New World Notes

SL Bloggers Wonder About Blogging for SL on an Unpaid Basis

Linden Lab is looking for SLers who want to blog for their community site, evidently on an unpaid basis, which is an opportunity that makes SL blogger Chestnut Rau only huff: "Linden Lab is making millions of dollars from us so I wonder why we should donate our content, and give editorial and exclusivity rights to them for free." She is right to be non-plussed: When Chestnut covered Second Life events for this blog for a couple years, I paid her in Linden Dollars.

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G+: Growing Size, Weak Traffic (Even for Posts About G+!)

Google+ is purportedly growing in user size, but at least from this blog's perspective, I'm not seeing those numbers translate into traffic -- even for posts about Google+! For example, above is the social media traffic generated by my late January post about Google allowing some Google+ pseudonyms. The unexpected results:

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3rd Party Viewers Google Higher Than SL's Official Viewer

SL Redditor "iLeeoh" recently noticed a curious thing: When he Googled "Second Life development viewer download", he got the third party Phoenix Viewer as his first result, and not a viewer made by, you know, Linden Lab. I just did the same Google search on a browser which I don't use for blogging about SL (which might skew the results), and got a somewhat similar response: The top listing was Alternate Viewers - Second Life Wiki, listing the third party SL viewers, with the official viewer listed in second. I haven't seen data on adoption of the official viewer since the Emerald debacle, but I'm guessing Google's search results are driving at least some SLers to try third party viewers over the official software.

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3D Printing: Over-Hyped Like 3D Virtual Reality, or Not Hyped Enough?

I've been thinking a lot about 3D printing, like the kind that Henry "Seifert Surface" Segerman used to create his SL to RL Hilbert cube. One popular argument runs that 3D printing is going to transform the entire world and our very identity, while others argue it's over-hyped like 3D virtual reality once was. And the thing is, when I think about what 3D printing is good for, I say, "Fun doohickies like that Hilbert cube, 3D prototypes for industrial design, and, um... something something something." I draw a blank on many other practical applications. Which leads me to suspect 3D printing will become a useful niche for hackers and designers, but probably not much more.

I'm even more skeptical, when a 3D printing advocate argues that it'll become as big as 2D printing:

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Now Your SL Avatar Can Take a Mesh Arrow to the Knee

Thanks to mesh-making master Maxwell Graf, my avatar has now taken an arrow to the knee. (A mesh-based arrow, of course!) Perfect conversation piece for fellow Skyrim fans in SL... or in places like the Welcome Area, where a random avatar just IMed me with the invitation, "Hey want to fun?", a good excuse for cutting conversations short. (Sorry, can't talk, arrow to the knee flaring up.)

Click here to teleport to get a free copy of your arrow by Max Graf, in his Rustica sim. And after the break, check out Max modeling his arrow in a more Skyrim-appropriate setting:

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Estranged Real Life Couple Argue Through the Facebook Avatar of Their Unborn Child

This is one of the stranger examples of avatar identity intersecting with real life social strife (and possibly not worksafe reading), but one which we're likely to see more of in coming years: an expectant Mom creates a Facebook page for her unborn child and updates the page through the persona of the child, which is all cute and adorable until the fetus' estranged father shows up. And an ugly argument ensues... through the Facebook fetus avatar. And they say Second Life users are weird.

Found via Reddit, through Unfriended, which has much more such sadness.

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Top 50 Most Popular Second Life Sims January 2012

Courtesy Louis Platini's Metaverse Business, a Second Life/OpenSim analytics company that gathers publicly accessible in-world data for its clients, here's the top 50 most popular sims in Second Life for January 2012, listed according their average visitor count, the unique visitor range at any given period, and the sim's rank the previous month. Here's the top 25:

The SL map guide now has a search function, which you can use to search any of these sims and directly teleport. Two new, oddly-named sims, QMRNA and KSA QJqJI pJLC, appear to be for Arab-speaking SLers. (Sim names maybe indicate trouble translating Arabic to Romance characters?) Indeed, SL's anonymous, bot-obsessed blogger "Little Lost Linden" claims that QMRNA is full of bots with Arab names. Me, I'm hoping for the day when the porn sims are mostly inhabited by bots servicing each other, in an endless feedback loop of virtual desire which fails to reach any real world closure.

Anyway, see top sims 25 through 50 after the break:

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Old Republic MMO Gets 1.7M Subscribers in About 2 Months

Some two months after launch, Star Wars: The Old Republic now has 1.7 million subscribers, Scott "Lum Lumley" Jennings notes, with over 2 million copies of the game sold. That's very impressive, and surprising to me: I was guessing the subscriber base would top out at 1 million. So clearly there's still some life in the monthly subscription-based model for MMOs, at least for those with massive production budgets like SWTOR. (Estimated cost: nearly $200 million.) As Lum points out, those 1.7 subscribers are actually "a mix of paying customers and customers with billing information entered but still on free trial", so the real test is how long those subscribers stay around, month after month. In six months or so, I'm still thinking that number goes down closer to a million.

