We all know Linden Lab likes to boast about ‘Land Mass’ statistics as as it comes to proving Second Life’s growth. Bad news, they won’t be able to do so at the end of November (or Q4/2008 probably). With a negative growth of “-1420 islands added” on November 24 compared to “26539 Islands Owned” in October that’s a loss of 5% in Second Life’s land mass. Yikes, we’re shrinking! The Openspace Exodus to blame, or are there other issues into play? The saying in Dutch goes “to cut off your own hand”. That might not be the case here, but with the Openspace / Homestead debacle, LL has at least cut off it’s own finger. The one that contained their Resident’s trust.

(On the bright side, virtual land prices have gone up again with an average of “2.0034 L$ Paid Per Square Meter” compared to 1.6023 in October.)

A maths question

If we know that in October there are 26539 Islands Owned by residents and in November 25119 islands (or less) and that each square meter of virtual land is worth 1.6023 L$ in October and 2.0034 L$ in November, then what’s the total value of land mass in L$ for October & November? And in USD? (One island is 65,536m²)

If you want to check the numbers for yourself (before starting to panic), take a look at Second Life’s Econmics Stats page. This is - sadly enough - not a sad parody. Except for the ‘Wounded SL’ logo remake. ;)

Tags: linden lab, openspace, second life, SLeconomy, virtual land
Categories: Second Life
4 Comments »

1. Dwell On It: Comic - Don’t bet on it - Often, not-far-sought things are the best. Miss Tateru’s take on LL & implementation of the ‘no gambling’ policy is one of those. Definitely read!
2. Other grids, the next frontier - A Crimson world - Raul Crimson explores the next frontiers: grids that run of OpenSim software. He tried out both OpenLife and Legend City and found pro’s and con’s in both. But keep in mind, out of all those Grids, SL is likely to still be the most stable! ;)
3. Koinup Blog: Open Sim: welcome on Koinup! - Koinup adds ‘Open Sim’ as a virtual world community on their photo- and machinima sharing website, after demand from the community. So go there to see the ‘kewlest’ Open Sim snaps!

Categories: Links
No Comments »

Wilfred Pinfold (an Intel colleague and general chair of Supercomputing 2009) announced to the Supercomputing 2008 conference attendees plans to create a new virtual world called “ScienceSim.” Supported by Intel and the conference committee, this collaboration aims to use these immersive, connected environments to further cutting edge scientific research.

Primarily, we want to create a new tool that uses the unique features of virtual environments to facilitate education, collaboration, and understanding. The output of many supercomputing applications — from astronomical simulations to medical models — is complex and often highly visual. Creating a persistent, standardized environment where these models can reside will make it easier to share and explore these data sets with other researchers. Also, for educators, ScienceSim will provide an interactive 3-D environment that can be used to explain complex concepts such as gravity in a highly intuitive manner.

In addition, this world will provide an opportunity to innovate in these connected visual computing environments. Today’s virtual worlds are hindered by application scalability, computing, storage, and networking performance. The high performance computing systems that Intel and others deploy to host ScienceSim will become test beds themselves for system-level innovation. Also, because the world is based on the OpenSim open source world simulation platform, participants will be able to experiment with enhancements to the engine behind the world.

Written by Justin Rattner. More at the Research@Intel Blog.

Tags: intel, open sim, open source, science, sciencesim
Categories: OpenSim
1 Comment »

update: iTunes inSL has been renamed to ‘Tunes inSL’ as Amazon links were added.

