New World Notes

Want to Help Improve Relay for Life 2010? Take This Survey

Second Life's Relay for Life raised over $270,000 for the American Cancer Society this year, but as we discussed last week, could probably raise much more with a few improvements. Reader suggestions include spreading the run out over a whole week as opposed to a single day, to minimize lag, helping make the L$ donations easier to write off on taxes, and more donation methods. Now there's a place you can officially register these opinions and more with the ACS, in an online survey -- go here to take it.

Meet Metaverse Art Maven Bettina Tizzy At SLCC!

I'm very excited to announce that the lovely and talented Bettina Tizzy will be appearing in person at the Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco next month, speaking on my mini track about SL blogging. She will of course be talking about NPIRL, the groundbreaking blog and in-world group she founded in 2007, devoted to great art and creativity in Second Life, and in doing so, has become a metaverse art maven influential not just in SL, but increasingly in the larger art world as well. After admiring her for so long, I'm lucky to have met her in real life last year; and now, you can too. Here's the New World Notes 20% discount code for SLCC.

Image credit: NPIRL.

Mixed Reality Portrait: CyFishy Traveler

The challenge to New World Notes readers: Create a mixed reality photo portrait that contains your avatar and your real life self in the same frame, and send it to me.

Today's featured subject: CyFishy Traveler and her owner -- or at least her left foot.

"Yes, that is my foot next to the screen and that is, of course, the loving couple of CyFishy Traveler and Beginning Thursday on the screen," she tells me. Ms. Traveler's owner took the photo with her iPhone, from the desk she usually operates Second Life. If you look closely, you'll see a glimpse of her real world face -- "[T]he picture on the wall behind the containers of writing instruments is a tattered printout of a photograph someone took of me as I was reciting my poetry in front of a Basquiat painting in the High Museum of Art," she tells me, "during my previous life as a coffeehouse poet of some vague repute. (Around that time in my life, I was involved with someone who was working on creating art installations in VRML, so I've been exploring virtual worlds for longer than I realized, now that I think about it.)"  More after the break:

Second Life Tweet of the Day

A Presbyterian seminary student and future monastic microbrewer (yes, really) Tweets out a unique call to prayer. If you're so inclined to join in, looks like service starts at 7pm SLT tonight: direct SLurl teleport at this link. Retweet me your favorite SL Tweets @slhamlet.

Seven Second Life Things From Last Week...

• The First Couple get an eerily accurate avatar-based tribute
• Meanwhile, an actual member of the Obama Administration makes a mixed reality appearance in SL
• Coders contemplate the possibilities of the new HTTP-in LSL feature, which founding Linden Cory Ondrejka says "fundamentally expanded" Second Life
• How can Relay for Life be improved next year? Readers make several suggestions, and an American Cancer Soceity representative (known as Stingray9798 Raymaker in SL) responds in Comments
• Japanese telecom sells SL avatars as mobile phone idorus
• SL Tweet of the Day, a new semi-regular NWN series aggregating choice metaverse twitticisms
• Help us choose NWN Readers' Favorite SL Sim of the Spring/Summer!

Today Athanasius Skytower Is SL Blogging For Life

The Second Life Relay for Life ended last weekend, but that's not the only in-world campaign on behalf of the American Cancer Society. Today, armed with a bucket-sized mug of coffee, Athanasius Skytower has dedicated himself to a 24 hour "blogathon" to raise money for the same worthy cause, blogging within and about Second Life since this morning. Follow his adventures throughout the day here, and consider making a pledge, which Mr. Skytower tells me can be done until July 31. Hit this link and create a free account to do that.

Sketchlifeは、Google Sketchupで作成した模型をセカンドライフ用に変換する。

Sketchlife はGoogle Sketchupで作った３D模型をセカンドライフ用に変換できるアプリケーションだ－－多くのコンテンツクリエイターが望んでいた機能が多く含まれ、特にSL作品にもっとインターオペラビリティー（相互運用性）を持たせたかったクリエイターにとっては便利である。このプロダクトはSLの中で"Mrs Brandi"として知られている西オーストラリア大学の学生が作った。

What's the Strangest Way You've Started a Second Life Friendship?

Paypabak Writer recently friended someone in Second Life, after a random encounter that started when her tail (yes, her tail) accidentally sent out a flirtatious chat message, and was solidified by a shared love of the Beatles, and freebies. "Who really knows if we should meet again, but for forty minutes because of the Beatles," she writes for SL Fix, "we connected in ways that in RL may never have happened." Not to mention the talking tail, which probably helped break the ice too. What's the strangest way you've started an SL friendship? Image from Ms. Writer's Flickr stream.

Sai Pennell Blogs Her Virtual Pregnancy

Why would someone roleplay virtual pregnancy? Sai Pennell is writing about her own experience, which she actually found weird and unappealing, at first; until, that is, her SL partner brought it up, as a kind of bonding prelude: "[A]s I'm getting closer to booking a plane flight to meet him in RL, I agreed to have a baby with Jeffry." And so it begins, leading to an exam in one of SL's many prenatal clinics, where the process takes on an even more realistic shape: "They ask you questions about your pregnancy, like if your feet are swollen, or what your stress level is, and if you've had cramping or bleeding. Then you lay on the chair and they take the heart rate of the baby and all kinds of stuff." Fascinating first-person insights on a fairly common sub-genre of social roleplaying. Image: saipennell.blogspot.com

Koinup Seeking Metaverse Bloggers

Virtual world social network Koinup (a sponsoring partner to NWN) is looking for bloggers to write about the metaverse on their own blog, writing for Koinup's 25000 registered members, and yes, the gig does pay. You'll be joining Fiona Haworth, who recently joined Koinup's blog team with this inaugural post on the Pathfinder sims. Go here for more details on applying.