Speaking of SWTOR, Iris has a good review of the game's avatar fashion here. We're thinking of doing more coverage of the MMO -- how many of you play SWTOR, readers?

Haters Gonna Hate -- But SLaters Gonna SLate

I just caught this photo submitted by iLeeoh to SL's Reddit group, where it's been up-voted like crazy, and couldn't resist meme-ifying it for your meme-ing pleasure. Consensus is it's a deer on a damn motorbike. Or as iLeeoh put it, "Oh nothing, Just a normal Day in SL". Gotta problem with that?

Top Seven New World Notes Posts Last Week

• Since Avatars Can Be Perfect, "Flawed" Hair Seems Stylish
• Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: The SL Etiquette of Copycats, Copyright, and Crying Wolf
• Give a Warm Reception to coldLogic's New SL Mesh Fashions
• Last Names for SLers Return Soon -- Plus News & Updates
• SL Estate Revenue Falls Below $5M/Mo, Lowest Since 10/09
• Steampunk Land Baron Desmond Shang on Why Losing SL Land is Healthy for SL
• The Short But Friend-Filled Life of a Hot Facebook Bot

NWN Comment of the Week: Steampunk Land Baron Desmond Shang on Why Losing SL Land is Healthy for SL

When I noted that Linden Lab's private estate revenue in SL has fallen to 2009 levels, famed steampunk land baron Desmond “the Guvnah” Shang stopped by to offer his thoughts in Comments: "Cutting back on land mass is actually a healthy thing for the grid," he argued, for "the fewer regions there are, the more it will balance with demand. I say that as someone who is cutting back regions myself right now." Of course, those cuts come with a cost, both for the community and company. Over the weekend, do read Desmond's full, fascinating analysis after the break:

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Since Avatars Can Be Perfect, "Flawed" Hair Seems Stylish

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Women have been dyeing their hair for a very long time, and for almost all of that time it was key to maintain the illusion that it was your natural colour. Touching up the natural roots as they grew out was crucial, because admitting to being a bottle-blond was a styling sin. Yet in Second Life, it's impossible to miss the trend of showing roots in avatar hair textures, which has picked up a lot in the past couple years. Now many of the most popular brands prominently feature rooted styles. Although some people don't get it, I think this trend makes perfect sense. Here's why:

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SL Bloggers Group Back in Business in SL and Social Media

The SL Bloggers group is back in business, thanks to Tymmerie Thorne, who has all the details here, including an in-world hang-out, and a group Twitter account. "We take 'em all," says Ms. Thorne, "news bloggers, fashion bloggers, badly dressed bloggers, humor bloggers, ranting bloggers, blog feed owners, store bloggers, short bloggers, Linden bloggers, opinionated bloggers, lazy bloggers, etc." That pretty much covers them all, except maybe steampunk Gorean furry bloggers, but I'm sure they'll be welcome with open arms too. Click here for the details.

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New Novel About a Man Who Falls in Love With Siri

Back when Apple unveiled the iPhone 4s' Siri, I wondered if she'd be the first AI we'd fall in love with, so it's too surprising that the Times just noted Siri & Me "a new work of fiction by David Milgrim that will be published in the fall by the Blue Rider Press imprint of Penguin Group", which as you probably guessed already, is about a young man "who falls in love with the mysterious—and often cryptic—woman living inside of his new iPhone.” Intriguing, though I kind of think it'd work better as a radio/podcast drama.

Who's Your Most Valuable Twitter Follower?

mvfapp.com is a fun, possibly ego-stroking Twitter widget that shows you your most valuable Twitter follower, i.e. the follower who in turn has the most Twitter followers. Mine (I'm @SLHamlet on Twitter) include the official SL Twitter account, legendary SF tech guy Scott "Laughing Squid" Beale, and the supremely awesome cellist Zoe Keating, who I once was lucky to meet at Foo Camp, and tell her about Second Life's arts and music scene. I'm also followed by Jenifer Lopez, but not the one you think, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

How about you? Share your MVFs in Comments!

Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: The SL Etiquette of Copycats, Copyright, and Crying Wolf

Iris Ophelia's ongoing take on etiquette & ethics in virtual spaces 

It should be no mystery what this week's Metaverse Manners theme is, so let's cut right to the chase...

Is there a right/wrong way to call out an SL copybotter/thief?

                    - The Fashion Police

Well, it really does depend on the context. If it's a shop selling stolen content, the best thing to do is to file a DMCA. While I know it can be a frustrating and unfulfilling process, I am in no way a fan of waging a public smear campaign or comment war against another designer, because you put yourself in a position where you may receive serious blowback. There's nothing stopping them from flaming your blog or Marketplace reviews either, not to mention the trouble that can come from retaliatory DMCAs. What you can do while you wait for your DMCA to be acted on is to warn your customers, as well as alerting any bloggers who have blogged the copied products (we REALLY appreciate this information!)

If it's a random avatar you see walking around with stolen content, you should tread just as lightly. When I was talking to fellow blogger Sasy Scarborough about this just yesterday, she pointed out that a lot of new players just have piles of things dropped on them, and they haven't learned how to differentiate stolen content from everything else. Even more experienced players may have no clue. A polite and friendly IM to tell them what items are stolen and from where is the best course of action here. Be helpful and informative, not hostile and accusatory. Someone sporting ripped gear head-to-toe should raise a red flag, however, and even I have a hard time maintaining my politeness around someone like that. All I can really say is that if you're in a store, send their name to the designer so they can be banned. Period.

Keep reading for two more content theft quandaries.

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FB Users Spent $1.85 BILLION on Virtual Goods in 2011!

Now that Facebook has filed for IPO, we're starting to get a somewhat clearer picture of its virtual goods market, and as expected (as Wired reports), it's fricking huge: "Facebook users spent roughly $1.85 billion on virtual goods within the site last year." That's mainly through Facebook Credits, the company's virtual currency, which became the mandatory payment method for social games and other apps in the middle of last year. My curiosity is how many people are spending that currency now. With about 175-200 million people playing Facebook games, and other means of getting Credits without paying for them (through advertising offers and such), I'm very roughly guessing somewhere in the range of 50-90 million users. But whatever the size of the currency base, it's huge, and a concrete sign of how mass market the concept of virtual goods has become.

And once again, I'm inspired to ask: Hey Linden Lab, how about sell Linden Dollars through Facebook Credits, like many other virtual worlds/games with a Facebook presence do with their own currency?

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Badass SL Avatar Inspired by Hellboy Movies is Badass

Ms. Munchflower Zaius just showed me this badassariffic Hellboy avatar she created in Second Life on a lark, a tribute to Guillermo de Toro's movie adaptation of the character. She was stirred to send it to me after I posted that Clockwork Orange avatar tribute, and I'm glad she did, because Kubrick aside, I personally like Clockwork less than Hellboy. Ms. Zaius made the shape, skin, clothes, contacts, and hair, and got Hellboy's belt and gun from the SL Marketplace.

And no, it's not for sale, because who wants Guillermo del Toro pissed off at you? However, you can buy Munchflower's many other amazing avatars and fashions fully of her creation: Click here to check them out, and click here for a direct teleport to her store in SL, in her sim Nomine.

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How Reddit's Virtual Community Helped a Real Community

The Associated Press' Jason Straziuso has a great article about a great story:  How the virtual community Reddit quickly rallied to raise $80,000 in donations to help a a Kenyan orphanage beset by violent thieves, one of whom hacked an ophan in the face with a machete. After a Redditor posted a photo of the boy's gory scar, the Reddit community went into action. Jason asked me to comment about the story, jumping off from what I wrote about Reddit on Internet Evolution earlier this week: "The request wasn't for millions of dollars for an abstract, seemingly unobtainable goal, but thousands of dollars for a very specific, easily understandable end. When the factors like that are aligned, the results, as we see, can be hugely powerful," I told him. Read the whole story here.

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Give a Warm Reception to coldLogic's New SL Mesh Fashions

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

coldLogic [Teleport to ColdLogic in ZYRRA] is a brand new all-mesh venture from Janie Marlowe, Zyrra Falcone, and Damien Fate that has a lot of fashionistas in a flutter. If those names don't ring any bells, here's a little background info: Zyrra was a prim hair innovator from the bad old (pre-sculptie!) days of SL, while Janie ran Mischief for years but more recently relaunced as Jane, a shop that had some of the first mesh clothing releases. Damien of course is the force behind some of the first and most popular mesh fashion templates, as well as being the original designer behind Loco Pocos, and the father of an adorable baby boy named Linden. But it's not just the all-star designer list that has people talking.

Because of the way that mesh and textures interact on a well made piece of mesh clothing, I decided to photograph these pieces a little differently. I've cropped these shots close and put the sun behind me so you can see the shading and detail without shadows or anything else too distracting. Without mesh, none of these pieces could look even half as good as they do, and this is definitely the clearest with the Kelley jacket, pictured above. Every crease, fold, flap, and button is modelled and textured to make it stand out with striking realism.

Keep reading to see two more favorites from coldLogic up close!

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The Short But Friend-Filled Life of a Hot Facebook Bot

There once was a friendly and beautiful girl named Aretha Millsaps, whose only flaw was that she didn't exist. Also, that she only existed to promote a commercial website link on her Facebook profile, but then you probably guessed that by now. Late last December, she sent a friend request to me, and while I'm usually inclined to accept requests from Facebook users who have mutual friends (and most don't even come with a personal message), Ms. Millsaps and I seemed to have nothing in common but those friends. So I kept her friend request in queue, and waited to see what happened.

By the time 2011 ended, Aretha and I had 7 mutual friends; by the first week of 2012, 11 mutual friends. Toward the middle of January, 14 mutual friends. Sometime after that, someone flagged her account, and Aretha Millsaps' life on Facebook was no more. But here is the curious thing: By then, over a dozen actual friends and acquaintances had friended her. More curious still: While many men are inclined to blindly accept any invitation with a curvy hot woman attached to it, roughly half of Aretha Millsaps' friends were women.

