New World Notes

Rezzable Help Wanted: Virtual Experience Designer in UK

If you're metaverse savvy and you're based in the UK (or have a permit to work there), my friends at NWN partner Rezzable may want to hire you: they're looking for a Virtual Experience Designer to expand their OpenSim-based Heritage Key ancient history simulations. (The new location for Rezzable's King Tut exhibit.) My obvious bias aside, this looks like a dream job, designing games, creating machinima, and developing other content to depict 3D recreations of great archeological sites. Plus, you get to work with lovely and talented people like Ms. Vint Falken, who made the eminently clever mixed reality help wanted ad above. Go here for all the job application details.

Why Simulcast a Shareholder Meeting Into Second Life?

What you're watching in this video is a recent shareholder meeting of NIC, a 600 employee-strong, Kansas-based provider of eGovernment web portals, streamed via audio into Second Life, delivered by an avatar representing NIC's CEO Harry Herington, to an audience of ten or so in-world. (In addition to audiences getting the simulcast via the web and speakerphone.) "Our business is based on making information easily available through a variety of communication channels," NIC's Nolan Jones told me via email, so adding a Second Life aspect to the meeting was a natural extension of their in-world activities. "We used a media presentation tool developed by Cranial Tap," for the Powerpoint display, Jones added. "I managed the CEO’s avatar so he could focus on presenting to the live audience. Using the media player while controlling the avatar was extremely easy."

But is this a cost-effective way of broadcasting a shareholder meeting?

The Mixed Reality Desktop of Qarl Linden

Happy Mixed Reality Monday, everyone; here's an apropos screenshot to start your week off right: it's what Linden Lab developer Qarl Linden sees, when he logs into his desktop computer at work. It's running Second Life, and it's currently displaying his SL office. And his Second Life office, in turn, includes a screen which displays his computer's desktop. Which means it shows you all the icons and applications Qarl's currently running -- including Second Life. Which is displaying his desktop. And so this screenshot, as Qarl tells me succinctly, "[is] my SL display showing my RL display showing my SL display showing .... well, you get the idea." I actually only sort of do, do you?

Image courtesy Qarl; go here to tell him about your now-melting brain.

Second Life Is What Twitter Isn't: Unique, Sticky, Profitable

"Twitter is what Second Life wasn't," marketer Chris Abraham argued recently in Advertising Age, seeking to quell anxiety that the current media hype about Twitter means that it's inevitably destined to suffer the backlash Second Life did in 2007. Unlike Twitter, Abraham notes, Second Life is not "light, cheap, and open". That is, it requires a large client install, has relatively demanding hardware/broadband specs, and isn't readily interoperable between the web and most other applications.

Those are all valid points, but Anderson's assessment greatly misunderstands Second Life overall -- and in doing so, understates the potential pitfalls Twitter faces now in at least three ways:

*Beautiful Kate* in Second Life: Coming This August, Drama With Oscar-Nominated Star Featuring SL

Courtesy of Australian-based movie production/distribution company Roadshow Films and metaverse developer Lowell Cremorne, here's a glimpse from Beautiful Kate (IMDB info here), a new movie starring Bryan Brown and Oscar-nominated Rachel Griffiths. As you might have discerned, Second Life has a role in the story about a young woman with a dark secret. However, it's just a background element, and according to Lowell, who has an extensive write-up on the production here in the Metaverse Journal, Second Life is depicted not as a weirdo freakshow, but more accurately, as a fun, Internet-based social medium. The movie was directed by Rachel Ward, who previously had a successful run as a leading woman in numerous 1980s Hollywood movies, and transitioned nicely to the other side of the camera. (Ms. Ward conceived the Second Life dance party that Lowell and Encore Design Group put together in-world.) Lowell tells me the movie is set for an international release August 6th, so it's likely to screen in major US cities then or soon afterward.

