New World Notes

NWN in Japanese: WEBは3D世界の未来となるだろうか？セカンドライフをバックグラウンドにしたスタンフォードの研究者が、賭けを始めた。

WEBは3D世界の未来となるだろうか? FlashやUnityなどのプラグインを通さずに、仮想空間をウェブブラウザ上に作っている新しい開発スタジオ、Kata Labsにとって、これは賭けとなる。FlashやUnityなどの代わりに、KataはWebGL、Mozilla Foundation によって開発された新しい3Dグラフィックフォーマットを使っている。

Svarga, Artificial Ecosystem Island, Is Back in Second Life! (Updated: It Was Purchased From Creator By Linden Lab)

Svarga, the island utopia that's also an innovative artificial ecosystem, is now back in Second Life. First created in 2006 by a UK programmer known in SL as Laukosargas Svarog, last August it disappeared from the grid without much warning. But now it's returned intact, with its randomly wandering rainclouds and bees and birds and plant life. I took the screenshot above last weekend, and now you can visit too: Direct SLurl teleport to Svarga at this link.

There is some mystery why it's back now. Last year after it had gone offline, Ms. Svarog told me she'd sold it to Linden Lab, though she's still currently listed as the owner. (I'm checking with the Lindens for confirmation.) For now, be sure to visit the place Philip Linden often describes as coming to close to his original vision for Second Life.

Thanks to Lukas Mensing and everyone else who pinged me on this!

Update, 2:40PM: Just got word from company PR rep Peter Linden: "Yes, Linden Lab purchased Svarga for much the same reason as we recently announced the Linden Endowment for the Arts: to provide a way for this high-quality experience to live on in the ever-changing world of Second Life."

Koinup Selects First 3D Wallpapers for 3D Wallpapers Nokia App (NWN Partner News)

NWN partner Koinup just announced the first artworks picked for the 3D Wallpapers App, which the virtual world social network will make available in the Nokia Ovi Store sometime in April. I'm totally biased of course, but they're pretty great. (No surprise, Torley Linden and environmental artist Poid Mahovlich helped select the entries.) Above are two, taken from theTrixibelle's "Butterfly" Avatars pool, and "China" by Sebcaen, from the Second Life Snapshots pool. Koinup's Pier tells me they plan to have 150-200 total images when the app comes available.

iPhone's "Pocket Metaverse" App Streams Second Life Parcel Media: Listen to Live SL Music On Your iPhone!

The latest update to Pocket Metaverse, the iPhone app* for accessing Second Life that I quite dig, has a great new feature: You can now use it not only to log into SL, but also, to play streaming media that's linked to whatever SL parcel you happen to be standing on. (Pictured at left, me listening to SOMA FM's Secret Agent channel that I stream in my SL office.) The most obvious and appealing use for this function, of course: Listen to a live SL music performance without having to fully log in with the standard client. Imagine the coolness of catching your favorite metaverse artist while riding the train or sitting in the park (provided you have a decent wireless connection.) Read more about it here.

*Formerly called "Touch Life", but re-dubbed Pocket Metaverse to comply with Lindens' policies on third party viewers.

Meet the Worldwide Members of Facebook's New World Notes Group

Meet the international Facebook fans of New World Notes:

New World Notes on Facebook

And I do mean international, just like Second Life itself. Randomly clicking on these faces, I immediately found folks from Singapore, South Africa, the Philippines, Portugal, Slovenia, Hong Kong, Austria, France, and all over the US. I love it.

Click some of their faces, get to know them better! And go here to become a member yourself.

Top Five New World Notes Posts Last Week...

• Lindens launch ad campaign countering anti-Second Life "Fat guy in a basement" meme (though I think it should look more like the above.)
• New World Notes interview With Jason Spingarn-Koff, director of acclaimed Second Life director Life 2.0
• How will Second Life cross the chasm into the mainstream?
• Don't like Second Life Viewer 2? Neither did the Lindens themselves -- at first
• Second Life 2.0's shared media can expose real life identity details -- Lindens post protection tips, security upgrade.

Weekend Machinima: "Bloody Mary", Second Life's First Narrative Machinima (I Think)

An Italian professor recently asked me about the first narrative Second Life machinima, and after some digging, I decided it's probably this one below: "Bloody Mary", by Pierce Portocarrero, which I originally wrote about in November 2004. Up until then there'd been a fair amount of montage machinima, but the medium was generally stymied by the lack of a major online video hosting site. (This was back in olden times, before YouTube launched in 2005.) Anyway, have a nostalgic look back at love gone horribly, comically awry in Second Life as it existed six years ago:

After the break, read what I wrote about for the original New World Notes blog, November 1, 2004:

Weekend Open Forum

You have the microphone! What's going on in your life other New World Notes readers might be interested in?

How Will Second Life Cross the Chasm Into the Mainstream?

Metaverse musician and Web 2.0 analyst Grace McDunnough has an incisive and important post responding to a Harvard Business School case study called "Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm", which provokes her to frame that topic in the form of a question: What will push Second Life to a point where it reaches mainstream adoption?

One business strategy, pushed by Crossing the Chasm author Geoffrey Moore, is to aggressively go after a particular market segment, and Grace wonders which one the Lindens should focus on. Harvard's analysis believes those include enterprise customers, educators, adult consumers or teens, but Grace is skeptical any of them will push Second Life across the gap. For example, viz educators:

I'm convinced the education market is saturated... and the introduction of land pricing model changes combined the recent departure of John Lester/Pathfinder Linden seem to indicate that the Lab's past love affair with the edurati is in that "old married couple" stage - safe, secure, not really growing wildly and with a lot less sex.

Well, how about enterprise? Grace balks there too:

As an "embedded practitioner" I know first hand how difficult it is to get people to download and install simple plugins for WebEx or AdobeConnect, much less go through the standard Second Life download and orientation so it's really hard for me to imagine that this is the "beachhead" Moore suggested.

Ms. McDunnough makes many great points, though I think she may be complicating the question some. What market will make Second Life cross the chasm? Here's one idea:

Everyone who's already expressed an interest in Second Life in the past, and who will in the near future.

Tyrehl Byk's Effects Show: The New Second Life Hotness?

Bixyl Shuftan has an intriguing profile of Tyrehl Byk's particle effects show in a region called Disturbed Fear, a phantasmagoria of light, sound, and music:

I found myself on a small platform about 4000 in the air. It was night, and the platform was a circle of chairs around what looked like a large bonsai tree. It began with a couple blue dots floating into the screen... They were soon followed by colorful swirls. Then came a number of smiley faces, soon followed by some agressive-looking ones, the screen suddenly full of spinning pictures of disasters and troubled images, the music blaring, “It’s the end of the world, as we know it.”

Delinda Dryssen has much more details and raves on the show, with many readers chiming in. ("One of the Best Things I have ever seen in Second Life!" is a typical opinion.) I can't wait to catch a show myself.

Image credit: Bixyl Shuftan.