Interesting bit of drama over on the Second Life forums which might only be a joke, but one that’s worth giving some thought. First some background:

Due to some announced changes coming to Second Life, there’s been quite a bit of discussion on topics that generally have to do with… you guessed it… money. The impending changes appear on the surface to potentially devalue “telehub” land, and this is making a relatively heavily-invested group of residents pretty unhappy. During all this debate I caught this bit of public relations/advertising in the official Robin Linden “Point to Point Teleporting” thread by none other than SL’s biggest land owner, Anshe Chung:

Project Entropia
IMVU
WoW

My IMVU avatar name is “Anshe”. I just added one new service at ANSHECHUNG.COM that allows you cash in your IMVU credits into US$. This should be great help for all content creators who consider expand to this new and exciting platform!

If you want hook up with my guild in WoW, feel free visit our homepage

At least in WoW nobody can suddenly destroy value of 20000 US$ investment in telehub land.

Now if there’s one thing that I realized almost immediately about Second Life – or any virtual world – it’s that any investment in content constrained to that world is at risk. And of course any services (like the ill-fated Gaming Open Market, which closed its doors when Linden Lab implemented an in-world monetary exchange system) are similarly at risk. So the only real way to protect your investment is to work on cross-platform content (basic textures, for example) or – and this is the important part – develop a good reputation that spans virtual worlds. I’ve posted previous entries on reputation and it’s importance which you can read here and here.

I’d therefore hazard a guess that being in the inherently risky virtual land business, Anshe decided to do what any Wall Street investor does: diversify. And that’s what the above post was really about: leveraging her business reputation. The next thing one has to wonder is whether the all-to-common practice of selling/buying accounts can be worthwhile in this effort; not just to gain reputation, but to protect it from detractors and critics.

Enter into evidence this little announcement posted today by Anshe critic Mulch Ennui:

Yes, It is true*, Mulch Ennui has sold his Avi. Now I can’t name names as to the new owner of my avi, as it is against TOS, but needless to say I was priced and sold. Just pure speculation (or maybe flight of fantasy), but I have a a suspicion as to why I was chosen to be mercilessly driven out of Second Life.

It has been fun guys. I will miss you all (except the usual asshats). I hope my new owner will bring as much joy and controvery to the world as I have tried to do.

Again, I cannot say who my new owner is per TOS, but if you are need need of land, I guess you can contact this one avi now.

A prankster’s joke? Perhaps. Likely. But the issues raised are real. It reminds me of the Chinese virtual world employee about whom I’ve previously written. As noted over on the New World Notes blog, she’s recently left her job… and with it her virtual identity. When/if I run into that avatar it will, to be honest, be a bit odd. Does the avatar itself have a reputation that will carry forward? Is there anything that will carry forward?

This all makes me wonder how many eBay accounts have changed hands. I’ll have to look into that.

Interesting bit of serendipity: about a week or so ago I called a design acquaintance to see how the shift from designer to manufacturer was going (she’s working on her own niche product line that I hope to one day cite as an indy success story) and discovered that in addition to her project she’s started consulting for American Greetings. Well, just happens that BusinessWeek has a pretty neat article on them today. Nothing fancy; nothing ground-breaking. Just a nice read about how one company treats it’s creatives.

Via a post over on “we make money not art” comes word of an electronic device for the blind. From their source, News.3Yen (which provides translation from the original Asahi.com article):

The prototype, displays 24 letters which can be refreshed with new text in approximately one second making reading easy for visual handicapped persons. A plastic sheet or card displays Braille lettering by creating arrays of bumps on its rubber-like surface.

Some years back I was imagining how something similar to this could be used as a virtual world interface. Imagine being able to transmit touch via a pressure sensitive input device and “display” it on this material. Now imagine a full-body suit made from it. Hmmm. Maybe you shouldn’t do that.

{Update: C|Net is now carrying a Reuters article on “touch” via cyberspace. Too bad they couldn’t have posted this a day earlier. Here’s the link}

About eight years ago I was working in a studio with one of the more energetic designers I’ve ever met, Patrick Douglas (currently a design manager for Target). Patrick was the kind of guy who, when he wasn’t slaving tirelessly on some in-house effort, was busy working on one of his own projects; usually something furniture-related (unless he was re-tiling his bathroom). When his personal interest in flat-packed, ready-to-assembly (RTA) furniture found synergy with some internal projects, I not only got a first hand look at an interesting niche segment but a chance to both puzzle over and contribute a little to one of these projects.

Back then of course this sort of product was still very much the domain of large established companies. When someone said something was a flat-packed item, it generally meant the thing was a cheap piece of RTA furniture made from particle board and covered in cheap veneer. The exceptions were on the other end of the spectrum – usually intricately laser-cut and pricey; laser-cutting – as a service available to small design boutiques – was still relatively new at the time.

The cool thing about laser-cutting was it’s ability to accurately and cleanly cut complex shapes, and it didn’t take long for clever designers to set about the task of creating objects intended for assembly without fasteners. While I don’t know if it’s a good correlation, I suspect the growth of Ikea has something to do with throwing into their basic recipe a large helping of clever design along with a dash of laser-cutting technology (among other things).

Anyway, that was then and it seems as if we’re now seeing a second (maybe even third or fourth) wave of new, creative products that begin their lives flat. Not all are beholden to laser-cutting machines, but many may be indebted to the earlier solutions that the technology enabled. Let’s look at some samples:

Notice anything here? These aren’t the products of large manufacturers (Muji is by far the largest; and is an easy exception to make). These are coming from increasing numbers of small outfits working beautifully within their business constraints. They also don’t limit their solutions to laser-cutting flat stock – note the injection-molded Emulation Kits.

More than anything, the goal of these upstarts seems to be efficient packaging to take advantage of e-commerce and ubiquitous shipping services. But wouldn’t that be the goal of every manufacturer? No one likes to “ship air”. How is it that these small, relatively inexperienced businesses can come up with these fabulous products when large multinationals can’t? or… won’t?

The product I mentioned earlier – the one on which I contributed – was designed to ship flat, but instead was shipped assembled out of fear the consumer would have trouble figuring it out… all five pieces. Makes you wonder why they bothered proceeding with the design in the first place, doesn’t it? Makes me wonder what companies are going to do when the world goes flat.

I took a peek over on Machinima.com earlier today and noticed yet another one in what seems to be an onslaught of machinima videos created in the recently released “The Movies” videogame. This one caught my attention by virtue of the title, “The French Democracy“. I didn’t stop to watch it.

Just a few minutes ago I happened to notice mention of it over on Water Cooler Games. I didn’t get halfway through the article there when I decided to head back to Machinima.com and have a look for myself.

Well, it’s primitive and the QT version I saw has a fair share of compression artifacts. The subtitles can be difficult to read, the pacing is erratic, the music can be overblown at times, the editing could be better, and the end reminds me of early government “lesson” films (in other words: it’s cheesy). But it doesn’t matter. For all it’s faults – and there are plenty – the message isn’t lost.

Watch it for yourself. This amateur bit of videogame moviemaking is ushering in a new age.

{Updated to include this Link over to Chris Anderson’s post on this same topic and further updated to add this Link to a post on WorldChanging}