With the world's theaters still painted profoundly pink, probably you've noticed people sharing real life photos of themselves that have been Barbie doll-ified via BaiRBIE.me.
Turns out that, yes, you can do so with photos of your Second Life avatar. Here's Gogo's before and after version (above). Somewhat paradoxically, the SL avatar looks more human than the AI-generated doll version.
Here's another, by Gidge:
Continue reading "Yes, You Can Barbie-fy Your Second Life Avatar Via BaiRBIE.me!" »
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
There’s a new blog in town and it’s called Gather and Nest. It’s a group blog focused on Linden Homes that aims to reach beyond the blog and form a community of gatherers and nesters. The founders are Gorgeous Aurelia (Gogo), Teresa Firelight, and Malayaa Morningstar with more to come.
They plan for the blog to be useful as evidenced by this early blog post: Choose Your Linden Home is broken, but it doesn’t have to stay that way! This is an opinion piece by one of the nesters, Gogo of Juicybomb, with suggestions on how to improve the Premium Plus home selection perk as well as practical advice for people who might want to trade homes or address other issues. She also lists links to other home tutorials she wrote on her personal blog in the past:
For more Linden Home tips, click here:
Continue reading "New Gather & Nest Blog is a Good Guide to Second Life Homes & Land" »
|
|
This has been hinted at for months and even accidentally popped up on the test grid recently, but Linden Lab finally launched new starting mesh-based avatars and a "customize your new avatar" mini-game-type experience (similar to what you get at the start of The Sims franchise) for new users right on the homepage:
We're excited to announce the launch of our new Starter Avatars! These avatars, called Senra, are a fresh mesh take on the classic Second Life avatar, with a customizable modern and stylish look. These avatars will give new residents the opportunity to get started with a mesh body and personalize their own unique look the very first time they log in to Second Life and get a taste for the endless possibilities of avatar customization available to SL Residents.
Go here to join.secondlife.com to try it yourself. You'll probably want to use a different browser than what you normally employ for logging into Second Life's website. These are very rudimentary avatars, so longtimers may understandably squawk, but the great thing is this gently leads new SL users into the virtual world in a way that's, you know, fun.
Some other thoughts:
See my Starting Avatar avatar below:
|
|
Where it started for Meta (last February):
Ray-Ban Stories let you capture video and photos, share your life’s moments and listen to music or take calls hands-free... We see smart glasses as a stepping stone to true AR glasses, and an important element of this is building something you’ll want to wear regularly for extended periods of time.
How it's going for Meta (according to the WSJ this week):
Less than 10% of the Ray-Ban Stories purchased since the product’s launch in September 2021 are used actively by purchasers, according to a company document from February reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Meta sold a total of 300,000 of the wearable devices through February, but the company only had about 27,000 monthly active users.
Emphasis mine, because wow. Normally people make a concerted effort to get their money's worth from a relatively expensive piece of hardware ($299+) but that's not even happening here.
This is notable, because "XR glasses that are the size of sunglasses" has been a constant goal among enthusiasts for decades -- a topic I just chatted about with Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz:
Continue reading "Meta's "Smart Glasses" Stepping Stone to AR Has Only Stepped Into Obscurity" »
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Fulvio Macchi is a dog lover. So many of his pictures feature him with a dog. This picture cracks me up. He cleverly positioned his dog to align with the gargoyle so they look of a piece. He’s sitting in his chair with a walking stick, looking all officious, but how stern can you be when you have a doggoyle by your side? His musical inspiration was And then I noticed she was a gargoyle by Nanowar of Steel.
For more boy and his dog pictures, click here:
Continue reading "Today's Second Life Flickr Pick: Dramatic Dude & Dog Photos by Fulvio Macchi" »
|
|
One ongoing paradox to ChatGPT is this: Even professional developers using it for business applications aren’t quite sure how it works.
The co-founders of Qurrent, for instance, a stealthy SF-based startup developing an agent-based approach to software development, have been experimenting with GPT to incorporate into their product. But lately they’ve been wondering how ChatGPT was able to “solve” a complicated logic puzzle that most humans would not be able to answer.
