3pointD.com

Well, it’s official: celebrity scents are over. As of tonight, you’re nobody if you don’t have your own 3D virtual world. Just ask supermodel-cum-talk show host Tyra Banks, who opened Tyra’s Virtual Studio this evening with a grammy party. “The studio is a free virtual world where you can listen to music, chat with your friends, get insider info about what’s happening at the Tyra Banks Show and just hang out,” according to the site. But you knew that already. In Tyra’s Virtual Studio, however (which is available for both Windows and Mac), “Your avatar can drop it like it’s hot.” Whew. We knew there was some added value here. (more…)

• VBS.TV
  Vice Magazine launches pretty online video site. Lots of good stuff from the leading purveyors of wonderfully controversial hipster irony. Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Powered by Brightcove.
  (tags: tv vice art music culture fashion television)

I am occasionally asked by reporters interested in the Second Life Herald (where I’ve been an editor for two years now) what the appeal of doing journalism in virtual worlds is. In an attempt to locate a pithy soundbite for them, I sometimes say it’s like being a foreign correspondent without having to leave your desk (though this is not, in fact, the whole story; read on). So I was interested to spot this post by Ethan Zuckerman (via the Business Communicators of SL blog), which contains some thoughts on similar topics, inspired by a conversation with Pitchfork’s Chris Dahlen for Dahlen’s latest column. Dahlen wonders whether the Internet is up to the challenge of providing information about places like Africa, since it looks like you can find a lot more detail on the Web about Buffy than about the Somalian Union of Islamic Courts, for instance. Which touches off a thought on Zuckerman’s part: “I find it deeply odd that journalism is expanding into these illusory spaces while it’s shrinking in the real world. I think the answer may be that these new spaces — whether SecondLife, World of Warcraft, the culture of fanfiction or machinima — are far more coverable than many events in the real world.” While both those statements are true, to an extent, I’d argue that there isn’t the causal link between them that Zuckerman sees, or at least that that link is not as strong, and that there are more important factors at work. (more…)

Now that the Official Guide to Second Life is out (with yours truly as one of the authors, don’tcha know), it seems Wiley has more SL books in the works. Coming up this summer is The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life, by SL residents Aimee Weber and Catherine Omega (aka Catherine Winters outside of SL). My feeling is that Wiley is making a pretty substantial bet on the continued success of Second Life. But it’s also a bet that itself contributes to the viability of the platform, by providing some important documentation that will make it more accessible to a broader user base. More good reading on the way. [Via podcaster and architect Lordfly Digeridoo.]

My latest guest post for Terra Nova deals with the excellent massively multiplayer online game NationStates, which was created by Australian author Max Barry, loosely based on his book, Jennifer Government (which I read last night; good read). Check out the post (and the game) for more details about how it all works, but the point is that the game incorporates some interesting mechanics of player governance. Of course, the game is all about governance, so that’s not surprising, but the point is that I think there are lessons there that could be applied to 3D online environments as well. (more…)

Total hours per month spent in Second Life

Reader Darren Herman has generated a really nice-looking set of charts based on the recent statistical release of user and economic data from the virtual world of Second Life. It’s slightly unfortunate that these are in a PDF (which makes them much harder to share on the Web), but they’re very pretty to look at. More importantly, because of how our minds work, and the fact that they do pattern-recognition better than computers, there are often important things to be gleaned from the visual display of quantitative information. (Can someone buy me a copy of that, please?) Take a look at the Second Life gender demographics after the jump, for example, and you’ll see what I mean. (more…)