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The popular, virtual reality site "Second Life", run by Linden Labs, will shortly unveil a new limited service beta trial in which they will give users the option of chatting up other avatars with voice instead of text.

Prior to this announcement, Second Life users wanting to communicate with one another have had two basic choices: text chat (either personal or in a group setting) or the use of third-party voice applications like Skype.

Linden Labs  has teamed up with VoIP technology partners Vivox and DiamondWare to engineer the service, which goes live on March 6 for a limited group of users. By the end of the month, Linden Labs hopes to extend the feature to all Second Life inhabitants.

Second Life's new integrated voice chat feature will offer a group mode that lets users hear voice conversations in their immediate proximity, and personal and regular group voice chat, where users don't need to be near each other to have a conversation.

After There.com added voice chat to its site in late 2003, many Second Life users have been clamoring for the same feature.  And after seeing users add Skype and other applications like TeamSpeak or Ventrilo into the site, Linden Labs apparently got serious about development.

The plan is to initially provide voice free of charge during the beta. Down the road, Linden Labs is considering limiting the offering to mainland property owners and island owners who pay a $295 monthly maintenance fee, and charging users living on the wrong side of the virtual train tracks an additional fee or making them upgrade to the current plan.

It's clear the site is at the very early stages of incorporating real-time voice chat, and it will be interesting to see what emerges from the user community and how people incorporate it into their virtual business and personal lives.

Since Second Life has become a bona fide marketplace, where buy/sell transactions occur on a constant basis -- and we're talking real money made here, not Monopoly currency -- I'm particularly interested to see what intrepid developers come up with.

How about virtual phone companies, including virtual payphone, mobile and landline services. Or community-wide news and radio "channels".

Just as long as it's not some virtual telemarketing business that calls me during virtual dinnertime...







 

GE has just introduced new incandescent light bulbs that supposedly match the new compact fluorescent type in efficiency and energy savings.

See this post from the Green Tech blog on this announcement. I agree with some of the comments that this appears to be taking two steps back, one step forward, but if the energy savings (and consequent reduction in carbon dioxide) rival fluorescents -- and the prices are right -- then we are still far better off going with either option than doing nothing at all.

Also of note, check out a new Yahoo! site -- 18seconds.org -- designed to encourage people to change to compact fluorescent bulbs -- a task that supposedly takes 18 seconds. The site, sponsored by Wal-Mart, shows a running tally of dollars saved and amount of carbon dioxide reduced as a result of replaced bulbs.

I was sorry to hear that Costco recently ended their amazing 2-year, no-questions-asked return policy for a bunch of electronics products, including TVs, computers, cameras, camcorders, cell phones, MP3 players and iPods, It was a wildly popular, if occasionally abused, policy -- and helped make Costco the go-to place to snag a great deal on a new flat screen HDTV.

Now, customers have 90 days to return these products for a full refund (although Costco will extend manufacturers warranties up to two years and offer free phone-based tech support).

Apparently, the company was experiencing a noticeable financial hit from its largesse, and the bean counters couldn't allow it to continue.

When I first blogged about the amazing energy savings -- and competitive pricing -- of new compact fluorescent light bulbs, I wrote about 2 common versions of the twist type bulb -- 60 and 100 watt incandescent replacements. Easily found at Costco or Walmart on the cheap.

  I've basically replaced every standard bulb in my house with a fluorescent one -- except for the more "specialty" bulbs, like chandelier bulbs, globe bulbs (for bathroom vanities), reflector and spot bulbs, outdoor bulbs, dimmer bulbs, 3-way bulbs, bug bulbs, grow bulbs, blue light bulbs, red light bulbs, and very very bright bulbs. In fact, any light bulb you can think of has a fluorescent replacement.

In other words, we're still talking a heck of a lot of incandescent light bulbs still burning in my house.

Why aren't they more readily available, and at more reasonable pricing? If you surf around, you can see little chandelier bulbs priced at $9 at piece -- and globes even higher -- and that's not including shipping charges! I'm sorry, but $15+/ bulb just ain't gonna cut it for me -- Not when we're talking dozens and dozens of bulbs.

Someone needs to convince a forward thinking company -- like the venerable U.S bulb company Feit Electric -- to bring prices down to competitive levels to goose their wholesale adoption. 

And I smell opportunity for folks who can figure out a way to make them easily available at a reasonable price.

Over the last couple of weeks, most of my neighbors and fellow New Yorkers have scratched their heads a few times when it came to the weather -- with temperatures sometimes 20 degrees or more above normal (it almost hit 60 today), it seems as if this is the "Year of the Winter That Wasn't". By this time, this far into the season, we've usually had a few snowstorms and a bunch of sub-freezing days.

Unseasonally warm temperatures are present all across the Eastern seaboard, and Mother Nature appears to be genuinely confused. I've heard stories about crocus buds popping up in gardens in New Jersey, and cherry trees sprouting buds in Washington, DC. In fact, there is a growing concern that this premature growth will seriously diminish cherry blossom production in May and June -- the normal season for the trees to be budding. If this keeps up, I'm sure we'll be hearing about animals doing some strange things as a result of their winter cycles being interrupted.

Amazingly, most of the scientific commentary about our weird weather points the finger not at global warming, but normal shifts in annual weather patterns, such as a north/eastward shift of the El Nino effect.

Hmmmmmmm...