The ‘live music’ scene is one of Second Life’s most compelling uses: sitting naked behind your pc, you can attend a live performance, insult the artist as their crew can’t physically hurt you and drink yourself totally waisted as you do not need to drive home. Oh. Wait. That had to be: “you can enjoy tons of different music styles from enchanting artists - which are easily reachable through IM or chat after their performance - brought to you live from all over the (real) world without the time loss of deciding what to where and needing to go and return from a smoky club.” Better, no? ;)

Of course, when attending a live performance in Second Life, you tip as a ‘thank you!’, be it the venue, the artist or both. Sadly, there were a few occasions that you did not have the needed L$ on your balance, or got distracted so you forgot. That may happen. Luckily, you can now make up for this, and it won’t cost you a single L$. A brilliant idea from the creative depths of Crap Mariner’s mind:

Did you get an iTunes or Amazon gift card for the holidays or any other merry occasion?* Why not show your support for live music in Second Life by buying music from Second Life musicians through iTunes or Amazon? Go to the Tunes inSL website to discover which SL artists you enjoy listening to have their songs up on iTunes/Amazon. Then follow their link to iTunes or Amazon and show them your love by purchasing one of their songs or even a complete album.

* Waiting for an iTunes or Amazon gift card is not necessary. You can also purchase the songs just because (you love them and want to show your support).

What did I do to show my support? The Tunes inSL logo design by VintLabs. (which I’m btw using as my first fulfilled Akoha mission, but more on that later) You like? Me kinda proud of it, so if you do not like, please formulate that in a sensitive and delicate way. Thanks! ;)

(Compression kills. Click to see without distortion, please!)

As this whole post is about sharing, joy and support, I want to thank The Boss for giving me permission to use the Greenies iPod in an actual logo design and mention that although Foolish Frost’s songs ‘Avatar’ and ‘Prim in My Hand’ are not available on iTunes or Amazon, you can listen & download them for free at music.rezzable.com.

Do you know any Second Life musician that could use some extra promo and a push of iTunes or Amazon sales? Make sure to let them know about Tunes inSL, ‘How do I get added’ is clearly explained there. They will join the list of famous SLive Musicians such as Grace Buford, Suzen Juel, Melanie Fudge and Rich Palmer. Do inform friends which own iTunes gift cards too! And the perfect virtual holiday present? An iTunes or Amazon Gift Card code and a link to the Tunes inSL website! ;)

Update: Thanks to Michael Cela’s suggestion that a less DRM limited option would be nice also, artists available on the Amazon music store now also have those links featured.

Tags: crap mariner, iTunes, iTunes inSL, live music, music, tunes insl, vintlabs
Categories: Music, SL Web Resources, VintLabs
1 Comment »

Free Accounts Pricing & Policy Changes

In 2005, we announced improvements to our Second Life Membership Plans. Not long after this, Free Accounts became available, which led to an enormous improvement on user signups. As a result we have seen tremendous demand for Second Life Avatars - with many thousands of them being ordered. We’re delighted that so many of you have found them to be a useful addition to your human form.

For those that don’t know, a Free Second Life account is a type of Second Life membership that we made available for light use such as occasional virtual intercourse, griefing an event or stalking someone with an alt. We figured that if Governor Linden may do that, we should let our residents have the same. But free accounts differ from premium accounts in one particularly significant way; unlike normal premium accounts, we often don’t have those peoples credit card numbers.

So Free Accounts have been incredibly popular as a perk for avatars, but sadly there is a twist. Unfortunately most of the Free Accounts are being used for much more than light use. Based on analysis performed in August and September, Free Accounts are being used about twice as much as we expected, in other words being loaded with double the inventory load and user hours than we’d expect for an account that is supposed to be light use.

Rather than being used for an occasional inworld presence, the majority are being used by residents looking for the full immersive experience. Because they were never intended for that level of load this is causing problems. For some people this has meant a less than great experience with performance fluctuations. The overuse of Free Accounts has also put additional strain on some of our network and database infrastructure at a much higher ratio than is reflected in the current pricing. So higher traffic and concurrency numbers along with heavier demands on the asset server, both of which impact the overall experience people have inworld.

We need to therefore take some steps to improve performance and better reflect their actual usage levels in our pricing so that we can maintain the best performance level for everyone. As a result, we will be implementing a pricing change effective January 1st along with some policy changes effective immediately.

