New World Notes

BioShock Rock: Keiko's Witty Spin On The Classic Videogame

This mixed reality music video features an excellent song from renowned Second Life musician Keiko Takamura that's a geek's mash-up delight: The machinima part of the video was created in Second Life, for one thing, but it's entirely referencing Bioshock, last year's acclaimed RPG/shooter hybrid.  On another level, it's sung from the point of view of BioShock's hero and his, well, complicated friendship with Atlas, the embattled rebel of Rapture city who guides him over the radio.  (You only catch all the song's references if you've finished the game before listening.)  At still another level, Keiko is actually singing about all the friends you're not sure you should trust.

That's intentional, as it turns out.  She wrote "Same Sad Tune" while watching her boyfriend play BioShock, Keiko tells me, while also thinking of "[a] guy who kept on offering to help me out at a time when I really needed it, but flaked out on me and disappeared off the face of the earth whenever I thought he was serious about keeping his word."  Her brilliant move is connecting these two totally unrelated elements, and it's testament to why Keiko Takamura's music has such a passionate following in Second Life.  Her success in the metaverse, she says, is also why she recently moved to San Francisco, to build her music career in both realities.

Smart Bunny: Playboy Sells Fashion Created And Co-Branded By Second Life Designers

Bunny Kerowynn Lubitsch strikes a pose in KO Designs' Playboy bustier

With regular events and a staff of gregarious, frequently dancing Bunnies, Playboy's official Second Life presence, a tropical island club developed by Boston's Green Grotto Studios, is one of the few real world company sites boasting steady visitor traffic.  (Direct SLURL teleport at this link.) And unless I missed a previous announcement, it can now claim another title: the first major company to link its brand with Second Life-only brands.  In this case, Playboy-branded fashion sold on the official island, but created and promoted by SL designers who are an integral part of the label; among them, KO Designs, Alpha Male, Sharkture, and Simply Spoiled.

"Initially we approached retail by creating replica versions of real clothing that is sold at playboystore.com," Green Grotto's MSGiro Grosso tells me.  "Over time we decided that we would make that a smaller portion of the retail experience and engage some of the top designers in SL to create exclusive SL-only Playboy collections as well as provide them with the opportunity to re-sell some of their existing clothing line and expand their brand."  It's a bold move, considering how sensitive and protective corporations are with their labels and trademarks (even Linden Lab themselves)-- especially Playboy, one of the most well-known brands on the planet. 

According to Grosso, however, it wasn't hard to convince executives in Hefner's empire to experiment.

Giant Robot: SoftBank Developers Create 3-Axis Accelerometer Game In Second Life

This from Japanese-based metaverse musician Komuso Tokugawa, who recently attended a Tokyo Second Life party, where a development team with the media/telecom giant were showing off an open source version of the SL viewer they've engineered to run with a motion-sensing accelerometer interface.  There's been variations of this hack, of course, such as iD Media's Wii/treadmill interface, but this one comes with its own form of wacky: 

The accelerometer control is hooked up to a giant Second Life robot holding a big glass crate.  Residents get inside it, and try to stay inside, while in the real world, you shake the crate like crazy.  A brilliant mixed reality video game that looks like tremendous fun.  Read Komuso's blog for more details, including SLURL to the robot's crate.

Photo credit: Komuso Tokugawa from sonicviz.com.

Virtual World Labor Protest Shows Up On IBM's Real World Stock Chart

Last week when I posted news of an international union protest on IBM's Second Life campus, IBM staffer (and blogger) Jaymin Carthage evinced extreme skepticism about its efficacy. "There is no evidence that the Union's activities [last September -ed] in Second Life were anything other than a cheap attempt to grab some publicity," he argued in Comments, notwithstanding a labor organizer who claimed that it was more.  Mr. Carthage may be a right on a certain level, though here's an interesting phenomenon: recently, I started noticing traffic coming to my blog from an unlikely site: AOL's stock market resource.  That's where shareholders and potential investors can research important company data, such as performance, market cap.  And last Wednesday, at least, that also included word on a convergence of avatars waving anti-outsourcing signs in the metaverse.

Mr. Linden Goes To Washington: Philip Rosedale To Appear At First US Congress Hearing On Virtual Worlds

This Tuesday, according to a Linden Lab media alert, the company's exiting CEO/future Chairman of the Board will speak on the topic of “Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium” before the House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee.  The purpose of the hearing, an official invitation from the Committee reads, "is to obtain testimony on the nature and growth of online virtual worlds; the types of applications and services, both commercial and non-commercial, supported and offered in such worlds; and any policy issues raised by virtual worlds that may need to be addressed or monitored."  (Emphasis mine.)

