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Filed under: Bugs, Patches, News items, Second LifeThe Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we've seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes. There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and while it has been a deprecated script function for years is still available to scripted objects.Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now availableSecond Life 1.22 (RC0) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, Events, real-world, Guilds, MMO industry, News items, Second Life, Virtual worldsAmong the people President-elect Barack Obama has appointed to his FCC agency review transition team are Net Neutrality advocates Kevin Werbach, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, and Susan Crawford from the University of Michigan, who teaches communications and internet law. Werbach, as it turns out, is a World of Warcraft player, according to Wagner James Au at GigaOM.Werbach has written about MMOs on his blog (back in 2006), that games "provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things." Werbach plays in two WoW guilds, one started by a friend, and the other is comprised of academics whose interests or work focus on virtual worlds. While Werbach is more of a traditional MMO gamer, Crawford is a fan of Second Life, judging by what she's written on the virtual world in the past on her blog. At the very least, it's a positive sign that individuals connected with the FCC and its policies really understand how people are using technology to socialize, collaborate, and play.Obama's FCC transition team includes MMO gamer, virtual world resident originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worldsOctober metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out. Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.Continue reading Second Life October metrics: More fallsSecond Life October metrics: More falls originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Economy, News items, Second Life The unprecedented decline of Second Life land area appears to be accelerating according to data from virtual world operator, Linden Lab. The net loss of simulators which totalled nearly 9,000 acres as of midnight on 10 November, has escalated to a net loss of 12,874 acres (52.1 million square metres, or 795 simulators) by midnight of 16 November. At present this represents an accelerating decline, with no sign of it bottoming out. While a number of users have requested a consolidation of four Openspaces simulators into a single ordinary simulator (which would represent an overall net loss of three simulators per consolidation) there is no data available to suggest that any of the requested consolidations have yet been processed. Linden Lab was not able to confirm for us that any such consolidations have yet taken place, so it is unlikely that they are a factor in this data. The net loss currently represents more than 6% of the total Openspaces simulators as at the time of the new pricing/product announcements.Continue reading Second Life land loss escalatesSecond Life land loss escalates originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worldsThe torrent of new users coming into Second Life is slowing, with today's signup rates now merely double the typical rates, and expected to close in the vicinity of 22,000 new signups for the day. This is all in the wake of the widespread run of a reprinted and regurgitated piece about the divorce of a UK couple. The original piece has run in hundreds of print and online outlets since the story broke last week. Even tiny local tabloids in small rural towns with little or no Internet access have pushed the story, and by and large readers responded with enthusiasm. In Scotland On Sunday, Teresa Hunter writes, "Last week's story about the divorce of a couple who met on Second Life must have been the kiss of death for the online virtual world."Continue reading The divorce heard round the worldThe divorce heard round the world originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

There is an article on web 2.0 tools, social networking and investment information. Second Life and our project on Investing InfoIsland are highlighted. the story: http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=43&issue=20081114 The section it ran in – note the art…(and picture of Maxito Ricardo) http://www.investors.com/editorial/InvestmentTools.asp

The first college fair on InfoIsland today was a great event! Thanks to Alice Burgess, Abbey Zenith, speakers (Stone Semyorka, Robby Kowalski, Sage Duncan, Vic Michalak, and Pathfinder Linden), colleges, attendees, and especially for the use of Info Island that made this all a great success. There was a lot of great networking and I learned some great tips on selling the idea of using Second Life to administrators including that we’re actually saving them money!! (thanks Sage!) Presentations also included information on taking the leap of signing up for a course being taught in SL and what the benefits are (interaction, meeting people from all over the world, trying a different medium for collaboration and presentation, etc.). Pathfinder graciously attended and spoke about several initiatives Linden Lab is doing to help support educators. -features such as ‘admin accounts’ -more reliable regAPI -’behind the firewall’ solutions from M Linden’s talk at a previous conference Thank you Pathfinder, Claudia, and other Lindens! Presentation here: pathfinder-presentation. Watch this site for further posts on the fair including machinima! Check out Flickr with the tag “infoislandcollegefair2008″ for photos.

Filed under: Patches, News items, Second LifeThe Imprudence project now has its first release candidate viewer for Second Life available, and far sooner than we expected. It's impressive work for a first release candidate as well. We've not had such a fast and smooth viewer experience since Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's series of Second Life viewers. Indeed, many of Beresford's patches are also a part of the Imprudence project. Imprudence necessarily replaces proprietary fonts with Liberation Sans and Bitstream Vera Mono, which look a little peculiar the first couple of times out, but score high on improved readability. There's no audio either, yet, as the proprietary FMOD audio system has yet to be replaced with OpenAL, but that is coming soon, we understand. As for the change from Kakadu/KDU to OpenJPEG -- this is supposed to be fractionally slower, but honestly, the whole experience was so smooth we never noticed.Continue reading Imprudence 1.0.0 RC1 availableImprudence 1.0.0 RC1 available originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Culture, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds An old saying goes "There's no such thing as bad press, so long as they spell your name right" which is normally attributed to P.T.Barnum, but there are a few quotes attributed to Barnum that weren't his, so we'll take that with a grain of salt. Right now, it seems more proper to say "There's no such thing as bad press, so long as there's a whiff of salaciousness about it." The mainstream media's spent the last few days spreading around a story about a UK couple who are getting a divorce because the husband apparently won't stop fooling around online. Maybe she was taking it too seriously. Maybe he wasn't taking it seriously enough. Either way, it is serious enough now. Now, much of the actual reporting about the couple, their situation, and Second Life (their most recent haunt) is pretty much utter tripe. Badly researched, poorly informed twaddle, really. But that doesn't matter, because it is causing a bit of a veritable torrent of new signups to Linden Lab's virtual world.Continue reading Divorce news brings surge of Second Life signupsDivorce news brings surge of Second Life signups originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Business models, Economy, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds Much has been made of a statement recently by Linden Lab's new CEO, Mark Kingdon, that 'Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.' You see, in a sense that's pretty much spot-on. Unless a premium account owns more than 512 square metres of the Linden Estate (colloquially known as the Second Life Mainland), that account is either only very small revenue for the Lab, or actually represents an ongoing cost to them. Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski said, 'The revenue we generate from premium subscriptions is largely offset by the stipends we pay out to these account holders, so this decline doesn't have a material impact on our business.' Either you're on an older premium account with a 500 Linden Dollar per week stipend grandfathered in, or you're on a newer premium account with 300/week. There's also a choice of plans, ranging from monthly to annual. Let's take a look at the relative values.Continue reading Premium accounts and the Second Life business modelPremium accounts and the Second Life business model originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

