True to form, something's new in Second Life every day. Here's a quick roundup of eclectic schtuff that caught my eye-in-hand!
Bob Bauhaus—who helped me test a bug the other day and shown here as mashed potatoes—and Hydra Shaftoe were talking to me about showing
off SL at anthro and fur conventions. Infact, some Lindens recently attended Further Confusion 2006. This led to me getting in touch with others involved. Chromal Brodsky has a great gallery here. Creations in SL are asynchronous in that you often see offline art being imported inworld, but not so much the other way around. Sad, I know. What's so awesome is this is the reverse. Arito Cotton is wearing himself as made by Shawn Keller, in the flesh and fur! Awesomeness. If I had a Torlop or Torse suit, I'd totally wear it.
Animals? I was guided to this thread about deer on the SL Forums. Apparently The Endless Forest is some kind of interactive screensaver, where you're a deer. I think it's one of those things I'm not motivated enuff to try out just yet, but will watch and see how it comes along.
Pathfinder Linden shared something on a related tip, a program called OGLE which extracts 3D graphics as they happen, and you might be able to do something like make a figurine out of your SL avatar, as this page illustrates, even using Second Life as an example. Hey! I know that dragon! It's by Olympia Rebus… I should let her know. I hope they got her permission. 
While we're on the topic of bringing things to life, within SL itself, Resis usually use Poser to make animations. They upload them as .BVH files. It's been a clumsy process with mismatched proportions, but several advances have come, including Xenon Linden's release of special avatar models, and this recently in… not one, but TWO homegrown animation editors: Vince Plunkett's AvMotion and rod Martin's untitled. I have used neither yet because I'm still trying to figure out how to make a shirt, but in time, I hope too. Looks like good words, good work. Anything which facilitates content creation is a big boon, and it's a thrill to see members of the community come up with solutions for what has long been a very ugly and arduous thing.
In official Linden news, CEO and founder of Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale is headlining the Serious Games Summit! (And I love how SL makes it into all these events even tho it's not a game, but has games within like we have hearts and spleens.)