Here’s the puzzle:
A king wants his daughter to marry the smartest of 3 extremely intelligent young princes, and so the king's wise men devised an intelligence test.
The princes are gathered into a room and seated, facing one another, and are shown 2 black hats and 3 white hats. They are blindfolded, and 1 hat is placed on each of their heads, with the remaining hats hidden in a different room.
The king tells them that the first prince to deduce the color of his hat without removing it or looking at it will marry his daughter. A wrong guess will mean death. The blindfolds are then removed.
You are one of the princes. You see 2 white hats on the other prince's heads. After some time you realize that the other prince's are unable to deduce the color of their hat, or are unwilling to guess.
What color is your hat?
Note: You know that your competitors are very intelligent and want nothing more than to marry the princess. You also know that the king is a man of his word, and he has said that the test is a fair test of intelligence and bravery.
After some failed attempts, here’s the prompt that Colin Wiel of Qurrent fed into ChatGPT, which then outputted the right answer:
Provide a step-by-step logical reasoning plan for how you would approach this puzzle, then step through the plan to achieve the correct answer. Here is the puzzle [insert puzzle text]
After a moment, ChatGPT came back with this correct reply -- spoiler alert if you’re still trying to solve it yourself:
Continue reading "How Did ChatGPT "Solve" This Challenging Logic Puzzle?" »
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
GoddessWhispers [Prettyflower Vale] has created a few abstracts in her feed that make me want more. Take this one from 2019, “Abstract: Gazing Through The Ice” has these deep, rich blues and greens in which we can discern shapes such as the trees she mentions in her description, but also we can see things that are not there. For example, on the right-hand side, the black and white shapes seem to be a woodpecker landing, but I think that is all in my head. She describes the picture, “Winter trees viewed from below the icy pond's surface. Using "miniaturize" filter to give a bit more depth and pop the colors.”
For more abstracts, click here:
|
|
Grateful for this book review by veteran virtual world educator Valerie Hill, who pinpoints some themes I've been most hoping that readers catch:
Surprisingly, Au holds the view that interoperability (which has been talked about for years as being essential to the real metaverse) may not be necessary! He argues that it is the communities within virtual environments that need to be able to cross platforms—not the platforms themselves. He tells us that most virtual world users, my colleagues and myself included, use Discord as the connection between virtual worlds. The concept of interoperability as a core element of the metaverse is, according to Au, a myth...
What are the reasons to be in the metaverse? There are many! Wagner James Au provides many stories, such as an elderly blues singer, a clothing designer, and a thoughtful artist. Most virtual environments provide opportunities for gaming and socializing (such as VRChat, Roblox, Fortnight, and many others). While Au does mention the potential for education in the metaverse, it is not at the top of this list. This is unsurprising because there is way more money made in the entertainment industry than in the field of education.
Education is definitely an important use case! I'd just consider it as an optional supplement, since many/most people, including kids, find 3D/immersive experiences difficult. But there are ways around that!
Speaking of which, join Valerie and me Friday September 22 at 1pm PT for a talk about the topic at The Virtual Worlds Education Consortium in Second Life.
|
|
Disturbing if inevitable story in the New York Times documents pro-Russian disinformation spreading across various metaverse platforms and MMOs:
Molfar’s researchers identified more than a dozen instances of pro-Kremlin propaganda in Minecraft, Roblox, the Russian versions of World of Tanks and World of Warships, Fly Corp, Armored Warfare and War Thunder. Almost all extolled the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, a theme Mr. Putin and his advisers have used to build support for today’s war. Some of it had explicit links to political parties or government agencies...
Jacob Davey, the head of research of far-right and hate movements at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, said Minecraft and other games could be useful tools for those looking to influence vulnerable young people, especially if those people had already sorted themselves into private groups where they were eager to discuss fringe ideologies.
"Technoodle", a Second Life user who helps run security for a trans flagged island in Linden Lab's virtual world, tells me of dealing with similar activity recently:
"People keep coming in, rezzing a prim that broadcasts support for Russia and then leave," as he puts it. "We have had to ban at least a dozen."
