Nothing much happening (a good thing, right?)

Things have been going along smoothly in Second Life of late, or it seems so to me. There has been activity from Linden Lab, just not much unexpected or inexplicable. Let me illustrate:

• The new Destination Islands: obviously a work in progress. Even LL is not foolish enough to think dumping newbies in world randomly is good for retention. Time will tell.
• Premium Wilderness: – - – yawn – - – The Moles do good work but by it’s very nature the DPW implements what “the boss” says. A fine example of what happens without the personal, emotional investment of resident builds. We can hope that some Lindens got their hands dirty and learned some building skills in the process here.
• Pathfinding and the other tools LL developed for Linden Realms (created to demo and test those tools): These are working their way through the shakeout process toward full implementation, it will probably be next year before they really impact SL.
• Mesh: I am seeing more and more mesh builds for sale but this will not reach it’s full potential until the parametric deformer is fully adapted and we can have mesh clothing that fits properly.
• Direct Delivery: Rolled out to the grid in a stripped down basic form. Even so it is buggy! If anyone is surprised by that you need to check your meds.
• New Phoenix/Firestorm update: The highlight of my month; very efficient, TONs of features, lots of ways to customize your user interface. Be prepared to spend some time setting it up to your liking, this is not plug-and-play!

So you see, for me this has been an interlude of sitting back and watching the passing parade, trying not to be drawn into the drama and overreaction of the moment.

“- – - all’s well with the world.”
Aldous Huxley

Communications: It isn't always the Lab

Reblogged from Living in the Modem World:

I’ve been somewhat critical towards Linden Lab were their overall approach to communications is concerned – although I’ve tried to temper my critiques with practical suggestions as to how things might be improved. I also hope that I’m not backward in coming forward to acknowledge those times when they do go out of their way to make the effort – such as with Oz standing…

Read more… 668 more words

Mainland versus Estate - which is the better bang for your buck to Linden Lab?

Reblogged from Pussycat Catnap's thoughts:

A not entirely complete thought here. But one I’m working on.

I’ve seen it written many times by residents of Second Life that estates are the land-profit center for Linden Lab, and the loss of estates while mainland is growing is a bad thing for the health of the grid.

I’m not convinced. But I am open to seeing numbers that show me where I am missing the point.

Read more… 1,226 more words

This is a very thoughtful analysis of Mainland vs. Private Estates from the Linden Lab business perspective. The conclusion is very surprising, but hard to argue with.

Happy Rez Day To Steller Sunshine & Us!

As the story goes, Steller Sunshine signed up for the early alpha of what was then Linden World on March 12, 2002; the very first resident!

One weekend the Lindens went home without turning the servers off and she created the Climbable Bean Stalk; the very first resident build! (It is still there, some later mods have effected the build date when you inspect it, but it is the first build according to the official story). As Tateru puts it  “It was on”. Stellar went on to create the Governor Linden Mansion, also still there, with a display of historic pictures in the basement.

From the time Steller signed up until today this has not been Linden Lab’s Game, it is OUR WORLD!

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Mahatma Gandhi

Important meeting Wednesday

This is something new and profound, there will be a meeting / discussion / interview with Jessica Lyon and Oz Linden at Wednesday, March 7th at 3pm SLT. The meeting will be broadcast live over Treet.tv and questions will be accepted from the audience! To my knowledge nothing like this has happened before. Hopefully it is the first of many such attempts at interactive communication between the community and Linden Lab.

The full announcement from the Phoenix Viewer blog is copied below:

LL&TPV’s – The Interview

Mon, 05 Mar 2012

This Wednesday, March 7th at 3pm SLT. I, Jessica Lyon will be interviewing Oz Linden from Linden Lab about the third party viewer policy additions and related concerns. I will be representing the Third Party Viewer Community and the resident community during this interview, not specifically this project. This is not a Phoenix Office Hour and is very likely a one time thing.

During the first half hour of the show I will be asking Oz questions based on input I’ve received from third party viewer projects and the SL community. During the second half of the show I will ask Oz your questions providing they haven’t already been answered.

The interview will take place in a private region that will not be open to the public, however you will all be able to participate and watch on the live stream here. http://treet.tv/live.Ask your questions on the live stream and they will be forwarded to me, then I will ask them for you to Oz during the second half of the show.

This is a very rare and in many ways historic event that will hopefully answer all your questions and concerns in regards to the new policy changes. The policy affects you! so be informed! Mark your calendars, invite your friends and spread the word.

Who: Jessica Lyon and Oz Linden
What: Interview with Oz linden for clarifications on the new policy additions and how they effect you and the Third Party Viewers you use.
When: Wednesday, March 7th, 3pm SLT
Where: http://treet.tv/live
Why: Because it’s important!

Hope to see you on the stream!

Jessica Lyon
Project Manager

No return to Last Names, a disappointment

Rodvik’s decision last week not to bring back last names rings a bit hollow, especially in the face of the massive community support for returning to them (the jira post has 2453 votes and 737 watchers). His primary reason not to make a change is that it is inhibiting to new sign-ups; a valid point, but easily resolved with a simple (optional, you can do this later or not at all) in the sign-up process. One of the reasons for the changes in what is required of Third Party Viewers was that newbies were being harassed based on the viewer identified in their tag (unfortunately this has been independently verified). I am sure there is even more widespread discrimination based on “Resident”. Simply removing the Resident or .resident in as many places as possible will only help a little, we are not fools, anyone without a space in their name is a newbie! Display names only confuse things, for all practical purposes we must see actual names in order to know who someone is, display names and appearance are too ephemeral.

I suspect that one of the unspoken reasons for not re-implementing last names is that coming up with continuing supply of acceptable names is a time consuming pain in the ass for the Lindens.

A better way:

1. Allow deferred last name adoption at sign-up.
2. Create a database of names suggested by the SL community, something similar to a jira where we can not only suggest but comment on suggested names. Make it searchable and so it can be ordered alphabeticaly, by most recent, or by most recent comments. That would provide a continual supply of names for LL to choose from. Preload it with existing names (marked “taken”) and vet it occasionally would be all the maintenance LL would have to do. The list would, of course be clearly labeled as suggestions. What names are used and why is solely at LL’s discreation.

This would result in last names reflecting the time frame when names were adopted, rather than rez date but I suspect there would not be much difference.

Lastly, this IS win/win. It will get the community off your back (this will not go away until you address it constructively) and we get last names back.

Proper names are poetry in the raw.  Like all poetry they are untranslatable.  ~W.H. Auden

A Surprising Leap-Week in Second Life

You may not have noticed it, but there has been some pretty amazing stuff going on in and around Second Life this week.

Last Thursday there were new rules for Third Party Viewers announced. That had the blogs churning over the weekend. Surprisingly the articles themselves and the comments to them were mostly constructive, trying to understand what it all meant. I saw very few flame-out rants or end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions.

By Monday afternoon Oz Linden was answering questions, in detail and officially!! He was even agreeing with some of the objections and promising to make things whole again when possible. He even delayed action on part of it so they could find a better solution! Just as importantly he explained why the policies were changed! There is no need of me going into detail here, but suffice it to say there were legitimate problems to be resolved. The methods may have been heavy handed, but much of the vital functions that were lost can be recovered by doing things a different way, either in world or by LL in server code.

The “shared experience” part of the new rules can be hard to understand. It is very vague as written. Two important points: 1- LL is primarily concerned with TPV features that break on the official viewer. Features that do not work on other viewers (even LL features) are a concern of the effected viewers development team and users. 2- Oz suggested that Test Viewers, even on the main grid, would be okay; so long as the default download met the TPV requirements. This is a huge relief! TPVs have been the testbeds for several ideas that LL would never have approved in advance (avatar physics among them).

The whole air of communication and cooperation around this change has been something new in Second Life. I give a lot of credit to Oz for his efforts.

Then —— Rodvik announces a decision on last names. Basically – NO.

The new thing is that he explains why – at length. Personally I do not agree, but at least I know why the decision is as it is (for now, he dangled a carrot at the very end of his post).

If all this communication and cooperation keeps up we may get Second Life back on track!

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” Benjamin Franklin