As it turns out, this phenomenon is fairly common on Facebook: A team of University of British Columbia researchers created a social network of bots on Facebook, and were able to get 3,055 of 8,570 friend requests on Facebook accepted. At first, only 20% of these bot requests were accepted, but once a bot gained a friend, subsequent acceptances by people in the acceptor's network increased to 60 percent.

Where is this going? With the imminent IPO of Facebook, and growing interest and investment in the network, it's easy to see a rise of bots:

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Be a Rat in the New Second Life RPG by Grendel's Children

Speaking of indie games, there's a new kind of SL roleplaying game from Grendel's Children, longtime and widely admired manufacturer of fantastic bestiary avatars in Second Life: LifeCycle Rats, which as the name suggests, turns your avatar into a rodent, and comes with an incredibly detailed heads-up display, for doing many many rat-like things.

Created by Grendel's Flea Bussy, "Flea designed the Rat Lifecycle game as the first one of a whole series of animal lifecycles," Grendel's Toady Nakamura tells me. "Imagine really being a dinosaur!" They actually created an earlier version of the LifeCycle Rat a few years ago, but have hugely upgraded it since then. Looks about as complicated as roleplaying a Skyrim mage-warrior, except, you know, more bitey. Click here to read the details, and click here for a direct SLurl teleport to get ratted up.

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Indie Game: The Movie, Documentary on Indie Developers of Fez and Super Meat Boy

This looks really great: Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary on the sweat and tears poured into producing low budget indie games which aspire to greatness:

Indie Game: The Movie Official Trailer from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.

It just won an award at Sundance, so expect to see this coming to cable TV and other outlets. The games, by the way, are Fez and Super Meat Boy, and are worth following in their own right:

Here's the official site for Fez.

Here's the official site for Super Meat Boy.

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Last Names for SLers Return Soon -- Plus News & Updates

After a month long absence from social media, Linden CEO Rod Humble posted an update on his SL profile, updating the company's plans for returning last names to SL avatars, along with other features to names, such as titles:

Speaking of long absences, the company hasn't updated its blog since December, and I have heard rumblings that something pretty big was coming. (And by "rumblings" I mean, "Coy non-answers from SL insiders.") But spokesman Peter Gray just pretty much confirmed to me that news is the case:

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Uncanny Valley Theory: The Effect Occurs When We're Passive Viewers, Not Interactive Participants

Berkeley philosophy professor Alva Noe has a pretty fascinating take on the Uncanny Valley as caused by 3D computer-generated movies like The Polar Express and Tintin (which I talked about recently). If understand him right, he's arguing that the feeling of uncanniness happens when CGI simulations of people are incorporated into a movie, which we watch passively. This confuses our expectations, because cartoons usually demand a level of interactive imaginativeness in our viewing:

Cartoons don't give us glimpses of worlds, they give us worlds to play in and toys to play with. Live-action movies, in contrast, don't give us opportunities to play; they give us access to hidden worlds... the uncanny valley yawns [when animators]... get confused about what kinds of stories they are telling: Are they inviting audiences to play, or giving them an opportunity to watch? [emph. mine]

Read it all here. I think Noe's theory also explains why the Uncanny Valley effect doesn't seem to happen as much in 3D virtual worlds like Second Life -- while human-like avatars should tweak our sense of the uncanny, the fact that we're interactively participating in the simulation, with the knowledge that a real human is at a keyboard, operating each avatar, keeps us away from the Valley.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan. Noe, by the way, gave a great and accessible Google talk about consciousness which goes down like a smooth bourbon:

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Epic Second Life Clockwork Orange Outfit is Epic

Viddy this SL fashion tribute to Clockwork Orange, which was created by Nestag Itano, who has a well-named male SL fashion blog called Untouchable Life. It's from a series of movie-themed fashion spreads, which also includes this equally great Rorschach from The Watchmen. So... click here to see how Mr. Itano clockworked his orange. Warning: site auto-plays a music stream, but fortunately, it's full of cool cuts.

Hat tip: Cajsa Lilliehook's indispensable "What I Like" column on Shopping Cart Disco.

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SL Estate Revenue Falls Below $5M/Mo, Lowest Since 10/09

Tyche Shepherd's latest indispensable Second Life economic analysis is up on SL Universe, and the news is not good: "Monthly private estate tier estimate is down below US $5 million for the first time since I began the monthly surveys in October 2009," she tells me. "It's currently estimated at $4.920 million." This is based on data she compiles from her bot-powered surveys of the grid, and notes: "Because it's based on a survey, there is a margin of error of plus/minus $58,000 but this still puts it under the $5 million barrier."

For Linden Lab, this fall represents another dip in land revenue, which comprises about 80% of its total revenue, and a downward trend from last year:

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Why Reddit Rules Over Facebook: It's the Pseudonymity, Stupid

I have a new post on Internet Evolution about the rise of Reddit in the age of Facebook and Twitter, which I'm pretty proud of. Why does Reddit, a content-sharing community with pseudonymous identities, keep rising in the face of Facebook? Because of the pseudonymous identities, I argue:

Reddit's rise is directly related to the dominance of social networks that fail to let us share online content and community in ways we need, which Reddit can better provide. Facebook is where we share limited, safe aspects of ourselves with extended family, friends, and colleagues. For that very reason, Reddit is becoming our "third place," the virtual pub where we feel freer to share aspects of ourselves that Facebook has almost totally constrained.

As I've said before, Reddit shares a lot of the best qualities of Second Life, just as a more accessible, web-based virtual community. (And has a pretty active SL sub-community of its own.) Hope you give it a read and even better, create an Internet Evolution account and jump into the conversation there.

New World Notes Highlights from Last Week: Kinect and SL, Google+ and SL, Avatars vs. Hollywood, and Much More

SL/OpenSim news:

• Tokyo University Developing Real Time, Open Source Kinect-to-Second Life Software
• Explore OpenSim & SL Regions on the Web & Convert Others for Web Use With Avatars Via the ArchTech Engine
• Google Reportedly Allows Second Life User to Keep Google+ Account Named For His SL Avatar (see below for more)
• Iris Rants: Don't Let Fear of SL Content Theft Cause Paranoia Over Alternate Designer Identities!
• OpenSim Active Users: Now About 15,000 (Same as in 2009)
• Have Furries Fairly Fled Second Life for Furry Forums?
• Why Lindens in Second Life Seem Arrogant & Out of Touch

Other tech/gaming/social media news...

• Google Now Allows Fully Pseudonymous Google+ Profiles -- But Only Those Known by a "Meaningful Number" of People
• Do Hollywood Actors Fear the Rise of Avatar-Based Acting?

Why Lindens in Second Life Seem Arrogant & Out of Touch

Serendipity Haven has a fairly funny field guide for satirically spotting Linden Lab staffers in Second Life (which I first spotted on SL's Reddit group.) The post is largely for the yucks, though there's an underlying assumption I often see SLers make in other, more serious contexts: That Lindens in SL are arrogant and out of touch with SL culture. At the risk of missing the joke, I should explain why that seems to be the case (for it often does), based on my own three year experience as a Linden (albeit one who was mainly contracted to explore and report on SL), and from knowing a hundred or so Lindens personally. Most of them are not arrogant in real life, and most of them do care about SL as a community, at least in the most general sense. However, they may seem both arrogant and detached in regards to SL (both in-world and on their website), for at least a couple key reasons:

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Iris Rants: Don't Let Fear of SL Content Theft Cause Paranoia Over Alternate Designer Identities!

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Recently a group of experienced SL designers got together to start a new menswear-focused superbrand, Entente,  opening this month. Of course, they've become a hot topic as a result, both because of their teaser images (which are gorgeous) and their choice to release under alts rather than their main accounts. Of course they aren't the first designers to reinvent themselves through anonymity or to see controversy as a result-- fri.day and Paper Couture are two other well-known examples (who were all eventually outed). For some this is innocent curiosity and speculation, but for others there is a sense of entitlement to knowing the "real" names behind these brands.

There are many good reasons to want to know who someone is, but the underlying motive is probably fear over content theft, which sometimes gives way to paranoia and makes us forget what makes SL identity valuable in the first place. Though this is a very real threat, identities are not information that designers owe their clientele, and here's why:

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OpenSim Study on Virtual Treatment for Phobia Needs Cars!

A very cool OpenSim research project for use in real world therapy is in need of virtual cars. It's being run by Jorge "Eggy Lippmann" Lima, a longtime SLer, for the University of Lisbon, and the study will use virtual world experiences as a way of treating people with real phobias. Specifically, as Eggy explains, "[S]ome people with agoraphobia will have panic attacks when driving over bridges and into tunnels, or even walk out of their car in fear if they get stuck in traffic." Eggy will show therapists and their patients virtual renditions of cars in various scenarios, "and I will ask them and their patients to answer some questions regarding whether or not they feel the therapy is helping them." Eggy is looking for modern mesh-based cars to use in OpenSim, and of course, your contribution will be acknowledged in papers published on the project. And you might even help some folks deal with their phobias. Go here for more info on the project and contact info on Eggy.

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Sim Deathwatch: SL's Hardcore Hard Alley Hits Hard Times

SL tier prices and economic hard times keep hitting hard, even those who are hard: To wit, Hard Alley, a notorious Second Life virtual porn sim that has been popular for years (I recall reading scandalized reports about it as far back as 2006), is in danger of going out of business, Mark "Pixeleen Mistral" McCahill reports on the Alphaville Herald. The owner cites high sim tier ($295 a month) and a decline of renters to defray those costs, problems that are universally hitting the SL economy on all varieties of sims. I doubt it represents a decline in interest for hardcore porn in SL -- about a third of the most popular sims by traffic are Adult-rated.