Beginning 1st January 2009

We will increase the monthly membership fee from USD$0 to USD$20 per month. This price increase will apply to all owners of Free Accounts on January 1st as well as new purchases after that date. There will be no grandfathering of Free Accounts membership fees.

Of course, a huge uproar arises and many residents threaten to abandon their Free Accounts. A week later, Linden Lab’s CEO Mark Kingdom responds with a Letter to the Second Life Residents.

A Letter to Second Life Residents

M Linden here. Many thanks to everyone who responded constructively with their concerns and suggestions about our Free Accounts announcement. We’ve listened carefully and your feedback has led to some amendments to our original plan.

Before I jump to the policy amendments, I’d like to provide some insight into our decision and then recap what we’ve heard from you. When the Free Accounts membership plan was originally launched, Linden Lab offered you the opportunity to explore the virtual world occasionally –- such as a visit to the CSI sims or a quick peep at SL5B. But we didn’t build in and enforce specific, quantifiable performance limits on the Free Accounts. Why? For two simple reasons:

1. As you know all too well, many things affect performance of the grid in complex inter-related ways (i.e., scripts, prims, avatars, media). We were reluctant to limit the overall experience and your creativity by posing specific limits on all these variables – partly because Linden Lab has always been pretty free-form and believes in the innate goodness of Second Life Residents and partly because imposing limits require that we hire staff to enforce them.

2. We wanted to get this product to market quickly. Free Accounts were wildly popular. Some went to the CSI sims and had a shallow encounter with an SL escort, as intended but many built out their avatar persona – improving building & scripting skills, gathering tons of freebies, camping and having other great immersive experiences. Since Free Accounts co-habitate with Premium Accounts on the grid, if one Free Account adds something to it’s inventory, the shared Asset Server gets overloaded. The avatar only logging in for occasional griefing who followed the original intent suffers and we are called in to resolve the conflict. Second Life is much too large to do that.

When we sorted through the good and bad in the many conversations, comment cards, emails, and calls, you shared many things but there were three consistent themes we can work with:

1. Those of you who used the Free Accounts as originally intended — for griefing, SLex and trade demo’s — want that product at the original price point and are willing to accept clear restrictions on usage.
2. Some of you have built businesses with your Free Account avatars, are renting land or a member of groups and although you acknowledge you are doing more than was intended for a Free Account, a large and rapid price change is too much for you to absorb.
3. Some of you have activities that were between an quick visit to an SL escort and a great immersive experience and want some kind of “Premium Account Lite” product – a lower price point than a normal membership subscription but with the ability to build out some kind of ‘Second Life’ experience.

We’ve launched 3 membership products in the company’s history: Beta Account, Premium Membership and Free Account. Because we have complexity everywhere else, we’re loath to add a highly complex pricing structure. Nevertheless, it’s clear we have to build a product mix and pricing structure that offers more flexibility.

Here is how we are amending the price change:

1. We are going to retain the Free Account product at its original price point and its original intended use (escort visits, trade shows, … ). We will have technical limitations to help regulate their use, initially ‘inworld time’ and inventory capacity restrictions, eventually group membership, friend list, land rights, prim creation (building) and attachment points limits. Those of you who chose to use the Free Accounts as intended may stay at the US$0 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.
2. If you want more than a Free Account, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Basic Account that is intended for light use such as having an orgy with two or more SL escorts. For existing Free Account owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Basic Accounts will also have technical limits for group slots and prims, and eventually friend list and inventory capacity limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Free Accounts will transition to Basic Accounts and the membership fees will go from $0 to $10 per month. We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Basic Account product. The discount amount will be the same as on land tier, roughly 30%.

* July 2009 — the membership fees for Basic Accounts will go from $10 to $20 per month

For detailed information on these changes, please go to the Knowledge Base.

We believe this is fair. Jack and I will join you in the forums throughout the day today to discuss this. Comments are closed on the blog, not because we want to limit dialog or free expression but because this is a conversation with Residents and the forums require log-in. This is a policy we are going to follow moving forward with all major announcements. Blog the announcement, express and discuss in the Forums.

