New World Notes

Is A Second Life Female Beauty Contest A Good Idea?

After launching an open forum to help Iris Ophelia select 2008's hottest male avatars, we were immediately inundated with names, well over a hundred dudes put forth by their friends, lovers, and admirers.  It was such a great response, I asked Iris if we should run a similar search, for hottest female avatars. 

She did not think that was a good idea.

"I don't want to be Little Miss Teardown," Iris warned, "but this is very much the dark side of SL aesthetics... Beauty is what leads to the bad feelings."  And because she's my style correspondent and is intimately familiar with Second Life's fashionista scene, I had to take notice.

"I'm gonna say 'style' and 'elegance' and 'creativity'," I protested, "that kind of thing."  I wasn't interested in a tacky digital flesh parade.  After all, I noted, "Anyone can slap a supermodel-looking skin on themselves."

Iris was mollified by that approach, but only somewhat. "You really really need to emphasize everything other than beauty," she said, firmly. "If you want it to not be a nightmare, it can't look like a beauty contest."

Which seemed like a strange thing to say.

Post (Second Life) Secret

PostSecret is a great blog with a powerfully simple premise: readers write their most personal secrets on an evocatively illustrated postcard, then send them anonymously to the blog's proprietor, Frank Warren, who publishes a select few every weekend.  SLsecret is a metaverse-based spin on that premise, posted regularly on the group blog Shopping Cart Disco by contributor Iris Seale, who has a keen editor's eye.  Like the original, the secrets revealed are sad, bitter, ironic, disturbing, erotic, profound, silly, passionate, overwrought, and sometimes, all these things at once.  The mystery of avatar identities and in-world drama adds several layers of meaning to stories coveyed in a few words and a single screenshot.  Absolutely go here to see them all.   Hat tip: Morris Vig at Second Arts.

Koinup's Burning Life Directory

In my weekend Open Forum on favorite sites in Burning Life, Silvy Noel points out a pictorial directory and photo archive of BL places on Koinup, an NWN partner.  (Like this place at left, a chill DJ club in the heart of the desert.) If you have a Koinup account and want to share Burning Life sites you vist, just shoot SL screenshots as postcards, then upload them to Koinup's server; the X,Y,Z address automatically filters them into the social network's BL content stream.  Details on how to do that here.

Monthly Users, Or User Hours? Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon On Counting Second Life Activity

Yesterday Second Life reached another peak concurrency: 71,159 users in-world, Massively's Tateru Nino tells me, up from last week's peak of 70,911.  But has this consistent rise of in-world activity translated into growth in SL's active monthly user base?  After a couple e-mails with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (M.Linden in-world), I'm not sure.

There's an industry rule of thumb that active users are about 10x the peak concurrency, which would suggest a recurring SL user base of 710K+.  As of last week, the company users stats counted 870,619 Residents who'd logged in during the last 30 days. 

But hold on: that number includes people who created a new SL account and logged in for the first time within that period, Kingdon told me.  Which increases the mystery.  Ms. Nino has been tracking new user sign-ups on her blog, and they average roughly 12,000 a day; i.e., about 360,000 new users a month.  So subtracting 360K from 870,619, we're left with around 510,000 monthly recurring users. 

In other words, while concurrency is growing, the number of active monthly users still seems to be stuck at around 500-550K+-- a plateau that's existed since last year.

I checked that number with Kingdon:  "I looked at our data," he told me, "and you are partially right, but not completely. Both our active user base and active user hours have been growing nicely since the beginning of the Summer.  We have some good momentum going in the fourth quarter."

So how many recurring active monthly users are there in SL now?  I put that follow-up question to M. Linden, and will post that number here, when/if I get it.  In any case, Kingdon argues that it's more important to track total user hours and concurrency numbers:

Second Life Use Case: Urban Planning With Simulated Agents

Digital Urban, the UK firm which created technology for uploading 3D models of city streets based on mapping data into Second Life, have outdone themselves.  What you're looking at above is a proof of concept for one of their latest projects: agent-based models for use in urban planning, visual demonstrations, and other applications.  Their demo models  Conway's famous Game of Life, Schelling's segregation model and above (most impressive to me), pedestrian evacuation, which models crowd behavior at they attempt to exit a building during an emergency.  It's part of their effort to use Second Life as "an online urban laboratory to explore issues pertaining to urban planning and public debate in a visually 3D collaborative environment."  Read more about it here.  (Image: digitalurban.blogspot.com)