The entrance to the sim looks like the surface of Mars next to an active volcano, which might seem like a somewhat strange place to blare pro-Russia messages. But it might have to do with how the island is displayed on the Second Life map grid:
|
|
Philip Rosedale and I were just discussing the challenge of creating user interfaces for virtual worlds, and this post on pass-through technology by my colleague futurist Amber Case, really helps crystalize why Minecraft's UI is so powerful (and successful):
All Minecraft’s on-screen UI functions are based around the game’s initial core purpose: Use your creativity and gathering skills to Survive a night against the Creepers — in-game enemies that you must build defenses against in order to have another day of gameplay.
That way, players can remain focused on learning all the game’s functions and how they relate to each other, all for the purpose of surviving and defeating the Creepers and the world’s other attacking beasts. It’s only after this that players realize that the UI they first learned for survival purposes can also be leveraged to thrive — creating beautiful and ambitious homes for themselves, or even the collaborative artworks with other players, all of which helps make Minecraft enormously popular over a decade after launch.
Minecraft's user interface is actually pretty complicated, but its singular purpose makes it become, with repeated usage, intuitive and pass-through:
Continue reading "Why Minecraft is an Example of Pass-Through Technology: Amber Case" »
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
This picture from Lu Vortex made me realize we don’t see many fender-benders in Second Life. A quick search on Marketplace and it was clear there really aren’t many car crashes at all. That makes this picture a rarity, an honest-to-goodness Second Life car crash.
For more intriguing cars, click here:
Continue reading "Today's Flickr Pick: Second Life Vehicular Adventures by Lu Vortex" »
|
|
Commenting on Meta putting the new Quest/Roblox integration as a key to its metaverse strategy, VR expert "SkarredGhost" believes it was a rush job:
Yeah, it's clear that Meta is betting a lot on Roblox. I tried today Roblox on Quest and it is so full of visible bugs that it is clear that it has been rushed out to release it for business reasons (Zuck being able to talk about it to investors).
In fact Mr. Ghost has a whole blog post and YouTube walkthrough (watch above) on the topic, which is important, because the current version is not officially discoverable -- but has already been played by quite a lot of Quest owners:
Continue reading "Roblox on Quest Feels Like a Buggy Rush Job (Comment of the Week)" »
|
|
|
|
UPDATE, July 28: Bumped up for weekend watching! And be sure to check out the interesting, somewhat ranty reader comments, and add some of your own.
Recorded at Linden Lab last week Friday, I'm honored to be the latest guest in Philip Rosedale's new YouTube vlogast, where we do a deep dive on the past, present, and future of Second Life and other metaverse platforms. I have not seen Philip in person since the pandemic, so it was great to catch up, get a glimpse of his upcoming projects (more on those soon) and delve through Making a Metaverse That Matters and related topics.
It was a thorough chat, much of it dwelling on What We Might Have Done Differently with Second Life, and touches on famous SL personalities like Blueberry, AM Radio, and Bettina Tizzy. Here's some other highlights:
More after the break!
|
|
At right: Popular Fortnite Creative maps featuring Sponge Bob, Shrek, Minecraft without authorization
Mackenzie Jackson, who leads a top Fortnite Creative development studio that's created Fortnite deployments for Doritos and other top brands, recently posted this viral rant about how companies like hers are having to compete against Creative maps with rampant IP violations. Pleading directly to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney:
We deserve better that this. @TimSweeneyEpic I appreciate the world you have given us with Fortnite. I hold it so close to my heart, but I can’t keep silent on this stuff socially. Internal reporting isn’t working so I’m going public. You take to twitter to advocate for all the wrongdoings of Apple etc. I’m asking you to hear us out too.
Only about 5% of Creative maps include IP violations, MackJack estimates. The problem is that they're unfairly pulling players away from professional studios like hers, and there's no way for them to do anything about it:
"Apparently they will only be removed if the owner of the IP reports it with Epic. Epic wont take any action otherwise," as she puts it to in Discord. "Which just means for those creators following rules and not wanting to risk their reputation they will always be competing against the islands breaking the rules.
"To be candid about it, it has affected my companies finances to the point where it is worth my time to try to reach out to the IPs myself and try to get them to report with Epic. The IP [violating] games are essentially clickbait that is working--driving a high percentage of our player base to maps that are breaking TOS, we are all competing for shares of the engagement. Our maps dropped out of discovery due to it. Effectively killing our player base and our engagement revenue takes an astronomical hit."
Her tweet has been viewed over 100,000 times, pointing from her perspective to a groundswell of anger among Creative developers like her.
"I can assure you that every dev team has complained at least once," she tells me, laughing without mirth. "Every creator I have talked to is reporting these islands. I just wanted Tim Sweeney to see the communities frustration around it. He tweets about Apple and all those injustices [with App Store fees/policies] and I need him to see his community and do better."
I've reached out to Epic about this and will post any reply I get here. My guess is Epic's hands are somewhat tied by lthe "safe harbor" provision of the US copyright law, but IANAL. I am surprised obvious potential IP violations aren't flagged before a map is published.
Anyway, read MackJack's original tweet below:
|
|
Above: Tunneler, an amazing first-person Roblox game
I was prepared to be snarky in response to Meta's latest earnings call, but if you read the actual transcript [.pdf here], it's notably less eye roll-ish about its metaverse strategy than previously:
The metaverse content and software vision continues coming together as well. We recently announced that Roblox is coming to Quest with an open beta on App Lab. For Horizon, the team is focused on retention right now and we're making good progress on that. We've made big improvements on avatars* as well, and that’s going to be a bridge between our mobile apps and our VR and mixed reality experiences. We'll have a lot more to share on both our metaverse and AI work at our Connect conference, which we'll be hosting in Hacker Square at our headquarters on September 27th. It's going to be a good one, so tune in!
We will, Zuck! Directly tying Roblox to Meta's metaverse vision is one of the few (only?) smart things I've seen the company do recently. The rest of the statement remains a questionable grab bag for reasons you could put in a whole book*, but connecting an actually successful metaverse platform to Meta's Quest is the best (last?) hope to give the device relevance. At the same time, Zuck and Roblox's CEO should also expect a government subpoena after the move.
*On the topic of "improvement on avatars", I wrote this in Making a Metaverse That Matters:
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Oria Lionheart’s photostream has some of the most unique role-playing pictures in Second Life. I mean, she’s role-playing a heliport marshaller in “On the Runway.” How fun is that! Did you even know you could roleplay a marshaller?
Back when there were still major airlines flying to small airports, my brother was a station agent and a few times he took me to work with him while he gathered weather for the National Weather Service and his airline, drove deer off the runway for planes to land, sold tickets, talked the plane in, and unloaded and loaded the plane. Yes, one person did everything from selling tickets to guiding the planes. He let me do everything except guide the planes and talk to the pilots. It would have been fun to wave those light cones around. If you want to do that, you can go to Eden Gateway. [To teleport, click here.]
For more of Oria’s fun picks, click here:
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Barbie is everywhere it seems, but to be honest, PG Barbie is the exception, not the rule in Second Life. Happily, that still leaves plenty of cute Barbie-inspired photos like this one from ϯEmy Hexemϯ. Her “Hiya Barbie, It’s Ken” is delightfully lighthearted and it’s fun to see the Ken doll at life-size (if decidedly not very Gosling-like) though there are also some Ken avatars out there.
For more of Barbie Life in Second Life, click here:
Continue reading "Barbie Cosplay Photo Fun Sweeps Up the Second Life Flickr Community!" »
|
|
Early is later, sad to say:
Life by You’s Early Access date has moved to March 5, 2024. We’re excited to take this time to continue improving Life by You, and can’t wait to continue to update you on our development! We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to Pre-Order, Wishlist, and leave us questions and comments! We’ve added an extra bonus for everyone for the start of Early Access, the Nightclub Vibe pack. If you previously pre-ordered, your pre-order will be automatically refunded by Epic. You will need to pre-order through Epic again to receive your pre-order bonuses.
|
|
In case you're feeling like an X-ile who's X-panding your social networks for completely X-cellent reasons, I would love if you connect with me here:
On Threads, I'm "wjamesau"
On Bluesky, I'm "SLHamlet"
In fact, I have some invite codes to Bluesky to give readers. If you want one, DM me this week on Twitter (sorry, X) or Plurk or Discord at wja_hamlet or even Facebook.
Remember, it's not about giving up -- it's about X-ecuting an X-orcism.
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Kayd, according to his profile, has been in Second Life for 15 years but only recently joined Flickr (although he was taking pictures all along).
And what pictures. Here is “Empire State of Mind.” I love the brightness of his shirt amid all the dark shadows. I love how the light picks out the curves of the car. It has a very raffish air. And he includes the SLURL. [Click here to teleport to TAMMAS HOLDINGS - CENTRAL MEET MARKET]
For more gorgeous pics, click here:
Continue reading "Today's Flickr Pick: Dramatic Black & White Photos from Kayd" »
|
|
|
|
For weekend reading/listening, here's the transcript of a new podcast interview with VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi for Making a Metaverse That Matters. You can listen to the whole thing above, and some favorite of my favorite are excerpts below -- on the origin of the book's title, my problem with the "open metaverse" as it's usually conceived, and my chance encounter in Second Life which transformed my view of the virtual world:
|
|
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lemondrop is Jule Lemondrop’s blog. In her recent post Moto Jette, she carries off an amazing feat of balance, sitting on her little Moto Jette without touching the ground. How does she do it? However she manages to balance, she does it with aplomb in a cute outfit that is playful, but not childish. This picture was taken at Sainte Rose Sur Mer [Click to teleport]
For more women’s fashion tips, click here:
Continue reading "SL Fashion Friday: Casual Summer Style by Lemondrop" »
|
|
PC/Mac readers recommend for SL:
Classic New World Notes stories:
All About My Avatar: The story behind amazing strange avatars (2007)
Fighting the Front: When fascists open an HQ in Second Life, chaos and exploding pigs ensue (2007)
Copying a Controversy: Copyright concerns come to the Metaverse via... the CopyBot! (2006)
The Penguin & the Zookeeper: Just another unlikely friendship formed in The Metaverse (2006)
Guarding Darfur: Virtual super heroes rally to protect a real world activist site (2006)
The Skin You're In: How virtual world avatar options expose real world racism (2006)
Making Love: When virtual sex gets real (2005)
Watching the Detectives: How to honeytrap a cheater in the Metaverse (2005)
Man on Man and Woman on Woman: Just another gender-bending avatar love story, with a twist (2005)
War of the Jessie Wall: Battle over virtual borders -- and real war in Iraq (2003)
Home for the Homeless: Creating a virtual mansion despite the most challenging circumstances (2003)
Wonderful: ChatGPT Apparently Improves My Blog's Comment Spam!
One super-fun Monday activity i have is going through this blog's comment filter to confirm the nuking of apparent comment Spam. For the longest time (like the last 15 years), it's been quick and easy to spot the Spam comment, which is totally off-topic promotions with a link to a commerce/scam sites. In a recent innovation in Spam comments, a bot apparently mixes up the Spam text with garbled excerpts from the individual post, so it takes a bit more time to identify it as Spam.
Now, evidently thanks to ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, blog comment Spam has taken a great leap in quality!
Pictured at right are a couple recent Spam comments, similar to several others that have been popping up on New World Notes recently. Unlike the Spam of the past, the comments are actually on topic to the specific post, and grammatically correct. (If totally bland.)
It's only when you check the commenter's URL do you realize it's a Spam bot promoting gift cards and obscure software or whatever. (Don't bother looking for the actual comments, they've already been nuked.) Ironically, many of these Spam comments generated by AI are attached to posts about AI.
So that's wonderful! It's great getting to waste an extra 5 minutes a week on comment moderation, so thanks for that, OpenAI.
There are some broader implications here:
Continue reading "Wonderful: ChatGPT Apparently Improves My Blog's Comment Spam!" »
Posted on Monday, July 24, 2023 at 02:34 PM in AI, Comment of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)
|
|