New World Notes

Willow's Playlist: In-world and Out-World With Jed Luckless, Second Life Rocker and Grateful Dead Tribute Artist

Exclusive to NWN, Willow Caldera covers SL's burgeoning live music scene

For all its virtues, one thing the in-world music scene is hard pressed to recreate is the joy of watching a musician's face and body language while they perform. An avatar, sadly, can't quite cope with the nuance, nor show the interaction of an artist with their instrument of choice.

Jed Luckless has happened across a way to cater to those who miss this aspect of the experience - and without impacting the pleasure of those who don't. His performances, as with most other Second Life musicians, take place on the grid, through the medium of his avatar, and his fans chat and dance and enjoy the informal atmosphere and respond to his comments throughout. But for those who need their eyes to enjoy the music as well as their ears, he offers the option of watching his Grateful Dead, Phish and Led Zeppelin-influenced brand of gravel-voiced rock live on a video stream.

Here he is performing in the Second Life place you're most likely to find him: Darkstar, a whole sim devoted to the Grateful Dead community on the grid. [SLURL]

Video shot live during a performance for Darkstar, featuring original song "Old Man Miller"

"With a pretty diverse set of influences and a self-taught technique that doesn’t really subscribe to any one convention, it’s a bit difficult to categorize the music I write," says Jed. "But even when playing structured original or cover tunes, the concept at the heart of my music is improvisation and spontaneity. I love the idea of music that exists only in a moment. This was always the appeal to me of bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish, whose shows are never the same twice. I’ve tried to retain that feeling at my shows, by not using pre-planned set lists, by playing two long sets with a set break and by filling in transitions and solos with extended, improvisational jams. This has led fans to brand me with the nickname 'Jammin’ Jed.'"

Second Life 2.0 Analysis: Epic Win for Userbase, Competition Killer... But Not Mass Market Game Changer (Yet)

When Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon first shared with me his vision for what would ultimately become the Second Life 2.0 viewer nearly two years later, he said he wanted it to be "delightfully usable". For established Second Life users, it is definitely that -- sleek, intuitive, and glistening with widgets that make the user experience more inherently enjoyable. (One personal favorite shown above: your friends and groups are now displayed with their profile picture.) From my perspective, here's how it will shift the market over the year:

Winners: The existing and casual userbase of Second Life

For the 800K or so active Second Life users, 2.0 is a giant win, sure to re-energize and extend their in-world activity, while drawing in light users who log-in only occasionally. As word of the revamp spreads, a significant percent of the 12 million or so people who've tried Second Life before but left for one reason or another will return -- and a fraction of them will stay. All told, this probably means peak concurrency growing from 80,000 to 150,000 over the next twelve months, and an active user base swelling toward 1.5 million.

Losers: OpenSim, Blue Mars, other 3D virtual worlds

With new features such as interactive web on a prim and Flash support, developers are sure to pile into SL, and innovate like mad. Hardest hit by this emigration of coders will be OpenSim, the open source spinoff of Second Life, which largely remains a hacker's passion project in alpha stage with an extremely small user base. Going forward, OpenSim projects will probably be broadly appealing only inasmuch as they are architected to interoperate with Second Life. Other virtual worlds will also feel the blow: still in Beta, it's difficult to see how Blue Mars can gain momentum, and even the casual 3D chat world IMVU is likely to lose users lured into Second Life. (The same can be said of other enterprise-level virtual worlds.)

Remains to be seen: Mass market adoption

Here I must disagree with Robert Scoble and others who suggest 2.0 will help drive mass adoption of Second Life. Beta is beta, and many additions and fixes are surely coming, but the viewer as it is now, while much more intuitive than what's come before, will probably not foster viral growth anytime soon. In essence, the viewer is much more user friendly for existing users who've already adopted Second Life on one level or another. For new users who don't create content or plan to be part of the virtual economy, who aren't excited by the idea of Second Life, or who aren't creating an SL account for a specific purpose -- and that covers pretty much 99% of the world -- 2.0 still provides little.

For them, a Second Life experience must always provide immediate and obvious answers to the big six questions:

Open Forum: What Are Your Favorite Features in the New SL Viewer? Least Favorite? (Updated)

I still plan (hope) to do an extended review of the new Second Life viewer later today, but want to start by opening the conversation to my readers. What are your favorite features of the Second Life viewer 2.0, and why? How about your least favorite element? Rant and rave away in Comments, with possible highlighting later!

Update, 10:45pm

Here are some most liked and least liked features from readers:

Favorites:

• Web on a prim (Rodion Resistance)
• Multiuser web (Nink)
• Teleport History (Isle Lunasea)
• Teleport Favorites (Hitomi Tiponi)
• Alpha skins (Osprey Therian)
• Left click to copy/paste (Ivey Deschanel)

Least Favorites:

• Identity merged in profile (Ziki Questi)
• High-res snapshots seem broken (Alicia Chenaux)
• Tab placement (Ivey Deschanel)
• Delete command slow (Isle Lunsea)
• Camera controls (Hitomi Tiponi)

In Subtle but Powerful Shift, New Second Life 2.0 Viewer Merges Real Life & Avatar Identity Onto Single Profile Panel

In the new, greatly revamped version of the Second Life viewer out in Beta today, the redesigned user profile window is one of the most striking features, powerful in its shift of visual metaphor:

As you can see above with ColeMarie Soleil's profile, Second Life avatar identity and real world information has now been merged into a single panel. Up until now, the 1st Life information panel has been relegated to a bottom level tab in users' profiles, seeming almost like an afterthought. (Unsurprisingly, many Residents don't even bother adding any details to it.) Now that the new viewer literally merges Second Life and Real World identity together on the same window, and makes them part of the same first impression of an avatar's profile, many more Residents are likely to feel obliged to say something about their real lives, if only some variation of No Comment.