One thing I learned and others were reminded about in this process is that we have a very connected, passionate Resident base and we need to bring you into the dialog earlier, before putting forward these decisions. The input we received after Jack’s announcement was prolific and by-and-large very, very constructive. Second Life is at a size where 1:1 conversations are difficult and the forums are inadequate for full dialog. Office hours come up short, too. We have some thoughts on how to bring Residents into the dialog earlier which we will cover in a future blog post and Forum discussion.

I’d like to close on this thought: An area of concern for Residents over the past year has been platform stability. Through the hard work of many, many people, including Residents, we have made great strides that are very well documented. Crash rates are down. Substantially. Period. And until this price change, we were riding high in user satisfaction so we know you have recognized and appreciated the improvements we’ve been making. Our breakthroughs in stability improvement are particularly noteworthy because our users base increased enormously over the last three years. And, a good part of that increase was from Free Accounts. However, the original plan was to up the concurrency numbers but expand at a much lower rate. But, Free Accounts — in many cases — have been overloaded with inventory content, scripted attachments and prim hair so our very substantial stability gains have come even with the unplanned load increase. We are deeply committed to making this the best virtual world platform in the world and we are making great strides. We’ve also demonstrated we can deliver on our promise of continual stability improvements – even in the face of unanticipated growth.

I look forward to hearing from you in the Forum. Thank you for your candor, patience, restraint and willingness to work with Linden Lab and the Second Life community at large. Second Life is the wonder that it is because Linden Lab has always worked together – albeit sometimes imperfectly – with Residents to build this magnificent, bigger than life world we all love so much.
Thank you.

Knowledge Base on Membership Plans


Full Size on Flickr (CC Attribution)

As inspired by Jack and M. Linden’s writings on the Official Second Life blog and LL’s history of downgrading the functionality of existing products whilst at the same time upgrading the price. If this text sounds familiar, this is nothing but a lucky coincidence. ;) This is NOT an official Linden Lab blogpost. Here are the LL’s official membership plans, where strangely enough, ‘additional basic’ still reads “One-time fee of $9.95 each”. No snow man were harmed during the writing of this parody, English spelling & grammar suffers from a slight concussion though. Oh, and T Linden is enquiring about Premium Accounts and what to offer them.

Tags: linden lab, parody, premium account, second life
Categories: Vint Falken
31 Comments »

When I was 14 - which is only 10 years ago - I was as lucky to attend a highschool with a more than decent computer lab for that time: 20 macs hooked up to the internet. Not that they were used much, as for except a few, nobody had an idea what to actually use the internet for. I remember teaching ‘internet for teachers: the basics’ with a friend of mine during lunch break, covering exciting missions such as there are ‘how do I create an email account’, ‘how do I check my email’ and ‘how do I search for something’. That’s back in the time when AskJeeves was actually popular.

Now, 10 years later, computers have become indispensable to modern education. Students use them for research, and teachers to find out if the students copy pasted from more than one, unique source. Or they use computers and the internet to connect to the Second Life Teen Grid, which is the case at The Suffern Middle School. I’m not reading up much on using virtual worlds for education, but was amazed that Peggy Sheehy together with the teachers has worked out that many projects that proof the possibilities for teaching using a virtual world. An example:

Teaching maths & budgeting in Second Life

Hello everyone…

By now you should have received your lindens. You are going to have to make sure that you budget wisely. In order to attend the beach party, you MUST have:

A bathing suit
A Suntan lotion
AA towel
AA surfboard
You will also need a beach blanket, a cooler, and some shoes. You must have 6 lindens left at the end of your shopping so that you can pay to get into the beach party.

You will record all of your work on the recording sheet I gave you. The first sheet is like a checking account…when you buy something, subtract the money. Your second and third sheets are for calculating how much money you are paying for the item (with the percent off). This will be handed in and used for me to grade your project. PLEASE DO NOT LOSE IT!

