I have recently read about four books about Second Life that I should probably ask Santa to bring me.
The first one is The Entrepreneurs Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse by Daniel Terdiman, which was recommended by Clickable Culture.
The synopsis on Amazon suggests that this will
give readers an in-depth look at businesses and other economic opportunities in Second Life, explain the business operations of each, and show readers how to identify, develop, launch, and profit from their own business. Written by an award-winning author and Second Life expert with deep ties to the business community, “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life” begins with an overview of the virtual world and its flourishing economy as well as the challenges it presents to entrepreneurs.A virtual business basics chapter discusses important features of all successful Second Life businesses, including marketing and advertising avenues. The following chapters discuss how to plan, start, and successfully run such businesses as real estate, clothing and accessory creation, construction and landscaping, adult opportunities, music and video production, art creation, and building and running entertainment venues. More esoteric opportunities – machinima, news media and blogging, working for other content creators, currency speculation, and more – are also explored. “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life” also features interviews with successful Second Life entrepreneurs, sidebars discussing practical considerations in each field, and useful resources for anyone who wishes to operate a successful, profitable business in Second Life.
The second book is Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life, by Aimee Weber, who is renowned as one of the better clothes designers there. This book claims to provide
details on how to design and use Second Life content, covering such important skills as building, texturing, scripting, animating, and terraforming. It follows a logical progression that builds upon a reader’s skills so that new and intermediate content creators will quickly become experts. It discusses how to create scripts to communicate and interact with the world and manage data. It includes a CD with tutorial files, textures, clothing and character templates, machinima, demo software, and resources and references provided by Linden Lab.
The third and fourth books are both by Jeff Heaton.
Scripting Recipes for Second Life presents
many common objects in Second Life, with complete Linden Scripting Language examples. For each example, you are provided with copy/modify-able objects for all examples in the Second Life world. These examples are presented as a series of recipes, which are useful by themselves, or as a starting point for more complex objects. The recipes span a wide array of uses. Useful recipes for buildings provide elevators, teleport pads, and locking doors. Vehicles are covered with example cars, boats and helicopters. The video game side of Second Life is demonstrated with an assortment of gun and bullet recipes. Recipes for wearable items such as glittering jewelry, jet packs, parachutes, and anti-push orbs are also presented. Recipes for slide shows, cannons, weather stations, and other miscellaneous items are also covered.Commerce is a huge part of Second Life. Two chapters are dedicated to commerce objects, such as tip jars, rental scripts and vendor kiosks.
Introduction to Textures, Animation Audio and Sculpting in Second Life does more or less what the title suggests, or at least I suppose that it does. There is no publisher’s blurb for this one at Amazon.
Later…
Catharina pointed out Designing Virtual Worlds by the legendary Richard Bartle, creator of the first-ever MUD. Although this is not specifically about Second Life it is important background reading. She also suggested that we should find a good introductory book that we could suggest as preliminary reading for new students.
This is a good idea. I had better find one!