New World Notes

Who's Second Life sexiest male avatar of 2009? By overwhelming majority vote, readers choose a dude... with clown make-up, bunny ears, and tentacles for hands. Now that Second Life's intuitive 2.0 viewer is finally out, are the millions who gave......

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As Chestnut noted in her events calendar, tomorrow March 15 at Monday 11am Austin time (9am SLT/Pacific), Philip Rosedale is appearing live at SXSW for a screening of the Sundance documentary hit on Second Life, Life 2.0, at the G-Tech......

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Priusという韓国のオンラインゲームとセカンドライフの共通点は非常に少ない--......

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I was deep in the heart of Texas when my laptop went kerploowie. So I took this photo by the lonesome Mopac highway instead. While I get my Net horse back on her feet, tell me, what all's been happening......

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The Trestles is a strip along the California coastline cherished by surfers and nature lovers alike, and its extreme popularity threatens the area with erosion, while also being a public safety hazard. (You have to cross an active railroad to......

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Chestnut Rau’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events… Dublin calls itself "the friendliest sim in Second Life" and while there is certainly lots of competition for that title, SL Dublin is a great place to meet fun and friendly folks.......

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Linden Lab's Chief Product Officer Tom Hale (in SL, a green frog avatar named T Linden) stopped by this blog to talk about Second Life user growth after the launch of Viewer 2.0. He attributes the spurt of activity in......

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I'm scrambling like a madman to prepare for South by Southwest 2010, where I'm speaking on two panels: This Saturday at 11am, I'll be asking Where's the Jobs in Social Gaming? with MMO wiseman Scott "Lum" Jennings. Next Monday at......

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Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing showcase of all things stylish in SL Daniel Luchador has the distinction of being one of the most unique avatars and personalities on the Hottest Avatar list. While many readers may not quite be......

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Second Life 2.0 Beta has been out in the world for nearly two weeks, and while it may not have boosted total user rates (at least not yet), how has it changed your day-to-day experience in SL (if at all)?......

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ColeMarie Soleil sees Second Life's arts scene from her unique point of view Colemarie sent me this machinima music video she recently made, capturing a live show of the indelible Skye Galaxy covering "Mad World", with a photographic technique that's......

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Not entirely happy with the Second Life 2.0 viewer? Meade Paravane has a long, long, very long list of 2.0 issues filed in the JIRA, the Lindens' online bug/feature request tracker. See your grievances listed there? (Hat tip: Angie Mornington.)...

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In three months, Philip Rosedale's new company LoveMachine built three fairly significant software projects for $30,000 total over a three month period, with roughly 50 developers working at the tasks. The work is assigned online via a bidding system, in......

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Here's an excellent local Denver news story on Fanny Starr, the Holocaust survivor who regularly visits Second Life to relate her first-hand account of enduring the Shoah as many of her loved ones were slaughtered along the way. I profiled......

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Second Life 2.0 has been out in beta for nearly two weeks, and when it debuted, I predicted it would boost in-world activity among established Second Life users. Let's check that hypothesis with Metaverse Business, an Second Life data analyst......

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I'm very happy to announce that ColeMarie Soleil is now a contributor to New World Notes, and will give us her unique look at the best of Second Life's arts scene whenever the mood strikes her (which is hopefully often),......

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The few, the proud, the augmented: New World Notes on Facebook On Facebook too, you're cordially invited to join them too. (If you've joined and don't see yourself above, hit Reload.)...

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Henrik Linden goes to the web: Is Web the Future of 3D Worlds? Stanford Researcher With Second Life Background Launches Startup Gambling That Important step in linking SL to the real time Internet: Tweet My Metaverse: Twitter OAuth Integration Added......

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NWN readers, you're cordially involved to write about anything in this open forum, as long as it's a) about Second Life, and b) your activities in it. Be sure to sign posts with your SL name and include SLurls to......

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From the irrepressibly inventive bark Aabye comes this glimpse of nightlife at SL's Tavern Yuko, where Japanese pop from the 60's inspires a drunken monkey and other revelers to shake it, and since Ms. Aabye evidently shot the video with......

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初期の導入者たちは、セカンドライフの新しいビューワーのシェアードメディア機能を使......

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Metaverse developer Gwyneth Llewelyn has an epic tutorial for Mac users who want to optimize the Second Life 2.0 beta viewer on their machines. Apparently it runs slower on Macs than the previous version, but Gwyn has some workarounds, along......

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The suicide of UK fashion designer Alexander McQueen sent shockwaves through the Second Life fashionista community, enough to inspire a tribute show by dozens of SL designers late last month, with proceeds raised this month going to Keep a Child......

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The all-seeing eye of Jeanricard Broek notices that Linden Lab is a listed customer of Endorphin, which is a groundbreaking system for animating characters and avatars in 3D in such a way that they "essentially animate themselves" (as the site......

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One day, acclaimed virtual/real life architect Keystone Bouchard happened upon a student in Second Life who was prototyping an aquaponics eco tower, designed to eliminate human starvation in an environmentally sustainable way, and was duly impressed. And if Keystone is......

