Now playing in New World Notes!

Ah, just one quibble. There is no choice for people not working. I had to refer to an old occupation.

TRAVELING LIGHT

So for the first time yesterday, I'm momentarily tempted to use an in-world service I'm supposed to be reporting on for direct personal gain, because I still need to buy two tickets to Florida for the Christmas holidays, and this tall slinky redhead in the silk blue cheongsam and a steel collar around her neck, she could probably get me a bargain...

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, PART I

Zed Aubret: There was a feature in Chicago magazine on this house that was built in Wisconsin... I loved it and so I copied it. No blueprints or anything, just [from] photos...

ARCHITECTURAL SLIGEST, PART II

During Poutine's pre-scheduled tour, I receive a random invitation to visit a place inspired by How the Grinch Stole Christmas. When we arrive, we are greeted by the brawny chief designer Lveran, his white-robed friend Zazas Oz, and KittenAnne Mousehold, a talking penguin in a Santa suit...

ARCHITECTURAL SLIGEST, PART III

HL: You say the land is more valuable because it's not in the middle of a road/pathway/etc, but won't point-to-point teleporting make that irrelevant anyway?

CP: Yeah, but once you've been to the place you P2P'd to, what then? I discover most places through serendipity. Which is why I really miss some of the features in the old map. I like the fact that you could choose which sim to visit from an alphabetical list of all of the sims. I would usually pick one at random and go there...

ARCHITECTURAL SLIGEST, PART IV

Hamlet Linden: I wonder what it's like to live in a place like this. Might feel like you're constricted to roleplaying Japanese medieval. Hard to have a gangster-style pool party here, for example...

ARCHITECTURAL SLIGEST, PART V

Chip Poutine: This to me, I think, would make your typical real life real estate guy with his face on the bus bench wet their pants. It's got all the gewgaws and neo-classical details that people in RL seem to want-- the reason why contemporary design isn't a part of mainstream culture and architects get dismissed as snobs dressed in black. This is it. I don't understand it, but here it is. Plus there's just so much freakin' stuff inside...

THE VIEW FROM 100,000

Throughout 2005, even well before the final approach to 100,000, we've seen Second Life become a platform for government research, a place to prototype a handheld video game, and a tinkerer's shop for new interactive hardware. How many other real world-directed projects will we see at 100,000? At 200,000? And how will the community of most active Residents respond to them?

FROM KATRINA TO TALAMASCA

Oddly enough, Ginny Talamasca's appearance today in New World Notes was made possible by the greatest natural disaster to hit the United States this year. After Hurricane Katrina raked its way across the Gulf Coast, Second Life Residents launched a number of in-world relief efforts; one of them involved a lottery in our virtual New Orleans, with all ticket sales going to benefit Katrina's victims via the American Red Cross. For one of the prizes, I offered a screenshot and a short writeup on this blog. But rather than use his winning ticket on himself, George Backbite coyly sent me to the clothing emporium of Ginny Talamasca with instructions to take a screenshot of her as a gift from him.

Which is how, by pure double-barreled happenstance, I ended up meeting a fashion entrepeneur who makes a real income from her virtual clothing sales-- when she's not studying, that is, to find a better cure for cancer...

SURVEYING THE RESULTS

I've compiled the final results of the New World Notes reader survey, my first attempt to get a handle of who you are that's reading this, what you find worthwhile with this blog, and what you don't. 251 readers took it-- my copious thanks to them all-- which means roughly 2-4% of total readership, a pretty good sample...

I think you're being a little overly critical of yourself. There must be something, no? Do remember that superlatives are relative, unlike elatives.

Click Da Link Yo!

... AND YOUR CHICKS FOR FREE

The line that divides the first two epochs of Second Life is a catwalk made of metal, surrounded on all sides by mist, roving satellites, and spotlights of white and red. It's the runway for a fashion soundstage created by a team of SL Residents but commissioned by an employee of MTV, a division of Viacom, the multinational media empire with holdings in film, television, print, radio, music, and the Internet, and annual revenue in excess of $8 billion-- a half billion of that generated, according to a recent Hollywood Reporter story, through online sales. But the cultural impact of MTV eclipses anything else offered by its corporate parent, far beyond its name recognition as a cable television network, or the home of "Punk'd" and Carson Daly-- or even where you can still see a music video every now and again, if you watch long enough...

Hey, Mr. Embedded Journalist: a single B-52 had a computer malfunction, dropped its entire load over Stagecoach Island. Check it out, Syd.

Heh, I love that movie. RIP, Spaulding.