We're pleased to announce a brand new Drupal module...

...but first, the reason we created it:

No matter how appealing an online service is, users and developers alike always feel frustrated when their noses bump up against walls.

Facebook users feel it when they receive email messages notifying them that they've received Facebook messages... without saying what those messages contain. LinkedIn users have felt it when they try hunting for a news feed for their own LinkedIn Answers.

And Second Life users feel it when they want to find some way to connect their in-world activity in some way with the rest of the online world; with a few limited exceptions (and to their credit, Linden Lab is working hard to expand them), that can be an exercise in frustration.

Maybe we can help change that.

Introducing the Second Life framework, a free Drupal module that allows scripts within Second Life to interact over the web with applications running on a Drupal web site.

This is an enabling module, built for developers. It allows you to create new Drupal modules with cool Second Life-integration functionality, but doesn't add new functionality in and of itself. It's built to interact with scripts written in LSL, the Second Life scripting language. (We built it as part of a larger project within SL; more on that as it develops.)

The download package includes a sample module and a handy Second Life client emulator. (It lets you test your work even if you aren't running Second Life. That reduces development time and lets you write modules for SL even if your LSL scripts aren't ready yet.)

The module was created by Khalid Baheyeldin of 2bits, our Drupal programmer of choice for brilliant coding. (Khalid is starting to take on mythic qualities. The other day, we mentioned to a friend who moves frequently in Drupal circles that we were working with Khalid. "Ah," the friend said, his eyes widening slightly. "'The Hammer.'" Apparently we aren't the only ones who think there isn't a Drupal problem out there that Khalid can't crack.)

He worked closely with LSL whiz Catherine Winters as they braved the idiosyncracies of LSL and mapped out the protocols needed for Drupal and Second Life to talk to each other.

We have our own cunning plans for employing this module, but we're eager to see how the community puts it to work. Exposing SL activity to the rest of the web? Bringing blog content interactively into SL? Using Drupal as a database for an SL script?

We hope this module will work alongside efforts like SLFeed to help break down the barriers that separate avatars from the wider world of the world-wide web. There's some amazing stuff going on in the walled gardens of the online world; it's time some of those walls came down so we can all have a look.

And if you're working with Drupal and Second Life, drop us a line. We'd love to know what you're up to.

Links: 

• The Drupal project page for the Second Life framework
• Khalid's announcement of the release 

Web 2.0 and Your Organization
July 24 & 25th, 2007
Centre for Social Innovation
215 Spadina Avenue, Toronto

How can your organization use social media tools to deepen your relationships with supporters, reach new audiences and raise more money? More than twenty people discovered the power of social media tools like blogs and wikis through a workshop I co-taught with Jason Mogus on Web 2.0 and Your Organization. Jason and I had so much fun teaching that March workshop in Vancouver, and got such a positive response from participants, that we will be offering the same workshop in Toronto this summer.

Here's the skinny:

Are you interested in how online communities like Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube can empower your members and customers to carry your message out into the world? Could your organization benefit from deeper collaboration among your team members, clients, partners or the public? Could better knowledge-sharing, stronger relationships and closer communications inside your organization and with your core supporters foster more efficiency, insight and effectiveness?

The latest generation of "Web 2.0" or social web strategies and tools offer powerful opportunities for organizations to improve the way they work, communicate their messages, empower others, and serve the public. In this workshop you will learn how the latest tools for online collaboration and community building can make your organization smarter and more effective.

This workshop is designed for communications strategists, marketing managers, and webmasters who are interested in how this evolution of the web can help evolve your organization's online strategy. We will give you the tools, knowledge, and most crucially, the vision for how your organization can use the web as a stronger agent of change. We’ll also cover the nuts-and-bolts, introducing the latest tools so that you know which options are most promising for your needs.

This workshop will take place from 6pm to 9pm on July 24th, and from 9am to 5pm (with lunch break) on July 25th.

Follow this link to register today -- space is limited.

For more information, please contact web2andyou@gmail.com. Or download our leaflet (PDF, 1 MB).

Rob and I are spending the next two days at NetSquared, in the company of 21 outstanding teams working on projects that harness social media tools for social change. We met many of these folks for the first time yesterday, in a pre-conference session that brought the projects together for an afternoon of collaborative idea-sharing and relationship building, and we were incredibly impressed by the commitment and creativity that these folks are bringing to their respective projects. As part of the NetSquared Innovators Support Network we will choose to work with one of these projects on a pro bono basis, providing them with their choice of a customized community participation plan, a recommended community feature set, or complete specifications for a new custom Drupal module.

But one of the themes that emerged in yesterday's conversation was the desire to foster collaboration not only among the 21 finalist projects here in San Jose, but among the more than 150 projects who participated in this year's call for Innovation Fund submissions. Like a lot of the folks here, we got really excited about quite a few of the projects that didn't end up in the top 21, and we started thinking about how we might support their work.

That's why we've decided to extend the same offer of pro bono support to one of the projects that isn't in the room today. Next month, we'll start working with Newscloud, an open source media platform that combines news sharing and social networking. Jodie Tonita of ONE/Northwest recently introduced us to Newscloud's founder and driving force, Jeff Reifman, and we immediately saw Jeff's work as exactly the kind of technology innovation that non-profits need now.

