More and more real-world organizations are using popular virtual world Second Life for a variety of purposes: advertising, education, e-commerce, or for the novelty factor alone. Are these meaningful forays into the future of the internet, or simply companies playing around in virtual reality for its own sake? Catherine Winters (Catherine Omega in Second Life) shows some examples of real-world organizations’ Second Life presences and explains what works and what doesn’t — and why.

Catherine discusses future applications of virtual worlds and explains why sometimes the best tool is the simplest one.

RELATED WEBSITE LINKS
http://www.CatherineOmega.com - Omega Point, Catherine Winters’ blog
http://www.SecondLife.com - Second Life website

PRODUCTS SHOWN
Second Life, virtual world developed and run by Linden Lab; access is free.

Featured Links:

Clinical Research Unit, McGill University
http://www.cru.mcgill.ca

W3 Schools:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/

CSS Zen Garden:
http://www.csszengarden.com/

http://www.webcreme.com/

1. Explain that the eye has cells that are sensitive to Red, Green, and Blue.
2. Show that monitors and projectors use only Red, Green and Blue to produce the illusion of all other colors.
3. Show that white paper reflects all wavelengths of light.
4. We need to be able to “Subtract” Red, Green, or Blue from the white light.
5. Show that Cyan only subtracts Red, Magenta only subtracts Green, and Yellow only subtracts Blue. With CMY we can control RGB one channel at a time. I will use filter gels to demonstrate this.
6. Printing inks are inexpensive and when you mix CMY you get a dirty brown. Therefore you need Black ink to produce clean blacks.
7. The printing industry uses the letter K because black is the “Key” channel. They register all other colors to the Key channel.