Customer Reviews

Second Life: The Official Guide

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book was a major disappointment.

There is very little How TO info in the book if you are not planning to create objects and try to make money in the sim. If you are just a visitor who wants a pleasant time sightseeing and chatting with others, then this book will disappoint.

A large part of the book is a tribute to selected SL residents who have made money in the sim. Nice for them, but who else cares?

Another chapter describes interesting specific locations in SL. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the sites are obsolete and gone.

Even if you are interested in learning scripting language to try to sell products in SL, there have got to be better instructional manuals out there than this.
When I had real HowTo questions, the answer was rarely found in the book.

I truly felt I had wasted my money in purchasing this book. You can learn as much useful info at the initial Help Islands and inworld tutorials once you enter SL.

My copy of Second Life: The Official Guide arrived in the mail yesterday and I'm pleased. The easiest way to summarize the book, is that it acts as the manual that would come with SL if it were shrink-wrapped software.

Mark Wallace's, Chapter 3: The Grand Tour is fantastic. Before the book arrived I spent hours with a friend yesterday talking about Second Life. He had an account, had logged in, more or less understood what it was but didn't know where to find cool things. This chapter covers that turf. New and seasoned residents both will find a lot of value in this chapter. It covers everything from The Shelter and Anwr Oil Rig to Something Awful and Gor. I'll be spending a few hours going back through these places which I've toured in the past. This chapter alone makes this a worthy gift for someone you want to become a Second Lifer.

Cory Ondrejka's LSL chapter is also great. This is the well written, professional introduction to LSL that was sorely needed. Non-programmers will find the examples a great place to start and programmers will be welcomed with the standard sections like "What are types?" that they are used to from other languages.

There is certainly a fair bit of nostalgia for us oldbies. Hamlet has a chapter profiling a number of residents and provides a history lesson in another. The history lesson is a must read for new residents and a stroll down memory lane for the rest of us.

Finally, Wallace closes the book out with a step towards 3PointD.

If you know someone new to Second Life, want to encourage someone to log in in 2007, or otherwise love all things Second Life, you should pick up this book!

Wow. Second Life: The Official Guide is just great. But I need to explain where I am coming from.

I'm happy to be a reasonably early technology adopter and I usually practice the "jump in and try it" mode. For example, I figured out my blog in 2004 without any guidance. But as I was thinking about Second Life as a brand new resident a few months ago, I was sort of feeling like this isn't a new technology metaphor, it's a travel metaphor. Second Life is a new place that needs to be learned more than it is a new technology that needs to be learned.

I've traveled the world a great deal. For example, I lived in Japan for six years and Hong Kong for two as Asia Marketing Director for a big American company. My entire career has been as an internationalist. I've visited some 40 or 50 countries on business or pleasure and logged several million air miles. Before departing for somewhere like Bombay or Bangkok or Brussels, I always purchase a travel guide and read it on the plane. I just like knowing the basics like what's a funky old restaurant to try, how to hail a cab, and how much to tip (or not).

What Second Life: The Official Guide does is act as your travel guide to a new place. The authors got that right. Thanks! Just like a great Frommer's travel guide, the book is chock full of places to go, people to see, etiquette, currency exchange, what to wear, and more. In fact, the publisher, Wiley, could do a version of this book as an actual Frommer's guide, to complement the Sybex computer book imprint that Second Life: The Official Guide is published with. Wouldn't that be cool!?

Yes, there is also a boatload of stuff for Second Life experts including details on the Second Life scripting language. This stuff is beyond me but if it is as well written as the parts that I devoured, than even long time residents will get a great deal of practical information from the book. Several of the authors work at Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life so it must be accurate.

Thanks for doing this book, guys. It is important.

This book was a big dissapointment for me. I was looking for more detail about using the client (especially the poorly documented menu options) and the scripting language, but found only a rehash of the most basic concepts. The CD is just a collection of publicly available resources I'd already found on my own.

The book did have a few useful links and locations, and a fairly detailed history of Second Life that I was previously unaware of. The book was also well constructed and had full color throughout.

If you want technical information and tutorials, skip this book. If you want pretty pictures, player interviews, and a list of places to explore; you'll enjoy it.

Linden Lab's Second Life has attracted a vast audience in the last year. This book is a copiously illustrated explanation of much that you can do as a new member. Most of it is non-technical. You don't need extensive computer background. One of the attractions of Second Life.

But the main message is that Second Life is quite unlike most massive multiplayer games. It's not the place for twitch combat. Instead, Second Life lets you and many others explore a fantastical social environment. Where you can heavily customise your persona.

Starting with choosing a gender. The book shows that a nontrivial percentage of gamers choose the opposite sex for their characters. It also discusses the etiquette of whether you tell others that you are doing this. Since in general, unless you do so, there is no way they can ascertain. These gender benders are one way that Second Life has been used by people to experiment with alternate gender roles, in a manner highly unlikely in real life, if they cannot realistically cross-dress.

