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| industry = Virtual worlds | products = | url = (lindenlab.com ) | alexa = 204,389 ()〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Lindenlab.com Site Info )〕 }} Linden Research, Inc., d/b/a Linden Lab, is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life. The company's head office is in San Francisco, with additional offices in Boston, Seattle, Virginia and Davis, California. Its offices in Mountain View, Brighton, Singapore and Amsterdam were closed in 2010. In addition, the company employs remote workers that communicate and collaborate on projects using Second Life technology. == History == The company, founded in 1999, employs numerous established high-tech veterans, including former executives from Electronic Arts, eBay, Disney, Adobe, and Apple. The company's founder and original CEO is Philip Rosedale, a former CTO of RealNetworks, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World in 2007. In 2008, the company was awarded an Emmy for Second Life in the user-generated content and game modification category. The award was given at the 59th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards. Philip Rosedale, chairman of Linden Lab, accepted the award. Although Linden Lab's Second Life platform was not the first online virtual world, it has gained a large amount of attention due to its expanding user base and unique policy that allows participants to own the intellectual property rights to the in-world content they create. The company's name comes from Linden Street, where the company was originally based. The company's transition from scrappy upstart to success is detailed in the book ''The Making of Second Life'' written by former employee Wagner James Au. Although many people have assumed that the inspiration for Second Life originated from Rosedale's exposure to Neil Stephenson's novel ''Snow Crash'', he has suggested that his vision of virtual worlds predates that book and that he conducted some early virtual world experiments during his college years at the University of California San Diego, where he studied physics. Rosedale's strong coding skills eventually resulted in the creation of a video compression technology that would later be acquired by RealNetworks, where he was made CTO at the age of 27. While at RealNetworks, Rosedale's ambition to create a virtual world was resurrected and recharged by technological advances in computing and his attendance at the popular music and arts festival Burning Man. With the help of a financial windfall that he reaped from his time at RealNetworks, Rosedale formed Linden Lab in 1999. His initial focus was on the development of hardware that would enable computer users to be fully immersed in a 360 degree virtual reality experience. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of "The Rig," which was realized in prototype form as a clunky steel contraption with several computer monitors that users could wear on their shoulders.〔Au, Wagner James. ''The Making of Second Life'', pg. 19. New York: Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-135320-8.〕 That vision soon morphed into the software-based application Linden World, where computer users could participate in task-based games and socialization in a 3D online environment. That effort would eventually transform into the better-known, user-centered Second Life. During a 2001 meeting with investors, Rosedale noticed that the participants were particularly responsive to the collaborative, creative potential of Second Life. As a result, the initial objective-driven, gaming focus of Second Life was shifted to a more user-created, community-driven experience. In September 2012, Linden Lab announced two new products: Creatorverse (for iPad) and Patterns (for desktops). In January 2013, Linden Lab purchased the game ''Blocksworld'' for iPad, a shared virtual world built of blocks. Rod Humble, appointed CEO in December 2010, announced his departure on Facebook on 24 January 2014, stating that he would be leaving Linden Lab to pursue founding a new company that will "make art, entertainment and unusual things!". In February 2014, Linden Lab announced that its new CEO was Ebbe Altberg, former COO of BranchOut. In June 2014, Linden Lab confirmed that they plan to build a new virtual world.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=New World Notes )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Linden Lab」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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