New World Notes

New World Newsfeed: Info Week On SL After The Hype

Recent dispatches from the outside world...

Second Life Tries For A Second Act -- InformationWeek

Mitch Wagner has a long and thoughtful summary on the state of SL as it is now, which is a paradoxical place to be: a profitable company with a half million strong user base that's so active, their voice usage is competitive with the world's largest VOIP provider, which still garners a tremendous amount of media coverage, while it's simultaneously dismissed by other media outlets and the wider tech world.  To figure out where things stand, Mitch talks with new CEO M. Linden (right), in-world entrepeneur  ArminasX Saiman, former Cisco metaverse evangelist Christian Renaud, and others.  (I offer some thoughts, too.)

What will it take for a serious, consistent, widespread reconsideration of Second Life by the Internet industry and the wider mainstream world?   In my opinion, that won't happen until world can show substantial, unambiguous growth in its active monthly user numbers-- say a million.  Until then, this paradox of perception will persist.

Obama, McCain Get Schooled In Second Life

This is a fairly cute machinima, especially if you've been following the Presidential election with clenched teeth (and who hasn't?)  In "Swift Kick Moms for Truth", Senator Obama's grandmother and McCain's mom lay the smack down on their kids' respective campaign fiddle faddle.  (Yes, yet another instance of Not Possible In Real Life.)  Both the Senators are impressively recreated, which is no surprise, as it's from  Silver and Goldie Goodman, who did a great topical machinima featuring Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove et. al. a couple years ago. 

New World Tableau: Riptide In A Stone Age-Inspired Hotel

Queens of the Stone Age has a song called "Leg of Lamb" with a lyric that reads:

In a hotel on the phone/You're gonna leave me/I should've known (should've known)/And I was thinkin', it's so sad/I didn't want you to go

Inspired by this passage, Gahum Riptide created a seedy hotel room in Second Life to fit the mood it evoked, the latest in a larger series.  "I've been doing a series of images inspired by different songs I like," he tells me, "and one I had been meaning to capture is visualized in that image."  After taking the screenshot, he did some surface post-processing,  "mostly to soften the hard edges, bring out the blues in the shadows, make the highlights yellower and the midtones redder, but that's it."

See more of Gahum's work on his Flickr stream, view the entire New World Tableau album here-- and read on for guidelines to submitting one of your own.

Wanted: Creative Designs To Fill An Empty Sim Monthly

NWN partner Rezzable has a void sim called Visions, and at the moment, it's empty.  They're looking for artists and builders who want to showcase their works in Visions for a month, starting in October, when it's opened to the public.  (The first artist, I'm told, is Wizard Gynoid, who's creating "a glimpse behind the curtain into the 8th Dimension".)  After that, Visions will rotate to showcase another creator's work for the next month-- maybe yours.  Go here for all the details on applying.

Prad Prathivi's Ultimate Second Life Keyboard Template

Just in time for the holidays, and after painstaking development, Prad Prathivi has distilled the essence of the Second Life experience, and created a PC keyboard overlay with a hotkey for every important command.  Take a detailed look for yourself.  No really, you should.  Hat tip: Harper Ganesvoort.

Now Open in SL: Immersive 3D Fansite Island For *Lost*

I'm still an avid watcher of TV's Lost, though as the plot gets ever more ornate, I wouldn't be surprised if Jacob was revealed to be a jazz dancing, backward-talking midget.  The long-awaited next season doesn't start until 2009, but Torley alerted me to a Lost fansite that just opened an island in Second Life, featuring many of the major landmarks from the show.  To get there, for example, you have to check into the Oceanic airport terminal, after which, you're teleported to the beach camp.  Like Jack, the first sign of indigenous life I saw on a quick visit was Vincent the blonde labrador, above.  (I'm pretty sure that's Jacob's eerie cabin in the background.)  A lot of effort has gone into creating accurate replicas of Lost locations, though the overall building quality is so far a mixed bag.  More important, however, is it's a central locus for fans to get together and interact in a live 3D realization of the show, as opposed to just a website or forum.  (The Oceanic lounge has a viewing screen for watching and discussing excerpts from the show.)   Go here to check it out.

Update, 8:45pm:  Mitch Wagner has a nice profile of the Lost island creators during a previous incarnation of the project, last Spring.

Philip Linden On Second Life Past And Future: The Metanomics Interview... And My Take On It

Beyers Sellers of Metanomics has just published an epic, multi-part interview with Philip Linden, covering  everything to mainstream adoption of SL to his management of the company when he was its acting CEO (the role he vacated last March.)  Beyers also corralled some metarati to analyze Philip's observations, and sought my comments on what Philip will do in SL, now that M. Linden has replaced him as CEO, and his management philosophy during the company's founding years.  "[M]uch of Second Life's limitations are directly attributable to a lack of a central and unifying vision," I say there.  To expand on that, here's something I used to half-jokingly say to Lindens, when I was a contractor:

Open Forum: Who Are Second Life's Hottest Male Avatars?

Last year, one of New World Notes' biggest posts was Iris Ophelia's "Top 10 Hottest Male SL Avatars for 2007", a compilation that was so popular, the men she selected were deluged by attention from SL's Gossip Girls.  It was also a fun way of contemplating the Uncanny Valley, and the point at which a virtually sexy man provoked a real response. Now Iris is updating her list for 2008, and she's looking for a few good new men to profile-- namely, ten more.

Behold Prim Composer, Offline Builder That Converts 3D Studio Max Files To Second Life Objects (Updated)

I'm sometimes prone to hyperbole, but I still insist that what you're looking at above is a milestone in Second Life's evolution.  It's Prim Composer, an offline building environment that takes objects created in 3D Studio Max, and imports them into Second Life and OpenSim.  (Click the images above, depicting the tubular monolith in 3DSMax, at left, and as it now exists in OpenSim.) Created by Shack Dougall, it's free software which already has an online support community of builders. 

How does it work?  "Building with Prim Composer for 3ds Max is a two step process," Shack explains to me by e-mail. "Offline, prims are created, linked, and textured in 3ds Max.  From 3ds Max, the textures, sculptmaps, and prim attributes are exported to XML files and bitmaps on disk.  Finally, the build is loaded into Second Life or OpenSim using an importer which logs onto the grid as the builder's avatar and uploads textures, creates prims, and links them into the final build.  Both sculpted and regular prims are fully supported."

News of Prim Composer comes to me from Dusan Writer, who's proficient with both SL building and Studio Max, and offers his in-depth, copiously illustrated review here. Dusan's most excited about how Prim Composer enables the interoperability of content, and that's indeed a very powerful thing. (Once the technical and social standards are agreed on, that is.)  Why do I think it's a milestone?  For a more immediate reason:

Koinup Launches Steampunk Screenshot Contest

Here's a challenge I suspect many readers will embrace: NWN partner Koinup, the virtual world social network, just launched a Second Life Steampunk Contest.  Submit up to three SL photos of people and places redolent with 19th century sci-fi, by October 16.  Famed scripter Miss Ordinal Malaprop and I will judge and select three winners, who'll get a Skye Steampunk Castle (right), valued at L$15,000.  But better yet, find themselves festooned in glory.  All the contest details here; see the entries as they arrive here.