New World Notes

The Art of M. Linden -- Abstract Peek Into Mind of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon

In a very interesting interview with Mark Kingdon on Massively, the Linden Lab CEO casually told Tateru Nino about his art student background, and pointed to his Flickr stream of drawings, a striking series of abstract and intricate meshes. I was curious to know more, and how they might relate to his current work in Second Life.

"I've been doing these drawings for 15 years," M. told me, "although the ones you see on Flickr are from a very condensed period of time... Drawing helps focus my mind, like meditation.

"The less colorful/intricate drawings on Flickr were done at the office while on long conference calls -- black ink pen, basic printer paper. (Yes, I can concentrate on the conversation while drawing.) I remember exactly where I was when I did the last one in the set (it's shaped like a lopsided Africa). I had to crop it because it had telephone numbers on it. A true doodle. The more colorful/intricate drawings -- the ones where I used colored pencils -- were done at home. They take a long time (and they're messy) because I am forever sharpening the pencils. I haven't doodled much at all since joining the Lab. When I am in in-world meetings I am always camming around."

So how does his artwork relate to Second Life and his management of Linden Lab?

Second Life's Oldest Resident is 97

Los Angeles architect David Denton uses Second Life as a tool for his work (more on that soon), and when colleagues complain that SL is too complicated, he has a novel reply: "If my 97 year old mother can do it, you can do it."

Because that happens to be the case: meet LS Back, who is almost certainly Second Life's oldest Resident. (When I told David about the 88 year old blues singer and the 87 year old Holocaust survivor who also use SL, he snorted: "Whippersnappers.")

Ms. Back, David tells me, enjoys flying around and exploring, and visiting the exhibit hall which David built for her, to display her watercolor paintings in-world. (He made it as a surprise for her 95th birthday.) We are fortunate to have a real life photo of her, because Ms. Back was initially reluctant to be profiled. For as she first told David, "Southern ladies do not reveal their age."

Photo and screenshot courtesy of D. Denton.

Second Life Machinima Shot With an iPhone

Want an economical way to shoot Second Life machinima? There's an app for that. As demonstrated by Botgirl Questi, who captures SL video with her iPhone:

I actually like how the iPhone gives the footage a glassy, abstracted appearance. (This is roughly the way Douglas Gayeton shot his Molotov Alva SL documentary, with a high definition camera pointed directly at his monitor.) Botgirl also edited this video with an iPhone app called ReelDirector, so it's entirely an iPhone package.

Korean Company Developing Multitouch Metaverse Screen Interface For OpenSim/Second Life

Watch this cool early prototype video of a multitouch screen interface for interacting in OpenSim/Second Life, the possibilities are exciting:

100" Multi touch screen with Second Life from junhee, yeo on Vimeo.

It's being developed by IMG512 (site here), a development lab with a South Korean company called Zentium.

"That SL server (we're using OpenSim server we implemented) can communicate with the client PC that connects to the OpensSim server by the Internet," Junhee Yeo, a VP with Zentium's Interactive Media Group, explained to me by email. "Also client PC has the multi-touch engine. That multi-touch engine gives touch event to the SL client like a mouse or track pad on your laptop." Junhee tells me the company is now focused on improving the multi-touch hardware, but may return to improving their SL/OpenSim interface later on. Hat tip: Gromike in Second Life.

Is Your Second Life Property Mentioned In Your Real Life Will?

The New York Times has an interesting story on a topic most of us would rather not discuss: What will happen to your virtual assets after you leave the material world? In the case of Leto Yoshiro, an avatar whose owner died last year, the Times reports that his SL partner Enchant Jacques was left having to maintain the tier fees for the island they shared, and ultimately had to sell it. The issue was recently brought up by Bettina Tizzy, who wants avatar-based artists to will their Second Life projects to trusted parties, so they'll still exist in-world after death. But metaverse artists aren't the only Residents who have good reason to will their Second Life content. There's all the SL entrepreneurs who earn a livelihood from their work in-world, and the landowners who've turned their property into a virtual community space that dozens rely on. (To name but two.) Add to that the fact that 20% of active SL users are over 47, and the question becomes even more pressing: Have you mentioned your SL content and property in your real life will?

Second Life Tells Twitter: Enjoy the Hype While It Lasts, Get Ready for the Backlash!

Just as Linden Chief Product Officer Tom Hale was finishing his presentation, "Surviving the Hype Curve: A Case Study" at the Web 2.0 conference last week, he concluded by showing this slide, a cute message to Twitter, at left.

Where once NBC TV shows like The Office plugged Second Life (as it did in 2007), the note reads, now such programs are more apt to mention Twitter. NBC is the peak of the hype curve, the letter signed "Second Life" warns, now get ready for the media and Silicon Valley backlash. A number of suggestions follow, some of which are arguable. (I'm actually not sure we should be thankful Second Life had so much hype so soon, especially since it added negligible growth beyond what was organically being added already.) Still, generous advice from a company that's survived past the backlash (video below.)

