New World Notes

Minecraft Adding Dynamic Map, Making the World Building Game Even More Worldly

This is a fairly cheesy machinima announcing some pretty excellent Minecraft news: This week's update, Minecraft 1.6, will come with a dynamic world map (if you can find the paper to make one.) A relatively small addition, but one that decidedly makes the virtual world aspect of the game even more, well, worldly. Read my interview with the game's creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, months before his game had sold well over 2 million copies. 8 months ago, to be exact. Hat tip: Tenebrous.

NWN in Japanese:ニュース再現プラットフォームとしてのSL利用をデモンストレーションする為、Second Lifeマシニマでシミュレートされたビンラディン殺害

ここでご覧いただいているのは、非常にラフに作られているが、SEAL Team6 による、オサマビンラディン殺害の再現マシニマだ。このマシニマは、Avatrian Studio によって製作された非常に精巧なAbbottabadの屋敷を舞台に短時間で撮影された。マシニマもAvatrian Studioの製作である:

Watch the Winners of Second Life Machinima Contest Judged by Peter Greenaway & Expert Panel

The University of Western Australia just announced the winners to its Second Life machinima contest, which garnered about 50 entries and was judged in part by auteur Peter Greenaway. The grand prize was shared by two entries, "Juroney" by Eric Boccara, and “A Journey Into the Metaverse” by Tutsy Navarathna. As it happens, I profiled both machinimas earlier this month: Here's my post on Tutsy's machinima; click here to watch it. (Embedding has been disabled.) Below is Eric's rousingly kickass "Juroney", which I wrote about here.

The other big winner was Bryn Oh, who won the "Peter Greenaway Prize" expressly selected by the director himself for her plangent machinima, "Rusted Gears". Watch and weep below:

Linden Lab Adds 24/7 Toll Free Number for Second Life Billing & Login Problems

Linden Lab just added a 24/7 toll free support line for billing and login problems, acknowledging account and billing problems that have sometimes threatened entire sims. In US and Canada, you can now call the company toll-free at 800.294.1067 or via a long distance-billed number at 703.286.6277.

French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, UK and Japanese toll-free numbers below. "While we of course hope none of your readers will need to use these numbers," company spokesman Peter Linden said when he emailed me a heads-up, "we wanted to be sure you and they were aware the option is there so that we can help resolve any billing problems ASAP."

If you do find a need to call, share your experiences in Comments!

Facebook Reportedly Deleting Many Second Life Avatar Profiles; Linden Recommends Facebook Pages Instead

Facebook is reportedly deleting numerous profiles of Second Life avatars on the social network. Among them is Angie Mornington, a well-known personality in SL, who recently received an email from The Facebook Platform Team, informing her that "Your personal account was recently disabled by Facebook." The message included a link, Ms. Mornington told me, and after clicking it, "I wound up at a page that said that in order to restore my account, I have to scan and upload a government ID showing my real name and photo, with everything else blacked out (social security number, address, etc.) I refuse to do that."

At the moment, however, there doesn't seem to be a thorough or systematic purging of Second Life avatars -- at least not yet. Over the weekend, I lost about a hundred friends on my own Facebook network, presumably avatars, but I still have hundreds of Facebook friends who are avatars. In any case, it does appear to be a substantial purge, and comes two years after a Facebook rep told me that while the social network requires accounts based on real names and/or identities, "[t]he vast majority of fake accounts on which we take action have been reported to us by other users." So it's possible that any purge is actually being driven by a rash of users filing reports against avatar-based accounts. Or perhaps Facebook is becoming more stringent about its policies in the run-up to their IPO.

In any case, if you do have a Facebook account for your avatar, there's a solution:

Top 5 Noteworthy New World Notes Posts From Last Week

• Philip Rosedale's Latest Project, Coffee & Power, Connects Location-Based Projects to Virtual Currency
• How Should You Share a Virtual World With Adults Who Roleplay as Children?
• As Second Life Grid Shrinks, OpenSim Regions Grow
• Osama Takedown Simulated With Second Life Machinima to Demonstrate SL as Rapid News Reenactment Platform
• Three Things I Hate Hate HATE About the Virtual Fashion World

Peter Greenaway on the Potential of Second Life Machinima

Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Peter Greenaway is a big advocate of Second Life machinima, and he's judging the University of Western Australia's machinima contest, the winners of which will be announced soon. (I've blogged some of the entries in recent weeks.) There's a long interview with Greenaway on the UWA Second Life blog now, and if you make machinima, you should probably read it. Sample:

I keep hoping to see a visionary machinima maker - someone who uses the medium as the message. At present we are only seeing other art forms rewrit - the short-form feature-film, the music video-clip, the catwalk presentation, the dance-movie, the documentary-fiction with commentary - it's related of course to a loop of what you want is what we can produce for you - but I am truly full of excited hope that it is coming - an increased demand for new and better tools by machinima makers will increase the soft-ware and even the hardware thinking.

Much more here.

Plurk Profiles Not Listed in Second Life Profiles (But Looks Like They Can Be)

Plurk people, please Plurk this: Plurk, the microblogging site that's very popular with Second Life users (at least with the several thousand Residents who use it) cannot be listed in Second Life web profiles. That's because, as Daniel Voyager blogs, Plurk doesn't have a “Connect your profile to other social networks” option. "Once Plurk has a way for us to implement this..." says Yoz Linden, "we’ll reconsider it."

But wait, Daniel adds: "Apparently today there was another comment made by Nimil Blackflag saying that “plurk has added oauth api." And so there seems to be. So if we're reading that right, it looks like the Lindens could Plurk-ify their profiles promptly.

A Blog for Finding Great Second Life Places

Avatars in Motion is a beautifully illustrated blog that will pictorially guide you to awesomesauce-flavored places in Second Life worth traveling to. (Like the one above called Daytime Dreams - more pics and teleport link here.) It's written by someone called "Hybie", whose full Resident name I wish I knew, to properly credit her, but it's not clearly listed anywhere on her blog as far as I can see. Oh Hybie, dear Hybie, bounteous Hybie -- and every other Second Life blogger who also forgets to list their full name on their blog -- please tell me who you are, so I might fully yodel your praises!

US Army's OpenSimulator MOSES Grid Offered to Developers Abandoned by Second Life Enterprise

Sitearm Madonna has a good interview with Douglas Maxwell (Second Life name: Maccus McCullough), head of MOSES, i.e., Military OpenSimulator Enterprise Strategy, the US Army-funded OpenSim project that I wrote about recently here. In it Maxwell makes an offer to virtual world enterprise developers:

"In some ways, MOSES is a direct response to the loss of the Second Life Enterprise Beta product." SL Enterprise Beta was a fully-operational, behind-the-firewall, 3D Web solution that was developed by Linden Lab, with Maxwell’s assistance, to be 100% secure. Linden Lab cancelled the SL Enterprise program in 2010. "MOSES allows the other SL Enterprise researchers to continue their work," explains Maxwell. "It would be a waste to let the content developed for SL Enterprise servers be deleted. Instead, it is preserved (in accordance with the terms of service) by migrating to MOSES."

So if you're a developer looking for a home for Enterprise-abandoned content, maybe MOSES can take you to the promised land. Read more about it here.