New World Notes

Mozilla Adds 3D Creator to Hubs, Web-Based, VR-Ready Virtual Rooms

You can now create scenes for Hubs without leaving your browser!

Spoke is a 3D editor from @mozilla that lets you quickly build 3D environments and share them with your friends.

Check out the new and improved Spoke:https://t.co/5pFzFZJ7pq pic.twitter.com/a8BTQpRYfB

— Robert Long (@arobertlong) May 14, 2019

I haven't played around much with Hubs, Mozilla's web-based virtual room platform, but it's impressively responsive and user-friendly (if rudimentary). And now it comes with Spoke, Mozilla's 3D creator/room editor:

Second Life's New "Post to Facebook" Feature is Pretty Cool, But Needs a Privacy-Protecting Page Option

An official Second Life viewer with an optional post-to-Facebook feature is now available here (as Hitomi Tiponi first told me) and it works pretty well. The "Post to Faceook" option is hidden in the Me menu, which is sort of odd, but once you use it, and connect to your Facebook account through the internal web browser that pops us, the posting process works well enough. Of course, a lot of SLers won't necessarily want to reveal who they are in Second Life on Facebook, but then many of them will enjoy doing so. ("Hey FBers, look at this insane furry robot vampire orgy going on in here!")

In any case, the feature is missing a really important option:

Top 10 Influential SL Blogs Ranked by Technorati (& Haskell)

Eddi Haskell has gathered and posted the top ten Second Life blogs according to Technorati, as compiled and judged by Eddi. (For instance, he eliminated blogs without unique content, but just a feed, and only those which show up when searching "Second Life" in Technorati.) If you're a regular and close reader of New World Notes, you'll recognize 7 of the top 10, but I just found three I've personally never seen until now: All Fashion SL (pictured above), My Second Life (with Pets), and Second Life 24h, all worth checking out too.

Web Service to Weed Out Bots From Your Twitter Account

Status People is a web-based service that tells you how many legit followers you have on Twitter, versus bots and discontinued accounts. And while most of my 4000 or so followers have Twitter accounts named after their SL avatars -- I'd guess 75% of my followers are avatars -- I'm pleased to know almost all of them are legit. Because as you know, being real on Twitter is more important than being real in real life.

SL Redditors on What They Do in Second Life (Or Once Did)

Here's an interesting discussion in Reddit's Second Life group (which now has over 1000 subscribers), asking "So...what do you actually do in Second Life?", a question provoking a wide set of answers. Many are more detailed about what they once did in Second Life when they were more active, and a lot describe it as a "3D chatroom", even seasoned SLers who know it can be so much more. Such as "Cubey", a successful entrepreneur, who says, "[P]eople use it for education: simulation, meetings, architecture, etc. Admittedly, most people use it purely as a 3D chatroom with naughty stuff, there's hidden depth if you know where to look for it." This inspires another Redditor to ask, "Does that imply you don't anymore?"

And Cubey answers, "I don't anymore."

Good Pinterest Account for SLers Looking for Second Life Events, Freebies, Sales Specials

Pinterest user and SLer Elysium Hynes is pioneering the way Pinterest works with Second Life, so I'm told by a person more perceptive about Pinterest than me: "She's kind of pioneering Pinterest for SL," says well-known, Pinterest-worthy blogger Cajsa Lilliehook (who's own Pinterest is here), and proceeds to pronounce her position: "Not Pinterest as a user, but the way she is using it to document events." Specifically, as Ms. Hynes herself explains in her Pinterest bio: "Me and some friends spent all day collecting pins and info on ongoing events in Second life, featuring group gifts, freebies, and a couple of new releases and sales special for the occasion." And so pray thee, please proceed to peruse her pins on Pinterest.

If You Advertise Items on Flickr, You Can't Use It to Link to SL or Even Your Blog -- Here's Some Alternative Services Where You Can

 

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Recently beloved SL builder Cory Edo had her Flickr account severely restricted due to violations of their TOS. She must have done something wrong, right? According to Flickr she did, but it's something that almost every other designer, blogger, and photographer in SL is doing wrong too because the rules that she broke aren't exactly shared openly by Flickr to begin with.

So what happened here, and what can you do to keep it from happening to you? If you post ads for your virtual products or services (or any products or services) on Flickr keep reading, for the sake of your pics and your business!

Second Life Facebook Page Grows Past 250K Fans - Probably Making It More Popular Than SL's Own Community Site

Second Life's official Facebook page just crossed over a quarter million fans, and based on this trendline on Pagedata, will likely surpass 300K fans by the end of 2012. To judge by the user behavior on it, it's a highly active page, with posts getting hundreds of comments and Likes, and clickthroughs (to Flickr pages and SL Destination listings) running from several hundred to a couple thousand. Also interesting:

SL Fashion Bloggers: Is Pinterest Plumping Your Pageviews?

My Pinterest account now has about 50 followers, even though I barely use it (because frankly, I still don't quite get how to use it), but despite Pinterest being the new Internet hotness, supposedly generating more traffic than Twitter, and there's an official Second Life Pinterest account, here's something I'm also not getting: Pinterest pageviews. Maybe a handful a day, dwarfed in comparison with, for example, clickthroughs from Plurk. But maybe that's my fault. Pinterest is much more visually-oriented than other social media sites, which may mean, outside Iris' great virtual fashion posts, New World Notes is just less Pinterest-able. So let me put the question the thousands of SL fashion bloggers -- how important is Pinterest to your pageviews?

How to Promote Your SL Brand in Facebook (Without Revealing Your RL Name)

Popular SL fashion blogger Ms. Strawberry Singh has a very useful post on how to promote your Second Life brand in Facebook. But wait, won't using Facebook link your real life name with your SL avatar? Well no, not if you do as Strawberry does here:

And as Strawberry says there: "Remember to pay close attention to the 'Your Settings' tab and make sure to check your posting preferences so you are posting as your avatar and not with your RL name, if that’s how you created the page. This is important if you wish to keep your RL name private." It's just that simple. Advantages of sharing on Facebook? Well, many, such as: