Yes, the rumors are right, I’ve been banned from Linden Labs’ Second Life.

Why?

Because I broke the rules.

I let my son use my Second Life account. I’m not allowed to do that. Only 18-year-olds are allowed to play in Second Life. Yesterday I publicly broke that rule by having Patrick build me a new part of my office while I was on stage running a panel discussion titled “a higher resolution.” The panel discussion wasn’t all that good cause I was incompetently running it, but Patrick was having fun building stuff and showing off how Second Life worked.

At the end of the session Beth Goza, a Linden Labs employee, caught up to Patrick on screen and said “you’re toast.” (We had both been warned about the rules before, so we both knew what that meant — we were about to be kicked and banned).

After the session was over Beth caught up to me and explained that my account was turned off and that my more than $100 I had invested in Second Life would not be refunded (my son and I had bought a variety of things in Second Life, including a virtual Macintosh, a house, and several other items).

We did get a podcast out of it, cause I turned the microphone on and interviewed a variety of people hanging out in the hall, along with Beth. She explained why the rules were the way they are. First, there’s the threat of a lawsuit (MySpace was sued for $30 million by a parent of a child who was alledgedly sexually assaulted by someone she met on MySpace).

Second, they want to keep kids out of the adult world because there are a lot of rooms where adult behavior is taking place. Sex. Gambling. Violence. It’s sort of like owning a bar or a casino. If you want to cater to an adult audience you need to keep kids out. Both for legal reasons as well as to attract an adult audience.

In Second Life there’s also a “Teen Grid” where Patrick will be able to join as soon as he’s 13 (that’ll be in January).

But, there are a few problems with the Teen Grid. First, it simply isn’t as interesting (most of the interesting worlds are in the adult version, and there’s a lot more people in the adult version too) and, in my case, I like working in Second Life with my son. He’s a lot more talented at building things than I am. Unfortunately he can’t move items he’s built from the Teen Grid to the Adult one. Yes, I was using Patrick as child labor in Second Life. Heheh.

Anyway, it’s a good lesson for Patrick to learn. There are consequences for breaking the rules. “It’s your fault,” Patrick just said, in defense. I did tell him to do it on stage. But, even that’s a good lesson for him to learn. If his friends tell him to break a real law, that won’t be an excuse in front of the judge.

Maryam tells him “that’s a lesson for you, Daddy’s not always right.”

No, I’m not. So, now what? We have to apologize to Linden Labs and appeal their decision and promise not to break the rules anymore.

I’m no longer a Microsoft employee. So, on Thursday I sat down with Kathleen Craig of Wired News to do an exit interview. Charles Torre interviewed me and Patrick while I cleaned out my office on Thursday. That interview will be up on Tuesday. My last interview, with Alex Gounares (Bill Gates’ technical assistant, who just got a promotion to corporate VP of corporate strategy at Microsoft) should be up shortly too. It’s a fun interview, can’t wait for you to see that.

I was standing in the back of the hall yesterday when former Senator John Edwards was speaking at Gnomedex and thinking back over the dozens of conferences and events I’ve attended over the past three years. From the big bucks “Demo” or “CES” to the very fun and little Reboot or IT@Cork.

Gnomedex stands alone for one reason: it is the only conference where every attendee has a computer out and on.

What’s funny is that Gnomedex seems like a goofy, unimportant conference. After all, the logo of Chris’ face is on everything. And only 400 people can attend. And, it’s just an unimportant blogging conference anyway, right?

But, we have that little issue of every computer out and on.

That shows this audience is different than any other audience I’ve seen any conference build. It’s like being at a press conference at times.

Kudos to John Edwards for recognizing that there’s an interesting audience here. He got a free ride cause he was the first to come and visit. The next politician who comes to a conference like this will be treated much harsher, especially if he or she doesn’t stick around afterward.

Al Gore, someone commented to me out in the hall, stuck around the TED conference the entire conference. Little things like this are what get people to really become committed to a cause or a person.

That said, Edwards was funny and made us feel good without really saying that much. He’s going to go far.

Congrats to Chris and Ponzi for a wonderful event. The party in the Museum of Flight museum last night really shocked a lot of people. The group I walked in with had no idea how good this museum was, and then realized that Gnomedex had stepped up its game quite a bit too.

