Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.

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2022’s Top 12 Most Viral Posts from New World Notes, Featuring the Fall of Blockchain & Meta, the Rise of AI & Metaverse Culture — Plus Echoes of Offline News in the Virtual World

December 28, 2022
Presented in chronological order, here's the New World Notes posts that garnered the most traffic and social media shares for the year. It's a nice compendium of 2022 news, from the collapse of NFT hype/blockchain metaverse platforms to the rise of AI image/text generation — along with virtual world echoes of real world news, including reactionary backlash against LGBT+ people, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine:
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Six more highlights after the break!

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5 Favorite Flickr Feeds to Follow from the SL Photograph Community

December 28, 2022

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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

It’s the end of the year and time to look back and share my favorite photostreams to follow. Nekonuko Nakamori is a perennial favorite. I love her consistency. Every picture includes her enjoying the scene. She goes from place to place and takes snaps. Her pics feel like watercolors. There is this softness, a luminosity that makes me smile every time.

For more streams to follow, click here:

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Open Forum: What Are Your Metaverse Predictions for 2023?

December 27, 2022
With the year 2022 starting to sunset, it's time to gather reader predictions for the New Year! Anything having to do with any metaverse platform (SL, VRChat, even Horizon Worlds) or related technology (VR, AI, MMOs, etc). As always, the more falsifiable the prediction is, i.e. concrete enough to empirically prove or disprove, the better!

To start things off, here's a couple I mentioned in my last video with Isabelle (watch below):
- VRChat will have 10 million monthly active users (either announced by the company or by a reputed analytics firm).
- Second Life will finally release an official mobile app.
Post your own in Comments below! I'll feature the best ones — i.e. the most falsifiable and interesting — in a post next year!

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Tweeko’s Photos Beautifully Illustrate the Vivid State of SL Avatar Expression

December 27, 2022

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Tweeko loves to shoot her pics from dramatic angles that reveal her subject in a new light. Take “That’s just the way” where she shoots from below, from her feet toward her head, the opposite as more usual pics. The lighting casts all the graphic elements into a deep shadow and lets us focus on her face, her outstretched arm, and her canted legs. I love this picture and it drew me in to take a deeper dive into her photostream. She linked to “Make Me Feel” by Janelle Monae to go with the picture. [Click here to listen]

For more of her framing the body at different angles, click here:

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Top 5 Posts Last Week Including: Meta Doesn’t Say “Metaverse” Much Anymore — But I Sure Do in My Upcoming Book!

December 26, 2022
Free Lelutka Heads Holiday Gifts Special Featured by NovataSL — Here’s How to Get Them

December 24, 2022
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Novata Second Life is a Second Life video blog from NovataSL. Her most recent post Free Lelutka Heads Holiday Special. is about the Lelutka free mesh heads and skin that has everyone over the moon.

I usually avoid video tutorials because I fall asleep. It’s like magic. Three minutes and…zzz.

Novata, however, has a very energetic voice full of enthusiasm and humor, so she was a joy to listen to and I did not fall asleep for a second. Her posts are bilingual in English and Spanish. I speak Spanish so I enjoyed the switching back and forth. She also lists the 54 stores participating in the Holiday Special gifts and provides links to them all. You must wear the Lelutka group tag to get the heads and skin.

LANDMARK CHRISTMAS GIFT:
- leLUTKA/leLAPEAU Holiday Special SIM 1: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife…
- leLUTKA/leLAPEAU Holiday Special SIM 2: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife…
- leLUTKA/leLAPEAU Holiday Special SIM 3: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife…
- leLUTKA/leLAPEAU Holiday Special SIM 4: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife…
For more freebie videos, click here:

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Watch: Sharing Gifts & Predictions in New World VIdeo’s Holiday Edition!

December 22, 2022
Please Like Subscribe!

For New World Video vlogcast Ep 7 – holiday edition, we chat about my upcoming book, selling TikTok dances for avatars, and we solve Second Life’s infamous retention problem. Plus we make and review 2023 predictions from viewers and ourselves, and take a look at several fun holiday gift ideas!

And here's the Marketplace/website links to the items we feature:
And as a bonus: The Wednesday dance by Phia Sims.

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These Evocative Images Look Like Bygone Photos But They’re Actually of Second Life Locations You Can Visit!

December 22, 2022

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Mr. B’s photostream would be perfect for a game of “Is it Life or Is It Second Life?” except every picture is Second Life. I think Second Life looks more real in black and white and his pictures harken back to a time when all pictures were unless they were hand-colored by the photographer. The white frame on these pictures make me think of old slides that usually had a number stamped on them and the name of the photo studio that developed them.

This is a picture of Jodis Old Train Station, Jodis. [To teleport, click here]

It reminds me of a single page my sister found from some long lost photo album (at right). It was a piece of that heavy paper old photo albums had and it had two pictures on it, one of my dad when he was a young man, the only one from before he got married. The other picture was of the river that went through the family farm.

This was taken some time in the 1920’s and you can see the similarity in how photos were developed. I suppose they needed wide margins for those little paper corners you had to stick them on with.

For more of Mr. B’s extraordinary Second Life travels, click here:

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My New Metaverse Book Has a Cover & New Title — Please Pre-Order!

December 21, 2022
Excited to reveal the cover of my upcoming book cover and its new title: Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For. Set to publish next June — Second Life's 20th anniversary — I hope you consider pre-ordering now. (Lovely stocking stuffer for the holidays?)
- Pre-order on Amazon here.
- Pre-order on Barnes & Noble here.
The original title, Why the Metaverse Matters, has been tweaked to better fit the times. It already matters to the half billion+ people heavily active in multiple metaverse platforms. The goal now, in my view, is to better explain the vision's origin, how it's been realized in Second Life and other pioneering platforms — and how it can be cultivated as a beneficial place for one billion+ people more. After writing about that topic for 19 years, I have some opinions there.

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Meta’s New Vision of the Future Doesn’t Mention the Metaverse Even Once

December 21, 2022

In case you missed it, Meta CTO and Reality Labs' head Andrew Bosworth recently published the company's vision of the future:

Meta began 2022 with a new name and a new vision for the future, and at Reality Labs it’s our job to bring that vision to life. We never thought it would be easy or straightforward, but this year was even harder than we expected. Economic challenges across the world, combined with pressures on Meta’s core business, created a perfect storm of skepticism about the investments we’re making…

[W]e’ve made tough calls this year to stop doing some work so we can maintain focus on those things we feel are most important. But I can say with confidence that after one of the hardest years in the history of the company, Meta remains as committed to our vision for the future as we were on the day we announced it.

Bosworth proceeds to lay out the company's confidence in its vision, in which VR/AR and mixed reality displays will become a pervasive part of computing.

Notable in its absence:

This new vision of the future from Meta.

Does not mention.

"The Metaverse".

Not even once.

See for yourself.

Which is pretty interesting! After all, the link in the very first line, "Meta began 2022 with a new name and a new vision", leads to this post from last year:

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