Second Life Gets Newspaper and Reality TV Show

I'm still astonished at all the activity surrounding the online world of Second Life -- I barely have time to live my own life, let alone a second one -- so forgive me if I seem a little bewildered by three announcements from earlier this week.

First I discovered that German publisher Axel Springer will be launching SL News in Second Life. The English-language tabloid will have all the features of a real-world newspaper, including an editor-in-chief, reporters who will sniff our stories from the Second Life metaverse, and an editorial office where these employees will, I assume, go to work. In a similar vein, the TV show Big Brother will be launching in Second Life, with -- you guessed it -- Second Life avatars as players stuck in a glass house.

But here's the one that really blows my mind. The Sci-Fi Channel and the UK's Channel 4, among other channels, will be launching a broadband TV channel in Second Life at the end of the month. Virtuallife.tv is expected to feature over 100 channels by the end of next year, some of them including original programming.

So let me get this straight. People are going to turn off their TVs, log on to their computers so they can use avatars to sit down and watch TV?