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In an interview with InformationWeek, the incoming CEO of Linden Lab said he's fascinated by businesses that grow up in Second Life. He also paid tribute to the "largely unfettered" creativity of the Second Life community. And he declined to comment about whether he's preparing the company for IPO or sale.

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The Second Life community today got its first good news in what seems like forever -- Linden Lab, the creator and operator of the virtual world, announced its pick for new CEO. At first glance, his resumé looks like the right combination of business acumen and creativity needed to restart the engines on the foundering ship.

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I had a chance to talk with the CEO of Qwaq the other day. Qwaq makes virtual worlds software optimized for corporate meetings. If you've spent time in Second Life, you know the power of avatars and 3-D spaces to enhance conversations and collaboration. It's hard to explain to people who've never tried virtual worlds, but it's real. Qwaq is an attempt to tailor virtual worlds for business collaboration, adding features that businesses need and taking away features that are harmful.

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Budding Wolf Blitzers can bring their news reporting talents to the Web and Second Life using a citizen journalism program run by CNN. Reporters post video, photos, audio, and text reports to the beta iReport site, and have the news appear on the site unfiltered. The best contributions appear on CNN itself.

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Philip Rosedale, the co-founder of Second Life, is stepping aside as CEO of corporate parent Linden Lab, and the company will begin a search for a CEO with more operational and management experience. This could be great news for Second Life and its community -- the service is, in many ways, brilliant, but it often trips over its feet when trying to execute some of the functions that are basic to any business, like communicating with big customers and processing payments.

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Second Life's Aberystwyth Lane recently visited one of the best areas in Second Life: Roma, which is dedicated to role-playing the ancient Roman Empire. She posted a terrific photo essay, which highlights all the detail and creativity that went into the build.

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Are you a jerk and do you want people to know it? In real life, it's easy to prove you are a jerk: You can talk loudly during movies, cut in line at Starbucks, or tell new mothers their babies are ugly. But on the Internet, it's harder to prove you're a jerk.

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We've recently seen silly articles hyping the threat of terrorists using virtual worlds and other Web 2.0 sites for recruitment, planning, and training. And we've seen equally silly articles ridiculing the idea. The truth is that Web 2.0 tools are great for terrorism, for the same reasons they're great for legitimate projects. That doesn't mean we should shut down Facebook and Second Life to protect ourselves from instant, horrible death. But we do need to rationally evaluate possible threats.

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Join us Friday to look at one of the most active communities in Second Life: Motorati Island. The sponsors, headed by Pontiac, recently turned the island over to the United Spinal Association. Renamed Motorability, it's headed up by Patty Streeter, who will be our guest for GridTalk noon SLT.

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It sounds like techno-utopian silliness to say that businesses need to learn from online games how to make tedious knowledge-work more enjoyable. But many knowledge-work jobs are so deadly dull that the typical worker lasts just nine months -- in call centers, for example. Extend that by a few months, and businesses stand to save piles of money, said Byron Reeves, a professor in the department of communication at Stanford University.

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Stanford University researchers discovered that users of virtual worlds like Second Life with attractive avatars were more confident in real life.

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Join us in Second Life and on the Web for a conversation with Wagner James Au, author of the new book, The Making Of Second Life, a history of the virtual world, its creators, and residents. The book is a terrific chronicle of a four-year technological landmark and cultural phenomenon.

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Join us at 3 p.m. Eastern time today when we'll be talking with my colleague, senior editor Andy Dornan, about virtualization and service-oriented architecture at the official launch of InformationWeek Live.

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Join us in Second Life and on the Internet Friday at noon Pacific time for a live Q&A with Karl Schroeder, a futures researcher, blogger at WorldChanging.com and science-fiction writer.

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Join us in Second Life or on the Web for a live talk with Intel's Stephen Fischer, senior principal engineer, Intel Corp. Fischer will talk about Intel's desktop processor strategy and technology, including the brand-new Penryn processor.

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The bad news keeps coming for Second Life. Linden Lab, the company that develops and operates the virtual world, released October and November economic stats yesterday, which show that total user hours in-world actually declined in November, for the second-ever time in Second Life history.