Then again, I'm also not sure Twitter will suffer any kind of backlash approaching what hit Second Life. Twitter seems to be scaling fairly well, which answers one of the most common hits against the microblogging network, leaving the only nagging problem, "When does this actually start making any money?" But to me that's an easily resolvable challenge. Take any one of Robert Scoble's tips and Twitter revenue will be rolling in but quick. What protects Twitter from Second Live level backlash is one essential thing Twitter's already achieved: Immediately perceivable, substantial impact beyond its user base. Impact that regularly effects businesses and organizations large and small, from the bar down the street, to a theocracy in the Middle East. Second Life exerts a substantial impact on its existing user base (hence Linden's profitability), but setting aside occasional exceptions, the influence beyond those borders is still relatively small. Which is why I keep pressing for mass market adoption as so crucial an issue.

At any rate, rest of the video below. Do you think T. Linden makes the case for survival well?

Is Philip Rosedale Making a "Love Machine" iPhone App?

On a hill of P Squared Island, the virtual office of Philip Rosedale's new company, is a Google Doc asking visitors to help his start-up fulfill numerous tasks. First spotted by the eagle eye of Dusan Writer, it offers tantalizing hints on the project Philip is now building. Among the requests are "a cool-looking analog voltmeter for a great lovemachine project", and a "sample iPhone app that has a couple buttons and hits a website... We need this app as a framework for a secret project."

At minimum, this strongly suggests Philip Rosedale is making an iPhone app. Putting the two requests together, my guess is it's a Love Machine app.

IBM and Nokia Developing Augmented Reality Conferencing System in Second Life

IBM and Nokia are developing an augmented reality conferencing system in Second Life, so people can share a real and virtual meeting space. Here's a video of the system in action, which incorporates head-mounted cameras to track eye and avatar position, integrating video from the real world and Second Life. That way, as the demo shows, meeting attendees can examine a 3D building which only exists in SL:

The project is being done in coordination with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, led by Charles Woodward, a Research Professor with VTT (known as Charles Cyberschreiber in SL.) It seems too cumbersome to be of much practical use, as yet. However, Woodward told me by email, the system is currently "just at prototype stage, and we have not tested it in real telemeetings. However we are starting a continuation project with over twice the budget of the first project, intending to take this into practical use. Besides head-mounted displays we have the idea of using large screens such as CAVEs and standard video conferencing systems for displaying the avatars and object interaction. We will also pilot the system in large exhbitions and fairs. I'm confident the system will have very practical use after we are finished (at end of next year.)" His fellow VTT developer is Tuomas Kantonen (Thomas Meridoc in SL), along with a number of staffers with IBM and Nokia. Keep an eye out for future iterations!

Mixed Reality Portrait: Gatsby Crumb, PhD Candidate Studying Real Politics in Virtual Worlds

Known as Gatsby Crumb in Second Life, Max Burns is the author of Pixels and Policy, a promising new blog covering the intersection of real politics and virtual worlds. His most recent post summarizes a fascinating experiment in racial prejudice recently conducted in There.com, which sadly seems to suggest that white avatars receive somewhat better treatment than black avatars. (He references some New World Notes posts which anecdotally suggest the same.) Burns' blog is an outgrowth of his academic studies, which he is now pursuing as a subject for a doctoral degree.

"I got into virtual politics/culture as a serious prospect after watching how Iran's pro-democracy activists made a seamless transition to Twitter, Second Life, and Facebook after the Iranian government basically made real-world protesting a death sentence," Max tells me. "The idea that these networks and virtual worlds we'd built for fun could be engineered to serve a real purpose in political speech and improving the lives of people motivated me to make Pixels and Policy into a kind of clearinghouse of research and information on the ways virtual worlds are slowly creeping into our real world media and policymaking."

See the whole Mixed Reality Portrait series here. Want to send me your own Mixed Reality Portrait? Here's submission guidelines and suggestions.

Second Life Machinima Integrated Into Multimedia Theatrical Production Co-Created By UK Director Peter Greenaway

While interviewing Italian artist Luca Lisci about his latest SL machinima, he casually mentioned an earlier project he worked on last year: creating machinima for The Blue Planet, a live stage multimedia show co-directed by Peter Greenaway. (Trailer above.) Film buffs will immediately recognize that name: the UK artist and director is renowned for a number of award-winning films he's created over the years, intellectually ambitious and visually arresting, often working with imagery that's extremely sexual or violent or sometimes both. (He's probably most famous for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover starring Helen Mirren and her edible boyfriend, and The Pillow Book, starring an oft-nude Ewan McGregor and, well, his Scottish banger.)

Second Life machinima was incorporated into The Blue Planet (a re-telling of the Noah's Ark story) at the behest of Greenaway's collaborator (and spouse), Saskia Boddeke, who's active in SL.

"We make art which is crossing and combining the different medias and SL is an important tool for us," Boddeke tells me by email. The team commissioned Luca Lisci (known as Vive Voom in SL) to capture footage of an SL ark and animals, created by Timmi Allen. "[Greenaway] liked the 'synthetic' mood of machinima and asked me to push forward expression as much as I can, but without losing that 'videogame' appeal," says Lisci. Here's some of the footage he made for the production: