New World Notes

THE WEEK IN NWN

Highlight Notes from the week that just was:

- Mia Wombat of Creative Commons offers a groundbreaking lecture and discussion on IP rights in this "The Age of the Conducer".

- Artificial life meets Cheech and Chong.

- Inside insights on designing this year's game developer contest.  Worthwhile Comments from the author of 3pointD, contest overseer Ben Linden, and contestant Rifkin Habsburg.

- Don't forget to vote in Round One of the NWN new logo search!

LOGO VOTING, ROUND ONE!

Thanks to everyone who submitted a NWN logo proposal last week-- I'm grateful for the enthusiasm and creativity sent my way.  I got 11 entries in all, so rather than put them up for one giant cumbersome vote, I'm separating the voting into three rounds-- six selections in the first, five in the second, then top three-five entries from those rounds into a final vote.  Have a look at the first round entries, then clickthrough to my SL forum to vote on your favorite.

200K

Another milestone for the world reached today-- though I suspect the more meaningful one happens at 250K, since it's more impactful to say, "A quarter of a million subscribers."  By including the Business Week cover story which provoked another influx of attention, this screen capture suggests how SL was able to leap from 100K to 200K in under four months.  Zero Grace, the first SL blogger to notice the flip, has some thoughts and some demographics.

ARCADE GAMES

Walker Spaight of 3pointD has a nice write-up of Arcadia, the Linden Lab-sponsored game developer contest featuring eight entries (Linden's descriptions with direct portals to each game here) focusing on Tech Warfare.  That's the robotic RTS pictured above; the mummy is actually lead developer Eckhart Dillon; Walker also covers the siege combat game Castle Wars, and SLictionary, sort of Pictionary using SL's building tools.

Arcadia's winners will be the games that collect the most Linden Dollars from players, as counted by a Linden-created "cashbox" players pay to get a game token or item(s) that lets them get into the game.  Walker ends his post pondering:  "Why Linden Lab has taken this EA-like approach to judging its game contest is baffling."   But I can say that the reasoning behind this approach is actually more complicated than "The game that makes the most money wins", because as it happens, Arcadia is one of the side projects I consulted on when I was still a Linden contractor, so I can speak to my personal perspective on that decision.  My attempt to de-baffle after the break.

GROWING YOUR OWN

Recently, Torley went looking for foliage in-world that grew and developed over time, because by default, the trees and shrubs of SL are pre-fabricated and unchanging, like so many chickenwire and canvas sculptures that set decorators use for live productions of Midsummer Night Dream.  Someone had already created a whole school of clown fish, after all, even programmed them to have genes and pass those on to their offspring.  Surely a Resident had scripted artificial flora that responded to sunlight and water, and grew? 

Unsurprisingly, Torley finally found what she was looking for. 

Also unsurprisingly, the first credible genus of artificial plant life to appear in SL is cannabis-- leafy, green, the weed with roots in hell (but legal for medicinal use in the state of California).

It's yet another demonstration of Gibson's adage, "The street finds its own uses for things", but as I learned, the project's a bit more ambitious than a mere stoner gimmick.  Torley's account is here; unable to resist, I had to check out the cannabis of Dave and Robbie Dingo for myself, and get their secret for making it grow, and grow so huge. 

After the break, their story, and time-lapse screenshots of the growth process-- which starts, as it turns out, with a seed and a dude praying for rain.

SL EVENTS OF THE WEEK, 4/24-4/30

It seems standard that when Second Life reaches another apex of mainstream awareness, it happens on an inordinately quiet week in-world.  Amid the usual crush of Tringo, Slingo, Greedy Greedy, and Pizza gambling game listings, there actually aren't many unique events in SL this week-- least the kind that are listed on the official site.  There is, however, a Creative Commons Australia talk tomorrow featuring four stellar speakers, and the opening of a new live music venue.  Details after the break.  (And if there's any special event I missed, post the details in Comments, and I'll update this post.)

Update, 4/25: Just got word of a book discussion tonight connected with an initiative to bring library events and services into SL.  Details under the April 25 listing after the break.

CREATIVE COMMONS IN SL: THE CONDUCER OF MIA WOMBAT

As promised last week, here's the lightly edited transcript of last week's lecture by Mia Wombat of Creative Commons (real life info here), and the lively conversation that followed with an audience of 70+ Residents.  Her talk, "Age of the Conducer", is a fascinating weave of the law and culture behind the current Intellectual Property rights debate around the globe, especially as it relates to video games and virtual worlds, particularly Second Life.  Into this, she introduces the "Conducer", a new figure in the realm of IP rights:  a person who is simultaneously both content creator and content consumer.   During her talk, Mia displayed a Power Point file in-world, most of which is contained in screenshots in this post, and is available for download here.

THE WEEK IN NWN

A roundup of highlights from last week's Notes:

- To help develop the movie's marketing campaign, Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide makes the trip to Avalon.  His owner, Fizik Baskerville, just posted an extensive explanation in the post's Comments.

- An SL protest on behalf of undocumented workers provokes an elephant-laden counter-protest.  Drew Ingmann, who describes himself as one of the counter-protesters, offers his side of the story in the post's Comments.

- A farewell to camping chairs from the Marine veteran who mastered them.

Remember, next Monday means Mia Wombat!

SL FOLKSONOMY

Writing for the SL Herald, Prokofy Neva (yes, that Prokofy) proposes a rather brilliant methodology for tracking what places in the world are truly popular and valued by Residents.  Not the current raw foot traffic metric that Linden Lab uses in its list of Popular Places, but places listed in the User Profile Picks tab.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, only seven of the 20 most Popular Places (by foot traffic) and most popular User Profile Picks overlap.  Essentially, it's a kind of Second Life folksonomy, one that could be very useful once landowner Traffic Incentives are ended in June.

Read more on "Picking the Picks" here.

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY FROGG!

Via Walker Spaight at 3pointD comes this nice write-up on the live music scene in Second Life from Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork Media, featuring Astrin Few, Frogg Marlowe (my write-up on Frogg here) and a host of other Resident musicians.  This comes just in time for tomorrow's grand opening of an entire island devoted to live performances in SL-- event details here.

Pitchfork, it's worth writing out, is the website that launched the alt rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! from cult fandom on the blogosphere to performing a show with David Bowie in the audience to a major record label deal.  Maybe Bowie will create an avatar for himself to catch a Frogg show (if the technophile rock god hasn't already, that is.)