Microsoft Confused About Its Own Virtual World Strategy

Last July I noted all the many signs suggesting Microsoft's interest and involvement in virtual worlds, specifically OpenSim and Second Life; last week, the Industry Standard's Ian Lamont sent me an article he wrote covering a presentation by Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer.  In it, Mundie dismissed Second Life, saying,  "Our view was that there was a fairly limited audience who was willing to deal with the construction of avatars and operating in that virtual space."  Instead, he believes the future in 3D belongs to Microsoft's Photosynth, a very cool technology that creates immersive spaces from composites of 2D photographs.  (Here's a demo video.) 

And while there's no doubt technologies like Photosynth have great potential, it's an odd statement for several reasons-- for starters, if that's "our view", why are so many Microsoft developers investing so much effort in Second Life and OpenSim?

"I can't explain why other MSers are bullish on SL," Ian told me, when I pointed that out to him in e-mail, "unless it's a case of them testing the waters like Intel, IBM, and Sun.  Note that Mundie is really focused on medium- to long-term projects; he said the timeline for some of his planning is 20 years out." 

Lamont went on to make another point about Mundie's presentation.

Sneak Peek At 3Di Open Viewer, Billed As In-Browser Second Life Viewer With PS3 Graphics

Here's a video demo of a project to keep your eye on: the 3Di OpenViewer, which purportedly runs both Second Life and OpenSim in a web browser, incorporating "the graphics engine used also for PS3, and works by the ActiveX technology on Internet Explorer."  Note the dynamic shadows, and rich textures.  Following up on this video, I got in touch with Taku Kamata, CTO of Tokyo-based 3Di, Inc. 

"Unfortunately," he messaged me, "this viewer is internal demo version for 3Di OpenSim.  (3Di OpenSim is commercial server package like Redhat Linux.)"  Which, according to 3Di's homepage, is expected to launch October 1st.  My second follow-up yielded no reply, so a lot of questions, such as when OpenViewer will be available, or how it uses PS3 technology, remain unanswered thus far.  Stand by.  Via Heidi Ballinger through Mal Burns' metaverse video feed.

Last Week's New World Notes Highlights

- Second Life Voice Use On Track To Eclipse Total Skype Use
- Prim Composer, Offline Builder That Converts 3D Studio Max Files To SL Objects
- Have You Received A Legal Notice In Second Life From A Real World Company?
- Angrybeth's Cool Multi-Camera Simulator Machinima Tool
- Open Forum: Who Are Second Life's Hottest Male Avatars?
- Now Open in SL: Immersive 3D Fansite Island For Lost

Open Forum: What's Your Favorite Burning Life Site?

Astra Thorne and I purchase tickets from an obtuse Machine Person

In the heart of the desert is a bed with a dreaming man surrounded by icons like the Statue of Liberty and Paris Hilton, and if you choose, there's a bot named Machine Person who'll sell you a ticket for the occasion, while engaging you in some strange curlicue conversation.  The creation of Jenne Dibou and  Mandy Marseille, "American Dreamer" is an immersive, gorgeously textured recreation of dreams associated with the old new world.   

Direct SLURL teleport to American Dreamer at this link.

As it happens, Dibou and Marseille's work is a literal realization of the "American Dream" theme for Burning Life 2008, which just opened today, and will run for the next week. The official Burning Life blog is here (difficult to navigate but full of information); the unofficial site, bursting with imagery, is here. 

What installations from Burning Life are capturing your imagination most?  Please post in Comments, and be sure to include a SLURL.  (To copy the SLURL location, just click Map, select Copy Location, and paste that here.)

12 Hours Left To Nominate 2008's Hot Avatar Guys!

The Open Forum for Iris Ophelia's Top 10 Hottest Male Avatar list closes tonight, at Midnight SLT.  If you don't see a favorite in Comments, you have until then to go here, and suggest some men for Iris to peruse!

Update, 9/27, 11:35am: After nearly 100 posts and about as many nominations, the Forum is closed.  Next step: Iris will be selecting 30 finalists for three rounds of reader's choice selection.