After a couple previous visits into Second Life, I decided to give it one more try. Several people sent in suggestions for places to visit, and I hit as many as I could stand while accomplishing a few other objectives. This time, it's all about penises, nudity, sex, guns, politics, virtual artistry, and so forth. These are, after all, the specialties of Second Life. Note that both the subject matter and visual material that follow are in no way safe for work. The report and a few choice pics are after the jump, and there's also a full gallery. Consider yourself warned.

Second Life has been taking it on the puss this past week or so, with more dogpiling on the economic questions, not to mention the whole nuking Reebok thing. And we enjoyed our own foray into supposedly popular SL locales and a first try at sex shopping. Speaking of first-timers, the account by Drew of "Toothpaste for Dinner" fame is one of the funniest things you'll read this month, so get to it. Thanks to those who sent in suggestions for SL places to visit, which we'll get to directly. Of particular interest are real-world entities, groups, or people that have SL presences. Drop us a line if you have tips for same.

UPDATE: Brilliantly amusing Warren Ellis post on Reuters about fighting off sexual infestations on his Second Life land.

As promised earlier, a first-timer's experience when sex shopping in Second Life warrants its own post. I'll tell you right up front that my immaturity levels do not speak well of me as a sex correspondent. Chris Peterson's Second Life Safari at Something Awful puts quite a bit more thought and action into the topic. That said, with even the Dutch getting lathered up about virtual child porn (and not in a good way), Second Life's burgeoning sex industry is almost politely underplayed when everything else about the service is praised to the skies. So let's go penis shopping, shall we? NSFW, if you haven't guessed.

IBM is in Second Life! The John Edwards presidential campaign is in Second Life! Your mama is in Second Life! Media hype of Second Life has developed a subspecies focused on the novelty of X real-world entity establishing a virtual presence in the pretend world, which should then draw mobs of virtual gawkers. Yet these alleged mobs often boil down to one or two lookie-loos wandering around, or nobody at all. Critics of our SL criticism have rightly pointed out that we miss nuances because we're not "into" SL ourselves. Despite some bad experiences and disappointments, your plucky guest editor is giving it another go. So is born "Valleywag Vuckovic." After the jump, a safari into notable Second Life hype-points to connect with the locals.

First, I spent the requisite time learning to move around and interact. I also wasted a good 15 minutes tweaking my "Boy Next Door" avatar beyond the default 85% gay anime life-study. Most of those minutes went to rectifying a mysterious bald spot that kept appearing whenever I adjusted my hairstyle. At the end of this process, my avatar was less gay, though somehow I felt that I, myself, had become more gay.

After that, I only had time for three stops on the hypewatch tour: IBM's SL island complex, the SL headquarters of would-be Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, and some sex shops. I'll cover the sex angle in another post later today. So first, up: IBM.

Bambi Franciso reportulates that Amazon's Jeff Bezos is considering a personal investment in much-hyped natural-language search engine Powerset. It's been widely reported that Powerset planned to use Amazon computing resources, but this would be an unusual vote of confidence from Bezos. Unless he really is just looking for a new toy.

Watch the above video if you must — D7TV's Sarah Meyers hits this past weekend's party for "natural language" search engine Powerset. Best quotes:

Girl 1: (gestures grandly) Powerset is going to transform the search industry. (uncertain pause) I was told to say this.
Meyers: They were telling me that the Internet is going to be like a person.
Girl 1: YES!!!
Meyers: But you know? I don't really believe that Powerset's going to be a like a person. (turns to other girl) Do you think it's going to be like a person?
Girl 2: (befuddled) No ... (more strongly) NO!

Actually, no, wait — here's the best quote, from comments at Techcrunch:

The Palo Alto Research Center today announces the licensing of its "natural language' search tech to Powerset, a startup search engine that will attempt to "out-Google Google," in the words of angel investor and board member Peter Thiel. Lots of Valley traction around this one, as even Thiel pal Sean Parker put down his beverage long enough to throw in. So what's the big deal?
Some are mighty impressed with the search-fruits of natural language, but its principal selling point is a little counter-intuitive. Users who don't know how to use power search methods in Google or elsewhere are just as unlikely to realize they can ask Powerset (or any other search engine) a grammatically correct question. They're also going to always enter the simplest terms to start with anyway, since it's much easier to just enter "cow porn" into the search field rather than "where can i find me some good porn about cows." (Let's see some natural-language porn search results, please.) Power users will like the better results rendered by natural language, but they'll also be very quick to ferret out the problems and logic gaps in the system.

All of which is kind of beside the point. It's naive to think that Google won't build a ground-up natural language system if and when Powerset becomes any kind of threat, and unless the amazing PARC search tech is so brilliant that it knocks everyone's socks off, the differences between the two systems will be academic, consumer-wise. The only way to "out-Google Google" at this point is to rack up a few billion dollars and purchase it. Smart money says that if Powerset is any kind of success, it will be Google buying out Powerset.

By the way: big Powerset party this weekend! You're going, right? Right?