New World Notes

Blue World Notes: Top Female Fashion in Blue Mars

Iris Ophelia covers selected top selling women's fashion in Blue Mars over on the blog I'm helping develop. That black leather jacket above is from Port Town, a beautifully decayed City.

Linden Lab Moves: Company Closing Avatars United Social Network; Marketing Director Catherine Smith Leaves

Linden Lab is closing Avatars United, the MMO-centric social network it purchased earlier this year. In another company move, longtime Marketing & Communications Director Catherine Smith just announced on her Facebook profile that she's left Linden. Without commenting on the business aspects of that move (because you know I can't), Catherine's departure has personal meaning for me. I've known Catherine since she joined the Lindens in 2003, and we've been friends ever since. (Until moving to run Linden's office in Amsterdam, she lived on the same street in San Francisco, a few blocks down from my apartment.) Smart and vivacious (I miss her laugh), she'll be stellar wherever she goes next. And with her gone, I'm amazed to realize that pretty much the only person at Linden Lab I personally know who was also at the company when I was a Linden (from 2003-06), is Philip Rosedale himself.

Hat tip: Ms. Ziki Questi.

Peter Greenaway Appearing in Second Life Today! (Acclaimed Director Co-Judged Machinima Contest)

Peter Greenaway, the acclaimed UK film maker, is appearing in Second Life today at 1pm and 7pm SLT (Pacific) to announce the winners of the machinima contest he helped judged. This will also be your first chance to see the winners of the 48 Hour Machinima Film Project. The acclaimed director of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover starring Helen Mirren and The Pillow Book starring Ewan McGregor has been a longtime supporter of Second Life as a new art form, and as I said last month, this is probably the highest profile filmmaker to be involved in a machinima contest. May more follow him.

This is the SLurl teleport link that will take you to the Second Life auditorium where Greenaway is appearing at 1pm and 7pm SLT. Given all the fantastic characters from his movies, I'm curious to see what kind of avatar he's chosen for himself.

Chestnut's Choices 9/23 - 9/29: Autumnal Equinox Celebration, The Follow Eco Friendly World Tour in a Day, SL Blogger Spoken Word Party, and Much Much More

Chestnut Rau's Weekly Roundup of Upcoming Events...  

The Follow is an extremely popular SL band who's music is influenced by U2, Radiohead, and Pink Floyd.  On Friday, 9/24 the band will be holding their second mixed reality World Tour In A Day. The Follow's tour kicks off in Australia at 5am and stops in five countries along the way before arriving home in the USA for the final show at 9pm. There will be real life venues across the world hosting the concerts via video.

The Follow has partnered with LimeCoral Apparel Company, a surf wear brand based out of Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. LimeCoral and The Follow are using this SL based "world tour" as a way to raise awareness of green philosophy.  The band members drive hybrid cars to the broadcast location, use energy-efficient LED lights for the shows, and distribution of their music is digital eliminating plastic CDs, paper envelops, and transportation resources.  Similarly, LimeCoral Apparel Company, is committed to creating environmentally conscious products and operates as an eco-aware business.  Conducting a "word tour" via SL is a natural extension of The Follow's outlook.

See the show at 5am in Australia, 1pm in France, 3pm in Portugal, 6pm in Brazil and 9pm in the US.  Click on the links in the country names to teleport to the venues. For more information about The Follow's World Tour in a Day go here.

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Thursday 9/23

4pm - The Hummingbird Cafe Open Mic

The Hummingbird Cafe, one of Second Life's oldest and most beloved venues hosts a regular Thursday evening Open Mic event where many well known performers started playing in virtual spaces. Tonight music by Dimivan Ludwig, Rock Doghouse, Karter Stonecutter and Reggie Fouroux is on tap. In Menorca. [SLurl teleport at this link]

5pm - CraigLyons Writer Live at Galaxy Isle

Craig Lyons brings intimate acoustic sublimity to his live electric rock show. His band performs regularly at LA's most distinguished venues including The Viper Room, Key Club, and the House of Blues. Craig’s music has been licensed by Universal Music, Fox, MTV, and Tokyo TV, and heard on shows such as 'So You Think You Can Dance' and 'The Real World' and YES, you can hear him in SL tonight. In Galaxy Isle. [SLurl teleport at this link]

6pm - SL Blogger Spoken Word Party

Chestnut Rau and Carrie Lexington have invited all SL Bloggers and anyone who might enjoy listening to a Spoken Word Party at the Blue Angel Poet's Dive Bar tonight. Come and read your work or listen to us take to the mic and read from our personal blogs. I promise not to recite event listings! In Kolor. [SLurl teleport at this link]

Also after the break: Rockcliffe U Legal Forum on SL TOS, Learn to build with mega prims, Art and Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI) Monthly Meeting and more

NWN Guest Post: Second Life and the Grid of Presence (Or, What Saramago Didn't Understand About Second Life)

A New World Notes guest post by Irah Anatine (aka Ana Alves)

A few months ago, Hamlet asked me to translate comments that Portugal's José Saramago, the Nobel laureate author who died last Summer, once made about Second Life. Quoting Rimbaud, Saramago dismissed SL by saying “real life is someplace else”, suggesting that we should not pretend to be be social or fashion machines online. With respect to my fellow Portuguese, I must disagree. I have managed Second Life projects for members of the European Union parliament and Portugal's government, and even spoken about SL to Iranian refugees in Iraq. So my understanding is quite different.

Second Life is just a small part of what I call a "grid of presence” -- an effective means for reaching as many people as possible in the most optimized form. By using the many amazing tools this new era gave us (Facebook, virtual worlds, open source, Twitter, YouTube) we can, and should, bring knowledge to everyone. We are living the most significant revolution since the creation of the printing press. Software and hardware allow, today, anyone to create, and share masterpieces. Companies can, today, reach and hire people who live anywhere. Reach better results and spend less money doing it. Educators can now educate better. Politicians can reach citizens better, and, more importantly, citizens can become better citizens again, from the comfort of their homes.

But I don't think Saramago was entirely wrong about Second Life.

How to Shoot Second Life Fashion With Dynamic Shadows -- The Gorgeous Way

Gorgeous Yongho of Juicy Bomb has a very excellent tutorial post for shooting Second Life fashion with dynamic shadows enabled, as above. She mentions one of my posts on dynamic shadows, which has subsequently given me crazy traffic, so I figure there are lots of fashionistas interested in adding shadow to their Second Life fashion. If you're one of them, go right to the Gorgeous source already.

Blue World Notes: How Blue Mars Can (and Will) Run on Macs and iPads

"Three Ways Blue Mars Can (and Will) Run on Macs & iPads" is my latest post on the Blue Mars blog, giving some background to my recent announcement on becoming a consultant for Blue Mars. While it's not currently possible to run the developer version of Blue Mars on the Mac with "a few tweaks" (my poor wording, which Mac users rightly knocked me for), there are a couple ways to get it running on the Mac. More importantly, the cloud-based version of Blue Mars will be available for Mac users in the next few months, on the native OS, without requiring a Windows installation. Not just on the Mac, but on iPads too. That version will run on is OTOY, which just announced the partnership with Blue Mars on VentureBeat.

Wednesday Machinima: "Ctrl-Alt-Del", Lainy Voom's Surreal Tribute to Her Muse

"Ctrl-Alt-Del" is a weird and beautiful new Second Life machinima from the master, Ms. Lainy Voom. Watch as soon as you can, because this is something that Magritte might make, had he lived long enough to make machinima:

Ctrl-Alt-Del from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

Lainy actually made this, she explains in the video notes, to overcome a creative block on her other projects. The images represent flashes from everyday life, while waiting for inspiration to hit. "The bird represents my muse, but it is also myself/creativity, I guess," she tells me. She improvised the machinima as she went, sometimes putting together several shots in an hour. "Other times I'd hit a scene that didn't work, so I threw it away, then waited until the next day to pick it up again. The whole thing took ten days." And while we'll have to wait to know if "Ctrl-Alt-Del" helped with her creative block, it's safe to say the results of her warm-up therapy came out great.

The machinima, by the way, is dedicated to Aino Baar (Cristina García-Lasuén IRL), the curator who recently brought Second Life machinima to millions of viewers in Shanghai. Technical specs for it after the break:

Live Music Survey: Who Are Your Favorite Folk, Bluegrass, Country, and Blues Performers in Second Life?

Here's the ten semifinalists for folk, bluegrass, country, and blues performers, chosen by NWN's panel from a massive reader open forum. Please choose your three personal favorites -- but before you do, be sure to check out any performer you aren't familiar with, in the YouTube videos I've embedded after the break.

Here's the list:

Online Surveys & Market Research

VOTING ENDS AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER! The most favored performers will be profiled in later New World Notes posts.

After the break, a sample of each performer. Whoever you vote for, do give a listen to some of the best artists in their respective genre performing in Second Life:

Blue World Notes: The Latest Style Posts from Iris Ophelia

From left to right, from Blue Mars, where NWN style columnist Iris Ophelia and I now work and blog from time to time:

• Sci-Fi Friday
• Metallic Eyeshadow
• Beach City Chic