What if Second Life had been named Expanded Life

CeNedra Rivera and I had a conversation the other night about integration and disconnection between aspects of our virtual and physical identities. It suddenly occurred to me that the name "Second Life" in itself suggests a radical separation. I wonder if a name such as "Second World" or "Expanded Life" would have made a difference in how the world's culture and our psychological approach to it unfolded.

How Botgirl Cloned Her Second Life Avatar in Twinity

I had a lot of fun giving Twinity another try this week so I thought I'd offer a brief introduction. Twinity is a "mirror" virtual world based on physical world geography. Berlin is their first build and will have over 50,000 structures digitized by the end of the year. Although Twinity is still very much a work-in-progress it's worth checking out.

Getting Started: You can download and install the Windows-only client software after registering at twinity.com. When you first log in you'll be teleported to a welcome area. Expect a learning curve, especially if you have ingrained habits from Second Life. Although they've made a clear effort to simplify their interface, I didn't find it especially intuitive. That said, after a few hours of effort, I was able to pay more attention to experiencing the world than figuring out how to operate within it.

Avatar Customization:
Most options such as chat, search and animations are accessed from a small icon-based menu box at the bottom of the screen.



The orange "me" icon launches a window for avatar modification and clothes shopping. Your avatar can be modified by changing settings on a series of sliders.



Now here's the fun part: You can clone your Second Life avatar by importing a few images. You can use just a straight-on view like the one below or optionally add a profile shot for a more exact duplicate. It is very important to use shots with even lighting and pleasing color and contrast, because they provide the texture for your new face.



After a little trial and error with different photos and some work with the sliders, I'm pretty happy with the result.



I'll cover more on Twinity in a future post. For now, here's a quick video clip to give you the look and feel of moving through the world. The mirror is especially cool.

Feedly Makes Google Reader all Shiny

I'm an information addict. I follow about 800 online information sources at the moment. This would be an impossible task without RSS feeds. If you don't know what RSS feeds are or how they work, please skip to the end of this post and take a moment to watch "RSS In Plain English," a short and informative video by the geniuses at Common Craft:

Feedly is to a standard RSS feed reader as an iPhone is to a typical cell phone. It takes your boring Google Reader page and turns it into a luscious, customizable feast-for-the-eyes delight. It's a free Firefox plugin that can work with your existing Google Reader account, import an opml file or just be used for ad-hoc feed collection. Let's take a look:

First, here's a standard Google Reader page:



And here's the main section of my feedly home page:



Feedly offers a variety of unique views that can be assigned to each feed grouping. For instance, the"river" setting below includes a paragraph from each feed alongside a thumbnail.



I've put my photo-centric feeds into a separate folder that uses a thumbnail-only view:



Other views include headlines only and full inline articles. When you see a post that looks interesting, you can "drill down" and expand it within the view and then minimize it when you're done with just a click. You can share, tweet, email, annotate or otherwise act upon the item from a contextual menu bar.



There are many other well-done features including a "spring cleaning" page that shows you which feeds you seldom read and a list of other users with similar recommendations.

So give it a try and let me know what you think. I've tried practically every RSS reader in existence and still check out new offerings, but I keep coming back to Feedly. Must be true love.

Here's that great video I mentioned in the introduction:

Meet Botgirl Linden

It's true. The sentient being known as the avatar Botgirl Questi is now registered as Botgirl Linden. The screen name depicted in this image is authentic. But before you start selling off your land and assets in panic there is one important factor I haven't mentioned yet: Botgirl Linden is registered on the OpenLife grid, not Second Life.

Although this started out as a joke, I had two key realizations as I walked around with the coveted/dreaded last name. First, it struck me that being a Linden must make it hard to interact in Second Life as a typical resident. Although there is no royalty in Second Life, Lindens do have the power of kings and queens within the realm of their world. They can grant boons or banish, lower taxes or strip a community of its assets and livelihood. The imbalance of authority is through edict rather than democratic rule, so the power differential means a Linden can't just be "one of the guys."

My second realization was that it would be really, really cool if Second Life was run by some of the "civilians" I really respect instead of our legacy crop of leaders. Imagine what things might be like if Dusan Writer was the new CEO, Vint Falken President, Jacek Antonelli CTO, Mal Burns head of Public Information and Codebastard Redgrave and Gabby Panacek the joint chiefs of community affairs.

Anyway, it was great fun to play Linden for a few days, even in OpenLife. My one regret is that middle names aren't supported, so I couldn't register as Botgirl Che Linden. (Nice t-shirt, huh?)

Oh yeah. One more thing before I sign off. I also registered the name "M. Linden." Those who have ears...

La Jetee' - Incredible Sci-Fi Short From 1962

Found via Immersion Blog and Amy Stein Photography. I posted this to my Tumblog, but it was so good I thought it deserved the wider viewership here.

From Glitch to Glam: Second Life Bug Serendipity (slightly NSFW)

I dropped into Second Life on Saturday afternoon for the opening of my good friend Nightflower's Artist's Cooperative. I quickly noticed many avatars in the crowd wearing cool-looking black skin.

I was intrigued. Was this some new fashion trend I'd missed? In local chat I asked something like, "Who started the black skin avatar craze?" Silence. No response at all.

Of course, it turned out it was just a software glitch causing a few avatars to render improperly on my screen. The dead air after my question was likely because no one had a clue what the hell I was talking about. Or they thought it was a racist remark related to our ebony-skinned DJ, GoSpeed Racer. Oh well.

Later that night, I decided to try duplicating what I'd seen by creating a solid black texture and applying it to my skin and eyes. It worked! I took a few photographs like the one below and went to bed.

I woke up way-too-early-for-a-Sunday-morning and couldn't get back to sleep. On a whim, I decided to jump inworld and grab a little video. Nightflower was online so I asked if she'd join me for a "ShadowPlay" shoot. She was kind enough to agree and we had a good time messing around on a rooftop in the middle of Extropia Core. I spent a few hours editing that afternoon to create the video I posted yesterday.

Here are a couple of still shots from Sunday morning. They are unretouched except for cropping.

Finally, here's a shot taken with CodeBastard Redgrave's cool FilterCam HUD.

I really like the black avatar look. It's kind of like being a walking infographic character. New fashion trend? What do you think?

VIDEO: Nightflower Submits to the Dark Side

ShadowPlay from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Next time: The embarrassing story of how I stumbled onto this idea, plus shadowplay erotica.