Second Life Takes on Darfur Conflict

The event was originally set for early December, but the offices of Lichtenstein Creative Media in Cambridge had to be evacuated following an electrical fire.

Bill Lichtenstein is founder and president of Lichtenstein Creative Media. A former producer for ABC, "20/20," "World News Tonight" and "Nightline," he said the event was better than he could have expected.

"It was quite a view from the stage," Lichtenstein said, adding that 65 avatars were present at the event. "We really see this as the new public media, and we hope to do a lot more."

Second Life, the 3-D virtual environment created by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, is populated by both individual users and companies. While residents are creating 3-D identities in order to design and sell goods in this virtual world for real money, corporations such as Dell(DELL Quote), Sears Holdings (SHLD Quote) and Cisco (CSCO Quote) are making a big push into the burgeoning world.

In the real world, photographs of Darfur taken by Haviv were projected onto one side of the Holocaust Museum during Thanksgiving week. The replication of this in Second Life includes those same photos, as well as video of the real-life event.