Blue World Notes: In Blue Mars, Top Ten Fashion Items Sell About Equally by Gender

Here's Iris Ophelia's top ten Blue Mars bestselling fashion items on Blue World Notes, where we cover the next gen virtual world. Iris notes that Blue Mars items for males and females sell about equally, which is surprsing.

Speaking of which, here's her tips on layering clothes in Blue Mars so they fit your avatar right.

Comments

[Major Rasputin]

Ok look, I -really- have to ask this because I find NWN to be a notable blog and reputable source on VR platforms.

Why, oh why, are you blogging about a fundamentally flawed, poorly implemented and planned platform that is an INSULT to the very idea of the metaverse? Why? Please, someone give me an answer? Are you really placing that much faith in Blue Mars to blog about it on a well-read blog like this?

[Hamlet Au]

Yes, Mr. Rasputin, I think Blue Mars has the best existing deployment strategy for making 3D virtual worlds with user-generated content to become a true mass market phenomenon. I wouldn't be consulting for them otherwise. Believe me, before getting onboard, I brought up all the SL-centric and market-based objections to them myself, and I think they have solid answers. But you're right to be skeptical, that's totally fine; all I'd say is see what happens in the next few months.

[Major Rasputin]

How is making users pre-download massive packages a deployment strategy? How does that allow user-generated content to be updatable? That is not how the metaverse is supposed to work. Is there an article with these kinds of questions asked or something similar?

I'm not sure if I can be bothered to watch Blue Mars for the next few months, because what I've seen and experienced leaves a staggering amount of doubt and disbelief at the possibility of this being a next-gen platform.

[Hamlet Au]

Major, here's a good place to start:

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/04/blue-mars-on-the-cloud.html

[Scarp Godenot]

I know Blue Mars is 'early on' in its development. But the clothes being blogged about here are incredibly primitive by current Second Life standards.

This is a good example of how far they have still to go to catch up in my opinion....

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I'll reserve my comments for the moment Avatar Reality's funding runs out. They'll still have a few years to go...

Note: LL's funding ran out in 2003. Since then, they had to struggle on their own, and have been profitable shortly thereafter — and able to pay 4 to 5 times their original funding just from profits every year.

When Avatar Reality can show numbers to prove the same thing with Blue Mars, I'll believe them.

Not even Facebook is profitable... with half a billion users.

[Hamlet Au]

Gwyn, Linden Lab got additional rounds of funding in 2004 and 2006 ($11 million that time):

http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/releases/03_28_06

As far as I know, the company didn't start informally reporting they were profitable until 2007.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

While I'm not a big fan of Blue Mars and while I think NWN is devoting a little bit too much coverage to Blue Mars, the name of the website is "New World Notes" not "Second Life Notes", though the blurb should be changed to "Wagner James Au reports first hand from the Metaverses"(plural) IIRC, NWN also reported on Lively and There and others as well.

Every Blue Mars post shouldn't have a bunch of "We hate blue mars and it sucks" comments. Admittedly, if I had better hardware (and if Blue Mars had a Linux client) I might be reporting on the fashion within it.

[Hamlet Au]

Look up at the logo to the left, CCC!

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Hey, it's Hamlet's blog and career. In a general way, I don't mind seeing what BM is doing.

I didn't really care about SL fashion posts, either, until Iris covered Mad Men. But then we educators are not exactly known for our fashion-sense in either world (a T-shirt with a project logo and jeans often constitute our ensembles).

I do glance at the Blue Mars post, even though that world is clearly not the "next gen" for educators. That may change with something like a Unity-based client. When I asked at a recent meeting, no one in our edu group in SL had ever taught in Blue Mars; most are exploring OpenSim.

I'd wager that OpenSim implementations hosted on our own hardware and connected to other campuses with Hypergrid will be where faculty will build their next round of simulations and distance-learning spaces. We won't need or want the broader public in: it will be hypergrid for faculty, students, and staff, like our campus intranets yet connected to others.

We don't need to replicate our campuses or make pretty social spaces in a public VW, since the potentials for recruitment of new students and socializing by existing students and alumni are not there. This generation does not use anything like SL, BM, or OS for pleasure. Maybe the next one will and we'll change our strategies.

That was the first thing that Princeton realized when they began to shut down their SL campus. The campus paper noted that no one was using the sims outside of class time; casual use was near 0.

[c3]

"The campus paper noted that no one was using the sims outside of class time; casual use was near 0."

lol.... and how many students sit in the realife classrooms when not in session....?... or use the campus restrooms when they are home for break...?