According a post of Reuters, virtual companies like the Electric Sheep company, are loosing interest in Second Life®, as "...new virtual world platforms coming online and Second Life® noticeably lacking in buzz for consumer-facing brands in the real world, some of the most well-known MDCs are publicly criticizing Linden Lab for shortcomings in technology and usability."
The Electric Sheep company has produced one of the most visible projects, as the CSI:NY-project.
According Reuters, the company encountered some difficulties due to a lack of native programming support, which made it difficult to bring new avatars into Second Life® already wearing themed clothes, nor was it possible to auto-enroll viewers in a CSI-themed group without special assistance from Linden Lab not generally available to developers.
“Second Life is just not at production level,” Giff Constable, the chief operating officer of Electric Sheep, would have said to Reuters. “You want to things to be bulletproof when you’re working with a global brand … I don’t know if we’d do it in Second Life the next time.”
On the contrary, Millions of Us, stated that they wouldn't hesitate to go into Second Life® again, despite its much publicized travails, but has his very loyal users, said Mat Small, who worked on Second Life® projects with Toyota, Intel and Cisco. But the growth right now is more youth-centric, like Habbo Hotel and Gaia.
In a reaction to this article in Reuters, Giff Constable said that they had indeed some difficulties with the CSI project, but that the numbers were good, and they still get 4,000 visitors a week coming to the experience even months after the October episode. Linden Lab® worked hard with the Electric Sheep company to make that launch as successful as it could be, and they appreciate that effort.
Although Constable did say that Second Life® still has a ways to go in terms of usability, accessibility, stability and performance, they have planned at least one project this year, but they are also focussing on Web-based technologies while Second Life® continues to make progress.
So, after all, not all the virtual agencies, are not that dissatisfied about Second Life® after all, but are not blind for the competition who makes their progress too.
It can only be a clear signal to Linden Lab®, that they know what their challenges are, if they were not already aware of that.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The end of the Nicholaz viewer.
I have been using the Nicholaz viewer in the past, and was very pleased with it until the Windlight viewer cam out and I switched. But I know there are many bugs etc. fixed thanks to this viewer.
Due to the lack of interest to open sources, Nicholaz has thrown the towel.
He had still the courage to start all over again with the latest official viewer, but got no support in the past from our dearest Californian friends, and therefore took the decision to stop the development of the Nicholaz viewer, and with that, an important bug fixer.
"In technical terms, with the current state of the 2nd world, like daily outages on the server, new leaks in the viewer, other problems, it would be like starting all over and probably even worse because now the binary crash reporter is removed from the viewer (this was the tool which I used to locate 90% of the crashes I found)."
It is sad to see that even people who found it interesting enough in the past to spend time in development, to make this virtual world a better world, now have to realize that Linden Lab® does not care for those "free helpers".
They don't care about their customers (residents), they don't care about their open sources, what do they care about? Maybe it is time to look out for something else?
Reading a recent article in a Belgian online magazine "Knack", it appears that the youth is more interested in "myspace" and 'facebook" than in "Second Life®" and other virtual worlds. The more Facebook and your hundreds of friends present a real and for free interactivity, in which everyone is easily identifiable, the more clear it becomes that Second Life® remain anonymously and virtual. On Second Life®, which is not so popular in Belgium, according the magazine, you play less and hang around longer, without real identity or aim. The profiles on Facebook on the other hand, are easier identifiable.
When our youth is not interested anymore in the virtual world, what will the future bring us?
Looking back to the recent changes in Second Life®, 2008 may become the most important year in the history of this virtual world. When they won't support the open sources, as they did in the past by accepting code submissions, the more difficult it will become to gain new users, new residents, who are interested in looking for answers to a better virtual world.
I hope they will finally realize what is important and what isn't.
Making new rules will have no effect, when there are no players to follow those rules.
Due to the lack of interest to open sources, Nicholaz has thrown the towel.
He had still the courage to start all over again with the latest official viewer, but got no support in the past from our dearest Californian friends, and therefore took the decision to stop the development of the Nicholaz viewer, and with that, an important bug fixer.
"In technical terms, with the current state of the 2nd world, like daily outages on the server, new leaks in the viewer, other problems, it would be like starting all over and probably even worse because now the binary crash reporter is removed from the viewer (this was the tool which I used to locate 90% of the crashes I found)."
It is sad to see that even people who found it interesting enough in the past to spend time in development, to make this virtual world a better world, now have to realize that Linden Lab® does not care for those "free helpers".
They don't care about their customers (residents), they don't care about their open sources, what do they care about? Maybe it is time to look out for something else?
Reading a recent article in a Belgian online magazine "Knack", it appears that the youth is more interested in "myspace" and 'facebook" than in "Second Life®" and other virtual worlds. The more Facebook and your hundreds of friends present a real and for free interactivity, in which everyone is easily identifiable, the more clear it becomes that Second Life® remain anonymously and virtual. On Second Life®, which is not so popular in Belgium, according the magazine, you play less and hang around longer, without real identity or aim. The profiles on Facebook on the other hand, are easier identifiable.
When our youth is not interested anymore in the virtual world, what will the future bring us?
Looking back to the recent changes in Second Life®, 2008 may become the most important year in the history of this virtual world. When they won't support the open sources, as they did in the past by accepting code submissions, the more difficult it will become to gain new users, new residents, who are interested in looking for answers to a better virtual world.
I hope they will finally realize what is important and what isn't.
Making new rules will have no effect, when there are no players to follow those rules.
Virtual Worlds Marketing
In a previous post I wrote about the "Virtual Worlds 2008", and the discussion about advertising where Anthony Van Zyl, was one of the speakers. I introduced Anthony Van Zyl as being the Managing Director of Simuality, the sim where Avatrait Gallery is part of, but also Managing Director of Slippcat.Slippcat is a new company, which is in fact an exclusive 5-year license, with Simuality and Code4Software, creator of virtual worlds metrics app V-Tracker.
SlippCat is a market platform designed to take "the strengths of the Metaverse, immersive environments, in-depth user engagement, and virtual economies, to build Empowered Engagement(TM), a "pull" approach to message delivery where the user is in control of how much information they're exposed to, while still building relationships with participating brands." Code4 founder Jared Freeman will also join Simuality as its CTO.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Superfast internet coming soon
Today's Internet will eventually be obsolete thanks to the grid computing project from CERN, the same research center that bought us the current Internet. The Grid is 10,000 times faster than a typical high-speed broadband connection.
The Grid was developed out of the project of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. CERN’s LHC requires massive computing power.
LHC will generate an annual data equivalent of 56 million CDs (enough to make a stack 40 miles high). So, they needed a new advanced system to save and analyze the data. Thus, the grid was born.
The Grid was developed out of the project of Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. CERN’s LHC requires massive computing power.
LHC will generate an annual data equivalent of 56 million CDs (enough to make a stack 40 miles high). So, they needed a new advanced system to save and analyze the data. Thus, the grid was born.
“We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at CERN. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centers in other countries.”
The old Internet is linked together by a series of cables and routing equipment originally designed for telephone calls (hence lack the capacity for high speed data transmission required for high definition movies, online gaming, holographic images, data from astronomy and others).
The new grid, on the other hand, will have dedicated fiber optic cables and modern routing centers and will be able to transmit data in mere seconds compared to hours or days.
"Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so."
Monday, March 31, 2008
The curtain is falling....
As explained in my previous post also, many residents are confused by the latest Terms of Service by LL.
As Tateru Nino wrote in his blog : "....The Terms of Service change in that context gives the impression of being a veiled threat. It's more than that, though -- it commands you to give up your rights to nominative fair use where that use conflicts with Linden Lab's laundry list of legalese. Or else. This pulls the matter right out of the arena of trademark law, and back into contractual law, with enforcement by the governance team...."
To me, it looks quite clear, we all must object to that ToS, although you have probably agreed by signing in after monday, when the new ToS was integrated.
Some organisations already decided not to go on, under the current conditions.
Second Life ballet is one of them. The ballet, which is very well known by now, has been promoting SL since the beginning, is a non-profit organisation, and even had the occasional participation of Linden Labs employees.
The two leading people of the ballet, Espresso and Inarra Saarinen, decided for legal reasons that they cannot agree to the new Terms of Service for Second Life, and so will not log into the virtual world. That means no performances of the Second Life ballet for the moment.
You can read the full article on "Second Life Herald"
Other blogs, as the "Second Life Crew", a Belgian blog, is urgently looking for a new name. Any suggestions are welcome.;)
That is the result when you have lawyers, who are to decide the strategy, instead of marketeers.
"Clearly, the company needs better operational management. Clearly, the company needs experienced, professional management to make it run smoothly on all fronts, tactically and strategically. Clearly the company needs better systems to ensure stability and reliability of the Grid, a better resident experience, and improved development and deployment of server and client software."Arifi Saeed wrote in his latest blogpost, which was written before the trademark affair, and was in fact an article in which way Second Life can move with a new CEO, but is an interesting post to read, especially in these circumstances.;)
As Tateru Nino wrote in his blog : "....The Terms of Service change in that context gives the impression of being a veiled threat. It's more than that, though -- it commands you to give up your rights to nominative fair use where that use conflicts with Linden Lab's laundry list of legalese. Or else. This pulls the matter right out of the arena of trademark law, and back into contractual law, with enforcement by the governance team...."
To me, it looks quite clear, we all must object to that ToS, although you have probably agreed by signing in after monday, when the new ToS was integrated.
Some organisations already decided not to go on, under the current conditions.
Second Life ballet is one of them. The ballet, which is very well known by now, has been promoting SL since the beginning, is a non-profit organisation, and even had the occasional participation of Linden Labs employees.
The two leading people of the ballet, Espresso and Inarra Saarinen, decided for legal reasons that they cannot agree to the new Terms of Service for Second Life, and so will not log into the virtual world. That means no performances of the Second Life ballet for the moment.
You can read the full article on "Second Life Herald"
Other blogs, as the "Second Life Crew", a Belgian blog, is urgently looking for a new name. Any suggestions are welcome.;)
That is the result when you have lawyers, who are to decide the strategy, instead of marketeers.
"Clearly, the company needs better operational management. Clearly, the company needs experienced, professional management to make it run smoothly on all fronts, tactically and strategically. Clearly the company needs better systems to ensure stability and reliability of the Grid, a better resident experience, and improved development and deployment of server and client software."Arifi Saeed wrote in his latest blogpost, which was written before the trademark affair, and was in fact an article in which way Second Life can move with a new CEO, but is an interesting post to read, especially in these circumstances.;)
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Spin Lounge is no more!!
Every sunday night there was a party at the Spin Lounge. I even advertised for some of those parties.
I had my rezzday party at the Spin Lounge, with the performance of Preciousse Moody. I think it was the only live performance at the lounge club. Well now, it is no more.The islands Strawberry and Peachez were sold by Coolzor Courier.
The Strawberry island was sold to our new landlord, Arifi Saeed and Peachez to an SL real estate company.
Arifi Saeed is Research Director, Second Life®, for Canopus Research Inc. The headquarter is located on the Long Island sim.
The company offers industry analysis and market research on the IT industry broadly.
I met Arifi yesterday for the first time, as I own a piece of land on Strawberry and some details had
to be discussed. You know, new owners, new rules, ;))So, it will be no more Strawberry island, which was already confusing, as the name existed already, but it will be called Canopus island in a couple of days.
The near future will tell if I will still have my home there, as I was not able to do anything this evening on Second Life® ;), and I could not reboot due to maintenance (???? on a Sunday??) of the grid, or crash of one of the servers.
In the meanwhile I keep hearing confusing voices about the ® and the™. Nobody knows what the future will bring us. The more I think about it, the more I believe that they (you know who) will urgently need a new marketing adviser, where they will listen to!!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A new brand logo for Second Life®
Don't panic yet, but Linden Lab has a new brand logo to promote your involvement in the Second Life world with the inSL logo.
It seems a bit confusing and complicated, but it should not be. The new logo is to help outsiders understand that you are working inworld with a product or business. But what is more, with the logo you have guidelines, what you can do and what you can not.
It is not my intention to write about every possibility, but there are some you may find interesting. And I am wondering how some blogs will change their names, or stop their activities after reading all the guidelines referring to the trademarks.
The good news comes first of course when to use the logo: you can use the logo when you have marketing services in SL, you teach an architecture course, your profile page on your social networking page shows your name, you've released on cd an album of your piano performances inworld, you publish a blog about scripting in the Second Life environment. These are some examples given by Linden Lab.
Do read the guidelines though, to know when to use the new logo properly.
But when going through all the terms and guidelines I also found this:
Unauthorized uses of Linden Lab's Trademarks
under the paragraph "No use in Second-Level Domain names" there is a list of examples which are not allowed.
"This is NOT OK:
secondlife.net
secondlife.de
2ndlife.com
secondlife-grid.com
chinasecondlife.com
secondlifesoftware.com
secondlifetutorials.com
lindenworld.com"
and further under "No Adaptation or Registration", which explains never to modify, imitate, or register any Linden Lab trademark, including but not limited to the Second Life brand name, the Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo, and the tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.", including a list:
"This is NOT OK:
2nd Life (can't shorten "Second Life")
2Life (no "Second Life" abbreviations)
Second-Life (can't hyphenate "Second Life")
Segunda Vida (no Spanish equivalent of "Second Life")
Zweites Leben (can't make a German equivalent)
第二生命 (no Chinese equivalent)
第二の人生 (no Japanese equivalent)
Your World. Your Voice. (can't imitate our tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.")"
I know and understand that there have to be rules and guidelines, but I wonder how the names that already exists for quiet some time, should change and how they will communicate this .
Also we, bloggers, will have to be prudent how to use the names and logos.
Although we only report about that virtual world, I don't see why we can not use the names and logos if it is justified.
I will now write about my third life, and I am glad that my name is Looker Lumet and not LL, or would that be a problem too?;)
Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended
It seems a bit confusing and complicated, but it should not be. The new logo is to help outsiders understand that you are working inworld with a product or business. But what is more, with the logo you have guidelines, what you can do and what you can not.
It is not my intention to write about every possibility, but there are some you may find interesting. And I am wondering how some blogs will change their names, or stop their activities after reading all the guidelines referring to the trademarks.
The good news comes first of course when to use the logo: you can use the logo when you have marketing services in SL, you teach an architecture course, your profile page on your social networking page shows your name, you've released on cd an album of your piano performances inworld, you publish a blog about scripting in the Second Life environment. These are some examples given by Linden Lab.
Do read the guidelines though, to know when to use the new logo properly.
But when going through all the terms and guidelines I also found this:
Unauthorized uses of Linden Lab's Trademarks
under the paragraph "No use in Second-Level Domain names" there is a list of examples which are not allowed.
"This is NOT OK:
secondlife.net
secondlife.de
2ndlife.com
secondlife-grid.com
chinasecondlife.com
secondlifesoftware.com
secondlifetutorials.com
lindenworld.com"
and further under "No Adaptation or Registration", which explains never to modify, imitate, or register any Linden Lab trademark, including but not limited to the Second Life brand name, the Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo, and the tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.", including a list:
"This is NOT OK:
2nd Life (can't shorten "Second Life")
2Life (no "Second Life" abbreviations)
Second-Life (can't hyphenate "Second Life")
Segunda Vida (no Spanish equivalent of "Second Life")
Zweites Leben (can't make a German equivalent)
第二生命 (no Chinese equivalent)
第二の人生 (no Japanese equivalent)
Your World. Your Voice. (can't imitate our tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.")"
I know and understand that there have to be rules and guidelines, but I wonder how the names that already exists for quiet some time, should change and how they will communicate this .
Also we, bloggers, will have to be prudent how to use the names and logos.
Although we only report about that virtual world, I don't see why we can not use the names and logos if it is justified.
I will now write about my third life, and I am glad that my name is Looker Lumet and not LL, or would that be a problem too?;)
Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended
Saturday, March 22, 2008
CosmoGIRL, There and Marketing in Virtual Worlds
From Metanomics:
This Monday, March 24th, 2008, at 11:00AM-12:00PM SLT (2:00-3:00PM EST), Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will broadcast from There.com to discuss CosmoGIRL. We will be joined by:
- Morgan Brooks, Associate Promotion Manager, CosmoGirl! (CG_Host_Morgan)
- Michael Wilson, CEO, There.com
- Mary Ellen Gordon, Managing Director of Market Truths Ltd.
This esteemed panel will be moderated by Accounting Professor Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University Business School and will discuss:
- CosmoGIRL's plans in There, their vision for success
- CosmoGIRL's upcoming 'virtual prom'
- How There provides support for ComsoGIRL
- Marketing in virtual worlds: demographics & psychographics
- Personnel changes at Linden Labs
- Effect of Wall Street financial crisis on investment in the virtual world industry
Monday's event will take place in There.com, at the CosmoGIRL stage. It will also be broadcast in Second Life on the 4-Sim CMP Amphitheatre on CMP Island as well as by our event partners, and filmed and streamed live on SLCN.tv.
One of the event partner locations:
Venue: MetaPartners Conference Area
Host: Frans Tomsen
Notes: MetaPartners is a Belgian communications company, specialised in the B2B integration of virtual and real world communication tools
SLUrl: http://tinyurl.com/2w4ctx
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The one million dollar idea!! Dedric Mauriac into the finals!
On December the 20th I posted a press release from OSRAM, who had introduced a contest for a one million dollar idea. The special feature of the contest was that the best idea will not only receive a prize, but will also be turned into an actual product in real world. The lucky winner will receive a million Linden dollars for the development.
One of the first readers who reacted on my blog was Dedric Mauriac, a colleague blogger, and he participated the contest.
I received a short message from him, just a while ago, that he was given 75.000 L$ by OSRAM, and that he made it to the finals!!
Congratulations Dedric!! And good luck in the finals!
article on bloghud:
"Assembling my pieces together, I created a large star as a lawn ornament in my million dollar linden idea. I even created a chunk of grass patched with dirt under it to demonstrate how the support piece is inserted into the grass for more stability. This has got to be one of the most prim-heavy models I have ever made. I had to work with micro-prims to get all the the LED's small enough to size down to the products actual size. When I was originally working with the star, I had different pieces for each angle. In the end, I made one piece that as adjustable to fit any angle. This made the star easier to assemble. A cord that powers the star can be seen behind it running along to the wall."
One of the first readers who reacted on my blog was Dedric Mauriac, a colleague blogger, and he participated the contest.
I received a short message from him, just a while ago, that he was given 75.000 L$ by OSRAM, and that he made it to the finals!!
Congratulations Dedric!! And good luck in the finals!
A glowing star
article on bloghud:
"Assembling my pieces together, I created a large star as a lawn ornament in my million dollar linden idea. I even created a chunk of grass patched with dirt under it to demonstrate how the support piece is inserted into the grass for more stability. This has got to be one of the most prim-heavy models I have ever made. I had to work with micro-prims to get all the the LED's small enough to size down to the products actual size. When I was originally working with the star, I had different pieces for each angle. In the end, I made one piece that as adjustable to fit any angle. This made the star easier to assemble. A cord that powers the star can be seen behind it running along to the wall."
SL Educators have a new resource!
Okay, it might not be the latest news, but interesting enough to mention it here.
There is now a SLED blog for Second Life Educators. It seems that this community has grown over 4.700 members.
The blog, announced on the official blog, will feature and highlight EDU-oriented events, tools, bright ideas, awesome groups and locations, expert opinions, pointers to tutorials and papers, and insider views on life in Teen Second Life.
The Lindens have asked a RL university instructor to edit the blog, so we can expect some high educational information to be posted.
The first article I stumbled upon was about a bright idea, coming out of the new feature of the SL candidate viewer.
Torley made a video tutorial about how to play movies, webpages and more. Watch it here.
Now, you would also have the ability to view multiple images without having to pay for and upload each image. This would give us more capabilities for showing our images, without having to pay 10L$ for every single picture that we need to upload, but with the only exception that you would show them in a presentation, which would be nice and money saving for students, teachers etc. for showing reports or so. You can read it here.
But the good thing is, that we constantly see progress in the development of our precious Second Life
There is now a SLED blog for Second Life Educators. It seems that this community has grown over 4.700 members.
The blog, announced on the official blog, will feature and highlight EDU-oriented events, tools, bright ideas, awesome groups and locations, expert opinions, pointers to tutorials and papers, and insider views on life in Teen Second Life.
The Lindens have asked a RL university instructor to edit the blog, so we can expect some high educational information to be posted.
The first article I stumbled upon was about a bright idea, coming out of the new feature of the SL candidate viewer.
Torley made a video tutorial about how to play movies, webpages and more. Watch it here.
Now, you would also have the ability to view multiple images without having to pay for and upload each image. This would give us more capabilities for showing our images, without having to pay 10L$ for every single picture that we need to upload, but with the only exception that you would show them in a presentation, which would be nice and money saving for students, teachers etc. for showing reports or so. You can read it here.
But the good thing is, that we constantly see progress in the development of our precious Second Life
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Dinosaurs extincted in Second Life
I was witness of a great spectacle on the Liberty Sim last Thursday!The Dino's were going to be extincted, and was announced in all Rezzable media. So, I had to be there, but there was a small problem...I could not get there.
I visited instead the Toxic Garden, which is a great place, but did not really visited it yet, because there was something bigger going on at the moment.
Once out in the garden, I tried to move my camera over the trees to the neighbor sim, where the dinosaurs had a wonderful life, until now. They had to be eliminated in a way: meteor showers, acid rain a colored space mothership crashing between the skeletons.Nothing seen something like it in Second Life before.
It was great to experience that my camera could go as far as that sim. I could even make close ups of the avatars who were watching the event from the different stake outs.
Unfortunately I arrived a little bit late, and before I realized what was going on, and set up my camera for all those different things, although it was repeated several times, the show was over.
It was not easy to move the camera as I wanted, not everything was rezzed in time to take the shots, but I managed to make some wonderful memorable pictures from an already milestone in the history of Second Life.
More of my pictures can be seen on the flickr stream or also on the Rezzable flickr stream.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Hospital of the Future in Second Life
“Virtual Palomar West in Second Life, an architectural and conceptual visualization of The Hospital of the Future opening in 2011. Powered by a Cisco Medical-Grade Network that converges information and communications technology along with clinical and building automation systems onto a single network, Palomar West will transform the future of healthcare as we know it. Palomar West is a showcase of architectural and medical technology innovations driven by flexibility for efficiency, environmental conservation, and patient and staff comfort. Experience The Hospital of the Future— today!”
The design of the hospital is modern, and the Second Life version of the hospital is a model of the physical campus that will be built (by the year 2011) in San Diego, California, packed with the medical-grade Cisco technology.
A collaborative Connected Health community uses Cisco Medical-Grade Network solutions to help improve caregiver efficiencies and enhance the patient experience.
Watch the video to see what they are planning to build in RL.
It is another piece of excellence with what they have accomplished in Second Life. And besides this application in healthcare, it could also be an opportunity for architects to visit the virtual building they have created on paper before having it built.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Dazzle, a new "First Look" viewer for Second Life
Who is saying that there is no progress in the development of Second Life?
Well, Torley announced a new first look viewer: The Dazzle viewer. It is not that much difference as the regular viewer, but it should look a bit better, it will improve Second Life’s appearance, which makes the UI (User Interface) more accessible and pleasing. And that is what we are all interested in, isn’t it?
These are the goals for the new viewer:- Improve visual appearance with modern UI graphics and icons
- Improve discoverability through expanded use of iconography
- Improve approachability with a lighter, friendlier color scheme
- Improve legibility by using dark text on light backgrounds
- Document technical limitations of current skinning capabilities
Now, as you could read, it is a “First Look”, so it means it can be improved, and is just a try-out. Don’t shoot
This “Dazzle” viewer is supposed to increase the usability, and can be used, for now, next to the regular viewer, so you will be able to switch from viewer.
Take a look at the official blog and, and if you are interested to try it out, you can also download it from the blog or here.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The AjaxLife interface
It has been quite some time that I was trying out the AjaxLife, a web based viewer for the Second Life, made by a teenager Katharine Berry. It must have been from July, and it was, at that time, difficult to log in, and when you were in, it was pretty basic. But it was, and still is, amazing to see what this youngster had accomplished.Now AjaxLife 0.1.1 has been released, highlights include inventory item giving, the lack of constant rotation, and the beginnings of inventory organization. She has even put up an issue tracker, to improve her interface.
I thought it was going to be a quiet death for the AjaxLife, and to be honest, I did not checked it out since then. She found herself some important sponsors, giving her the possibility to go ahead with her development, which is great news for this talented young woman.
Back in November she posted “The End”:
“Following proof that there is nothing left for me in SL, both from an earlier discussion and a recent event, I’ve decided to go out entirely…… I’ve cancelled my account. AjaxLife development will stop, and the public service will be terminated.”
But after only four days she has put the AjaxLife back online, and it has been working ever since, and as mentioned before, with some generous donations, she will be able to continue her work.
So, being convinced that we did not see the last of her, and encouraging her to improve the thing that she started, I will look forward to what she has still to offer in the near future.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Second Life photo contest
What does mean "Exotic" in your Second Life?
Maybe Exotic is a beach under the sun or a sensual dancer in a sexy club. Exotic could be a landscape manipulated with Windlight or just your avatar with extravagant hair!
This Contest is about the concept of Exotic in Second Life! Don't be shy, tell us what Exotic is for you and submit your photos!
You can submit your entries from February, 14 until March, 6.
The winners will be announced on March, 13 on the Koinup Blog
Read the rules to enjoy and win amazing prices!
Rules and Guidelines
If you wan to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup.
The registration is free and takes a few seconds.
All the submissions in the contest must be tagged with this tag: exoticcontest
(add this tag to each one of your contest entries)
Maximum 2 entries for participant.
In the photo, you can include your avie, your friends or only the landscape.
Submissions must to be screen shots from Second Life. You can use Windlight or you can post process your photos if you like, but it's not required.
Submissions can't be photos already hosted on Koinup. So, please publish new photos.
The Winners
There will be 3 winners, and each one wins 20000 L$.
Two will be selected by our judges and one by the community!
Our Judges are the best known blogger and journalist Hamlet Au and Mario Gerosa, journalist and author of the volume "Second Life".
The community has the chance to view, comments and fav the entries... So invite your friends to visit the contest page and express their preferences!
The coolest entry, according to the Koinup Guidelines, will be the third winner.
The winners photos will be published on the Hamlet Au Blog
This announcement was found on the Koinup log in page and could be something for all of you who want to give it a shot. The prizes are not bad though, but the rules......you have on one side the jury, and on the other the community, and that is just where I have my doubts, as, if you don't have a big social network you are already on the loser's side, even if your pic is good.
But giving it the benefit of the doubt, I think I will submit two of my pictures, as I can do some effort to win 20.000L$, don't you think so?;)
Looker Lumet in the Avastar
Well, it was not really me but some of my pictures, taken at the première of Noelani's machinima last week (see previous posts) , that were published in the latest issue of The Avastar.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
First Look : Windlight Viewer (issue)!!!
Good news: there is a new Windlight viewer with fixed bugs to be downloaded here.
The official Linden blog reports this new update with the list of fixed bugs, which is of course good news.
Although......I am very disappointed.
I know...I hear you all say...there he is again. Sorry to repeat it, but the bug which makes me crash all the time, is not fixed yet.;((((
I understand, you will probably not have the same issue as I have lately, but I can assure you, it is not very pleasant to crash 12 times in 2 hours.
The only thing that I can do is to blog about it and to ask your help, so that Linden will do something about it.
I have noticed that my neighbour at Strawberry, Ponk Bing, has reported the very same issue already, so, all I need to do, is find as much support as possible, to vote for this issue to fix.
As you will probably know by now, the bugs can be reported through the issue tracker, also known as the Jira Issue tracker.
The description of the failure VWR-4361 is : "On holding Alt and clicking on an object or avatar whether near or far, even myself to move the camera, I often crash to the desktop.
This appears fairly randomly, but can strike at any time anywhere. Error reports are always sent and it's happening with increasing frequency. "
Now, I would like to ask if the readers of this article would possibly vote on this issue, so that Linden Lab would notice that it is a serious problem, for me at least ;) and my neighbour, and that we would be grateful to have this issue fixed as soon as possible.
Just follow the link , be sure to log in with your SL account, and then you can vote ( at the left side of the page). It would be highly appreciated if you, my readers, would help me in this issue.
I can not imagine that only a few residents have encountered this problem so far.
Thank you in advance!!
The official Linden blog reports this new update with the list of fixed bugs, which is of course good news.
Although......I am very disappointed.
I know...I hear you all say...there he is again. Sorry to repeat it, but the bug which makes me crash all the time, is not fixed yet.;((((
I understand, you will probably not have the same issue as I have lately, but I can assure you, it is not very pleasant to crash 12 times in 2 hours.
The only thing that I can do is to blog about it and to ask your help, so that Linden will do something about it.
I have noticed that my neighbour at Strawberry, Ponk Bing, has reported the very same issue already, so, all I need to do, is find as much support as possible, to vote for this issue to fix.
As you will probably know by now, the bugs can be reported through the issue tracker, also known as the Jira Issue tracker.
The description of the failure VWR-4361 is : "On holding Alt and clicking on an object or avatar whether near or far, even myself to move the camera, I often crash to the desktop.
This appears fairly randomly, but can strike at any time anywhere. Error reports are always sent and it's happening with increasing frequency. "
Now, I would like to ask if the readers of this article would possibly vote on this issue, so that Linden Lab would notice that it is a serious problem, for me at least ;) and my neighbour, and that we would be grateful to have this issue fixed as soon as possible.
Just follow the link , be sure to log in with your SL account, and then you can vote ( at the left side of the page). It would be highly appreciated if you, my readers, would help me in this issue.
I can not imagine that only a few residents have encountered this problem so far.
Thank you in advance!!
Friday, February 8, 2008
Virtual Theft In Second Life
Reading an article on Reuters about theft in Second Life, it seems to become really annoying for creators, who put a lot of energy in developing something, and then see how someone else is running off with their ideas, their products and, as result of that, with their money.
Those thieves are even so arrogant, that they invite the creator to join their group, to register in SL again, every time they are banned with a different name.
Millions of dollars are circulating in SL, without having a police to investigate possible crimes or laws for them to enforce.
As Second Life is a free-account-based virtual world, pirates are becoming increasingly brazen in their activities.
