Katharine Berry, while not leaving Second Life completely, is winding down pretty much all her Second Life commitments, forum moderator status, shucking her island, and closing off her other Second Life website services except for AjaxLife.

AjaxLife is how we came to know Berry, with her superlative efforts to produce an open-source, web-based, thin-client for Second Life.

So, here's something to chew on. This article talks about how parents might not be aware exactly how expensive virtual world items can be, and how easy it is to just keep buying things. After all, it's not Real, is it?

But here's what opponents of the Age Verification service have been saying all along. Anyone can use a credit card, even if it doesn't belong to them. There's just no good way to verify that you are who you claim to be. What's needed instead? A random monitoring system? Someone to come along and ask generation-appropriate questions? "Who were the Mamas and the Papas? Who was Taft? Don't know? You must not be old enough." I'm just throwing it out there. That's obviously not a good method either, but at least it does require more than static information presentation.

How many teens do you think are on the Main Grid? How easy was it for them to get there? Is it time to collapse the Teen Grid yet?

(Via stuff.co.nz)

Machinima Guru, my Teen Grid alter ego, stopped by the College Fair on Sunday. It brought me back to the days when I had to wander around the smelly gym of my rival high school picking up pamphlets as I went along. Technology sure has come far! Storm Basiat, the dedicated teen manager for Eye4You, was waiting to send me a port as soon as I logged in.

When I arrived, I was greeted by two of the most adorable astronauts I've ever seen! I was able to listen to a few speeches before I had to log off. One of them, as presented by Daniel Voyager, was for TSL Greeters. When asked for comment, attendee Reallife Orca, of Digital Refinery, noted that "It was interesting to see all of the colleges who showed up, I was just a bit let down that no trade schools came out."

I grabbed pictures of everything I saw, but was really dismayed to find that I was unable to donate to the TG College Fund for some reason. If you would like to help, you can send your donations to Bluewings Hayek on the Main Grid. For a full write-up of the Fair from Storm, check out SLNN.