms of service prevent users from using textures from third-party texture services, as some of them pointed out explicitly. Second Life has an internal economy and closed-loop virtual token called
8330-507: The software is a 3D modeling tool based on simple geometric shapes that allows residents to build virtual objects. There is also a procedural scripting language, Linden Scripting Language, which can be used to add interactivity to objects. Sculpted prims ("sculpties"), 3D mesh , textures for clothing or other objects, animations, and gestures can be created using external software and imported. The Second Life terms of service provide that users retain copyright for any content they create, and
8428-819: The third country to open an embassy in Second Life . In September 2007, Colombia and Serbia opened embassies. As of 2008, North Macedonia and the Philippines have opened embassies in the "Diplomatic Island" of Second Life . In 2008, Albania opened an embassy in the Nova Bay location. SL Israel was inaugurated in January 2008 in an effort to showcase Israel to a global audience, though without any connection to official Israeli diplomatic channels. In 2008, Malta opened an embassy on Second Life . Religious organizations have also begun to open virtual meeting places within Second Life . In early 2007, LifeChurch.tv ,
8526-449: The user following the link. An inline link may display a modified version of the content; for instance, instead of an image, a thumbnail , low resolution preview , cropped section, or magnified section may be shown. The full content is then usually available on demand, as is the case with print publishing software – e.g., with an external link . This allows for smaller file sizes and quicker response to changes when
8624-640: The user so chooses. In March 2006, while speaking at Google TechTalks, Rosedale said: "So, we don't see this as a game. We see it as a platform." Second Life used to offer two main grids: one for adults (18+) and one for teens. In August 2010, Linden Lab closed the teen grid due to operating costs. Since then, users 16 and over can sign up for a free account. Other limited accounts are available for educators who use Second Life with younger students. There are three activity-based classifications, called "Ratings", for sims in Second Life : As of October 2024 , live streaming service Twitch lists Second Life as
8722-497: The various skin elements. Text hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into a word or a phrase and makes this text clickable. Image hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into an image and makes this image clickable. Bookmark hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into a text or an image and takes visitors to another part of a web page. E-mail hyperlink. Hyperlink is embedded into e-mail address and allows visitors to send an e-mail message to this e-mail address. A fat link (also known as
8820-531: The virtual world and Second Life avatar Anshe Chung . By that time, Anshe Chung had become Second Life ' s poster child and symbol for the economic opportunities that the virtual world offers to its residents. At the same time, the service saw a period of exponential growth of its user base. One of the principal developers, Cory Ondrejka , was forced to resign as chief technology officer in December 2007, with Rosedale citing irreconcilable differences in
8918-480: The way the company was run. Nevertheless, the platform continued to grow rapidly, and by January 2008, residents spent a total of 28,274,505 hours "inworld" and on average 38,000 residents were logged in at any moment. The maximum concurrency (number of avatars inworld) recorded was set at 88,200 in the first quarter of 2009. Second Life was honored at the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing
9016-465: The world (known as the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in both individual and group activities, build, create, shop, and trade virtual property and services with one another. The platform principally features 3D-based user-generated content. Second Life also has its own virtual currency, the Linden Dollar (L$ ), which is exchangeable with real world currency. Second Life
9114-479: Was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to further strengthen the community-based software development effort and bring the Open Cobalt virtual world browser to its alpha release. Together with John Dougan as technical project lead and a growing international community of software developers and volunteers, the Open Cobalt project contributors released Open Cobalt Alpha in April 2010. OpenCobalt 1.0 alpha 22
9212-550: Was established in 2006. Services have been held regularly, making the FUUCSL Congregation one of the longest-running active congregations in Second Life . The Egyptian-owned news website Islam Online has purchased land in Second Life to allow Muslims and non-Muslims alike to perform the ritual of Hajj in virtual reality form, obtaining experience before actually making the pilgrimage to Mecca in person. Second Life also offers several groups that cater to
9310-561: Was familiar with the metaverse of Neal Stephenson 's novel Snow Crash , Rosedale has said that his vision of virtual worlds predates that book, and that he conducted early virtual world experiments during his college years at the University of California, San Diego , where he studied physics. Second Life began to receive significant media attention in 2005 and 2006, including a cover story in BusinessWeek magazine featuring
9408-708: Was founded as an open-source simulator project. The aim of this project is to develop a full open-source server software for Second Life clients. OpenSIM is BSD Licensed and it is written in C# and can run under Mono environment. From 2008, alternative grids began to emerge and many of these allow cross visits from other grids through the hypergrid protocol using OpenSimulator. Second Life residents express themselves creatively through virtual world adaptations of art exhibits, live music, live theater and machinima , and other art forms. A wide variety of recreational activities, both competitive and non-competitive, take place on
9506-575: Was released in June 2015. Recent activity involving the project can be found in the Open Cobalt Google Group. The goals of the Open Cobalt effort are to stimulate the use of distributed virtual environments, advance visual simulations, and deepen collaboration in education, research, and personal entertainment - and in so doing to: Open Cobalt is both an end-user application and full featured software development environment for creating
9604-581: Was the Gopher protocol from 1991. It was soon eclipsed by HTML after the 1993 release of the Mosaic browser (which could handle Gopher links as well as HTML links). HTML's advantage was the ability to mix graphics, text, and hyperlinks, unlike Gopher, which just had menu-structured text and hyperlinks. While hyperlinking among webpages is an intrinsic feature of the web , some websites object to being linked by other websites; some have claimed that linking to them
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