The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) will launch a Second Life property (ABC Island) next Monday. Its Four Corners program ("Investigative TV journalism at its best") that evening will include a piece on SL. And at 9.30pm journalist Ticky Fullerton "will be answering questions from a small audience inside Second Life".

The program will also be simulcast inside SL. This is good news for me. I've just purchased a wide-screen digital TV but my apartment block has no digital aerial. It won't be installed until the 24th (election day), so no signal for me until then.

The Sydney Morning Herald has run a story on the ABC's SL encounter. It notes that ABC managing director Mark Scott has an avatar "but no, he's not going to reveal his name".

The author of the piece, Stephen Hutcheon, has one too and it's called Esteban Xiao.

I really think the ABC should publish Ticky Fullerton's avatar name.

For the benefit of visitors outside Australia, the ABC is different from other TV stations because it's funded 100 per cent by the federal government. It also is notable for having a more liberal cast than other broadcasters. This is not to say that the ABC is biased. Nevertheless, it tends to lean toward the left when covering most stories.

It's interesting that The Australian newspaper, which tends to be more conservative than The Herald, did not run a story on the ABC's venture.

Yesterday, I logged into SL and visited The Pond, which is an island that has been established by Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company. There were a few people there, but I saw no special events in train. I left after about five minutes, having spoken to noone.