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The Electric Sheep Company, a leading content-creation company working in Second Life and other virtual worlds, this week laid off 20 people, or 25% of its staff. Coming on the heels of the departure of AOL from Second Life, and CTO Cory Ondrejka’s departure from Linden Lab, the events invite the question: What’s going on in Second Life? Is something wrong?

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Join us for a discussion with Desmond Shang, founder of the popular Caledon group, a Victorian-themed area that's proven to be one of the most popular areas of Second Life. Many residents and businesses struggle to create compelling content in Second Life -- well, Desmond has done it, and so we can all learn from him.

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Cory Ondrejka, who was employee #4 at Linden Lab, the company that develops Second Life, either quit Tuesday, or was fired.. As with most high-level corporate departures, his going out the door was marked by a terse, vague statement by his -- former -- employers, and a great deal of discussion on blogs. The big question for the Second Life community: Will the change mean faster fixes for the stability and usability problems that plague the grid, or will Ondrejka's departure make things worse?

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Join us in Second Life Friday for our rescheduled GridTalk with Daniel Terdiman, author of the new book The Entrepreneur's Guide To Second Life, to learn about the best ways to do business in-world. Daniel's talk was supposed to happen this morning, but Second Life was down for maintenance, so we rescheduled it.

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Join us in Second Life Tuesday for GridTalk with Daniel Terdiman, author of the new book The Entrepreneur's Guide To Second Life, to learn about the best ways to do business in-world. Daniel will pass along the wisdom of the world's best fashion designers, retailers, and other in-world business people.

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Joe Miller, Linden Lab vice president, platform and technology development, will be our special guest for GridTalk, where we'll talk with him about Windlight, new Second Life technology that makes the world more beautiful and realistic.

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Our guest for our next GridTalk is science-fiction writer Charles Stross, whose most recent novel Halting State, is set in the near future -- just 11 years from now, when virtual worlds, massively multiplayer games, advanced mobile computing, and augmented reality are a part of daily life.

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"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams made the trek to Second Life recently, where he encouraged audience members to step up and kick him in a sensitive private place. "This is what you call being customer focused. I think Nordstrom could learn a thing or two from my example," Adams said on his blog.

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Join us for GridTalk on Tuesday when our subject will be Cisco Systems' upcoming Virtual Career Fair, with guests Christian Renaud, the company's chief architect for networked virtual environments, and Randy Sisk, new markets and technologies scout for the company. Cisco is a pioneer in using Second Life and other virtual worlds for business, so we'll also spend some time discussing the broader issues of commercial activities in virtual worlds.

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Join us for GridTalk on Tuesday when our special guest will be Jonathan Himoff of Rezzables, the company behind the Greenies and about 20 other of the most popular and innovative areas in Second Life. He'll talk about business, community building, and creativity in Second Life, as well as where his company gets those crazy ideas.

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CSI: NY's episode in Second Life was a total blast. I went into it with pretty low expectations, and was delighted throughout. It was a heck of a lot of fun -- and it got Second Life right in spirit, even though the SL portrayed on the show was much faster, more stable, and had much better graphics than the real thing.

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You're invited to GridTalk tomorrow in Second Life and on the Web, where we'll be talking to IBM and Linden Lab about their joint initiative to create standards for interoperability between virtual worlds and the Web. The two companies are working on standards to allow users to move their avatars between virtual worlds, as well as standards for sharing data between virtual worlds and the flat Internet.

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The crime scene investigators of CSI: New York go into Second Life to catch a killer next week, and the preview is up on YouTube.. The video shows a tech customizing an avatar. And then they go do some kind of gladiator thingie in-world. ZOMG, this is so exciting!!!!

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The Office's favorite beet farmer and assistant to the regional manager, Dwight Schrute, is getting into Second Life, according to a report on the blog Just Jared.com. Dwight's avatar, "Dwight Shelford," features "a profile that proclaims his love of a variety of NBC Universal movies and shows, and his desire to 'calculate the exchange rate between Schrute bucks and linden dollars,' " according to Second Life Insider.

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As if Google isn't pervasive enough, it looks like the search-engine company is planning to launch its own virtual world, which will compete with Second Life, but could be much more valuable to business users in real-world applications.

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Are virtual worlds like Second Life here to stay? My answer is "yes, but." Yes, but virtual worlds are part of a long-term transition which also includes the mobile Internet. Yes, but the result will be a complete transformation in how we think about being "on the Internet" vs. being "away from the computer." Yes, but Second Life might not be the virtual worlds platform of the future.

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IBM, like other businesses, plunged into Second Life partly in search of a new profit stream. I bet it never considered employees would use Second Life to strike the company.

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Don't miss our upcoming discussions in Second Life, where you can learn about the best ways to do business in the virtual world, and about using the new voice feature.

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Join us in Second Life Tuesday for our Geek Meet with Infinite Vision Media, creators of some of the most popular areas and events in Second Life, which happen to be sponsored by big real-life companies: The Weather Channel's island, Suzanne Vega concert, and Kurt Vonnegut interviews.

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Our first Geek Meet using the native Second Life voice technology exceeded expectations two-fold: Keystone Bouchard gave a fascinating presentation on architecture in virtual worlds. And the voice technology worked like gangbusters.

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Tuesday morning's Geek Meet in Second Life will be special for two reasons: First, the subject: Keystone Bouchard will speak on virtual architecture -- how design principles in the virtual world will evolve to be be different from real-world architecture.

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This hauntingly beautiful video shows construction of a 3-D re-creation of the famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh. The soundtrack is the lovely "Starry, Starry Night," by Don McLean. I think everybody will like this video, but you can appreciate it a little more if you've actually done some building in Second Life.

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Just as in real life, stock exchanges in Second Life bring investors and entrepreneurs together. Today, we'll hear from several SL stock exchanges in a panel discussion moderated by a Cornell University professor.

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Second Life's population growth didn't just slow in June -- it declined in one key metric. The number of active users -- people who have spent more than an hour per month in-world -- declined 2.5 percent to 495,000 in June, and the growth in total user hours slowed to the lowest rate in six months, Reuters reported.

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Second Life is still growing -- it's just growing at a slower rate than it was. Total signups grew at a rate of 12.6% in June, down from 15% in May. Growth in premium accounts -- accounts people pay to use -- was 5.3%, down from 8.1% in May. Is this a temporary lull? Or a sign of coming doom?

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AjaxLife lets you run Second Life without the need to install or run the service's resource-intensive client. AjaxLife is quite primitive, but as a proof-of-concept, it's remarkable.

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William Gibson, whose 1984 novel Neuromancer was a bible for Internet pioneers, is making an appearance in Second Life. Gibson wasn't the first person to use the idea of "cyberspace," but he coined the word and popularized it.

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We're kicking off the new Geek Meet discussions in Second Life by meeting with the top gadgeteers in Second Life, the creators of the MystiTool, Calendar Cogs, Stats Collector, and Squawk tools.

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Recently, I checked on an obscure corner of my vast Second Life real-estate empire, and by gosh, voice is working there. I was excited -- I've been impatient to start incorporating voice into my regular Second Life usage.

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I'm very pleased to report that we're teaming up with one of the best virtual-worlds news blogs, Metaversed, to beef up our ongoing discussion group in Second Life.

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A VC principal writes that merchants are making big money in virtual worlds -- over $1.5 billion annually and growing. Virtual goods helps buyers express themselves, and increase satisfaction with whatever game, service or virtual world they're using.

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I'm wrapping up an article I've been struggling with for months, about how real-life businesses succeed in Second Life. It's a tough article to do because I think the overwhelming majority of real-life businesses that move into Second Life are failures.

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A friend from Second Life IM'd me this evening, wanting to know if I posted messages to the Second Citizen forums saying how much I hate "newbs." Because I am always alert, I responded: "Huh?"

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Bruce Willis didn't have many interesting answers during a news conference in Second Life to promote the fourth Die Hard. But many of the questions were refreshingly weird. And the event taught an important lesson in using Second Life for marketing.

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