From Victoria Peterson We are proud to announce the formation of a new Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) Interest Group, the Second Life Interest Group (SLIG). SLIG was formed by unanimous vote at the November CAL Board meeting. The purpose of the group is to: Explore new ways of doing digital outreach, networking and public relations in order to promote Colorado and its libraries (including but not limited to academic, public, special, and school) on the virtual world of Second Life Build a Colorado Association of Libraries presence on Second Life through a new virtual library that will represent the combined efforts of the aforementioned Colorado libraries and their library staff. This new library, “the Sustainable Living Library” on the sim Emerald City, will represent best practices for living an ecologically conscious life. Through virtual workshops, conferences, and links to “green websites”, the community of Second Life as well as real life patrons will learn more about their environment and how to save it. The “Sustainable Living Library” will make available to the community of Second Life the online public access catalogs of Colorado libraries associated with this new library and any programs or activities that promote Colorado, its libraries, or CAL. The Mission Statement of the Sustainable Living Library: The Sustainable Living Library of Second Life is committed to creating better and healthier lives for ourselves and our children through sustainable living practices. By developing workshops, exhibits and other resources, we strive to educate our visitors about green practices and other ways to sustain healthy lives and a healthy planet. SLIG will be meeting soon in the virtual world of Second Life. Interest group members and all others are encouraged to attend this virtual meeting. In the meantime, if you’d like help opening a Second Life account and/or have any other related questions, please contact: Victoria A. Petersen: petersen.victoria@gmail.com Eileen Dumas: edumas8@gmail.com Already In-World? Visit Emerald City and see its current development! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Emerald%20City/123/62/26 Further Reading: Sustainable Living Library blog: http://sustainablelivinglibrary.blogspot.com/ Recent Press: “Libraries go green @ Emerald City”, article in the national print and online magazine, RezLibris http://www.rezlibris.com/librarianship “Mancos PL Builds Green”, ALA Tech Source Blog Interview http://tinyurl.com/ALAinterview We are looking forward to seeing many of you in-world, and to work together in the creation of CAL’s Sustainable Living Library! Cheers, Plautia Corvale Victoria A. Petersen Technology Manager Mancos Public Library 970.533.7569 skype: plautia.corvale PO Box 158, Mancos, CO 81328 http://mancos.lib.co.us/ http://librarybuildingproject.blogspot.com/ http://sustainablelivinglibrary.blogspot.com/

Filed under: Economy, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski is better known to Second Life users as Zee Linden, though we think of him more as a Zeno, after Zeno of Elea, who baffled, annoyed and amused pre-Socratic thinkers with a set of seeming paradoxes, many of which revolved around the adjustment of frames of reference and measurement -- and, whatever their original intention -- amply display the follies that arise from doing so. You can pick up all of that from yesterday's Q3 2008 world metrics from Zdanowski, entitled 'Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September'. You might want to check September's published figures against that report, and see if you agree with 'unusually strong'.Continue reading Second Life's "unusually strong" SeptemberSecond Life's "unusually strong" September originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: Business models, Economy, News items, Second Life, Virtual worldsSince the announcement of Openspaces 3.0 product pricing for Second Life (and the subsequent update to a reduced specification Openspaces 4.0 product), Linden Lab has seen its virtual world shrink for the first time on record with a net loss of 24.05 million square metres (a little less than 6,000 acres). That's a net loss, so however many new simulators have been brought online since the beginning of the month, those gains have been canceled out by customers dumping land, and an additional 24 million square metres have been lost. During its Q2 2008 report, Linden Lab identified the (now deprecated) Openspaces 2.0 product as a primary growth driver. It isn't presently clear how long this downward trend will last. So far, those net losses amount to just 2.8% of the total Openspaces 2.0 product that are actually out there on the Second Life grid. Many owners, however, have said that they intend to hang on to their void simulators for as long as possible, and dump them just before the jump to Openspaces 4.0 (or Homesteads 1.0) becomes mandatory. It remains to be seen if the Lab can shake off the chill and push those figures up in the latter half of the month. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. Continue reading Chilly policy reception causes exceptional Second Life shrinkageChilly policy reception causes exceptional Second Life shrinkage originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worldsYou could be forgiven for having forgotten about the Linden Prize already, given that it's been four months since it was announced by Mitch Kapor. Nevertheless, we weren't entirely surprised to see Linden Lab reannounce it, this time with some actual details, terms and conditions. The fundamentals of the prize seem to remain unchanged. It is US$10,000 worth of Linden Dollars for (as Kapor put it) 'superlative achievement exemplifying the mission "elevating the human condition" through using Second Life.' The terms and conditions now make eligibility somewhat more precise.Continue reading Linden Prize reannouncedLinden Prize reannounced originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Clark Abismo DATE: November 7, 2008 EMAIL: rezlibris@gmail.com RezLibris launches first SL library Magazine The staff of RezLibris Magazine is proud to announce the launch of the first publication devoted to librarians and information professionals in Second Life. Featuring articles and columns written by and about librarians and those in related fields, RezLibris aims to provide news, entertainment, and events coverage of the library community and Information Archipelago. Monthly issues will be available for viewing at http://www.rezlibris.com and quarterly in-world print editions will be distributed commencing in March, 2008. Starting with its November 2008 online issue, updated articles will be posted the first Sunday of each month. Many interactive features will be included in the website edition including machinima and slide shows. Regular columns will consist of articles on the various types of libraries: public, academic, special, and world libraries; up-to-date news happenings for Info Island; coverage of library institutions and organizations such as ALA, SLA, and Alliance Library Systems; an Arts and Entertainment section with reviews of art exhibits, museums, film/theater, music, fashion, and books; an immersion section featuring role-playing sims and genre-specific libraries, i.e. Mystery Manor and Sci Fi Portal; real life stories and profiles; a teen section; and an Ask the Librarian column. Submissions and suggestions are always welcome. RezLibris is currently supported solely by volunteer work and donations. For information on advertising in the online or print editions, contact Sifriya Devin, Ad Manager, by IM or at sifriya.devin@gmail.com. RezLibris Magazine http://www.rezlibris.com SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City/146/152/24/?title=RezLibris%20Magazine Email: rezlibris@gmail.com Join our SL group: RezLibris Readers Clark Abismo, Publisher Dulcie Mills, Associate Publisher

Filed under: Interviews, Second LifeLinden Lab announced that it has signed on interactive design agency, Big Spaceship, as a key part of its strategy to rework the user-experience, user-interface and signup system for Second Life. The project has been dubbed the UX (User eXperience) project. Big Spaceship, in fact, has apparently been onboard with the Lab for some little while now -- we're only really just hearing about it. We had the opportunity to steal a bit of time with Benjamin Linden (otherwise known as Ben Glenn) who is a Director on Linden Lab's User Experience team and talk to him about Big Spaceship's involvement. Ben is primarily responsible for the user interface design of the Second Life viewer. Along the way we learned a lot about the Lab's reasoning behind this project, the goals they were shooting towards, and how they intended to achieve them.Continue reading A chat with Benjamin Linden: LL and Big Spaceship collaborate on user-experienceA chat with Benjamin Linden: LL and Big Spaceship collaborate on user-experience originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Second LifeOne of the latest additions to the Linden Lab team is Amanda van Nuys, now the director of Enterprise Marketing at Linden Lab. I don't think there's any prizes for guessing that van Nuys was hired by Mark Kingdon, the Lab's new CEO, as she spent five and a half years as vice-president of Corporate Marketing at Kingdon's old haunt at Organic Inc. 'I'm leading the marketing charge when it comes to how companies can use virtual world technologies -- powered by the Second Life Grid -- to communicate, collaborate, and learn,' said van Nuys, 'Needless to say, the possibilities are endless and the timing is perfect. With the current economic downturn, companies are going to be searching for ways to reduce costs (particularly travel), increase innovation, and conduct business in more eco-friendly ways.' Opinion is divided at the moment on whether the economic downturn pushes enterprises towards or away from virtual worlds. It might be another six months before we really start to see an indication of which. Nevertheless with the Enterprise Marketing team continuing to grow at the Lab, it doesn't seem like a stretch that Kingdon would poach someone with a skillset and record that he knows well. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. Linden Lab's new Organic enterprise marketer originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Don't remember Bob? This is his ninth 'appearance'. Bob's strips are tagged for your convenience.

College Fair at Alliance Virtual Library! Representatives from colleges and universities will gather on Info Island, Sunday November 16th between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM SLT to speak with Second Life residents about attending college. Explore colleges and universities you may not have a chance to visit by taking this opportunity to talk to a wide range of postsecondary institutions to discuss course offerings, admission and financial aid requirements, college life and other information that will aid in the college selection process. Scheduled Speakers for the event are listed at the following URL: http://infoisland.org/college-fair-participants/ Please join us Sunday, November 16, 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM SLT Alliance Virtual Library http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/128/128/2