New World Notes

Cassie's Clips: Walkthrough of Blogotex, the Online Management System for Second Life Fashionistas

Courtesy NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles, here's a hands-on walkthrough of Blogotex, the quirky name of a cool and useful web service for SL fashionistas, especially bloggers:

"Blogotex is a good alternative to blogger groups if you're ever low on group space in Second Life," as Cassie explains. "Even with a Premium subscription, I used to run out of room and would have to leave one group to join another. Aside from event groups, this is where most of my blogger items come from now. They list all new releases and normally what events they're for, or Flickr links. You can grab a limited amount and blog them, post your blog posts there to be able to grab more. You can also get redeliveries of items if needed." The delivery system, which deposits items directly into a user's SL inventory, is a particularly cool feature. There's also some new-ish features which expand on the platform's power:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Choice Of The Day: "Well Seasoned" by Syn Beresford

New World Notes' SL Flickr correspondent Cajsa Lilliehook loves this holiday image from Syn Beresford as much for what it doesn't show, as what it does: "When the wreaths go up is when my mind turns to Christmas. This picture is so much more interesting because it captures only a portion of the wreath and much of it is out of focus engaging our mind in completing the picture because we just can't help ourselves." (Which is good composition advice in general.) Click here to embiggen.

Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.

Join SL's Peace on Earth Hunt for Globes, Free Ample Avi Avatars

Starting tomorrow, NWN partner Ample Avi is participating in the Peace on Earth Hunt (POE 11 for short, since it's now in its eleventh year running), billed as the longest-running grid-wide hunt in Second Life. (Ample Avi has participated in the POE Hunt every year since its beginning.)

"This is a L$0 hunt, and hunters will be looking for a small globe of the Earth," Ample's Xme Xme tells me. "There are no decoy globes, and designers are required to hide their globes within a reasonable distance of the landing point.  A hint for hunters is provided at the landing point." 

For the Hunt, Ample is also offering a Winter-themed gift in partnership  with Junior Avi, for creating family scenes like this one:"Bringing the Tree Home". The avatars depicted here are available for free via these SLurls:

• Go here for the Junior Avi. 
• Go here for Ample Avi.

Looks like much fun for hunt fans. This one runs from December 1st to December 31. More about POE 11 on the official site.

How Many Second Life Communities Will Follow Pfaffenthal 1867 to Sansar?

Linden Lab has created Sansar partnerships with a Hollywood movie, e-sports groups, and YouTube/Twitch personalities (including the just-announced comedian Steve Hofstetter), but little has been reported about any outreach with the many communities and brands in Linden Lab's Second Life. One possible exception is Pfaffenthal 1867, a sub-community built around roleplay in a detailed recreation of a Luxembourg City district from the 19th century. But last week, Pfaffenthal 1867's leader, Hauptmann Weydert, announced the roleplay sims would be closed, so the project could move to Sansar:

The moment has finally arrived, for the 1867 project to move on to SANSAR, were land is free, where we can have better graphics,VR headsets and real physical interactivity. Note that Sansar works very well on a normal PC [Editor: Some would argue otherwise] for desktop mode you do NOT need a gamer PC. IMPORTANT! All the 1867 sims in second life will be shut down next Monday, on the 26th of November. Please pack all your stuff by then.

The sudden move is surprising, so I asked Hauptmann Weydert donations were running short to cover tier.

"No," he told me via SL IM, "it was arranged that the museum paid until that date and after this we were to move to Sansar."

The passive voice of his answer was a bit ambiguous, so I asked him if (as many have speculated) that Linden Lab was helping the community make this move. No answer at press time, but I'll update this post if I get a reply. Until then, and until Pfaffenthal emerges in Sansar, here's a lovely tribute by Pepe Cometa to what the community created in Second Life:

1 in 10 Second Life Merchants Surveyed Earn USD $100,000+ a Year From Selling Virtual Goods

Here's another notable result from that survey of SL merchants we discussed on Tuesday: How much real life money they're making from Second Life content. While 42% of those surveyed say SL is "a full time job and main income source", this question above indicates just how much of that income they're typically earning.

While the majority are making USD $1000 or less (those selecting "1"), about a third of merchants are making between $1000 and $5000 a month (options 2-5). But the results on the other end of the spectrum are even more surprising:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Choice of the Day: Cataleya's AFK in Second Life

"I like this photo from Cataleya because who has not fallen asleep working away on a blog post, their Second Life open. I love how she is illuminated by the laptop and the naturalism of the light, the lap in the corner giving depth to the room." And I love how it's an image of being AFK in Second Life created with a Second Life image.

Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.

Cassie's Clips: Important Etiquette Tips for SL Shoppers & Merchants

Among the reasons given for the apparent SL recession that we're currently in, is the high levels of drama and social strife among merchants and consumers. So NWN's Cassie Middles and some of her friends are here to lay down some basic principles of etiquette and best practices -- watch above. Guidelines include:

• Treat others how you wish to be treated
• Customers and designers are people too.
• Check merchants profiles and see who to contact [with questions]. "The designer might not answer because they have a person who would.
• Say Please and Thank You. "I cannot emphasize this enough."
• Please try to contact a designer first before writing a bad review. They might be very happy to help fix the issue [you're complaining about].
• Don't jump straight to anger. "Be polite, kind, and considerate. You'll get much better results than anger ever would."

Most of these principles, discerning readers might have noticed, are equally applicable to real life. Except when it comes to contacting an SL merchant, that's pretty unique and ridiculously counter-intuitive:

Virtual World Recession? Over One-Third of Second Life Content Creators Report Recent Sales Down 15-30% -- But Only 2% Are Creating Content for Sansar (Survey)

Here's the results of the survey I mentioned last week, and they're worth a close look. Key points are probably these:

• 39% of merchants say sales are down this month, compared to recent months -- this despite a typical upturn during the Holidays.
• 42% of those surveyed say SL is "a full time job and main income source" -- so this downturn is actually a threat to many of their real life livelihoods.
• Less than 2% are actively creating content for Sansar, while 37% have a wait and see attitude to Linden Lab's new platform -- and 52% say they'll remain merchants in Second Life "til the end of the world".

This downward trend reflects frequent reports from SL content creators I've received over the last few months. While SL private estates are still slowly growing, SL consumers seem to be buying less, overall. For instance, as Chic Aeon puts it in Comments:

November is looking very average (over the last year) for me. October was one of my lowest months for a long time. I can confirm that EACH and EVERY SL creator I talked to has noticed a sharp downturn (most from summer and continuing ; I had a very good summer - who knows why). Also events are really hurting -- pretty much across the board including the top ones. 

If there is a general downturn, what's the prime cause? According to Grid Survey, peak daily concurrency continues to slowly trend downwards, from about 55,000 in November 2017, to about 52,000 this November. That, and a waning of in-world events in general, which diminishes reasons for buying new virtual fashion (the major shopping category), is definitely a contributing factor.

SL merchants, of course, have a closer perspective on the problem -- here's some of the reasons for the downtown that they anonymously gave in the survey:

Watch: Augmented Reality App Created for Virtual Reality Headset

Last week we were speculating on Philip Rosedale's comment that VR is preferable to AR, since after all, you can use the video camera capabilities of many virtual reality headsets to create an augmented reality experience within VR. And then a guy named TonyVT Skarredghost came by to comment that he'd done exactly that: 

I already do AR with the Focus. (At the link you can also find an opensource plugin for that that I made for Unity) and also mixed reality.  And I can guarantee you that is pretty awesome. And it has the potential of showing a modified view of the world... so not only virtual objects added to the world.

Read about it on his blog post cleverly entitled, "How to create an Augmented Reality app for the Vive Focus in Unity". Tony gets pretty deep into the technical weeds of making AR possible on a VR platform. For instance, it involves hacking the Vive Focus' camera streams:

Second Life Grid Continues to Grow in Wake of Tier Discounts (But Slowly)

Likely missed by many during Thanksgiving week, here's the latest Second Life economic report from Tyche Shepherd, a top statistician for a major multinational whose quirky hobby is tracking the evolution of virtual world land ownership on Grid Survey.  (Follow her on Twitter here.) Continuing a trend noted last month, Second Life is still seeing positive (if tiny) growth of private SL sims, Linden Lab's top revenue source, a trend which started last July after tier discounts were announced:

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 23819 ( 16144 private estates & 7675 Linden owned). 32 new regions were added and 10 returned to the grid, with 40 regions removed (14 were renamed and 0 came and went since last report) Adult regions were up in number by 9 to 5932 (24.9% of the grid). While the number of general rated fell by 5 to 2934 (12.3%). Year to date net Private Estate growth stands at 38 regions (0.2% growth).

At this rate, it's likely that overall growth for Second Life private regions in 2018 will be net positive by a whisker. But as Tyche told me last month: