A collaborative timeline of the history of the virtual world Second Life's (http://www.secondlife.com) development, including both technology related milestones and social / cultural historic events. Please feel free to contribute.
Created by rhiannonsl on Jul 10, 2008
Last updated: 10/21/10 at 05:17 AM
As we head into the fourth quarter, I wanted to share some of the progress that we’ve made since we realigned engineering and created our Platform team. The team is comprised of simulator, services, and viewer developers and testers (Platform Development), as well as our operations, IT, data warehouse and customer support teams (Platform Operations). The focus of the teams will be to drive “back to basics” improvements across the grid and evolve our current architecture into a scalable set of services and APIs. Let’s take a look at our progress over the last few months, delivering against the goals that Philip set at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC), in August.I’m happy to report that we have already delivered on a number of those, and are making good progress toward the rest. A few of them may take longer than we’d originally anticipated, but we plan on completing all of them.Below you’ll find a list of projects and initiatives we’ve delivered on in the two months since SLCC, as well as some back-up performance data. A number of these projects will have a major impact on the Second Life experience, as we currently know it. Expect to see further posts from some of the Platform team, focused on how we are improving Second Life in terms of faster performance, increased stability, and a generally smoother experience for all.Reduced LagHere’s an interesting factoid: there are about two million teleports in Second Life every day. Previous to our recent release of Server 1.42, when an avatar teleported or crossed into a new region, everyone on the destination sim would experience a “lag” event as the simulator stalled while processing the incoming avatar. This was often experienced as “jitter” on the sim, especially evident when many avatars arrived at the same time, such as for a live event. In the new simulation code, this slow point has been moved to a separate thread. Our simulator performance profiling tools show that this lag pain point is almost entirely gone, greatly improving performance for highly trafficked regions.Faster Texture LoadingIn August, we made some changes that improve the speed with which textures are loaded in a scene. Our release of HTTP Textures changed the way textures are delivered to, and loaded in, Viewer 2, resulting in less waiting around for the scene in front of you to come into focus. This change will also serve as the foundation for a series of bigger improvements, including the deployment of a new asset system, which will improve texture loading and object rez times even more. For the real techies, here’s the back story: Last month, we moved away from the Isilon storage clusters, as our primary storage for assets. Most assets are now stored on Amazon’s S3 platform, and we have deployed a “middle-layer” caching service, which is where most asset calls will be served from. The time to complete asset “puts” and “gets” (the times that the viewer requests assets and times those assets are delivered) has improved significantly. We reduced the average PUT latency by over 60%, from 1.3 seconds to 0.6 seconds, and our GET latency by 20%, from 0.25 seconds to 0.20 seconds. What does this really mean? Well, when you add up the cumulative time saved in asset latency across the millions of requests a day, there is a net savings of over 4,000 hours of time shaved off of asset latency per day! That translates into less load on the simulator processes and better rez times in Viewer 2.The next step here is to get the simulator out of this process, and that will happen in early 2011. At that point, we’ll have extended our asset services and can begin enabling a content delivery network (CDN), bringing latency-sensitive assets (objects and textures) closer to Residents for even faster rez times.New Chat Service Coming SoonWe’re finally going to tackle the group chat problem that has been a Resident complaint for a long time. Group chat can often be confusing, with “chat lag” causing responses to appear late, or sometimes not at all. You should start to see real improvements in this early next year. Over the last few months, we’ve completed a number of development sprints to prototype an XMPP service and have decided to move forward with an ejabberd deployment. We’re targeting to have a test deployment of the new group chat service by the end of this year, and full production deployment in early 2011. Group Limits Will be Raised to 40Another big pain point for Residents is the current limit that lets you be a member of only 25 groups. We plan to raise this limit to 40 by the end of this year. In the past, our biggest concern about raising group limits was potential performance degradation, with additional stress placed on our central database. After completing some internal analysis, we now feel comfortable enough to extend group limits up to 40. I’ll put a qualifier on the group limits increase, however, and state that if we see a decrease in performance (i.e., more lag), then we may decide to roll back to the 25 limit