Using Newscloud, an organization's members and supporters can identify the news stories that matter to them, annotate those stories with their own reflections, and collaboratively create a window on the day's issues that reflect their interests and priorities. Individual users may find Newscloud compelling too -- quite apart from the social benefits of collaboratively surfacing interesting stories, it's got a great interface for reading blogs and news sites that displays stories as they appear on the originating site, rather than as plain or reformatted text. The best way to understand Newscloud's value is to visit the Newscloud site, sign up for an account (it's very quick!) and take it for a spin yourself.

Our clients and colleagues in the non-profit sector often ask us to help them integrate news into their online communities. They want a way to bring their members and supporters the news that is relevant to their issues and interests, and ideally, they want a way for their audience to interact with those stories and engage in meaningful conversation around the latest news. Newscloud offers that potential, but right now organizations need to either convene on the Newscloud site itself, or install their own version of the Newscloud platform.

We're going to work with Jeff to make it easier for non-profits to integrate Newscloud's features directly into their own web sites. Working from our own experience developing non-profit sites on the Drupal platform, we're going to help Jeff develop a Newscloud Drupal module, so that the thousands of community sites now running Drupal can integrate Newscloud-enabled news sharing directly into their sites. We'll use our own clients' needs as the basis for developing the module's specifications, but we'd love to hear from other organizations about their own needs for news sharing and commenting, so that our specifications can reflect the needs of as many organizations as possible -- just leave your comments on this post, or e-mail me directly (alex at socialsignal dot com) to get involved.

We'll keep the NetSquared community posted on how this experiment evolves. And we hope that other members of the NetSquared community -- technology assistance providers, developers, funders, and participating projects -- will think about how they might help or collaborate with one or more of the 150 projects that have profiled their needs on the NetSquared sites. The time, advice and support of this community can help each and every one of these projects move forward, and advance the state-of-the-art in using social media for social change.

One of the biggest criticisms of Second Life is that the numbers frequently hyped aren't accurate. It's true that there were one million user accounts as of 6 months ago and that as of this writing, the SecondLife.com front page indicates there are currently 4,598,897. That number will likely be over 4.6 million by the time you read this blog post. So what does that actually mean in practical usage terms? Are there 4.6 million regular Second Life users? Well, no. Immediately after that, the page goes on to indicate that only 1,629,589 users have logged into Second Life in the past 60 days.

For truly accurate information about Second Life's usage, we need to look at longer-term stats. Let's take a look at a few provided by Second Life users, as well as Second Life's developers, Linden Lab itself.

read more »

If you work at the intersection of technology and community-building, we hope you'll join us for the March gathering of Social Tech Brewing's Vancouver chapter. Social Tech Brewing brings together folks from social media, nonprofit organizations, community service, social activism, social ventures and technology to share ideas -- and beer!

read more »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 2, 2007

Vancouver, Canada - One of the world's foremost authorities on interactive scripting in virtual worlds has joined Vancouver-based Web 2.0 firm Social Signal, company CEO Alexandra Samuel announced today.

Catherine Winters, known in Second Life as Catherine Omega, will serve as Social Signal's Managing Director of Virtual Worlds and lead the company's new Second Life practice.

"Social Signal's mission and goals are very much in line with my own goals for social change," Winters said. "The potential of virtual worlds to affect interactions both online and off is incredible. I'm very excited to have the opportunity to lead projects that realize that potential."

Winters is a co-author of the newly-published Second Life: The Official Guide and the creator of the acclaimed LSL Wiki, the leading resource on Second Life's scripting language.

Samuel said Social Signal plans to unveil its first initiatives in Second Life in the first half of 2007. The company has purchased an island, and Social Signal's staff have been active participants in Second Life for several months.

"For organizations looking to engage their publics, Second Life offers an experience like no other," she said. "It promises the rich immediacy of video, the interactivity of the web and the intimacy of face-to-face contact.

"But making good on that promise means going beyond storefronts and billboards. Catherine's expertise in Second Life interactivity and her understanding of virtual-world community dynamics and participation will be critical to our clients' success."

Samuel said she's particularly intrigued by the prospects for organizations that link a Second Life presence with their other Web 2.0 communities. "The real power may lie in finding ways of harnessing the networked relationships of the social web to the interactive vitality of Second Life," she said.

"We've become adept at finding innovative applications for versatile platforms like Drupal and WordPress. I can't wait to see what happens when we integrate Second Life into that toolkit."

Social Signal, founded in 2005, builds online communities for businesses, governments and non-profits, with a focus on fostering social change. Clients have ranged from CompuMentor, which provides technology assistance to more than 50,000 non-profit organizations across North America, to Vancity, Canada's largest credit union.

Note: Social Signal will host an informal public reception to welcome Catherine Winters on January 3 from 2 pm to 4 pm Pacific/SL time (5 pm to 7 pm Eastern) at TechSoup's Second Life headquarters on Info Island (SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/InfoIsland/52/171/33/). All are welcome.

Information:

Alexandra Samuel (SL: Consultini Paperdoll)
tel. 778-371-5445
alex@socialsignal.com