Lots of blogging and photos are on Technorati for the Gnomedex tag.

The Seattle PI’s Todd Bishop has a good report on John Edwards’ visit to Gnomedex.

Who is this guy Matt? He sure gets around the world, but he isn’t sitting on my couch like Seth Long is (we’re watching the World Cup).

He recently wrote that he doesn’t get HD, but had to check it out here. “It’s pretty,” he told me. Says if Formula 1 was broadcast in HD that might throw him over the top.

Speaking of Matt he wrote in his FAQ that he visited Totem Lake in Kirkland and thought it was the most depressing place he’d ever visited. That’s near my house. Ouch!

I’m going to take some time off of blogging and enjoy being temporarily unemployed (I start at Podtech on July 5).

My Microsoft email is no longer working. You can write me at robertscoble@hotmail.com.

My cell phone stays the same. 425-205-1921.

Thanks and have a great weekend, see ya at Gnomedex!

Melodeo starts up tomorrow and with a bang. Former U.S. Senator John Edwards is one of the first users.

What’s different about it? They have nice support for mobile phones. I played tonight with it on a Nokia phone and the service helped me find several podcasts and listen to them.

It’ll be interesting to see which distribution network ends up being important. This one is certainly one to watch.

Interesting, Vic Gundotra leaves Microsoft, Business 2.0 says, to take a year off and then head to Google.

Vic is the guy who hired me into Microsoft and is one of the people who made me believe. I will never forget his pitch to me to join Microsoft: “this might be good for your career.”

Thanks Vic for everything and good luck in your future career.

+++++

Brain drain at Microsoft?

Is there a brain drain going on at Microsoft? It sure looks that way but keep in mind that Vic and I didn’t write code. We didn’t make the products.

Those of us who — whether deserved or not — become public faces of companies can wildly change the perceptions of those companies.

There are 60,000+ people working at Microsoft. Not two or three. Or even 15.

What’s ironic is I met quite a few employees at Microsoft who used to work at Google. No one talks about them.

On the other hand, this is a win for Google and a loss for Microsoft. They got a good guy.

By the way, I tried to call Vic for several hours tonight to get his comment and he didn’t return my calls. I didn’t know either Vic was going to leave before today, either, although when we talked recently about my own career I could tell he was considering life changes as well.

One of the coolest things I ever got to do was tour the robotics lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Here’s the tour unedited. Even gives props to Java and some non-Microsoft development tools. They have some of the coolest people I’ve ever met and the robotics might suprise you (two of the students were building soccer-playing robots on top of Segways, other students were building surgery tools, really great stuff).

This is a great video to run on my last day at Microsoft. Party in building 18 at 4 p.m. Patrick is here helping me clean out my office. I’m filled with emotion. Sadness. Excitement. Terror that I didn’t finish a bunch of stuff.

The video is long, but it’s in three or four distinct segments, so it’ll be easy to poke through it and find some good stuff. Don’t miss the soccer stuff at the end, those robots are mondo cool.

I got to know the 88Slide folks a little better at VLoggerCon. This blog is a little video trivia show (it’s only one minute long every day). You watch them every day, answer the question, and get entered into a lottery for winning a prize.

Anyway, Noah Bonnett, executive producer, tells me they are gonna give away a one-year’s subscription to Netflix on next Thursday’s show.

So, that got me all wound up, as if I’m not wound up enough (today is my last day at Microsoft) so I go over to the Beachwalks’ video blog to see what’s up. What’s Rox talking about? Money, money, money. Talking about Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation.

I can’t wait to do my own “walks on the beach” show — I’ll send it in to Rox for free. Rox has nicer beaches to play on with her dog.

I love the “Skype the Conch” button. Heheh. What a great lifestyle. Do you have a great lifestyle? Why don’t you share it all with us?

Oh, and if you think Videoblogging is just really lame, you gotta check out RabbitBites. Two rabbits rip various videobloggers into shreds. Hillarious!

OK, I’ve seen everything now. Alex Komarnitsky has a web site where you can watch the grass grow. His grass. Is there anything that you can’t do on the Internet?

Well, some of you are Drupal developers. I have a friend who needs some development done. He’s looking for a Drupal developer for a short-term project. Are you one? Leave a note here and a way to be contacted. Thanks.