In Second Life, residents create unique clothing, buildings, hairstyles and artwork, etc., to sell for virtual dollars that can be exchanged for real money. As a result, virtual intellectual property is tied to a real-world dollar amount. Yet, Linden Lab’s terms of service agreement has the following to offer:

“…you understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the service, you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (i) use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service, and (ii) use and reproduce (and to authorize third parties to use and reproduce) any of your Content in any or all media for marketing and/or promotional purposes in connection with the Service;”

As a “resident” of Second Life, I recently had to refer back to this agreement after I found out that my avatar (Dexter Mahana) had been used in a recent ABC exposé without my consent. I was contacted by a reporter from SL Business Magazine who was curious if I had signed a disclosure. Of course, I had not and was never asked to do so – though I would’ve been flattered had ABC bothered to approach me.

My avatar’s brief media exposure got me thinking about the definition of ‘ownership’ in a Second Life. As populations in virtual worlds grow, the lines of intellectual property become more important to define. “Virtual” law, however, is at best a techie’s interpretation of the real-world – without, of course, any checks, balances or rights beyond the terms of the user agreement. But, because those terms don’t include an In The Case of Copy-Bot clause for blocking users, Linden Labs has been powerless to stop the bot-festation. That leaves no recourse for affected residents to file of any semblance of a lawsuit, leaving them virtually (pardon the pun) powerless to fight back.

In fairness to Second Life, they are working on creating a way for residents to “self-police” themselves by creating restrictions within certain areas. Interesting, but I wonder how long it’ll take another bot to break down the virtual walls of self-policed barriers.

Perhaps the copy-bot fiasco re-affirms that Second Life is nothing more than an interactive, and highly entertaining game. It’s principal draw is not the opportunity to make money, but Second Life’s unlimited potential growth as an open source product. In a sense, then, the entire economy is not supported by the trade of linden dollars, but by the opportunity to be creative.

It’s ironic (and kind of hilarious) that the very bots that pose the greatest threat to Second Life’s economic structure (like copy-bot) are arguably the most creative uses of the program. If Linden Labs creates “laws” against the use or production of programs like Copy-Bot, it would essentially put a cap on Second Life’s growth potential. As frustrating as it might be for the creators of virtual hairstyles and digital objects, limiting creativity could ultimately be more damaging to the program’s long term development than any invading sci-fi bot.

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To begin with, I appreciate how customizable they’ve made the Calendar. As they say on the Y! Mail Blog, the ticker on the bottom “makes it super easy to add and edit events, see when you’re busy and when you’re free, and generally stay on top of your schedule.” Its easy to share events with other users and the calendar is accessible from Mail (like Microsoft Outlook) – a big plus for someone who is accustomed to using Outlook at work.

Categorizing emails is very easy – editable with just a click-drag-drop. The ‘Find Message’ tool is terrific, and the spam protection is the best I’ve seen. There are lots of suggestion tools to help users with categorization, and icons for easy category identification. Though the ‘Event Bar’ at the bottom of the page appears to have a glitch, everything else about the functionality of Mail is seamless. They’ve even included roughly 30 shortcut keys to speed up emailing. For example, a user can type ‘r’ to reply or ‘f’ to forward, for highlighted emails. Because of these shortcut keys, it might take new users a bit of time to get used to the system, but there is plenty of help available to guide users through (see weird faceless man).

Perhaps the best change, however, is that Y! Mail allows you to have multiple emails/replies/forwards open at once. They open in separate panes, rather than separate tabs, which translates better to the way I multitask during work. Even the new RSS feeds on the sidebar (finally!) toggle within the same pane as emails. You can browse email titles or RSS headlines without switching applications. This entire update, in fact, seems to be about cutting down waiting time and consolidating information. I’m guessing that the new version will be especially attractive to a younger demographic, since they’re more accustomed to consuming multiple types of media at once.

Because Y! Mail caters to an audience that likes to multitask, it could be the unexpected comeback for Yahoo!. Sure, social networking and video sites are hot topics at the moment, but email remains the crux of all online communication. For that reason, Yahoo!’s attention to perfecting their email server is extremely smart, and though overlooked, may ultimately be what regains Yahoo!’s market share.

We wrote, “The Act will…effectively put the gambling companies out of business” – this is not entirely accurate. The bill has made it illegal to process transactions by credit card and US based financial institutions – a slam to the banking industry, not gambling companies. Though on the surface it appears that the banks will be held responsible, many financial institutions claim that they lack the technology to track gambling transactions. As Steve Verdier, director of congressional relations for the Independent Community Bankers of America, says (via MSN Money), “The Fed and Treasury are not supposed to ask us to do the impossible.”

Regardless, the UIGE Act does not extend to International 3rd party intermediaries, such as Neteller and FirePay (both London-based and traded on the London exchange). Once money is transferred off-shore, the account holder can send it wherever they choose – to a jeweler in St. Thomas, a casino in Costa Rica, or any other U.S. company or individual. In other words– even if U.S. banks are forced to monitor transactions (assuming they develop adequate technology), online gamblers can still transfer money through international accounts.

What I’m most interested in, however, is the bill’s specific wording. The Act prohibits transactions through “unlawful” gambling sites – but what makes one site ‘lawful’ vs. ‘unlawful’? Many have suggested that the Act is only targeting sports betting, in which case, sites including other popular games like Poker and Blackjack may not be affected. Given the massive popularity of poker, I seriously doubt that people will cease to play online, and will merely find alternative means to fund their accounts. A much more effective way to discourage online games would be to impose a gambling tax on various poker sites. In fact, the Poker Players Alliance conducted a study showing that such a tax could generate over $3 billion in federal revenue (PDF).

In the meantime, what does this bill mean for major casinos that have been lobbying to move their operations online? Mitch Garber, chief executive of Party Gaming, is quoted on MSNBC saying, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they [MGM and Harrah's] didn’t have an interest in winning non US-facing companies as a means of dipping their toes in the internet world. I know MGM and Harrah’s well, and I think they have always acknowledged that internet gaming companies will move ahead in time and watched with great interest to see the success.” ( Incidentally, the Act has made traditional casinos like Harrah’s more attractive to investors. Yesterday, Harrah’s received a buyout offer of $25.7 billion from Apollo Management and the Texas Pacific Group.)

In my opinion, the bill is a feeble attempt to stop the unstoppable. It’s akin to placing a band-aid on an arterial wound. Yesterday’s falling stock prices of companies like PartyGaming and Sportingbet are an initial shock, but are in no way indicative of a dying business. Just as prohibition didn’t put an end to alcohol consumption, the Gambling Enforcement Act will fail to curb a massively popular activity. If anything, it will only encourage gamblers to become more creative.

The service comes, however, with a number of limitations. In addition to technical difficulties
pointed out by Search Engine Watch blog, the PDFs are hard to read and can be hundreds of pages long. Numerous similar projects already exist, most notably Project Gutenberg, where books in the public domain are available for download in significantly smaller (and readable) files. As SEW points out, its difficult to find PDFed books in G BS without an advanced search, or exact keyword search for an author/title. Regular Google SERPS don’t include listings for the downloads, and beyond this search widget, it doesn’t look like G is doing much to promote the adoption of its Book Search, much less the new PDFs. Despite Google’s extended audience reach, between printing costs and the unreadable scan quality of most texts, its unclear what advantage it has over competing archives.

Regardless of said usability issues, I know a few english lit professors who would appreciate the archival value of out-of-print and original works. G book search can turn a relatively obscure
publication into a top 10 search result. Hence the significant adoption of Google Book Search by academic publishers, in contrast with the growing opposition garnered by the commercial press (see the Screw Google post in Publishers Weekly).

However, if the goal of Book Search is to provide “access to large collections of books…from some of the world’s greatest collections,” its real benefit is as a publically accessible library record. Which is why i’m suprised that no one picked up on the Library Catalog Search feature that Google launched last week. Listed in Google’s Advanced Search options, this new function tells you exactly how many libraries hold a copy of that obscure academic text and which are closest to you. For researchers, this is a new point of accessibilty into previously closed university catalogs.

It takes 717 sheets of paper to print the PDF version of a Tale of Two Cities. Save the trees people. Don’t print out the pdf, Book Search the library and walk there.

Of course, it was foolish of me to try to relax. Every time I think I’m relaxed, and out of search mode for the day, it keeps pulling me back in. Case in point: About fifteen minutes after turning on the Open, I saw one of Ask.com’s recent TV commercials.

Out of curiosity, I picked up my laptop and opened up Ask.com to see whether or not they had any interesting information about the Open. Their Smart Answers product is typically really good for sporting events, often displaying real-time scores, stats and links to related information.

My search for “U.S. Open tennis” yielded…dubious results. Check it out for yourself:

As expected, the US Open Smart Answer was really useful, featuring relevant, timely info and links to the official site, schedule, history & player rankings. Then the requisite paid listings from our friendly neighborhood ticket scalpers. Followed by? Nothing. No organic listings at all, just a notification that the site couldn’t handle the current volume of searches. Figuring that I might have just hit a bug, I performed several more searches, including some that were completely unrelated to the Open.

Of course, the site is back to normal this morning. Then again, the company isn’t advertising on a high-profile sporting event this morning. It’s an unfortunate misstep, especially considering that Ask’s search results are generally really good these days. I wonder: How many people saw the ad, went to the site (for the first time in a long time) and had a similar experience? Would you be motivated to go back? This kind of performance will definitely not help them catch Google. (Or Yahoo! and MSN for that matter)

The best ‘Geo’ product since the Metro Photo-sharing site Flickr updated today with a very cool new GeoTagging feature, which allows you to sort pics according to location by dragging and dropping them on points in an interactive map. Okay, we admit it; we geek out pretty much whenever anyone adds an interactive map to anything, but this map has a satellite view and…it’s just really cool, OK? But if you don’t take our word for it, you can check out this very filmstrip-sounding presentation called “GeoTags and You.”

Look for this plot on Law & Order in about 4 years What do you get when you plug up the computers of a hospital and the Defense Department with debilitating adware? About three years, says this AP story. Young Christopher Maxwell, whose botnet hijinx ‘unintentionally’ got a bit out of hand, now faces three years in the slammer and another three of “supervised release” for unleashing his hacker assaults on tens of thousands of unwitting computers. Just as we always say, kids: crime doesn’t pay (except for the hundred thousand bucks Maxwell and his friends netted before they were nabbed).

Bangs, Bangs, you’re dead… Blog Search wasn’t the only thing Yahoo! pulled the plug on over the weekend. The original Yahoo! web series Richard Bangs Adventures, a year-old travel show, also met its demise, says MediaPost. Cause of death: failure to build an audience. Yahoo hasn’t given up on original video content entirely, though…yet; they’ve still got the front lines war reports of Kevin Sites in the Hotzone, and they say they’re looking for an Adventures replacement.

“Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer our communication and collaboration tools to your entire organization — customizable with your branding, color scheme and content through the administrative control panel, and with no hardware or software to install or maintain.”

Those tools, currently, are Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Page Creator. Lacking a word processor and a spreadsheet, Google Apps for Your Domain isn’t quite ready to tackle MS Office just yet, especially when Office 2007 promises collaborative features of its own, which would erase Google’s only differentiating advantage here.

Word from Battelle, though, is that an ‘enterprise’ version – souped up and ready for use by large businesses – is in the works, and could include the Writely word processor and Google Spreadsheets before the end of the year. We’re not sure why Google would release Apps for Your Domain at all without those two components, which are pretty much essential to most business environments, large or small. It does appear, like Michael Arrington says, like a bit of a rush job – the acronym, for instance (GAYD) doesn’t seem to have gotten the benefit of much proofreading.

Actually, there was one peep. Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny replied to Om’s post, confirming Yahoo!’s official silence on the matter and saying that Blog Search had been offed, without further elaboration.

That’s when Greg Jarboe decided to dig deeper, tracking down Yahoo! spokesman Brian Nelson for some horse’s mouth action. Nelson said that the removal of Blog Search was a temporary move, promising it would return after a retooling. Courtesy Jarboe, here’s a cryptic snip from Nelson:

“…blog content remains an important part of our overall news and news search strategy. It’s worth mentioning again because I’ve read speculation in the blogosphere about what Y! might be thinking bigger picture when it comes to blog content.”

He’s probably referring to Steve Rubel’s supposition that Yahoo!’s readying a blog reader/blog search app, similar to Ask’s Bloglines product. You’ll know more when we know more…

In a deal that will come to fruition by 2007, says Reuters, Google and eBay will share the international ad revenue (details not disclosed), and the companies will also cooperate on click-to-call technology that would enable interested buyers to contact eBay sellers over the phone just by clicking on an ad. The latter project will combine elements of both firms’ VOIP services: eBay’s well-known Skype and Google little-used Google Talk app – once again, details are sketchy.

Since this Google-eBay deal parallels the Yahoo!-eBay tie-up in many ways, you might wonder if there’s a PayPal component at work here as well. So far there’s no word on that, nor on whether the deal will have much effect on the Google Checkout tiff that began back in July. Checkout, a transaction service that offers PayPal some competition, was banned from eBay over accusations of unreliability. It looked at the time like a move to preserve eBay’s PayPal monopoly, but legitimate questions have emerged over the past couple of months over Google Checkout’s well-publicized difficulties.

As for when you’ll start seeing Google’s ads all over eBay’s international sites, we’re not sure. But they’ll probably start small and ramp up slowly, as with Yahoo!’s US ads. Some eBay merchants have chafed at the idea of ads directing their customers to other sellers’ auctions, so thus far Yahoo!’s ads have shown up mainly when eBay searches yield no results.

Too far? Too far was about two turns back thattaway Just when you thought there were just enough fake, ‘funny’ internet religions, Philipp Lenssen comes along and points out The Church of Google. They’re recently installed in a new domain with a new name (having apparently been called “The Church Of Googlism”), and they’ve even got the requisite holy gospels: “Proof that Google is God” includes PROOF #3, “Google Answers Prayers.” Oh yeah? Please don’t let there me a hymn book, please don’t let there be a hymn book, please don’t…

From our “That Explains It” Department If you’re like us, you’ve probably lost count of the number of times you sat in front of a monitor, stared at an email inbox explosively overfilled with penny stock spam, and wondered if all that nuisance is worth it to anybody. If you trust the BBC, the maddening answer is ‘yes.’ They carry a report touting a study that claims really good stock spammers enjoy a 6 percent return on their mailings, thanks to, well, the rest of us. The poor folks who go in on the spam stocks naturally fare a bit worse (via Threadwatch).

Gareth Keenan investigates… …Microsoft’s YouTube leak. Explains Ars Technica, the team behind the revered British comedy “The Office” agreed to do a series of training videos for the corporation a couple years back, on the condition that they never escape to the outside world. But as we now live in a YouTubed society, the temptation proved too much for one employee, and the funny clips made their way online. We have to say we’re pleasantly surprised at Microsoft’s self-deprecating sense of humor, though not in their reaction to the leak, which has been decidedly stern – the videos have been yanked from YouTube as of this writing. Still, Ars writer Nate Anderson calls this “a fine bit of PR for Microsoft,” and we have to agree that we like this side of them.