At last, I bought land in Second Life to built my virtual home in. I've been shopping for more than a month, and couldn't find a tract I fell in love with. I'm still not in love with the land I bought, but I like it.

It's 1,008 square meters in Carnforth.

Why'd I buy that parcel? It's got a gentle slope, and it's near to the ocean. Also, I liked the look of the neighborhood: No obvious businesses, no obnoxious big ads, just bunch of houses with interesting architecture. All of that will give it a nice view.

The cost of the land: About US$40, plus US$5 per month maintenance fees (called "tier" fees in Second Life). If it turns out I don't like the land, I expect I can sell it to someone else get my money back.

Why'd I buy land? The same reason I've had a personal space on the Web for more than 10 years, a home page which evolved into an online journal and then a blog. It's a place where my friends and select business associates can connect with me, and it's a place where I can play with the technology. I'm looking forward to getting started building in Second Life; I haven't done any of that so far and it's a major part of the fun of the virtual world.

Why didn't I buy the land for InformationWeek? Couple of reasons, really: I think the tract is way too small for what we should do in InformationWeek, when we do decide to buy land in SL. Also, I expect my first efforts at building and landscaping in Second Life to be bad. It's one thing to just be one guy learning to build in Second Life, and writing up my experiences on the InformationWeek Blog. It's quite another thing to have this butt-ugly monstrosity sitting on IW land, with the IW brand on it, where passersby can look at it and get the idea we don't know any better. We do know better; it's just the purpose of this land is not to market InformationWeek; it's to have a place where I can experiment and be bad at it, at least first.

In other news: We shut down the InformationWeek offices in SL.