New World Notes

Sell Your Linden Dollars for Bitcoins in Second Life (If You Don't Mind the Long Wait & Losing Value from the Trade)

Turns out you can sell your Linden Dollars for Bitcoin, the virtual currency lots of people talk about (even though few of them use it as an actual currency), from within Second Life, where about 400,000 people regularly use the virtual world's official money. Software engineer Sam Williams documents his experience of doing just that, via the Virtual World Exchange. It's pretty time-consuming:

In order to initiate the transfer, I had to visit one of VirWoX’s terminals inside Second Life, where I deposited L$5,195. That’s me in the image above, with what appears to be some sort of cat behind me... The final step was simply to get the money out of my VirWoX account and into a bitcoin “wallet,” a secure address that acts as my public identity on the bitcoin network. This turned out to be, by far, the most time-consuming step. After downloading the recommended bitcoin client, I needed to wait about five hours for it sync with the network.

And if I'm looking at the current exchange rates right, he lost a few dollars of value in the process:

GOING PRO IN SL

How do you turn your Second Life into a real life career?  Though she's written about creating SL machinima and solar eclipse simulcasts, this blog has been rather sparse of Aimee Weber lately-- but that's partly due to the copious commercial projects the avatar fashion designer and metaverse experience crafter has been developing in recent weeks.  Most notably, she created the immersive Second Life space showcasing Warner Brothers' artist Regina Spektor, for Millions of Us, the new virtual world production company from former Linden staffer (and pal) Reuben Tapioca.  Since so many Residents must be wondering how they too can convert their SL talents into their paying gig, I asked Aimee to offer advice on turning passion into profession.   All that and an interview with LL Vice President Robin Linden on the subject, after the break.

THE PROFESSOR AND THE BUTTERFLY

Expanding her talents in yet another direction, Aimee Weber went right from creating the movie version of the solar system to preparing the stage for viewing last week's solar eclipse simulcast from Turkey to a server in Second Life.  It isn't every day that you get to work with a nationally renowned scientist in a virtual world, let alone grope him, so I asked Aimee to document her efforts on this groundbreaking event here.

HER WORLDS, HER IMAGINATION

A few months ago, groundbreaking 3D builder and avatar fashion designer Aimee Weber decided to expand the limits of machinima too, creating a planetarium-worthy tour of the solar system within Second Life.  It wasn't just the professional polish of the movie that struck me, but far as I can tell, it's the first fully-realized use of machinima for educational purposes.  Rather than interview her, however, I asked her to blog a behind-the-scenes account here, as NWN's first contributing writer.

Watch her movie here.  Then read on for her step-by-step account of the production, told in her sassily inimitable style.  (And be sure to catch the pretty amazing announcement at the end, of particular note to San Francisco Bay Area residents.)