- As EU & US Regulators Investigate Facebook, VR Evangelist Robert Scoble Warns That Oculus May Not Survive
- Philip Rosedale Offers To API License High Fidelity's 3D Spatial Audio To Zoom & Other Online Conferencing Services
- Caltech Launches Virtual World Campus In SL As Pandemic-Era Social Space
- Core Launches Attack On Roblox's 25/75 Revenue Split For Creators
- The Life & Death Of NPR's Science Friday In Second Life Ends On A Mystery
- Play White Veil: Surreal Platform Game Inspired By The Dark Side Of Social Media, From Acclaimed Metaverse Artists Cica Ghost And Bryn Oh
Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
Making a Metaverse That Matters
Contact me — links below!
My Patreon Supporters
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.
The Virtual Museum Team hosts several museums in Second Life, Wolf Territories Grid and Roblox. Check out all the teleport links here.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Fashionologie is an excellent blog from Xana Newall. “When You Can’t Stay Awake” spoke to me. Who hasn’t been this tired at least twice? Besides, I want the sweater:
- Addams – Pheobe Sweater
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Hitting Facebook at the worst possible time for the company (but they should have expected it), regulators in Germany, the European Union's most powerful member state, are now going after Oculus’ now-mandatory Facebook log-in:
“In the future, the use of the new Oculus glasses requires the user to also have a Facebook account. Linking virtual reality products and the group’s social network in this way could constitute a prohibited abuse of dominance by Facebook,” federal cartel office President Andreas Mundt said in a statement on Thursday.
This is happening, of course, just as the United States government files a monopoly suit against Facebook, basically tossing Zuckerberg alone in the ring in a tag team deathmatch.
“I think that it is a good example of the different and sometimes complimentary antitrust approaches in the EU and the USA,” the EFF’s Cory Doctorow tells me. “The EU has historically gone big on conduct remedies, that is telling companies what they can and can't do but allowing them to create these big monopolistic silos. The US is now coming around to structural remedies, that is, breaking companies up so that they have no reason to self-preference.”
Doctorow suggests that the US simply requiring Facebook to sell off Oculus would be more effective, rather than prohibiting mandatory log-in:
“If Facebook didn't own Oculus,” as he puts it, “there would be no reason for Oculus to require a Facebook login, so breaking Facebook up would produce a more durable remedy than banning it from self-preferencing with Oculus accounts.”
One way or another, it seems like the end of mandatory Facebook log-in is coming soon. But VR evangelist Robert Scoble tells me that would also be the end of both Facebook and Oculus:
“Doing that would kill Oculus,” as he puts it to me, later adding, “If Facebook is forced to divest Oculus, then Oculus won't survive.”
Here’s why he thinks that:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Angelo Diabolico’s “Tu sempre al mio fianco” or “You always by my side” is a lovely and romantic picture of a couple enjoying a walk in the park or the forest and seeing a deer. They’ve come to a stop, standing silently, holding their breath, not wanting to startle the deer and this magical moment. Angelo Diabolico’s photostream is full of wonderfully emotional pictures. There is a fantastical element, heightened by her color choice that leaves so much white with only splashes of color in the sky and their clothes.
Ahead, an oldie but a goodie.
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Caltech is among the very best universities in the world, famous for being the home of Richard Feynman and other science legends. (And perhaps even more famously, for being the setting for Big Bang.) Now it's helping drive a rebirth in educational uses for virtual worlds with Virtech:Virtech is an interactive, social, and private space inside Second Life, designed to furnish the Caltech community with an alternative to in-person interaction. Through the use of avatars, participants can visit a rich virtual space furnished to enable engaging experience as well as seamless social interaction. Virtech is a safe, pleasant space to socialize, create, collaborate, and learn. It is open only to the members of the Caltech community and their approved guests, and the members of other academic communities by a special arrangement. It is operated by the Virtual Reality Lab, which is a part of the Center for Data-Driven Discovery at Caltech.
Virtech's launch is led by Caltech astrophysicist George Djorgovski, a longtime advocate of virtual worlds for pedagogy. (Unsurprisingly, his Second Life avatar name is "Curious George".) While virtual worlds for universities peaked and declined about a decade ago, COVID-19 has once again brought their potential value to the fore:
"The pandemic has taken away an important component of the student life," as Professor Djorgovski puts it to me. "In the normal times, the incoming students have to establish new friendships and networks, learn from the older students, and collaborate. The older students are also affected, and this is becoming a critical issue for their social and psychological well-being. Standard social media or videoconferencing apps are a poor substitute for the interpersonal interactions, but Virtual Worlds offer a qualitatively superior experience."
More here. As a first goal, he and the Virtech team are planning to give students a 3D space for social interaction and collaboration. "Later on, we plan to use it for educational activities, such as the lectures, office hours, discussion groups, etc."
And no, notwithstanding SL's somewhat sordid reputation (or for that matter, what Big Bang might imply), Virtech has restrictions on Adult-rated content, privacy protections for students, and is barred from outside visitors:
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Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I love this picture by Akame called “Mirror Kill.” If you look closely at that URL, you will see it ends with “in/faves-137983034@N05.” That’s because I found this picture by looking at Celestial Demon’s Faves. I featured him yesterday, and today I looked at his faves to see if was someone new to me. There nearly always is. Sometimes I will go to someone’s faves, then to the faves of someone who catches my eye in their faves, and so on and on until I am in a completely new genre. It’s a fun game and everyone should play it once in a while.
“Mirror Kill” is not just because of the mirror surface of the lake, but the colors are rich and yellow and blue are complementary, making a good color story. It makes me think of the photographer’s Golden Hour which had passed shortly before this picture was taken (pretending that this was just natural light rather than WindLight.} Did you know there are Golden Hour calculators?
So where will Akame’s faves send me?