So what's happening here? Without investigating too deeply (and I'm not hugely het up to have a hard look at Hard Alley) my initial guess is this:

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NWN in Japanese: Bryn OhのSLアートがクラウドファンディングを通じて、1日でUS$6000の寄付を獲得！

素晴らしいSLアートを見る為に、お金を払ってもいいという聴衆は、存在するのだ。しかも彼らは、そのアートが繁栄し続ける為に、大金を使うこともいとわない。

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Explore OpenSim & SL Regions on the Web & Convert Others for Web Use With Avatars Via the ArchTech Engine

Click here to visit several locations originally created in Second Life and OpenSim on your web browser. You don't need an SL/OS client to view them, and though they use Unity 3D to display, now you don't even need to download a Unity plug-in, because the latest version of Flash (standard to nearly all web browsers) has Unity's display code built in. This is the latest, nearly consumer-ready version of technology created by Tipodean, from ex-Linden Chris Collins, with the help of SL/RL architect Jon "Keystone" Brouchoud, which I wrote about earlier this month. Now the demo comes with a menu and many locations to select from. The one you're looking at above is a web-accessible version of NOAA, which was originally developed in Second Life for the US government branch. As I noted this week, OpenSim is not apparently growing its userbase. Unity, however, has been growing by leaps and bounds, with a user base in the tens of millions. So if OpenSim (and for that matter SL) wants to grow beyond the smaller market for client-based installs, something like what Tipodean is doing with Unity probably a fruitful way to go.

Related to this, Tipodean also just launched the Archtech Engine, which uses Unity to generate web-based 3D spaces with avatars -- and can do so with SL and OpenSim locations. Chris and Jon and I recently hung out in an early, military-themed demo, see below:

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Google Reportedly Allows Second Life User to Keep Google+ Account Named For His SL Avatar

According to "TheBlack Box", which is the avatar name of a Second Life user, Google allowed him to keep his Google+ social network account named after that pseudonym. After changing the G+ account name from his real life name to his SL avatar name, his account was flagged, and he sent Google this SL group website link, to prove he was known as TheBlack Box by over 2500 SL users. After some more back and forth, as he reports on his active Google+ account, Google eventually sent him this e-mail:

"Thanks for sending us your appeal. You're right: your name does comply with the Google+ Names Policy. Your name has been updated on your Google+ profile. If you submitted the appeal during sign up, your profile has now been restored. Log in to Google+. Sorry for the inconvenience, The Google+ team."

And so now TheBlack Box in SL is officially TheBlack Box on Google+. This is evidently evidence that Google will indeed allow at least some SL avatars to go by their pseudonym on Google+, when provided sufficient evidence that the avatar name is well-established. When I spoke with her on Tuesday, a Google spokesperson was cagey on what kind of evidence they would accept for pseudonymous G+ accounts. And different Google policy review staffers may make different decisions. But at least in The Black Box's case, a pseudonym-only avatar name was apparently allowed.

Hat tip: Botgirl Questi.

Ask Miss Metaverse Manners About Dealing With SL Content Theft Accusations!

For her next installment of Miss Metaverse Manners, Iris Ophelia takes on a totally touchy topic: The etiquette and ethics around dealing with SL content theft -- both as someone being accused of such theft, and as someone making the accusation. It's a conflict that comes up often, leading to bad blood and in the worse case scenario, real world lawsuits. Miss Metaverse Manners (hopefully) to the rescue: Anonymously post your touchy etiquette and ethics questions around content theft in SL on Iris' Formspring account.

Tokyo University Developing Real Time, Open Source Kinect-to-Second Life Software

SLKinect 2 is a pretty cool open source project being developed by folks at Network System Laboratory of Tokyo University to connect real world motion captured by a Kinect to avatar movement in Second Life and OpenSim. Watch:

Fumi Iseki, a developer with NSL, recently told me more about the project: "These softwares are open source, so anyone can download, read code and use [them] software freely." The code has almost no licensing restrictions, and they've also created code for third party viewers to use. "We hope that third party viewers include our patch."

This is part of a larger SL/OpenSim-oriented project by Network Systems Laboratory:

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Have Furries Fairly Fled Second Life for Furry Forums?

One day recently, software engineer Tess Chu was walking through a hotel, when she stumbled into a furry con. This was a fortune-filled encounter, for while she's now a Senior Software Engineer and Analyst at Kabam, the leading Facebook strategy game developer, her previous life was at Second Life, as a Studio Director at Linden Lab. So on finding out she was an ex-Linden, the phalanx of furries were fairly friendly. For as everyone knows, furries have been among the more active subcultures in Second Life. (Though probably not as large as often assumed: A community leader estimated it to be under 20,000 during SL's 2006 hype wave.)

In any case, after Tess told them she was an ex-Linden, the furries in the hotel told her a fairly different tale:

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How to List Your Avatar Name Next to Your Real Name on Google+ (Which I Generally Recommend)

While it's now possible to have an avatar-only Google+ account (if you can convince Google your avatar is known enough to deserve one), you can also just list your avatar name alongside your real one. In your G+ profile, just click Edit Profile, select your name, then “More options", like so:

You can list your nickname in many ways, one being the way I do so above. Unless you're planning to absolutely maintain a Google+ account that's only relevant to your avatar and those who only know your avatar, I'd personally recommend listing it as a nickname alongside your real name. Doing so will give your Google+ account more credibility to both non-SL users and SLers who don't know your avatar, and give you leverage beyond whatever happens with Second Life the commercial entity. That's especially important to professional content creators and artists. As Beverly "Bettina Tizzy" Millson explains, "With artists, your name is everything. A pseudonym isn't a bad deal in real life for them. But limiting your persona to a virtual name in a walled garden (especially one that isn't growing) that can only be shared via still photos or machinima... it's a trap."

How to Photograph Photoshop-Free SL Water Reflections

Yes, this puddle-filled picture above by Graphic Dix was made in Second Life, and no, the final image hasn't been post-processed in Photoshop or suchlike. Click here for the embiggenized version. Now that you're duly impressed, click here for a detailed, illustrated, step-by-step tutorial on how that's done.

Mr. Dix, by the way, a designer from near Milan, also makes beautifully post-processed SL-based images, and shows you how to do so here.

Google Now Allows Fully Pseudonymous Google+ Profiles -- But Only Those Known by a "Meaningful Number" of People

Google is now allowing a limited number of users on its social network Google+ to have fully pseudonymous accounts, a Google representative just confirmed with me. This after Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz announced yesterday the reversal of a previous Google policy banning pseudonymous accounts. The new policy isn't to be confused with "Nicknames", a Google+ feature also announced yesterday, which are just alternate names listed in addition to an existing (real name) on the profile.

Regarding fully pseudonymous accounts, here's the key clause from Horowitz:

[S]tarting today we’re updating our policies and processes to broaden support for established pseudonyms, from [artist] trench coat to [pop star] Madonna. If we flag the name you intend to use, you can provide us with information to help confirm your established identity. This might include:

• References to an established identity offline in print media, news articles, etc
• Scanned official documentation, such as a driver’s license
• Proof of an established identity online with a meaningful following

We’ll review the information and typically get back to you within a few days. We may also ask for further information, such as proof that you control a website you reference.

Does this mean you can have a Google+ account named after, say, your Second Life avatar, or your Reddit username, or whatever? Maybe. Here's where things get tricky. "It’s important to note that not all appeals will be granted," the Google spokesperson told me. "Users must show that this name is known by a meaningful number of other people."

I asked the spokesperson if that would specifically include pseudonyms based on Second Life avatars. "They include web profiles that only the avatar's owner can use," I explained. "For example, here's mine [Hamlet Au]."

Google's reply:

Continue reading "Google Now Allows Fully Pseudonymous Google+ Profiles -- But Only Those Known by a "Meaningful Number" of People"

Do Hollywood Actors Fear the Rise of Avatar-Based Acting?

The Academy Award nominees for last year's movies were just announced, and one prominent actor's name wasn't included among them, even though he was featured to universal acclaim in one of 2011's biggest movies. I mean, of course, Andy Serkis, who played the chimpanzee named Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes through the technology of motion capture:

His performance as Caesar was vivid, nuanced, heart-wrenching. And as I wrote when Rise opened, Serkis is basically our first avatar-based movie star, renowned for the 3D digital characters he plays, though few who enjoy his performances in theaters know who he is, and still fewer (beyond dedicated geek cineastes) could identify him in real life, were they to pass him on the street. Despite the acclaim for his Apes performance, which won him a nomination by the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, and despite a a lobbying effort for an Oscar nomination by the movie's studio, 20th Century Fox, which ran a "For Your Consideration" ad in trade journals for Serkis as Caesar with the headline “The Time is Now," Serkis got no nomination.

Here's where it gets interesting to me: The Academy Award nominations are made by filmmakers in their respective category. Directors nominate directors, screenwriters nominate screenwriters... and actors nominate actors. So Serkis was specifically snubbed by fellow actors. This despite his popular co-star in Apes, James Franco, lobbying for Serkis' motion-captured performance:

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A Klein Bottle Comes to Second Life (Again)!

A Klein Bottle is a mathematically brain-melting object with no in or out and no front or back, and thanks to Wizard Gynoid, one of them was made to float in Second Life. Watch this machinima to see what I mean:

Love the music by modern master Moby and metaverse artist Miso Susanowa, and it's a credit to both I can't tell when the Moby music ends and the Miso music begins. (Or vice versa.) Via Second Life's Subreddit.

This isn't the first Klein bottle to rise from SL, as I suggested: At least one more was created in 2008 by AM Radio and Miki Gymnast.

Via Ms. Gynoid in Comments: Click here for a direct teleport SLurl to the Klein bottle.