again.Snowstorm Driving Viewer 2 Improvements At SLCC, we announced Project Snowstorm, our new open development program for Second Life’s Viewer 2 client software. Snowstorm is already incorporating Resident input, particularly around a more customizable user interface, has produced a number of beta releases, and is deploying daily open-source code releases. You’ll see the first fruits of their efforts in production very shortly, with the release of Viewer 2.2.New Main Grid Deployment ProcessIt was pretty clear that if we were going to make velocity improvements, then we needed to be able to update our server software more than three to four times per year. As Lil Linden discussed last month, we have significantly changed our deploy process and are now deploying code on a weekly basis to the main grid (Agni). This means that bug fixes will be deployed faster and new features and functionality don’t have to pile up and wait for the next major “release train.” It also means that if we do encounter problems, then we are able to quickly back out the changes, without affecting other code that is working properly. This process also works much better with the agile development practices that we have formalized internally over the last three months.Display Names and Mesh Public Betas Available TodayWhile we’re focusing our resources for the moment on platform improvements designed to make Second Life faster, easier to use, and more fun for all Residents, we are also testing two new features that had been in development for some time before SLCC. The new Display Names feature is in public beta, and will enable more freedom of expression in Second Life. We have also just launched the public beta of Mesh Import, which will revolutionize content creation in Second Life. So I encourage you to download the Project Viewers and share your feedback.I’ll share more with you on our “back to basics” technology projects in coming weeks and months. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our recent progress in the comments below. And, as always, thanks for all of your passion and participation.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/26fFBjvt1UE/back-to-basics-technology-improvements
I'm very happy to announce that, as a core feature of the new Viewer 2 Beta, Second Life Search has been redesigned inside and out to make finding the people, places and content you're looking for easier than ever before. We've revamped the interface, overhauled what's happening under the hood, and refocused our work on Web-standard tools and methodologies that have not only improved our ability to bring you more relevant search results, but also made us faster on our feet as a development team. And, we've been building a first-class Search team--from Yahoo!, eBay, Google, and Amazon--to bring the best of search and advertising services to Second Life. We've been hard at work improving Second Life Search, and we're excited to share some of the work that we've recently completed in conjunction with the new viewer.Second Life Search, as part of Viewer 2, now includes:A New and Improved User Experience: The first thing that you'll notice about search in Viewer 2 is that it's got a whole new look and feel. We've reorganized the interface to be more intuitive and to use filtering and sorting techniques common to search on the Web. We've also cleared away some of the legacy UI found in Viewer 1.23 to create a clean hierarchy of information and actions. One of our biggest goals in this redesign was to make the search interface more inviting for new Residents while still preserving many of the search options that current Residents had become accustomed to. For example, in the Viewer 2 Beta, there is now only one location for conducting a "Places" search (rather than a tab and a filter as found in Viewer 1.23), and that "Places" search can be filtered and sorted to achieve similar results as in Viewer 1.23.A Robust Search Infrastructure: We've also redesigned the search infrastructure to be more robust and nimble. These changes, although maybe not as immediately visible, are a major step forward as we work towards innovating more rapidly and being responsive to Resident feedback. Previously, Search was hard coded in the XUI language of Viewer 1.23; now, search uses HTML on top of Django Web services and can be developed independently of Viewer 2. This gives us greater speed and flexibility as we develop additional search features, advertising products, and bug fixes.Google Search Technology: As we all know, Google's relevance algorithms are the defacto industry standard on the Internet. In Viewer 1.23, the Google Search Appliances (GSA) served results to the "All" and "Group" search tabs for years. For Search in Viewer 2, we have expanded our use of the GSAs, and they now provide the first set of results for most search types. (Advanced search users can still access Linden Lab's proprietary search tools through category filters and sorts.) Google alone cannot provide the best results for Second Life Residents, however. So, the Search Team is continually adjusting how the GSAs work in order to provide the highest quality, most relevant results within Second Life. Enhancement to Classified Advertising: Second Life business owners can benefit from a significant change to classified