New World Notes

MEETING LOVISA

Direct portal to Federated Media's SL office here.

Lovisa Tackleberry is the SL name of a fine new ad exec with Federated Media, and she's the one you send an IM to, if you're interested in advertising on New World Notes-- Linden Dollars and SLURLs accepted. After explaining to the FM staff how easy it is to convert L$ to US$ and then transfer that to their Paypal account, they gamely assented to take Linden Dollars in lieu of currency.  (Interestingly, one member of the ad team already has experience taking ad buys with various currencies, when he worked with a publishing company that had both US and EU-based magazines, and advertisers would pay in the currency that was currently stronger on the market.)  To give them a presence in SL itself, I've donated my old office in Shipley to Lovisa-- a bare bones platform, really, because it's an old, overbuilt region, but look at the view!  Maybe we'll get John Battelle and the rest of the FM team to have rooftop parties here, like he used to do during the dot com heyday of his Industry Standard.

In doing all this, New World Notes gets to make some SL news of its own-- to my knowledge, Federated Media is the largest "legit" enterprise in Second Life to accept Linden Dollars as a kind of micropayment, becoming a mediator between its large real world advertisers and SL's burgeoning economy.  Pretty cool stuff.

NEW WORLD SLURL: THE LOST GARDENS OF APOLLO

Direct portal to the Lost Gardens of Apollo here; Web-based Scene Globe of the Gardens here.

Thanks to a tip from Tao Takashi, I have my first flying SLURL, a place in Second Life seemingly designed with the power of flight in mind.  It's not that the Lost Gardens of Apollo are entirely airborne-- indeed, the landscape is just as inviting, as are the courtyard areas along the water-- it's that the space is open enough that it makes more sense to fly from place to place, and there's no sacrifice of context, for doing so.  You don't start flying because you get frustrated by trying to walk up narrow stairs, for example; you fly from high tower to high tower because that's what seems, well, most natural.  More on Apollo's creation after the break.

HAMLET ON THE SHEEP DECK

In-world broadcast event listing here.

In about a half hour I'm going to be a guest on PRI's Open Source Radio with Christopher Lydon, interviewed via old school telephone line while also appearing live from an SL stage created by The Electric Sheep Company.  Also on the panel is the esteemed Sherry Turkle of MIT, author of the vastly influential Life on the Screen-- without which, I likely wouldn't be writing this blog.

Update, 3/29 11:00AM PST:  The MP3 of the Open Source program and forum conversation on it is here.  I was glad the producers also brought Cristiano Midnight and Chip Poutine into the mix.

Hopefully I came off relatively coherent.  The attempt to merge the Second Life portion with the land line phone interview didn't quite gel, at least for me, since I rarely use my plugged-in-the-wall telephone anymore, and it barely works-- meaning I had stretch the cord across the room and put it near my computer.  Meanwhile, my cell phone started ringing in the middle of the interview, forcing me to text message a reply while talking to Chris Lydon.

This clumsy attempt to handle several simultaneous streams of information is an ironic counterpoint to an observation I made during the show, that for younger Residents especially, Second Life was just one more medium to add onto their vast cellphone/pager/PDA/IPod/IM/Live Journal/Skype/My Space communication network.  Not sure that came across in the show, but then, at least I can blog that point here.

SL EVENTS OF THE WEEK, 3/27-4/2

This week, highlights include a Buster Keaton film, a garden show, and the simulcast of a total eclipse of the sun from Turkey.  Details after the break-- and remember, you can submit event suggestions here.  Please.  Don't let "Events of the Week" disappear in the sticky morass of Tringo/sexball party/free L$ camp-offs already choking up the listings.

MASTER THE METAVERSE POSSIBILITIES

Handsome young super-genius Torrone Trumbo (who could become the next Q or James Bond's worst enemy, it's still up in the air whether he continues using his powers for good) has unleashed his latest plan for metaverse world domination:

An online world credit card.