OpenSim Active Users: Now About 15,000 (Same as in 2009)

In June 2009, I asked a lead OpenSim developer about my estimate of 15,000 active users of Second Life's open source spinoff of Second Life. This source told me that 15,000 sounded about right.

In January 2012, extrapolating from this month's OpenSim growth statistics, HyperGridBusiness' Maria Korolov posted a recent update: "[I]f you take the 9,700 users that we counted, add in the 6,000 or so users that are missing, we'd be at around 15,700 active users -- a pretty decent number." (Emphasis mine.)

And I agree, that's a pretty decent number for a 3D open source platform. It also suggests, as I wrote last week, that OpenSim doesn't seem to be growing. Then again, if it was about 15,000 in 2009 and around that number now, neither is it losing users. (And I'd be wrong in speculating that OpenSim usage was dwindling.) At the same time (as reader James OReilly points out), OpenSim's status on Google Trends has been declining in recent years (as the chart above shows.)

Again, this is not a criticism of OpenSim, which is a very useful platform in many cases for a limited subset of developers and consumers. However, it needs to be pointed out for an important reason:

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Second Life Redditors Wonder WTF is Up With Linden Lab's SL Poor Ads -- Please Tell Them, Lindens!

Over on Reddit's sub-community for Second Life (be sure to subscribe!) "Jeran" wonders why Linden Lab is doing such a poor job advertising Second Life, pointing to recent fails like the outdated, odd-looking vampire screenshot on the front page. "[W]e need LL to show off what our content creators can do, which is a LOT," writes Jeran. "But the uninitiated public can't see that unless they are shown these things in advertisements." So why is Linden Lab not doing that? I thought about putting that question to Linden Lab, but am fairly sure an official response wouldn't be very instructive.

Instead, Linden Lab folks reading this blog, I encourage you to go to Reddit -- which uses pseudonyms, so you needn't worry about outing yourself -- and share your perspective there.

Newt Gingrich, SL Fan, Likely to Be GOP's 2012 Candidate

Newt Gingrich, who once visited Second Life as an avatar flanked by a Qaddafi-esque squadron of female bodyguards, declaring it "the beginning of a very different kind of system that let's exactly what you see in front of you happen, which is people from all over the world, can come together, and be together, and share ideas", won the Republican primary in South Carolina last weekend, handily beating Mitt Romney. And as my friend Andrew Leonard noted, since 1980 the Republican nominee who wins South Carolina goes on to win the GOP primary for President. And in any case, Newt is way ahead of Romney in the next primary contest, in Florida. So prepare to hear a lot more in the mainstream media about the Second Life of Newt Gingrich soon.

Update, 11:25AM: By the way, just to make sure no casual readers interpret this post as an endorsement of Gingrich (a notion that makes me throw up in my mouth a little) let me also note that the Obama Administration, through Beth Noveck, President Obama's former deputy chief technology officer for open government (an early SL innovator), has also done some outreach into SL of its own. (But in my opinion, leveraging the platform much more realistically than Gingrich.)

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Top Five New World Notes News From Last Week

• World of Skyrim Actually Much Smaller Than San Francisco
• Crowdfunding SL art: Peter Greenaway Acclaims SL Artist Bryn Oh, Donates to Crowdfunder to Re-Open Immersiva leads to Bryn Oh's SL Art Crowdfunder Raises USD$6K in One Day!
• Linden Lab's marketing limitations: How to Shoot Spectacular Second Life Screenshots: Iris Ophelia's Way... Versus Linden Lab's Way and Here's the Vampire That Should Be On SL's Homepage
• Controversy with the SL viewer code: Claiming Staff Bias, Ex-Linden Karl Stiefvater No Longer Helping Linden Integrate Alignment Tool into SL Viewer leads to SL Insiders oleads ton Alignment Code Controversy: No Personal Animus, Karl's Code Will Be Integrated into the SL Viewer
• OpenSim Gaining Regions... But Not Gaining Many Users

How to Stylishly Celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year in SL

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

This Monday, people around the world will be celebrating the Lunar (or Chinese) New Year, and Second Life is no exception. Believe it or not, Chinese New Year traditions are very fashionista friendly. It's best to wear a new outfit for example, as well as to get a haircut, to symbolize a "fresh start" to the new year. Red is the preferred colour to wear for the Lunar New Year in China as it's believed to repel evil spirits, while black is avoided as it represents death. Pictured above is what I'll be wearing to greet the Year of the Dragon in SL: a super cute (and super red) qipao from +Lika Ruby+ named Chunjie paired with their colour-changing peony headdress.

+ Lika Ruby + [Click here to teleport to + Lika Ruby + in SHIKI VILLAGES] has quite a few outfits inspired by classic Chinese fashion (each in an array of vibrant colours ad prints, just in case red isn't your favourite), any of which would be perfect for any Lunar New Year festivities you might be attending between now and Monday. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

I took this photo, by the way, in the SL sim called China, which resembles a beautiful Chinese brush painting -- a perfect place to celebrate Chinese New Year: Click here for a direct teleport.

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