Join us this Sunday when the Copper Robot talks to folks at Linden Lab about the new policies on adult content, news about voice functionality in Second Life, and some of what the Lindens are doing to foster community.

Linden Lab plans to institute a new "Adult" rating for graphic sexual and violent content in Second Life. Residents who participate in those activities will have to verify their real-world age by presenting real-world ID. Adult content on the mainland will be segregated into its own continent (although it can continue on private islands). Linden Lab says they're doing it so... read more

Watch the video of our conversation with folks from Dancing Ink Productions and 3DSquared, two companies using virtual worlds technologies to help bring about social change in regions as far-flung as Louisiana and Egypt.

Our guests were Rita J. King (SL: Eureka Dejavu) and Joshua Fouts (SL: Schmilsson Nilsson) of Dancing Ink, as well as Spencer Zuzulo (SL: Hiltz Zilz) of 3DSQuared. Dancing Ink has been working on a couple of projects bringing Egyptian bloggers together with the U.S. government to stimulate the free flow of information, while 3DSquared as been working with underprivileged kids in Louisiana to use... read more

Tomorrow morning at 11:30 am, I'll be locking lips for cancer prevention, manning (roboting?) a kissing booth for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life SL, organized by Shawna Montgomery and Haley Salomon. It's a Star Trek themed event, and I'll be dressed for the occasion (I put together a really fun costume for the occasion) This is the place So if you ever wanted to swap spit with the Copper Robot, this is your chance. I'll be limbering up my lips between now and then.

I'll be joined by other Second Life celebrities, including blogger Hamlet... read more

I answered Botgirl Questi's comments about pseudonymity (here and here) with a wisecrack (here), and she challenged me to say something serious (here).

Second Life's custom of pseudonymity is actually a lot like how the real world works. It's the transparency of the flat Internet that's weird, not Second Life.

I'm writing this at a coffeeshop. If I choose to strike up a conversation with the guy sitting at the next table, he and I will each decide how much personal information to divulge. We'll each decide whether to share our full names, where we live, our... read more

Our guests on the next Copper Robot this week are two organizations using virtual worlds and digital media for social change.

Our guests Rita King and Joshua Fouts of Dancing Ink Productions are using virtual worlds to promote conversations between different cultures. The company has focused on Islamic relations recently; last year, they hosted Egyptian bloggers in conversation with a U.S. diplomat in Second Life. This week, Dancing Ink will follow that event up with a video broadcast of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control briefing on swine flu from the American University in Cairo.

King... read more

The Brazen Careerist, Penelope Trunk, talks with the Coper Robot about career advice for Baby Boomers and Generation X, why people who comment on blogs are jerks, what to do when you're unemployed, the benefits of blogging, and why it's a bad idea to use the phrase "oral sex" in a blog headline.

Penelope is the founder of three startups, most recently Brazen Careerist, a Web service to help companies locate hard-to-find find job candidates.

Prior to Brazen Careerist, Penelope worked at marketing for a Fortune 500 company, played professional beach volleyball, worked on a French chicken farm and... read more

Penelope, author of the blog Brazen Careerist and I talked about career advice for people over 40, career advice for the unemployed, how to maintain personal boundaries while blogging about incredibly personal subjects, what Twitter is good for, why it's a bad idea to use the words "oral sex" in a headline (but it's ok in a blog post), and more.

This isn't the most interesting video ever made. Penelope wasn't in Second Life at all for the interview, and I wasn't in-world most of the time because I kept crashing. Also, as with all our videos, it's unedited, so... read more

The Copper Robot talks with science-fiction novelist Charles Stross. Charlie has a new novel out -- The Revolution Business, the latest in his Family Trade series. He's also the author of Halting State, a near-future crime novel set in a world where virtual reality and online games have become mainstream, and Accelerando, the story about three generations of a remarkable family experiencing the Singularity, the next stage of human evolution. We talked with Charlie about the premise for the Family Trade novels, politics, computers, and how Bernie Madoff ruined one of his upcoming books.

And don't miss our interview this Sunday... read more