OK, the next SL Future Salon is all set for Tuesday, September 26th
at 6 PM PST with Justin Hall and Mark Barrett (danah Boyd can not
make the date--hopefully some other time). The post is up at http://
slfuturesalon.blogs.com/second_life_future_salon/2006/09/
next_sl_future_.html and I've copied it without links below. The
theme of the night is balancing the deep creative possibilities of
transparency and lifelogging with issues of privacy and control of
personal information.

Please send me an informal RSVP if you're planning to come so I can
estimate attendance. This one will be released as a podcast with the
help of Secondcast and Metaverse Sessions' John Swords AKA Johnny
Ming (w00t John) and I'd like to experiment with bringing some
saloners onto Skype with us towards the end, so update your Skype and
prepare your vocal chords if you'd like to try that out.

Hope to see you there! And don't forget to join the inworld group SL
Future Salon if you want to get inworld announcements and join the IM
channel too. And BTW this salon is two days before my RL birthday,
virtual cake appreciated ;).

Jerry Paffendorf / SNOOPYbrown Zamboni

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The Second Life Future Salon continues on Tuesday, September 26th at
6 PM PST with Justin Hall and Mark Barrett. We'll be talking on Skype
and streaming live into the Sheep Tower 5th floor conference room [<--
SLURL] on Sheep Island. The theme of the night is balancing the deep
creative possibilities of transparency and lifelogging with issues of
privacy and control of personal information.

Justin Hall has been working on a framework for what he calls
passively multi-player online gaming or PMOGing. See his short video
presentation here for a succinct introduction, and an MP3 of his
inspired keynote at the Mobile Games Conference for more. PMOGing
asks that you make your online activity transparent to others in
order to turn the web itself into an MMO of sorts, one that we play
simply by behaving and performing for the networked public eye. From
PassivelyMultiplayer.com:

Description

Passively Multiplayer is a system for turning user data into
ongoing play. Using computer and mobile phone surveillance, a user
and their unique history. These resulting avatars can be viewed
online, and they interact with other avatars online.

Examples of data: web sites visited, email addresses, chat
handles, contents of email or messaging, contents of word processed
documents, digital images, digital video, video game moves.

Examples of avatars: virtual pets, animals, virtual humans,
virtual fantasy characters, secret agents, athletes, movie stars,
famous people, gangsters, soldiers.

Summary:

A system for using user data and device-use history to generate
avatars and/or game moves in an online multiuser environment.

Mark Barrett came on the Second Life scene relatively recently and
made waves with his site SLStats.com which tracks how much time
you've spent inworld, where, and with who. After initial controversy
over people's SL information being posted to the web without their
explicitly opting into the SLStats system, Mark quickly modified to
the service to only track those who've signed up themselves. Mark is
also the creator of SLBuzz and SLTags. From SLStats.com:

Second Life Stats allows you to see how much time you spend
playing Second Life, and can even keep statistics on other
interesting things, such as tracking your whereabouts. It does this
using a small attachment that your avatar can wear.

SLStats is completely passive, and doesn't require you to do
anything besides wearing the SLStats attachment. You can browse
statistics of other Second Life residents using SLStats, rate them,
and also write blog entries straight from within Second Life.

I also find myself now working on an SL side project that juggles opt-
in etiquette, transparency and privacy. What is it? Well, I kid you
not, it's a kind of mix between the old SLTV, Subservient Chicken,
and "Someone keeps stealing my letters..." (a kind of massively multi-
player alphabet sandbox). More on that soon, and at the salon.

And so the three of us will discuss our projects and visions, issues
and expectations around privacy and transparency, and work with
saloners on defining some groundrules for lifelogging etiquette on
the web and in virtual worlds. There's been a lot about this in the
news recently. More background posts coming soon.