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Yesterday’s meeting (Melanie, Tish, David O., Giulio and Philippe) was the first held in a Qwaq Forum workspace. See the recent reviews of Qwaq Forums by Tish and Giulio. The image below shows the team editing an Excel spreadsheet in-world -one of the most interesting features of this business oriented VR environment.

Besides discussing some veeeery secret things, we welcomed Philippe and David announced the creation of a Lunarez social network based on the Ning platform.It was decided to give a final polish to this website and start spreading the good news that we are moving to space for real.

Philippe Van Nedervelde, CEO, E-spaces

Philippe Van Nedervelde, a polymath expert in many technology domains including nanotechnology, VR and telepresence, has joined the team. Of course he does have a Second Life avatar (Philippe Golding) but he prefers other next generation VR meeting environments such as Qwaq Forums and has created a Lunarez QF meeting space.

Wired - NASA Dreams of an Interplanetary ‘Second Life’ for Mars Crew: NASA thinks it has an answer to the psychological challenge of interplanetary isolation. While aerospace engineers are designing the Ares rockets to be deployed in the Mars missions, a more starry-eyed contingent at NASA is testing networking and virtual reality technologies that they think will connect the first wave of Mars pioneers with their families, friends and colleagues back on Earth, in a 3-D virtual world cut from the mold of Second Life or World of Warcraft.

Especially relevant: If NASA’s virtual world gambit seems like a pipe dream, there’s no doubt that astronauts traveling to Mars, or returning to the Moon, will enjoy a wealth of tech communications options that the Apollo crews couldn’t have imagined.

Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, says that with high-resolution videocameras, podcasts and web forums, the first Mars invaders could stage the ultimate reality show, with some becoming super-icons back on Earth.

Just knowing that their every move is being watched by a rapt audience at home could help the Mars voyagers find the strength to solider on in the face of “long-term conditions of isolation, privation and psychological stress,” says Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars and founder of The Mars Society.

“The psychological boost enjoyed by Mars-bound astronauts of knowing that they are ‘golden people,’ celebrated as heroes by millions on Earth, cannot be overstated,” says Zubrin.

Ben Goertzel (Zarathustrapocalypse Zeta in SL), CEO, Novamente

Ben is a world class expert in artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology, and his company Novamente is researching the next breakthroughs. Don’t miss his talk on AGI Meets the Metaverse. We are all very happy to have him on board - he has indicated that he may be able to contribute to the cost-effectiveness of the project by developing a smarter-than-human AI on a second hand Iphone. Probably joking, but with Ben you never know. By the way, happy 2008 to everyone.