If you're a regular reader to New World Notes, you'll know there's been a fair amount of controversy over the topic of merging real and virtual identities. I personally advocate it as an option architected into the system, and rejoiced when the Lindens announced they'd integrate Facebook Connect as a SL log-ins choice soon. But as the conversation over a post last Friday showed, some Residents believe (and often fear) Linden Lab wants Residents to link their real and Second Life identities together. This single design choice does seem to make a subtle nudge in that direction. It will be interesting to see how it changes identity formation in Second Life in future years.

Robert Scoble Interviews Linden CEO Mark Kingdon About the Second Life 2.0 Viewer - Discuss Here!

As promised yesterday, here's Robert Scoble's interview with M. Linden:

So far, it's a very general interview, owing to Scoble's audience. (The new Second Life 2.0 viewer just announced today is only discussed briefly, but no worries, I'll be doing a hands-on review imminently.) On his blog, Scoble says the new viewer "is important because it makes significant moves toward the Web and shows a new strategy: one of integrating into social networks."

Contest: Koinup Taking Submissions for Upcoming Virtual World Wallpaper App for Nokia

I'm happy to announce a new sponsored project with my friends at Koinup, the virtual world social network: 3D Wallpapers, an upcoming app for Nokia's Ovi Store. Koinup is taking user submissions for the app, so this is a unique chance to get your screenshots from Second Life and other worlds featured on potentially millions of mobile phones. (I believe this is the first app of its kind on any phone system.) To submit your work, create a free Koinup account (if you haven't already), and upload your submissions to two groups: Avatars, for pictures of avatars from all worlds, and Second Life for SL screenshots of all kind. More details here.

Robert Scoble Reconsiders Second Life

Perhaps more than any other person, technology uber-blogger Robert Scoble was responsible for fueling the enthusiasm that led to Second Life's hype period of 2006-2007 (certainly in Silicon Valley.) I trace it to a post he wrote in March of '06, "Second Life +is+ an OS". (Poignantly, a lot of his own excitement was informed not by press reports or media demos, but by his son, who was a dedicated builder in SL, albeit an underage one.) He interviewed me at his house in 2007, and spoke at length about Second Life in numerous venues. Like most Valley luminaries, he's since moved on, so it was more than a little interesting to see this post show up on Scobelizer early this morning. A video interview with M. Linden is promised soon; I'll post that when it goes online.

Weekly Recap: Top Twelve Posts From Last Week

• UK Popstar Kirsty Hawkshaw Returns to Second Life With Kinetica, Virtual Installation Created With Her Voice Samples: Read her interview, see and hear the installation here.
• Second Life Displayed in Virtual Reality Cave for Military Veteran Therapy Project: See the video here.
• In Survey of Educators Using Virtual Worlds, Second Life the Overwhelming Preference: Read the results here.
• Lanna's Rule: The Less You Reveal About Your Real Self in Second Life, the Less Likely You Are to Stay in Second Life: Read the controversy here.
• Oxford Press Book on Digital Age Spirituality Argues Second Life Provides Platform For Innovative Religious Thinking: Interview with author here.
• Second Life Backlash Finally Hits Education Sector (Too Bad It's Misdirected): Read why here.
• In Stroker Lawsuit, Linden Lawyer Rejects Class Action Status, Claiming Most Residents Don't Register SL Content: Analysis and conversation here.
• Second Life's Land Mass, as Depicted on Google Maps (Bigger Than San Francisco, Broader Than Los Angeles) : Must-see picture here.
• Reader Second Life Predictions for 2010: Hype Returns, Lawsuit Settled, Teens Join Grid, SL on the iPhone: Read my analysis here.
• New Build of Shadowdraft Supports In-Profile YouTube, Google Translation, Second Life Graphics Set To Awesome: See details and video here.
• Willow's Playlist: Space Rock with Alazarin Mondrian and the Invisible Band
• Other World Notes: City of Eternals, an MMO That Actual Women Actually Play

Meet the Facebook Fans of New World Notes

A Monday morning hat tip to Facebook users who are readers of New World Notes (hit Refresh to see them all):

New World Notes on Facebook

This group, of course, contains the smartest, most creative, most desirable people on the entire social network. If you're reading this and you're on Facebook, you're invited to join them too.

Weekend Machinima: Steff Ling Plays With "Pencils"

Steff Ling's Second Life machinima "Coloured Pencils" is a hip and funky example of what you can do with in-world effects, created for an Australian electronica band called The Mollusk. Possibly unnecessary NSFW warning -- contains paint-spattered avatar nudity:

Because while you might think the bolts of animated color were created in post-production, they were actually built and scripted by poidowl Poikolainen within Second Life. "There was actually very little post done," Steff tells the SL Machinima Artist Guild, "just a mirror effect."