I want to thank Alan for his comment on my post about leaving Second Life. It was enough to convince me to give Second LIfe a second chance. Developments on the NMC Campus lately, like the art exhibit have been interesting.
Like our own Boatwright Library, The Malcolm Brown Library on the NMC Campus in Second LIfe has had a renovation this summer. Previously the NMC's Library has had a few terminals that link your web browser to sites on the web, as well as a few books you can read if you're good with your SL camera.
This morning I walked through the Library and came across newspapers hanging downstairs. What's more, it looks like the newspapers are fairly recent. An article in the Washington Post, “Hezbollah Balks At Withdrawal From the South” is from August 15.
All of a sudden I thought how cool it would be if NMC could manage to update these newspapers every day with the current edition's image. They could make it so that touching the newspapers gives you the option of opening each paper's web site in your browser. I could come to the reading room, glance at the newspapers, and browse to any that seemed interesting that day. All of this would be an interesting alternative to browsing my bookmarks. I might even bump into others who are checking the news and start conversations about some of the stories we've come across. That's something I can't do when I'm browsing my bookmarks.
One thing that would have to be fixed is the resolution of the newspapers. I don't need to read the stories themselves, but at the resolution of the current newspapers, I can't make out all of the headlines. Down the road it would be interesting to see if there was a way to bring more of the newspaper content – beyond the front page – into SL so I could see more stories than just the front page. If the Library could have education periodicals, it might facilitate more conversations, since that's a common focus.
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