Well, there are several important points to keep in mind when choosing your name in Second Life offcourse.

The first is that this choice is permanent (unless you create a new account), so choose carefully. Another important point is that unlike services like instant message clients, email, etc%u2026, the addition of a last name allows you to not have to worry that the first name you want will be taken.

For example, if you want your name to be Kung Foo, someone already creating Kung Chung would not block your choice of the first name Kung - only the combination with the last name Foo being taken would not allow you to create the name. This also means you do not need to add numbers to your name to differentiate. In fact, this is discouraged, as the vast majority of players do not have numbers in their first name.

You should also be aware of proper use of case, as your name is case sensitive and cannot be changed once created. You should capitalize the first letter of your first name unless you absolutely want your name to start with a lower case letter.

The choice of last name is a matter of personal preference. You cannot define the last name yourself, but you can choose from a long and regularly changing list of last names. Last names are added and removed on a regular basis to add variety. It is why you may find that you know someone in SL with a last name that is not available for you to choose from the list when you create your account. This is not uncommon, as many names have been retired already or some are restricted for other reasons. There are no gameplay consequences from last name choice.

I generally speaking suck at predictions, but there are some for Second Life that it will be interesting to see what comes through. I'm going to divide them into the technical, the social, competition and the external "big users" categories, basically because that is how they occurred to me.

This is obviously going to be quite long, so read on under the fold.
Technical changes:

1. Linden Lab will upgrade the JIRA to make it more user friendly. It might even upgrade the ability of normal users to report issues. (Of course this is in part true already! But more improvements to come.)

2. Maximum concurrency will continue to increase, reaching over 100,000 routinely by the end of the year.

3. HTML on a prim will be along, in a number of steps. Of course this is a pretty easy one, since it was due before Christmas.

4. Another easy one, the UI programme will come through and we will be (relatively easily at least) able to skin our clients how we choose.

Social changes:

1. Age verification in its current form will fall flat on its ugly face. Two things will happen in response:

* A different system will evolve which will place control where it belongs - on the users that claim to be 18

* We will see the mainland change shape as we move to a mature continent (or continents) and PG continent or continents. This will pave the way towards a unified grid as the drive to allow families to spend time together in Second Life increases.

2. Second Life users will become increasingly balkanised, but with people moving between groups still - just like RL people tend to use Facebook OR MySpace, not both.

Competition:

Second Life will get a significant competitor. This could be the translation of HiPiHi into English, although I suspect political controls will prevent this. It could be Google's new project, or something else. To count it will have to be fairly globally accessible, social, content creation, the chance to make a real-life living will be there.

Big External Users:

1. At least three new companies will "get Second Life" at least in their own terms. I would say it's hard to deny IBM have, Coca Cola say they have succeeded by their own standards.

2. Educational use will continue to grow. Pressure from high-school users will add to the pressure for a unified grid rather than a teen and an adult grid so they can teach 17 and 18 year olds in the same class and space.

3. The quantity of peer reviewed papers highlighting the impact of virtual worlds will increase markedly. Some of the rest of the world will start to think about Second Life as an educational platform on the back of these papers