advertising within Second Life Search. Now, we can place classifieds alongside more searches, and advertisers will have a better opportunity to be found by relevant buyers. In Viewer 2, potential ad exposure (i.e., the number of search requests that serve ads) will increase to 100% of initial searches, whereas in Viewer 1.23 classified ads were only shown alongside search results in the All and Group tabs. Additionally, we have increased the number of featured classifieds from nine to 12 on the Search homepage (which appears when you click the magnifying glass or type CTRL-F). The bottom line is that the new Second Life Search benefits everyone within the Second Life economic ecosystem--most importantly business and Residents--as it plays a crucial role connecting inworld buyers and sellers. The more that Second Life Search can help Residents, particularly new Residents, find compelling content, communities and experiences, then the higher the probability they will be come active, long-term Residents. Plus, more Residents mean more potential customers for inworld businesses. So, go download the Viewer 2 Beta, try the new and improved Second Life Search and let us know what you think.Searching TipsTo browse the features in the Find window (including Search, Destination Guide and Classifieds), click the magnifying glass icon in the Search field at the top right of the Viewer 2 navigation bar. To initiate a search, type a keyword in the Search field on the Viewer navigation bar. Once you've initiated a search from the Viewer navigation bar, the Find window will open with an initial set of relevance-ranked results. You can then narrow your results with Category filters and organize the list with Sorting options. Your search terms are now carried from one category to the next, with no need to re-type!Further Reading:Tom Hale's Viewer 2.0 Beta Launch Blog PostEdelman Linden's Shared Media Blog PostViewer 2.0 Beta ForumResources to Help You Learn Viewer 2Viewer 2 Help Portal (links to everything below)Quickstart Guide (SL Wiki)Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)Release Notes (SL Wiki)Video Demos (YouTube)SL Answers (SL Answers) And, if something breaks or you're really stuck, then contact Support and we're happy to help.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/zIljHEkxiNo/search-in-viewer-2-more-than-just-a-pretty-face
If you have a Linden Home you have probably noticed a control panel cunningly placed on an inside wall of your house. Today these panels will be enabled, allowing the home owner to use the Linden Home Control Panel -- a web page that you can use to configure various aspects of your Linden Home. Since the launch of Linden Homes on February 17, we've seen nearly 13,000 people take up residence in a Linden Home. The response we've seen to the program so far has been beyond even our expectations, leading us to double the number of homes that we originally made available. And there are more to come! Our early homeowners love having a home base from which to explore the online world, and a safe, private place to entertain and socialize -- all for no additional cost beyond a premium membership.One piece of early feedback we got from a large number of Residents was the desire to be able to customize their houses more. Partly in response to that feedback, we've now turned on our Control Panel feature, giving you a range of options for making your home your own.The exact changes you can make will vary depending on which house you have, but will include features like lighting, curtains, and texture choices for the various surfaces of your home. Want a different roof texture? Just click! Need to change the color of the living room wall? Click again! We're hoping that the Control Panel will evolve over time to give you ever more functionality, but to begin with we need to test the basics -- hence this is a Beta. If you have any problems using it, please do let us know.For full instructions on using the Linden Home Control Panel, click here.Once the Beta period is over, and the Control Panels are proven to be working reliably, we will work on packaging up these scripts and explaining how they work so that Residents can take advantage of the technologies we have developed for this project in their own homes and estates, and no doubt extend them in ways that we haven't even dreamed!Lastly, as promised, the base textures for the various themes will be made available to all Residents today. At each of the different Hub areas you will find a box of textures for that theme, so if you want the Elderglen textures, please visit the Elderglen Hub! Texture kiosks for each theme are available at the following SLurls:ElderglenMeadowbrookShareta OsumaiTahoe SpringsWe look forward to seeing what you come up with, and finding more ways to help you settle into Second Life. Welcome Home!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/GHY1ug2r0lg/customize-your-linden-home-with-our-new-control-panel