And no, despite the April 1st date, this is no fooling: it's even on the Committee's schedule, and the video will be streamed live from the site starting at 9am EST, 6am Noon Second Life time.  Billed as the first Congressional hearing to directly address the topic of virtual worlds, it'll be led by Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA), who happens to have an avatar of his own.  (Last December, rather than jet to Bali for the UN's conference on climate change, Rep. Markey addressed the topic from within Second Life.)  Philip is not the only virtual world expert being called: Susan Tenby (Glitteractica Cookie in SL), director of Techsoup.org's Non-Profit Commons in Second Life, will also appear.

Image mash-up credits: Tao Takashi, Frank Capra.

Update, 10:05am:  Adam Reuters has more details on the event-- namely, the House will also call Dr. Larry Johnson of The New Media Consortium and Colin J. Parris, Ph.D., Vice President of Digital Convergence at IBM Research.

66K: SL Concurrency Keeps Climbing Around 500 Per Week

This was the world's maximum concurrency about 90 minutes ago-- 66,429, a new record, well over a thousand more than its previous high of 65,285 two weeks ago-- which was, in turn, about a thousand more than the previous peak of 64,305, on February 24.  At this rate, simple arithmetic suggests the world will surpass 75,000 peak concurrency by the end of July.  (But not 100,000 by the close of 2008.)

Shortly after reaching that point, it's worth adding, the site and the world grid crashed for unspecified reasons.  Presumably this will show up on the number of unplanned outages, which have decreased after a notable spike last November and December. 

So, concurrency steadily rising-- stability, maybe not so much.

Last Week In New World Notes...

- Have you experienced the music of Chouchou?  You simply must.

- Will the Lindens go IPO track in 18 months?  Take this survey by Monday Noon!

- If your avatar is hot, do you feel hot, too?  A Stanford study suggests Yes.

- What's the point of unions protesting on IBM's SL campus?  A union organizer and an IBM staffer debate the subject in Comments.

- Does the new Second Life(tm) trademark policy make sense?  IP lawyers, developers, bloggers, mull the move in Comments.

Two Lawyers Puzzle Over Second Life®'s Trademark Policies

Under Second Life's new branding and trademark rules, do I now need to put an ® symbol on this blog's top banner?  I don't know, Gwyneth Llewellyn doesn't know, and curiously, two intellectual property lawyers who are active commentators and Residents of Second Life don't quite agree on that question's answer, either.  This comes out in a fascinating Comment thread in my post on the subject, with Benjamin Noble, author of an upcoming book on virtual law published by the American Bar Association, and Kit Meredith, in real life an IP rights lawyer with a perspective of her own.  (Click their respective images, to read their Comments, or extended posts on their own blogs, Benjamin's here, Kit's here.)  The conversation revolves around "nominative fair use" and what rights the Linden's Terms of Service agreement entail.  In other words, manna for men and women in the burgeoning field of metaverse jurisprudence-- and vertigo for me.

Meanwhile, the Lindens' PR representative tells me a clarification statement is coming today or Monday.

Update, 3/31: Actually, no announcement has come.  "Due to a high volume of inquiries on the topic,"  Lewis PR's Peter Gray tells me instead, "Linden Lab plans to address these questions in another blog post which should be up soon."

Armidi Rules: Arguing For A High Fashion Monopoly

Last October, Iris Ophelia noted how the official emporium of real world fashion designer Armani was tepid in comparison to Second Life's homegrown clothing empire with a similar name, Armidi.  According to SL-Newspaper's Alesia Schumann, Armidi has come to dominate metaverse couture in general, with fashionistas openly talking about "the rise of Armidi and their ability to suck the grid's talent pool of clothing and hair designers".  So much so, the twin M words, monopoly and Microsoft, are mentioned.  Ultimately Alesia rejects those comparisons, and makes the case that Armidi's dominance is a good thing, fostering competition in a market that's already fragmented.  (What with the sheer size of Second Life's fashion industry, and its many disparate varieties.)  In any case, the mere fact of Armidi's success suggests that recent concern over content theft may be overstated.  If IP violations were so rampant and economically harmful, how did a relatively new metaverse brand grow to such prominence so quickly?

Bettina's Best: More Of The Metaverse Maven's Latest Picks

Mapmaker to the metaverse at its most magical, Bettina and her NPIRL group keep unearthing treasures.  Above is Prados Azules from a Barcelona arts group, a fantasia island that's also been the site for several excellent mixed reality parties.  Next door in imagination is the scrumptiously colorful alien forest isle of Soror Nishi, created and imported from Blende.  If those two are too hallucinogenic, enjoy the clean and crystalline concept builds of a Resident called Designer Dingon, in real life an award-winning designer, on an island named Architecture.  Visit all three over the weekend, and I may see you there.