Book party for "Second Life Herald" by Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace

Of all my favorite memories as a reporter, there may be none higher on the A-list than what happened in Peter Ludlow's hotel room late one night in Austin, Texas.

For simplicity's sake, let's just say that two of my heroes, Make magazine senior editor Phil Torrone and Adafruit Industries founder Limor Fried, took a Roomba vacuum cleaner, hacked it, dressed it up to look like a frog and then wirelessly directed it to run back and forth across a street. It was Roomba Frogger.

To witness this, a crowd had gathered in the glorious hotel room of Ludlow, a philosophy professor from the University of Michigan who moonlighted as the founder of first the Alphaville Herald and later the Second Life Herald.

Among the others in the room that night, besides myself, Ludlow, Torrone, Fried, former Electric Sheep Company futurist-in-residence Jerry Paffendorf, Linden Lab engineer and world expert on teledildonics Kyle Machulis (aka qDot), Clickable Culture's Tony Walsh and several others, was Mark Wallace, the editor of 3pointD, and at the time the editor of the Second Life Herald.

Roomba Frogger is neither here nor there, except that it demonstrates just the kind of silliness that Ludlow is willing to countenance. Well now he and Wallace are about to publish the book they have been working on for some time, aptly titled "The Second Life Herald: The virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse."

It is a tale based around, as I understand it, the stories that established the Herald as indispensable reading, and should be fun reading and a great look back at, among other things, SL's early years.

I can't wait to get my copy.

But meanwhile, there's going to be a book party for its launch on Saturday, Nov. 3, in Brooklyn. On 3pointD, Wallace says:

"It should be in bookstores momentarily, and you can already buy the thing online, but maybe the most fun way to acquire a copy would be to buy one at the party we’re having in Brooklyn on November 3.

As the official invite reads: Join us deep in ghetto-industrial East Williamsburg, for a night of measured discussions (yeah, right), virtual-to-real confusions, griefing, pr0n, and who knows, maybe even a bit of reading and/or speechifying, as we mark the publication of the official-as-it-gets story of the most kick-ass virtual newspaper you’ve ever read.

Party time: Saturday, November 3, 8-11pm
Location: 3rd Ward, corner of Morgan Avenue and Stagg Street
Subway: L train to Grand Street (then walk down Bushwick to Stagg, then down Stagg to Morgan)

Refreshments will be served, but we’d welcome contributions of the occasional six pack, as we have no idea how many refreshees are actually going to show up. In any case, it should be quite a good time, so we hope to see you there."