There is much more available, as the book relates. You can construct buildings, to make an environment conducive to your persona. More generally, you can make other objects. Also, you can perform activities from which to derive real dollars. Hard work, as the book advises. But unlike some other gaming environments, Second Life explicitly lets you garner some real income if you so desire. This monetary interaction with the real world is a compelling and addictive feature to some players.

While there is a wealth of information here, I think the book would be improved if more of the basics were included eg. getting around,what to look for, what you can get out of joining a group, how do you get to some of the sub windows referenced in the text etc.
There are other books available which go into more detail and which I have found to be of more help.

This is a very poor introductory book. The single fact that it has no index is enough to rate it only one star. You cannot look up anything readily. Much of the book is fluff: useless, even if sometimes interesting, information on the background of SL and its workings and its denizens. But it is very poor at explaining how to DO things in SL. Almost every time you want information on the specifics of how to do something (move, look around, build, buy, etc.) instead of telling you, it tells you to check the KnowledgeBase of SL itself. Two things wrong with this: you already have to have an SL account to do so, and the URLs given don't work. Further, terms and jargon are used before they are explained. This book is good example of why people who are close to a technical project should not be the authors of manuals for beginners. As "the official guide" to SL, this ought to be an embarasment to to those who wrote it and those who run SL.

I've heard about Second Life over the years, but most recently with regard to successful applications in teaching, and particularly distance learning. When I checked into Second Life for the first time, it was quite overwhelming. Although, Second Life itself provides a wealth of information and orientation opportunities, it's still nice to have a book that collects a lot of the lore of Second Life in a convenient off-line format.

The book is short on in-depth how-to's about Second Life, but it is strong on conveying the history, philosophy, and to some extent, the "feel" of Second Life. It is written by several people, so the book lacks a consistent "voice," yet every writer in the book is an enthusiastic participant in the Second Life phenomenon, sharing a common outlook that makes the book an easy and enjoyable read.

And clearly that is what this book conveys: Second Life is a burgeoning phenomenon that may one day have wide-reaching implications that extend into Real Life. This is an outlet for creativity, imagination, and play of all kinds. Some people are even making real money within its virtual environs.

Think of this book as a tour book that mentions some of the sights you can find when you visit, that warns of some of the "steamier" areas to consider, that describes standards of behavior and etiquette among the residents, and that unlocks some of the initial mysteries a new arrival is bound to face early on.

If you're interested in Second Life, this book will shorten the initial learning curve. If you've been a Second Lifer for awhile and you're looking to master some of the more advanced elements of Second Life, such as building from prims and scripting, you'll find very little here to help you. Still, it will probably end up being a book every Second Lifer will want to read at least once.

Yes, I call myself a geek but I have yet to check out the phenomenon known as Second Life. That changed yesterday when I finished the book Second Life: The Official Guide by Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au, Mark Wallace, Catherine Winters, Cory Ondrejka, and Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham. I can now see the appeal on a number of levels...

Contents:
Part 1 - Getting a Second Life: What Is Second Life?; Getting Started; The Grand Tour
Part 2 - Living a Second Life: Changing Your Appearance; Using Your Library; Managing Your Inventory; Building; Using the Linden Scripting Language
Part 3 - Success in Second Life: Who Are You?; Making Money; Real Residents; A Cultural Timeline; The Future and Impact of Second Life
Appendices: Real-Life Education in Second Life; Glossary; Additional Resources; Menu Commands and Functions

My learning style would be best described as "read first, then try." One of the reasons why I had not yet tried out Second Life is because I had no idea as to what was involved and how to get started. Yeah, you can always dive right in, and then clean up mistakes as you go. This book allows you to avoid the "mistake" phase, orient yourself from the start, and start getting the most out of your on-line experience. The writing is a nice blend of intro and advanced material. For newbies, there's the "here's where to start, and here are the basic instructions on how to move around and interact" information. At that level, Second Life is basically a three-dimensional chat room. But the real fun comes when you start building your own objects and scripting your own actions and gestures. There are chapters included on how to manipulate the Linden Scripting Language to personalize your avatar. And using "prims", you can create and build just about anything you can imagine. For creative types, Second Life is a playground without limits. Architecture, engineering, fashion design, you name it. And a little time spent with Second Life: The Official Guide will spark your imagination and get you geared up to expand your creativity. The book even explains how it's possible to buy and sell using Linden dollars (which *do* have a real-life exchange rate).

A very useful and aesthetically appealing book that will likely hook you into a new virtual existence.

Far too many pointless, repetitive screen shots and boring "human" interest stories. Imbalanced: for example, too much about adjusting body parts, too little about building and scripting. Several places they say things like "create a new object" but don't tell you how to do it! An index would have helped in these situations. Some good advice, but way too many self-congratulatory personal stories.