Director of Oscar winning Movie uses Child avatars in new SL Machinima!

from new world notes "This is the trailer to 'Dear My Father', an SL machinima currently in development, scheduled for a Summer release. (Warning: contains some brief sexual imagery.) It's the work of Japanese filmmaker Hidetaka Nagahama (known in Second Life as Sela Boa), who was also Assistant Director of Departures, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film."

It looks to be a film with some hard themes especially for some of our community members. What strikes me is the way the director has used slightly cartoonish backgrounds to make his main characters stand out. Looks very kool.

A rough translation of the video's dialog/captions "The boy loved his father... The boy didn't love his father.... The memory of father in his boyhood.... Of himself in his boyhood... His memories were different from others... But his memories were same as others. Dear My Father. 2009 Summer. Coming soon."

Secondyouth.net - Second Childhood Website

To coincide with the Second Childhood Network, we have released a website that gives outsiders a little info on our community, places and how to join. The website offers to guide you through joining the virtual worlds and to arrive directly at a Learning Tree where you quickly become a child avatar and join a group.

if you ever visit the learning trees and see a new person there, please give a helping :)

Visit the Website HERE

Second Childhood Network

This week saw the release of the Second Childhood Network. The Network is a collection of 24 most popular kid places in SL connected via a Visual HUB that lets you travel from place to place.

"it's a way to see our community as a whole, many of us are unaware of the many places available to our community"

here is a video created to help explain the Second Childhood Network and show how to use it.



The HUBS are available at all 24 locations on the network. It is hoped that this will encourage members of the child avatar community and normal SL residents to travel and explore the whole circle of places.

How Dangerous is the Internet to REAL kids? - Growing Up Online

Today i stumbled across an article by David Pogue for the New York Times which examines closely the question of internet safety. He makes reference to a PBS Frontline documentary film which is certainly worth watching and is in SEVEN parts, each 8 minutes in length exploring many aspects from over protective mothers, to cyber bullying.

“One of the biggest surprises in making this film was the discovery that the threat of online predators is misunderstood and overblown. The data shows that giving out personal information over the Internet makes absolutely no difference when it comes to a child’s vulnerability to predation.” (That one blew my mind, because every single Internet-safety Web site and pamphlet hammers repeatedly on this point: never, ever give out your personal information online.)

“Also, the vast majority of kids who do end up having contact with a stranger they meet over the Internet are seeking out that contact,” Ms. Dretzin goes on. “Most importantly, all the kids we met, without exception, told us the same thing: They would never dream of meeting someone in person they’d met online.”

Several teenagers interviewed in the story make it clear that only an idiot would be lured unwittingly into a relationship with an online sicko: “If someone asks me where I live, I’ll delete the ‘friend.’ I mean, why do you want to know where I live at?” says one girl.

[From How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children? - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog]

View the very good VIDEO here

Bunny Hop

Hi All!

Easter is almost here, and, as usual in sl, there are Easter Egg Hunts beginning! A friend mentioned on to me, and I have been following the links to see the places and find the eggs. This one is called the Bunny Hop (that might explain the people you see hopping around sl..... I do say MIGHT! heheheh), and covers a lot of different places, there being apparently over 160 different eggs to find.

The Bunny Hop HQ, aduchi momoyama (146, 189, 40) is where it all starts, with a notice and an example egg. Follow the directions the rabbits are taking the eggs, and you will soon find your first real egg, with a gift and the landmark to the next location.

It's not a quick race, some of the eggs are REALLY difficult to find (yes, I did follow the yells of "It's over here!" a couple of times...), others are in plain view. Take time to look round places and enjoy the exploration, it's well worth it. As in most such hunts, the eggs are placed by stores to get you to see their stuff, and there are some nice things out there! It's the different locations that are really fun though, the colourful, the strange, the downright weird (like the place covered in blood, and where i stood in something icky..... rather cool really...) and the truely beautiful like the place in the sky with transparent floors. I've put some pictures in to let you see.

So far I have found seven eggs, the next is proving difficult to find... but there are still loads for me to discover, and I am going to have fun doing so.... anyone want to join me?

Tepic

KIC Kids Info Center

Hello and welcome to the KIC, the Kids Info Center!

After 3 days of celebration is the KIC open for all Kids since March, 20th. If you need help, want to know more about being a SL Kid or just want to have fun or a Sandbox for building in a calm and safe environment, this place is for you. Just made from SL Kids for SL Kids. Many different buildings to explore, the MnK HQ is there too. Arts made by Sl Kids, the (SLC) learning tree with a lot informations, the transmogrifier for adults who want to be a SL Kids fulltime or just from time to time...yes you were reading right: Adults are allowed there too! We will tear down the biased opinions about SL Kids (or try it) grins. All welcome! If you need help or advice or can't find the answer yourself, we have KIC Mentors to help you, some of them also Second Life Mentors. Just go to the "Old Town" over the suspension bridge to the first buidling you see at the left hand. Enter it and you will see a display with all Mentors and the language they speak and their online/offline status. Click the sign and type your message into the open chat.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/KIC/128/128/33

sven Homewood

Clash of the Kids [Updated]

Well Linden Lab have done it again. They have announced something that effects their residents again. And once again the entire grid community seems to be up in arms. Though at first i was not sure how their new policy on adult content was going to effect me.

The Child Avatar Community is a special magical thing that has never happend anywhere before. SL is the cradle of life for a community of people around the world that live second childhoods, no other platform can claim that.

We all have invested so much time, money and emotion into our new gangs of friends and adventures. So far i think we have felt safe knowing that everyone around us, even if we pretend to be kids are in fact adults. The Child Avatar community spearheaded a clean non-adult environment to play and it seems Linden Lab are wanting more of the main grid to follow this.

But will this mean we will eventually loose that secure blanket that keeps Child avatars seperate from REAL kids? We have worked hard to make this world within SL and it's easy to feel backstabbed if LL decide to drop the 'Adults only' rule of being in SL. It would drop us all in a moral dilemma that we did not want, 'is it ok for underage residents to mix with Adults who pretend to be kids'?

This is the question that has to be asked even if LL decide to push it aside. Why has LL decided to seperate Adult content from the rest of the grid if not to prevent the possibility that underage residents might make unverified accounts?
We already have options for Adult Residents to avoid adult content, for example the Huds that tell you wether the place you are is Rated R.

Even if Linden Labs reasons for moving Adult content has nothing to do cleaning up the main grid for underagers, we still need to start thinking about the future and how the interaction between underagers and Kid Avatars could and should be.

Some argue that it should not matter if the people you interact with are adult or underagers, as you treat all people the way you would want to be treated. That the Kid Avatar is by nature a caring, imaginative and inspiring individual and who better to draw experience from.

Who would parents prefer an underager to be shown around the main grid? A Child Avatar resident, or a scantly clad Stripper?

There is a view that underagers would prefer to go hang out with the strippers than play with virtual kids, but that cant always be true. A lot of the stuff that we build for our own virtual second childhoods are based on the same kool things that real underagers find kool so it's not impossible that underagers might be drawn to the fun and games we also enjoy as Kid avatars.

There are some that feel no matter how safe we try and make things in our community, that there will always be the chance that being a child avatar will be exploited for deceiveful means. This though can be applied to any type of avatar community in SL, and any type of chat program infact.

The debate about Child Avatars, Adult Content and Underagers on the Main grid will go on for ever. As a community we need to be recognised for our deeds so carry on being the kool kids of SL.

[UPDATE] ABC news ran a sensationalised story about a wii game and concerns about adults and children playing same games. Read an article about it here