Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.

The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!

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

The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.

Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.

The Mysterious 40,000 People Plateau of Second Life User Concurrency

October 13, 2021

Second Life concurrency data courtesy since 2009 by Tyche Shepherd's Grid Survey

Here's the latest Second Life concurrency stats direct from Tyche, the woman who knows more about them than anyone outside Linden Lab (and possibly even more than anyone still at the actual company):

"The trend in maximum daily concurrency is pretty flat for the past 3 months or so [see chart here], the same with Median and Mean Daily. It is down on from what we were seeing in the Spring but still above pre-Covid levels."

The COVID "spike", however, was just a few thousand more active users, and most of them were existing SL accounts coming back during the quarantine.

Which leads to the mysterious plateau of Second Life user concurrency. My takeaway from what Tyche tells me next:

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Today’s SL Flickr Pick: Fashion & Flights of Fancy from Anja Mexicola

October 13, 2021

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

Anja Mexicola’s “Bouquet” is a lovely romantic picture. The background is one at the Backdrop Photo Dome, a place often used by bloggers who can use the backgrounds rezzed there but she did a great job using a filter to give the entire picture the feeling of being hand-painted. I love that she was not tempted to be too symmetrical placing the flowers and birds. She is not symmetrical either, her left arm and hand are visible with a billowing eyelet lace sleeve. One the one hand, it is exuberant with so many flowers and the birds, but then there is restraint in her colors. She’s smart in her choices.

If you want to know why you should never have a mermaid roommate, click here:

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Facebook Internal Survey: 1 in 4 Not Convinced By Zuckerberg’s Defense Against Whistleblower Allegations — Nearly Half Want Government Regulation

October 12, 2021

As promised last week, here's the results of a survey conducted last weekend by staff at Blind, an anonymous messaging/virtual community app for employees, asking users their opinions on the recent whistleblower allegations made against Facebook. About 5,000 responded across many social media companies, with nearly 10% of them (482) staff members at Facebook itself.

Courtesy Team Blind, here's the survey results from Facebook employees only, starting with the question, "Are you convinced by Facebook’s defense to the whistleblower’s allegations?"

Here's how Facebook staffers answered:

Notably, a significant minority of Facebook employees (1 in 4) did not find their own company's defense against the allegations to be credible.

There was a similar result to another question: "Do you believe Facebook puts profits over user safety?"

Here's how Facebook employees who took the survey replied:

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Open Forum Question: Could Second Life Work on a Touch Screen / Tablet Optimized for Seniors?

October 12, 2021

We know that many seniors like the late Fran Serenade (above) have found great value in using Second Life, both as a social/creative platform and (as in Fran's case) even finding therapeutic value in them. However, many seniors have difficulty learning or using the SL viewer for Mac/PC.

But what if the virtual world was accessible via a touchscreen?

Caltech astronomy professor George Djorgovski, director of the university's Virtech campus in Second Life, recently put it to me this way:

Many seniors who would benefit from the social opportunities in SL are not very computer-savvy.

They may be comfortable with an iPad, but not a standard laptop/desktop. iPads and similar devices simply do not have the hardware power to deal with something like SL, and whatever apps do exist (and are still available or maintained) are little more than messaging apps.

There are, however, notebook/laptop machines that have a touch screen, which someone who is used to a tablet may find easier to use than a laptop proper. Also, I know that it is possible to boot Linux on at least some Chromebooks, and use a Linux SL client, but I don’t know about the performance thereof. Any experiences or recommendations along these lines would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, George and I discussed the late-lamented Lumia app for Android devices, but that's no longer officially supported (far as I can tell), and as great as it is for established SLers, wouldn't work well for the target audience he's talking about:

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Vivien DeLancoure’s Vivid Goth / Dark Fantasy Avatar Portraits

October 12, 2021

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

Vivien DeLancoure’s “Sometimes time doesn’t heal wounds” brings together two very different aesthetics into a glorious union. On the one hand there is the baroque delicacy of the filigreed bird cages. Then there is the Steampunk/Goth fight-ready toughness of her boots and gloves, but she is not without her own baroque ornamentation as you can see in her corset. The contrasts are balanced and work so well. The birdcages are all empty suggesting several wounds that are still unhealed. I love the careful balance between the industrial elements and the baroque elements. It’s beautiful and her cast-down eyes create the emotional effect she intends. She also blogs and these items were the Engine Room event that ends October 20th.

To see extraordinary Dark Fantasy pics, click here:

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Top Posts Last Week Featuring: What Facebook Employees Think About the Facebook Whistleblower and the Continued Kid-ification of ROBLOX

October 11, 2021
- New World Notes Newsfeed: Metaverse Content I’m Currently Consuming. Featuring a Facebook-less Horizon, a dearth of visits to AT&T in VRChat, and the coming "Hannibal Lecter" to Second Life.
- 80% Of Facebook Employees Believe This Week's Whistleblower Revelations Will Damage Company, According To Massive Internal Poll
- ROBLOX Releases New Rules For Its Metaverse: No Politics, Romance, Or Cross-Platform Promotion Of Its Virtual Currency Allowed
- Sannyのおすすめバーチャルワールドニュース : 2021年9月 Sanny Reports For Virtual Japan. Share with Japanese-speaking virtual world fans!
Give Your SL Avatar Realistic Wounds With the Really Needy HUD’s New Explosive Pack!

October 8, 2021

Just in time for Halloween and Squid Game roleplay in Second Life, the Really Dangerous Explosives Pack is a fun new addition to the Really Needy HUD (a proud sponsoring partner), which turns SL into a Sims-like game experience. Now, with the help of major style brand Izzie’s, any damage from nearby explosions will cause visible wounds to appear on your avatar.

Here’s Really Needy creator Grace7 Ling with more details, along with some new NSFW partnerships:

Roleplayers can now give their urban game more gritty realism with the Really Dangerous Explosives Pack, which includes a feature that auto-applies blood-splattered BOM layers onto your avatar body, if hit by an explosion.

This is a feature of the Really Needy HUD which are used by roleplayers in Second Life to simulate their avatars having Hunger, Thirst, Energy, Health, Hygiene and even Toilet and Procreation needs.

This new release builds on the different types of injuries recognized by the HUD (which goes much beyond a simple combat meter), such as burns, falls and gunshot wounds, and now blast injuries.

As covered in a prior New World Notes post, gunshot wounds automatically appear on the parts of the body where the avatar was shot. With this new release, avatars within the blast radius of a fragmentation grenade will get covered in blood splatter or bloody cuts (depending on how much gore you want), or might be bruised badly if they suffered shock damage from a nearby explosion.

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Halloween in Second Life Style Tips from Victoria Konnor James

October 8, 2021
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Victoria Konnor James' recent post Thirsty for her blog “Pretty Things, Nice Life” has me wanting those beautiful illuminated pumpkins in real life as well as first life. I mean, let’s get serious about pumpkins. I like roasting pumpkin seeds and will happily substitute pumpkin for potatoes in a stew or even make a pumpkin soup or two or three, but one good-sized pumpkin is about as much as I want at one time. Also, if you put out a pumpkin the first week of October, it passes it’s prime long before Halloween. But these pumpkins are so pretty and of course, they don’t smell of pumpkin 24 hours a day, not even 1 hour a day. I want them. Do they exist in real life?

{vespertine}
- Illuminated Pumpkin – short /bloody blue
- Illuminated Pumpkin – short /zombie green
- Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /jack orange
- Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /neutral
- Illuminated Pumpkin – tall /zombie green
If you’re ready for the Halloween spirit, click here:

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80% of Facebook Employees Believe This Week’s Whistleblower Revelations Will Damage Company, According to Massive Internal Poll

October 7, 2021

While Mark Zuckerberg and other executives strenuously defend Facebook against the allegations and documents made public by whistleblower Frances Haugen, denying any serious wrongdoing, the company's employees have a very different perspective:

80% of them believe the whistleblower's revelations will at least cause some short term damage to the company, while a full third believe the damage will be much worse, causing serious harm to the company's revenue, or even lead to an Uber-level crisis, where top executives are fired or forced to resign. (See above.) Almost half consider the impact to be serious. (Love the "Biden joins the chat" option, i.e. new government regulation/penalties are imposed.)

This all according to a user-created survey posted earlier this week on Blind, an anonymous messaging/virtual community app for employees, accessible only by company staff. (They're only able to log onto Blind's forum for Facebook via a company e-mail address.)

Over 6300 Facebook employees took the survey – roughly 10% of the entire company, a huge sample. In other Blind-based surveys I've reported on, such as this one about curbing hate speech on Facebook, only a few hundred employees typically participate. So this new survey is a fairly reliable barometer to the corporation's internal collective sentiment.

So that in mind, it's notable that just 1 in 5 of Facebook employees seem fully aligned with their executive team:

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Marvel at These Maximalist Second Life Images by Ella Pavlona

October 7, 2021

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

Ella Pavlova is a maximalist. While many artists strive for minimalism or realism, a maximalist goes for excess. “More is more” might be the catch-phrase that defines maximalism, but that does not mean undisciplined or chaotic. Yes, she and the bluebird are surrounded by flowers but they curve around her, encircling her. They do not obscure her, though perhaps the bluebird is hard to see at first glance, but then, it is King Charmant visiting the imprisoned Princess Florine, who is, it seems, in a prison of flowers. Elle links to the exquisite Bluebird pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty.

For more maximalist Ella, click here:

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