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Prius, a South Korean online game, has very little in common to Second Life -- according to its English-language Wikia entry, it's a 3D MMORPG with discrete character classes and a leveling system, not a user-created virtual world without a......

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It's somewhat ironic if totally fitting that Second Life has grown old enough to generate a nostalgia hashtag on Twitter: for Residents who knew SL back in the day (say, from 2002 to 2005, before the hype wave appeared on......

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Exclusive to NWN, Willow Caldera covers SL's burgeoning live music scene If water coolers were a popular feature of Second Life, you probably wouldn't need to hang about with your plastic cup for very long before you heard the name......

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Chestnut Rau’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events… The charity estate West of Ireland kicks off their annual Festival of Saint Patrick this week. The Festival is a sixteen day celebration and fund raising effort that includes music, dancing, storytelling......

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Is web the future of 3D virtual worlds? That's the gamble of Kata Labs, a new development studio creating virtual world spaces within web browsers, but not through a plug-in like Flash or Unity. Instead, Kata is using WebGL, the......

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When Second Life reached the apex of hype backlash, two major criticisms of the virtual world stood out most: It wasn't a friendly or inviting place to corporate sponsors, and its sexual content would drive the mainstream away. So it's......

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There's a powerful new addition to Second Life's scripting codebase, with as much transformative potential as anything in the SL 2.0 viewer: it's now possible to add Twitter authorization to scripted objects in SL via OAuth. It was created by......

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Depicted above: Best of Second Life submissions for 3D Wallpapers As I mentioned last week, NWN partner Koinup is developing an upcoming app for Nokia's Ovi Store, 3D Wallpapers. The app will feature the top user submissions depicting the best......

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Early innovators have already figured out how to use the new Second Life viewer's shared media function to stream webcam video of their real face on their avatar's face, but you knew they wouldn't stop there. Why just settle with......

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My pal Daniel Terdiman of CNET has been writing about Second Life for about as long as me, and last Friday, wrote a rather downbeat editorial on the state of 3D virtual worlds, which are losing investment dollars to social......

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Last Tuesday, I noticed that the new Second Life profile window merged real and SL identity, a powerful shift many readers weren't happy with. Last Wednesday, I argued that SL 2.0 will grow Second Life's dedicated user base, kill the......

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Monday greetings to Facebook users who are also fans of New World Notes (hit Refresh to see them all). Just look at their delightful mugs: New World Notes on Facebook If you're reading this and you're on Facebook, you're cordially......

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Virtual world and MMO pioneer Raph Koster has a long and important post on the future of the medium, reflecting on its place within current trends. In the near future, he writes, [I] would be betting against all the “native......

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The floor is open!...

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最近開かれたロンドンファッションウィークで最新コレクションを発表したスウェーデン......

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This week Linden Lab announced an NEA-style Linden Endowment for the Arts program, which is a great initiative in itself, and it's also kicked up some larger questions worth asking. One immediate controversy: Does live music performed in Second Life......

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This is a fun idea: Harper Ganesvoort is holding an Oscar-themed fashion contest, challenging fashionistas to show off what ensemble they'd wear if they were invited to the Academy Awards. (For possible inspiration, see Iris Ophelia's starlet-worthy ensembles from last......

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Mariko Nightfire was a well-written and illustrated travelogue post on a recreation of Mont St. Michel in Second Life [SLURL], created by Moeka Kohime in such loving detail that the restaurants on the island have condiments, for god's sake. Then......

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Fridays I usually devote to covering Second Life bloggers (if there's enough noteworthy posts that week.) Read any SL blog posts recently that deserve special attention? Please post URL and description in Comments. Can be any topic related to SL,......

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The new Second Life viewer comes with a shared media function which lets you put interactive web content on SL objects. The possibilities, of course, are endless. You can, for instance, put a website with a whiteboard program on it,......

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Ann-Sofie Back's Second Life avatar; design from Ms. Back's latest line Ann-Sofie Back, a famed Swedish fashion designer, revealed her latest line at London's Fashion Week recently, and it comes with a fantastic twist: it's inspired by the fashion of......

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Chestnut Rau’s weekly round-up of upcoming SL events… On February 27th beginning at 3:30 pm SLT, the Erie Isle Roleplay Community will host the Second Life premiere of the award-winning documentary "Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown" , a chronicle of......

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Exclusive to NWN, Willow Caldera covers SL's burgeoning live music scene For all its virtues, one thing the in-world music scene is hard pressed to recreate is the joy of watching a musician's face and body language while they perform.......

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When Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon first shared with me his vision for what would ultimately become the Second Life 2.0 viewer nearly two years later, he said he wanted it to be "delightfully usable". For established Second Life users,......

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I still plan (hope) to do an extended review of the new Second Life viewer later today, but want to start by opening the conversation to my readers. What are your favorite features of the Second Life viewer 2.0, and......

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