Good luck and I’ll see you at the beach party!
Mrs. McKiernan

Peggy Sheehy on Teen Second Life in Education

One of the leading ladies behind the ‘Ramapo Islands’ project is Peggy Sheehy, who already in 2006 established a presence for her middle school in the virtual world of Teen
Second Life. The Ramapo Islands now welcome more than 1200 students a year. Miss Sheehy tells us why a 3D Virtual Environment is that suited for use in education:

1. Level of Engagement - The kids perceive it as playful and creative. 90% of the kids are gamers, so the Second Life client is an interface they are familiar with.
2. Psychosocial Moratorium - Teens need an environment or a situation where they can experiment: explore their personalities, social norms, explore who they are without the fear of consequences.
3. Possibilities - Kids can participate in situations they could not do in ‘the real world’. The above ‘maths mission’ would already been hard, but imagine climbing into a rocket, physics tests, … .
4. Equality - There is less peer pressure, and lots of the social differences disappear. The avatar does not carry their ‘real life’ limitations.
5. Safety - As they are stuck on the Teen Grid, so no ‘freaks’ and ‘weirdos’ to worry about.

Other interesting projects:

1. An investigation of ‘body image’ in Second Life.
2. The sets for the ‘Wizard of Oz’ school play are build in Second Life and will be projected behind the actors.
3. Open the Rampage islands to collaborative teamwork with other schools on the Teen Grid.
4. …

More at Ramapo Island Edublog
and skoolaborate.com.

Peggy Sheehy Video Interview

Make sure to watch all the video interviews with Miss Sheehy by ‘Happy Steve’, as there are quite a few. In the order I enjoyed them: students’ perspectives on TSL, Class Intro to TSL Part I (noisy!), Class Intro to TSL Part II (noisy too), on TSL in education Part I, on TSL in education Part II and on Security in TSL.

Via SLtalk.de

Tags: education, peggy sheehy, ramapo islands, second life, teen second life
Categories: Vint Falken
2 Comments »

I’m sure ‘pixel boom boom’ - an euphemism for ‘3D virtual sex’ or whomever you wish to call it - happens in other Virtual Worlds and MMORPG’s too. Yet, Second Life gets always targeted by the RL press. Of course, you have ‘dedicated’ virtual worlds such as the Red Light Center, but I wonder, do World of Warcraft, the Sims, Entropia Universe, … avatars have a sex life too? And all the necessary bits & pieces to make ‘virtual intercourse’ a true ‘immersive experience’? :D

NSSFW version here - original by Miss Share Rile here

For example, IMVU has a ‘black market’ for ‘pixel boom boom’ equipment: “Don’t expect to be taking part in stuff like this often, it’s against the rules and the black market is very secretive about handing the furniture.” When asked if this ‘IMVU Orgy’ is not illegal, against IMVU’s ToS, Miss Shara Rile answers: “There is, they just hide it reeeaaally well to avoid being banned. Can’t stop people having their fun I figure.” Now, errr, I have a few questions:

1. What price does the ‘needed furniture’ switch owner for? (an average, converted to USD)
2. Are IMVU avatars born with genitals, or do these bits need to be purchased? Or even better, do they come attached to the furniture?
3. What’s the punishment if you get busted?

Hoping to get an answer from Miss Rile soon. In the mean while, do you know of any other virtual worlds or mmorpgs where avatars can have an - maybe illegal but healthy and more or less visually appealing - CGI sex life? ;)

Tags: behaviour, IMVU, pixel boom boom, rant, slex, virtual intercourse
Categories: Exploring, Rant
13 Comments »

Eric Reuters goes out

The Reuters Second Life bureau closes it’s doors. I guess this means you may secondlife.reuters.com from the feedreaders. Eric Krangel, the human behind Eric Reuters, writes at The Silicon Alley Insider about the ‘Why’ and gives a rather grim summary of his experiences in Second Life: “I wasn’t in Second Life to play, I was there on assignment for Reuters. The login server would crash. I’d try to reach sources, but Second Life’s IM window would hang on “waiting” all day when trying to figure out who was online. “Teleports” — the ability to move from point to point anywhere in Second Life — would stop working and I’d get locked out of my own office. These weren’t one-offs, they were my daily, first-hand, happens-all-the-time experiences. For all its bugs, Second Life is tolerable as a playground, but enterprise users will never and should never use it for business. Re-focus on the core mission: Keeping the hobbyists happy and converting potential recruits into hardcore (read: fees-paying) users.”

Yet Eric does not totally give up on Second Life as a platform: “For all the sound and fury over recent price hikes and layoffs at Linden Lab, Second Life has a community of fanatically loyal users. Since Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not advertisements, Second Life is much more likely to survive the Web 2.0 shakeout than most other startups. There’s an incredible depth, passion, and camaraderie to the Second Life community that more popular online experiences like MySpace or World of Warcraft can’t match. And while I didn’t find it compelling, there really is something awesome about buying be able to “buy” a grid of blank 3D space, mold it like clay into an elven forest, a futuristic space station, or a bdsm dungeon, and then invite your friends to hang out.”

Eric Krangel has his own ideas on how Linden Lab can make Second Life more fun and a better business:

1. Build good newbie-oriented content.
2. Acknowledge that Second Life’s reputation is now a liability.
3. Radically simplify the user interface.
4. Abandon the idea that Second Life is a business app.

M. Linden is still staying

In the mean while, Linden Lab’s CEO M. Linden gave an interview to Mr. Dusan Writer (published here). The main tone of that? ‘All happy. All good.’ A quote: “80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes content creators. We are putting more than 80% of our investment in the consumer market because a good part of our investment in Enterprise crosses over (shared media). We talk about Enterprise because we are doing new things there. We need to talk more about our plans for consumer because we have many big projects under way there.” Yeey, does that mean we get…

a.) More roads.
b.) More tier increases.
c.) More Teleport & Login failures
d.) Something else.

Excuse me my bitterness. But I still feel betrayed: a 2 year relationship, that you _know_ is dying. You still wish to fix everything, mainly because of the effort you put into it, because of you’re used to it and because of the mutual friends you now have, not because the butterflies are still there. You keep trying, attempt to be bedazzled again, but the other party just f*cks it up, each time. Eerrr… overreacting, me? :D

T. Linden - human: Tom Hale - comes in

I can’t help but cheer at - new -T Linden’s first blogpost, it’s a stroke of communication genius: share something personal, share your goals and instantly call out for feedback from the residents so they feel engaged. Tom Hale’s Mission at Linden Lab: “Bring a product focus to Linden Lab and to Second Life.” T. Linden starts by asking what could make a premium subscription truly premium? What would make the experience a delight for you? What would it take to make me sign up for premium?

What it would take to make me go Premium

1. Visitor Statistics (Part 1) For every piece of land I own, I want to see visitor statistics. How many avatar visits/day, how many are unique, how long do they stay, which objects did they interact with on my land, how many purchases did they make, … . Let’s call it google analytics for SL.
2. Object Statistics (Part 2) I want to be able to tag ‘tracking code’ to an object. Let’s say 30 month/premium user. I get a lovely web overview of how many different avatars own the object, how many are rezzed inworld, on how many different sims, and how many copies in total are out there.
3. IM’s don’t get capped. Also, get me a web interface on secondlife.com where I can log into, see an overview of the IM’s I have not responded to yet, and can reply to them. (Reply email to IM delivered to mailbox to often fails.)
4. Access to ‘import and export tools’ from different 3D software tools officially supported & maintained by Linden Lab. These things end up in a seperate ‘builders’ inventory.
5. The guarantee that on Virtual Death / Suicide I am allowed to donate my complete inventory - be it no-trans items or not -
   to another avatar. Without that avatar having to pay succession rights, duh! ;)
6. Account Babysitters I want to be able to allow at least 1, preferably 2 or 3 other people to log into my account, if I for any RL reason can not. They can access my inventory & make L$ payments, but can not convert my L$ to real money, nor can they add to my L$ balance with RL Balance. How would this work? I would allow them access to my account from Web Interface, putting their avatar names in as ‘babysitters’. This allows them to login using their Avatar Name + Password, after which they can choose to go into ‘babysit mode’ and use my avatar. Using ‘corporate avatars’ shared amongst a few co-workers would not be violating ToS anymore. That and somebody I trust could watch over my account & necessary payments if I ever decide to go sailing for two months.
7. More than 25 Groups! I think we mentioned this already ‘nough times?
8. Communications in (one off) my country’s official language(s) You charge us our local tax, I would assume important communications like tier raises, downtime warnings, … are brought to me in a language I flawlessly understand.
9. Automated Sales Data Access API hooks + key to automatically process sales data, and use it for whatever we see fit.
10. A Vote! For important issues - eg. openspaces - it can not be a bad thing to actually consult your ‘residents’. Polls can contain simple yes/no answers, or a bit more options. Supplied on the login screen when a premium resident logs in. Every premium account has one vote, and LL promises to actually take into account the results of those ‘referendums’.

And there are more things that would make me register for Premium, will update the list if I stumble over more current frustrations that could use fixture! See, still trying to fix our relationship, and hoping Linden Lab will not screw up this time! ;) LL really did hurt my feelings when Marc Kingdom stated “Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.”

What would convince you to go/stay premium, and how much would your ‘wishlist’ be worth in USD/month (without VAT)?

Tags: eric krangel, eric reuters, linden lab, premium account, reuters, rl press, second life, T Linden, Tom Hale
Categories: Second Life
16 Comments »

Sharing chat logs with others in-world is against Community Standards/ToS, right? But errr, if they get printed on your jacket layer, you can’t be held responsible, can you?

This did not happen to me for virtual ages (read: a few months), so I was very surprised, and even a bit nostalgic when suddenly, I was wearing my UI again. I decided to just leave it that way, and wear it proudly! ;) In the back you see the lovely Mister ArminasX and we were talking about the SL Bloggers Mix’n Match Aftermath and our survey (results soonish!).

As far as I know, wearing your UI is a ‘local client’ bug and others don’t see it, so not possible to really ‘violate’ chat privacy rules. Posted because of bug-nostalgia. :D In RL fashion everything seems to go in ‘circles’, bootleg, tight jeans, wide disco pants, they all seem to be ‘fashionable’ then terribly outdated only to return about 10 years later. Will the same happen to our clothing issues? In 10 years from now, will we revive ‘prim stuck in ass’ as being worn only by the fashionable avatars? ;) And who will be the first SL designer to officially incorporate our User Interface into a design?

Tags: client bugs, fashion, rant, texture
Categories: Fashion, Rant
12 Comments »

Starting December 31, 2008 Google’s Lively will be shut down. Rooms and avatars will not be available. Embedded rooms in blogs and other web pages will continue to show an image, but users will no longer be able to enter Lively rooms and interact. I hope nobody was planning on celebrating New Year’s Eve in Lively? ;)

From the Official Google Blog:

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That’s why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. Thank you for sharing this experience with us. We’ve learned a lot about how users interact in rich social environments, and we hope you’ve enjoyed your time with Lively.

Posted by The Lively Team

I wonder, though luck for the content creators that started to spend a large amount of time experimenting with Google’s Lively? Wasn’t ‘Lively’ not err.. lively enough? Not enough interest as sex & flirting was not allowed in Lively? :D And err, is this one less competition for Second Life, or a large bunch of people that now will not get interested in the concept of ‘3D worlds’ in the first few years? :/

Hat Tip: via Kris Constellation, still alive! ;)

Tags: 3D, 3D web, google, lively, virtual worlds
Categories: SL Web Resources
6 Comments »