Here's a good cautionary tale for those looking to make the plunge into buying their first HDTV or getting a second or third set for the bedroom and study. With prices finally coming down to earth, many people have decided they've waited long enough and are snatching up the plasma or LCD thin screens of their dreams.

According to this great piece on Cnet.com by David Carnoy, a new HDMI standard -- specifically HDMI 1.3 -- is slated for incorporation into HDTV's starting around the second quarter of 2007. Based on this information, you just might want to hold off a little while longer before buying that snazzy new set.

What is HDMI 1.3? HDMI, which stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface, is a successor to DVI, and is the highest quality A/V connection available today that can transmit both digital audio and video signals. HDMI 1.3 supposedly supports twice the bandwidth as HDMI 1.2 (10.2Gbps vs. 4.95Gbps) and supports "Deep Color" --  10-bit, 12-bit, and 16-bit color depths -- while HDMI 1.2 supports only 8-bit color. That translates into 17 million colors at 8-bit, and 1 billion at 10-bit.

Other benefits supposedly include:

• a new mini connector (for HD camcorders and still cameras)
• better backward compatibility
• automatic A/V synching (so characters' lip movements accurately match the soundtrack)
• support for new multichannel HD lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-D Master Audio

Thanks Greg...much appreciated

Hmmm, ok, here goes:

Five Things You Don't Know About Me:

1. I'm much better looking than the picture of me that's posted on my blog (and other TMCnet.com pages that contain my words of wisdom) -- at least that's what everybody tells me. And although I may look 30, I'm really going on 47 (thank you Grandma Mickey for your genes --  she recently passed at 99)...

2. I may appear to some to be a "money is no object" type of guy  -- willing to throw money to the wind -- but in reality I'm a rabid, bargain-hunting thrill seeker -- flea markets, tag sales, eBay -- even the occasional dump -- those are my preferred hunting grounds.

3. I'm a great handyman and love fixing things -- and my neighbors know it, much to my chagrin

4. Although I love it, I start to hiccup uncontrollably if I eat foods that are a bit too spicy hot (like certain Indian, Mexican, Thai and Chinese dishes).

5. I've worked some interesting odd jobs in my youth -- as a boiler room operator (in college); a waiter at  The Council on Foreign Relations in New York where I met and overheard many a great statesmen present and met the late; great Peter Jennings; as a copy editor for the New York Yellow Pages (hated it); as a workman on a team of house renovators (loved it); and started my first  business with my brother Glenn when I was 11 and he was 10, doing all sorts of odd jobs for rich homeowners in the neighborhood -- it was called "Glenarc".

Ok, so I guess it's my turn to tag others (forgive me if they've already been tagged by someone else): I tag Jon Arnold, Rich Tehrani,  Richard "Zippy" Grigonis (not sure if he's started blogging yet -- and I'm also not sure if this experiment is just limited to bloggers or not) but as Exec Editor of TMC's Internet Telephony, SIP and IMS magazines, I'm sure he can devote some analog print space and ink), Tom Keating, and Om Malik.

Or at least while traveling through airports or getting through customs in a foreign country.

A new service called The Luggage Club will ship your goods, luggage, skiis, surfboards, golf clubs -- or whatever -- to anywhere within the U.S. or to any of 220 countries around the world -- door-to-door, and overnight. In many cases, The Luggage Club shipping charges are much less than what FedX or UPS charges.

The company also offers a number of "frequent shipper" membership plans -- a Platinum Plan provides for 30 deliveries of cargo for $6,795 a year. Too much? Less expensive Gold and Silver plans are also available.

Now that we've entered the high season for trade shows -- and travel -- I thought I'd share a surefire method for getting a great hotel room for the absolutely lowest price on the planet. Please note that I haven't made this public through my writings before -- although it is a technique that a number of people have discovered. Consider it a small reward for reading my blog.

The technique involves the coordinated use of two Web resources: Priceline.com and Biddingfortravel.com. We all know about the "Name Your Own Price" feature on Priceline, where you bid a price for a hotel with a particular star level in a particular geographic zone of a city where you want to stay.  Familarity with this feature is a plus.

Biddingfortravel.com is a great Priceline-centric message board that lists winning bids at hotels around the world, and has great FAQs and tips about getting the most out of Priceline, as well as lists and user-submitted reviews of hotels that have been selected in each Priceline zone. The Hotel FAQ on this site is invaluable -- especially the information that details how to use "Free Rebids" on Priceline.com.

Without the magic of "Free Rebids", Priceline limits you to one bid for a hotel at a particular star level, in a specific zone and dates of stay. If your bid is rejected, Priceline wants you to change the star-level (always to a lower star rating), add a zone or change the check-in or check-out dates, or wait 72-hours to bid again. However, the free rebid technique lets you circumvent these constraints, and allows you to continue to bid for a specific zone and star level without changing your selections.  You can start bidding at the lowest price, and in most cases have multiple opportunities to raise your bid incrementally.

I won't detail the whole process here, but I do encourage you to click the FAQ link above to learn how to make use of "Free Rebids". By using the combination of Priceline.com and Biddingfortravel.com. I've been able to get discounts of at least 60% and up to 80% on 3 and 4 star properties all across the country. Biddingfortravel.com is also a great resource for getting dirt cheap airfares, but I haven't used Priceline.com for my airtravel as it's more important for me to use an airline brand I trust and enjoy (for me it's Jet Blue) and because I want full control over my itinerary and the ability to rack up points.