Metaverse LaLa: Los Angeles-Based Second Life Artists Seeking Mixed Reality Gallery Space

Brookyln is Watching, the New York art collaborative that created a mixed reality portal linking Second Life to a Williamsburg art gallery, brings us news that several Los Angeles-based Second Life artists are looking for a space to create a similar cross-world platform in LA. Among them is Douglas Story, the man who makes marvelous metaverse flowers, and pictured here, Gracie Kendal (Kristine Schomaker IRL), a talented abstract expressionist who compares Second Life's art community to that of New York in the 1950s and Paris in the 20s. Any ideas, Angeleno readers? Contact information and more here. Image credit: www.kristineshomaker.net

OpenSimulator Gets Web-to-World Integrated Social Network

OSGrid, billed as "the largest free-to-connect OpenSimulator grid", added a fully integrated social network to its metaverse earlier this week. Elgg looks and operates in a very similar way to Facebook (check out Elgg's friend update stream at left), but as described by lead developer Adam Frisby (Adam Zaius in SL), it takes over a lot of the functionality that in-world groups use: "[I]f you have a group 'inworld'," explains Adam, "the exact same data should be used on the website. Join a group on the website - it should show up in world." Anyone in a large Second Life group, notorious for their frequent chat failures and other communication lapses, will probably recognizes how powerful this functionality can be. Imagine getting in-world group notices on the web, without having to log into the world and arduously drag the info from your archive.

"It’s more of a presentation layer," Adam explains to me by e-mail.

Send Me Your Mixed Reality Profile Photos!

Here's what I hope is a fun challenge for everyone who reads New World Notes:

- Log into Second Life, and position the SL camera on your avatar.

- Sit next to the viewer display, and take a photo featuring you and your avatar side by side.

- Write a short description of where you are in the real world, and where your avatar is in Second Life. Include your avatar name for credit, and if you like, link to your web site or SL location.

- Send the photo and description to me, either as an attachment (less than one meg, please) or a link to Flickr/Koinup/etc, via hamlet@secondlife.com,or via private message to me on Twitter, or on Plurk.

- I'll publish a select number of my favorite photos on New World Notes every Monday.

What you're looking at above is me in my San Francisco living room, on the big red chair where I usually write New World Notes; yes, I'm in deep need of a haircut, and the photo is a touch blurry, and I'm sure my readers can do better with their own submissions. But hopefully it gives you an idea of what I have in mind.

Why am I doing this? Several reasons:

The Real World Object Essential To Noelyci's Second Life

I asked Second Life bloggers in Alicia's challenge to write about a real world object important to their virtual experience. Noelyci Ingmann wrote about this: his insulin pump. (Which as it happens, acts as a kind of virtual artifical pancreas that keeps him alive.) Why is the device so important to what he does in Second Life? "I felt like I always wanted to design something in Second Life that was meaningful and lasting," he writes, "a contribution I could stand behind." So he created an SL version of his insulin pump, as a way to raise awareness about diabetes, then got friends' avatars to model it in a Virtual Insulin Hotties photo series. Whether they're in the challenge or not, I'd love to read other SL bloggers discussing the real world objects that impacted their Second Life as profoundly.

Metaverse Wayback Machine: OpenSimulator Tool Exports Second Life Builds to OpenSim

From a Second Life build to an OpenSim installation (courtesy Mr. Zaius)

Late last week, leading OpenSimulator developer Adam Frisby (known in SL as Adam Zaius) announced he's been creating a revolutionary tool: as yet unnamed, it "allows you to export a OpenSim Archive from a Second Life Region". In other words, it enables you to copy and save Second Life content you own, and import it into an OpenSim server. (As above, with an old moonbase Zaius owns in Second Life.) Anticipating fears of another CopyBot scare, Adam reports he won't release the code publicly as yet, "although I might release a binary version containing creator and permission checks similar to Second Inventory." (As blogged here.) Copying objects embedded with scripts may even be theoretically possible.

This is groundbreaking for at least a couple reasons: since OpenSimulator operation is so much cheaper than paying for SL land, this tool would enable cost-effective archiving of Second Life content, off the SL grid -- sort of a Wayback Machine of the metaverse, as Adam notes. (As we saw only last week, great SL content often disappears because the owner finds it too expensive or irksome to maintain in-world.) Which suggests a second reason why this may become so important: a means for SL content creators to quickly extend their creativity and commercial products into OpenSim-based worlds.