Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Linden Lab News & Analysis
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Originally posted on my Patreon here UPDATE, March 4: This story continues here. If you've visited Facebook recently, you may have noticed new official ads for Second Life which incorporate video and images that are AI-generated. (And at least in one case, uses an Adobe Stock image.) After seeing complaints about this from SL creators…
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Originally published on my Patreon here The most fascinating story about next gen AI in technology may not be about DeepSeek or whatever OpenAI is announcing, but reside in a 21 year old metaverse platform which has something no LLM can boast about: A simulated virtual world with terabytes of meta-tagged data constantly evolving. That's…
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The new test ad for Second Life attracted quite a bit of opinions from longtime SL users, including some on-brand snark — and this smart suggest from longtime virtual world explorer Kaylee West: As a regular user of both SL (17 years) and VRChat (6 years), one of the big things that keeps me in…
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Hari Sutherland is a longtime SLer and author of the new book, SECOND LIFE: The First, Best Metaverse in Words and Pictures There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the problem of retention of new users in Second Life. While the focus has largely been on the daunting UI and learning curve, along with…
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Linden Lab just started publishing new ads on YouTube for Second Life, one of which you watch here. ("It represents one variation of many that are being tested", the company tells me.) Screengrabs of it throughout this post. It's part of a new and aggressive marketing campaign for Second Life — basically the first one…
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Now on my Patreon: Project Zero is not simply a cloud streaming option for existing SL users. It's tightly integrated into an aggressive marketing plan with a growing budget, and a completely revised first-time experience that discards the "Welcome Island" model that's basically existed since 2003. In my recent conversation with Linden Lab heads Brad…
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Read part 1 here While Philip Rosedale returned to developing Second Life full-time a few months ago, Linden Lab was playing with cloud streaming the virtual world well before then: "[T]he team had already experimented a bit with this technology a couple years ago," as he told me recently. "They started playing with it a…
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Now on my Patreon is part 2 of an in-depth chat I recently had with Philip Rosedale on Project Zero, the company's code name for streaming Second Life on a browser. (Which you can still try for free here, in increments of 10 minutes,) In this section, we get into his strategy on completely re-imagining…
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Now on my Patreon is the start of an in-depth interview I did with Philip Rosedale on Project Zero, the company's code name for streaming Second Life on a browser. One point he mentions (that I initially missed coming back from the holidays in early January): Starting this week, they're letting a select number of…
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BREAKING: Linden Lab Test Launches Browser-Based Streaming for Second Life — And You Can Try it Now!
Above: At my office in Waterhead via Project Zero Starting now — and starting 2025 with guns blazing — you can try out browser-based streaming of Second Life, enabling you to experience the virtual world with maximum graphics settings displayed on a web browser, even on low-end PCs/laptops — go here to access it for…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 