His reasoning is elegant and hard to refute:

As the time of this writing, there are 166,922 residents, spending over 135,984.00 in 24 hours and $6.5 million USD in transactions took place is about 20 days. In 2006, there's a good chance $100 million USD dollars worth of transactions will flow through the virtual world of Second Life. Linden recently rolled out their own exchange, Lindex, meaning - they're almost a bank now. It's not a matter of if, just when-- credit card companies, Pay Pal, Amazon, eBay and the individual "gaming" companies eventually bridge the real and virtual currencies with loyalty programs and private label credit cards-- there's too much money out there to -not- to do this.

Being the blogger for Make, he's going the next step and planning to create the thing himself.  More details here.

NEW WORLD SLURL: CAMP DARFUR

Direct portal to Camp Darfur here.

Now if I were to build a virtual Darfur, I think it would include a target range for taking potshots at the virtual janjaweed, and paying L$ into the tents would send those funds via Paypal to Doctors Without Borders, and somehow, every visit would be registered on a medic's battered laptop in a dusty refugee clinic, so that the patients gathered around it would know when someone in the world had spent even a few seconds out of their day thinking of them.

But this, this is definitely a start.

More images after the break.  Thanks to Haney Heaney of Omidyar.net for the tip.

AN ALKALINE FIT FOR MY PROCEEDING

Mistress of the difference engine Ordinal Malaprop has fashioned a windmill that harnesses energy and stores it into a battery, and has provided the scripts to build same.  She also offers these words of pre-emptive scorn for those who'd wonder why in the world we'd want windmills and batteries in the first place:

You look to me like some sort of clerk or other man of business, possibly even an accountant. Where is your soul, sir? Do you have no appreciation of the joys of simple creative activity? Begone with you, and run through the park with no shoes on until you have re-united yourself with the pleasures of experience rather than commerce, or until you tread on a squirrel, at which point you may stop so as not to cause further harm.

NEW WORLD SLURL: STYLEHIVE

Direct portal to Stylehive here.

After enough nudging from various individuals on the bleeding edge of all that's cool and fashionable and now, I paid a visit to the inagural party for Stylehive, the latest intersection between the virtual and real.

The party itself was a fashion contest featuring various top designers showing off their wares, but it was really a showcase for the Stylehive operation.  Every piece of furniture in the Hive (created by NWN contributor Aimee Weber, natch) was selected through folksonomic vote by Stylehive members, modeled exactly after its real world analogue.  Clicking on every item of furniture launches the web browser and takes you to the Stylehive page featuring it-- which, in turn, gives you the option of buying the actual furniture piece through an e-commerce site.  It's a pretty cool application of immersive retail, even if you're just window shopping.  More pics from last night's fashion show after the break.

NEW WORLD SLURL: THE COLLECTIVE

Direct portal to The Collective here.

The Collective is the kind of card game for people who enjoy squaring off against a penguin with a samurai warrior and a black cloud of death, and calling that a fair fight.  You can also go up against a jellyfish and an exploding chicken, and once again, the trick is marshal an army of minions who are up to the task.  'Cause the chicken can explode at will, and you may need backup.

To be perfectly honest, The Collective, which is a kind of Magic: The Gathering for Second Life, is way too complex and slow-paced for my taste.  But as it stands, it's far and away the most popular title in the Game Developers' competition so far, selling thousands of cards, which players collect to create a pack of minions and magic spells that can be played anywhere in SL-- and that's saying something.  You also get game credit for keeping your Collective equipment on at all times-- for example, you get an experience bonus when you travel with it into another region.

Since I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a pitched life-or-death battle involving a penguin, I instead watched a match between Collective co-creator Matthias Zander and hardcore player Sera Cela.  Their duel pitted Sera's firebird against Zander's three ice dragons, who seemed to be on the ropes from Sera's firey attacks, but before dying, laid a pile eggs which eventually hatched and wreaked revenge on Ms. Cela's lone phoenix.

NEW WORLD SLURL: ARCADIA

Direct portal to Arcadia here.

The SLURL for the week, of course, is Aracadia, home for the 2006 Game Developers contest, featuring eight contestants vying to be the top four most popular titles.  Over the next couple weeks, I'll be trying out the games and giving each a mini-review. 

SLURL valid until May 11.