In the past there were already some lawsuits for similar cases, but all parties involved were based in the
This person is a German citizen; who even suspect he’s being copied by a national of neither the
Linden Lab Linden has a detailed page with instructions on how to file a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which provides a mechanism for copyright-holders to seek relief if their designs are copied online, but will avoid disputes between avatars.
There was recently a blog post called ”Better Than Free” written by Kevin Kelly, who is an editor-at-large for “Wired”, and lays out some interesting assertions:
“The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times….. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere.
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”
He describes his eight “generatives” that he believes will be the ways in which individuals and organizations can generate value:
"….A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced.
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability"
Interesting story, interesting thought….
/me taking back my old typewriter, not to leave any trace on my pc, and changing the black ink lint after every article, so nothing will be traceable anymore.
Ooooh how I love the technical progress in our modern society!!!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Short notice upgrade for Second Life
It is not my intention of posting notices about upgradings from the grid, but this one could interest all of the European residents, as Linden Lab has planned to do an update of the central servers, which means that we could face some troubles getting into Second life this evening. The update will take place between 10.30 AM and noon SLT.
The second item is that there will be a 5 hour rolling restart commencing from appr. 2.30 PM SLT, but expecting to last a bit longer.
Info from Massively.com and Second Life.
As you know I upgraded my PC up to 2,5 Mb Ram memory, but nevertheless, I keep crashing, even more than before. On Sunday I crashed five times in a row, right after being connected to the grid, so...bye bye notices, IM's. Yesterday, the same thing happened, but only three times. What an improvement!;)
And thanks to my extended RAM memory, I now crash from one second to another, where it used to take quiet some time, before I could try to log in again. W00t!! What an improvement! ;)
But reading the post of Tateru Nino, none of these bugs will be fixed today, ;(((
The second item is that there will be a 5 hour rolling restart commencing from appr. 2.30 PM SLT, but expecting to last a bit longer.
Info from Massively.com and Second Life.
As you know I upgraded my PC up to 2,5 Mb Ram memory, but nevertheless, I keep crashing, even more than before. On Sunday I crashed five times in a row, right after being connected to the grid, so...bye bye notices, IM's. Yesterday, the same thing happened, but only three times. What an improvement!;)
And thanks to my extended RAM memory, I now crash from one second to another, where it used to take quiet some time, before I could try to log in again. W00t!! What an improvement! ;)
But reading the post of Tateru Nino, none of these bugs will be fixed today, ;(((
Friday, January 11, 2008
That is exactly why I am in Second Life.
According a report from Forrester, an independent technology and market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology, within five years we will get our real work done in the virtual worlds.
"Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — set-up can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counselling more realistic by incorporating non-verbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions"
We all know that more and more companies are making their appearances into Second life. When we see, with the last virtual world conference in mind, that the big players are interested and investing in the virtual worlds, it is a certainty, that within a period of time we all would have the benefits in our real life of the virtual ones.
Can you imagine what would be possible in a virtual world like Second Life?
- As I am working in the automotive industry, an advantage would be the 3D prototyping , which would allow us rapid building, alternation possibilities, and avoid costly real world design mistakes, not even speaking about the loss of time in real world by making these rapid prototypes.
- The different communication advantages, throughout training, real-time chat and voice.
- We are all already aware of the marketing and media interests in Second life, and it is still growing.
- More and more will rich media and 3-D search solutions become important, as virtual world worlds expand their web-presence.
Don't be surprised that in a couple of years, the virtual worlds will become more and more integrated in our real life, just as the World Wide Web did some years ago. What would you do these days without the Internet?
Info from Forrester and Business Communicators of Second life
"Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — set-up can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counselling more realistic by incorporating non-verbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions"
We all know that more and more companies are making their appearances into Second life. When we see, with the last virtual world conference in mind, that the big players are interested and investing in the virtual worlds, it is a certainty, that within a period of time we all would have the benefits in our real life of the virtual ones.
Can you imagine what would be possible in a virtual world like Second Life?
- As I am working in the automotive industry, an advantage would be the 3D prototyping , which would allow us rapid building, alternation possibilities, and avoid costly real world design mistakes, not even speaking about the loss of time in real world by making these rapid prototypes.
- The different communication advantages, throughout training, real-time chat and voice.
- We are all already aware of the marketing and media interests in Second life, and it is still growing.
- More and more will rich media and 3-D search solutions become important, as virtual world worlds expand their web-presence.
Don't be surprised that in a couple of years, the virtual worlds will become more and more integrated in our real life, just as the World Wide Web did some years ago. What would you do these days without the Internet?
Info from Forrester and Business Communicators of Second life
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