Woohoo!This past Tuesday, we released Viewer 2 Beta to the public. To give you some insight into the work that went into the renovation of the viewer, I want to give you a quick guided tour below. But first, a few important headlines:This is a Beta. We're still fixing bugs and massaging the UI based on your feedback, but there likely won't be major functionality changes between now and when it becomes the default viewer. However...We'll be going back to more regular releases from here on. This means more frequent releases (hopefully quarterly), each with a more manageable amount of new features.There's lots of new stuff in Viewer 2, not the least of which is a new user interface. Also check out Shared Media, new Navigation controls, and new avatar capabilities like a tatoo layer and alpha textures.We have also released the source code to Viewer 2 via our Snowglobe project.Of course, there's lots more. Please be sure to read T's post and the Viewer 2 Beta Release Notes for all the details, as well as some answers to a few FAQs of the last two days.Here's a quick tour of how we got here:DevelopmentAbout 20 Linden Lab engineers toiled full-time for the last year on Viewer 2. We call the team "The Front", kind of like "The Front of House" at a casino or hotel, the part the customer sees. We had small teams devoted to UI development, Shared Media, viewer infrastructure, improvements to avatars, rendering, as well as a team devoted to open source, security, voice and other improvements. Most teams used some variant of the Scrum development methodology. There was also a full complement of QA, UI designers, Product Managers, Program Managers, Release Managers, and Documentation staff.We also partnered with The Product Engine, a contract development firm headquartered in California, but with most of its developers in Odessa, Ukraine. While Linden Lab has embraced distributed development for some time, working with our Ukrainian friends was a whole new thing for us. It's been a wonderful relationship that we hope to continue.User ExperienceA first-class goal of Viewer 2 was to improve the user experience, especially for new Residents. We allowed ourselves to think differently about the UI, and our usability tests with new Residents have showed that we have made wonderful strides. Here we also tapped outside expertise to help us think outside the box, working closely with 80/20 Studio on our new designs.Of course, there's also bunch of the user interface that we didn't touch, not because we didn't want to, but because we simply ran out of time. The appearance editor, inventory management, and the build tools are largely untouched. For now.Resident Feedback Early and OftenWe enlisted a team of Resident alpha testers back in September, a subset of the "Battery Street Irregulars" called BSI-STU (for "Special Testers Unit"). They provided invaluable feedback, both finding bugs and letting us know when the UI just wasn't working for them. The communications UI in particular got a major overhaul based on their feedback. We expanded the Resident tester pool dramatically in January and February to over 100. Again, we got great feedback and made many changes based on what we heard.Wondering how you can get in on future Beta tests? Send us email at beta@lindenlab.com and tell us why you think you'd make a most awesome tester.The Highlight ReelHere are some of my personal favorite things in Viewer 2. Be sure to check out the Release Notes for the full list of what is new:Shared Media: Being able drag a URL from just about any Web site onto the face of a cube is pretty transformational. Having it work with embedded Flash is a game-changer, as is sharing collaborative in-world documents using tools like Etherpad, Google docs and my favorite (so far) Colorillo. We've already seen some amazingly creative builds and are expecting many more to come. Be sure to check out Edelman's post on cool uses of Shared Media.Outfits: Easily changing outfits from the side panel.Navigation Bar: One-click access to your favorite locations is a dream, as is teleport history and browser-like back and forward functionality.Tattoo Layers and Alpha Textures: The death of invisiprims. Yay!Inventory Icons: The new inventory sneaker icon is awesome :)So Much Code, So Little TimeViewer 2 is just the beginning of lots of great stuff underway for 2010. We had to make some painful choices of stuff not to include in Viewer 2 in order to get it done. Among the thing we left out but are hoping for in the not-too-distant future: More Social Tools: Social tools that will let you more easily share with friends all your favorite people, places, and things from Second Life.Mesh and Content Rendering Improvements: We expect these will be as transformational to inworld content as Sculpties, Shared Media, and Flash.Avatar Rendering Improvements: Tattoo layers are just the beginning. We expect to make some great improvements to how avatars look and behave over the course of the year.Continued Work on Enhancing the User Experience: As mentioned above, we ran out time for improvements to the appearance editor, inventory management, and build tools. And of course we will continue to refine the UI as we learn more. Lots more to come.Real People, Real SoftwareOne of the delightful qualities of our Residents, especially those of you that frequent these blogs and the Viewer 2 Beta Forum, is your passion. We love that! And clearly we've sparked lots of passion with Viewer 2, both from people who love what we've done and from those who think we may have missed the mark. Mostly the feedback is wonderfully constructive, sometimes it's a little less so. That's OK, we can take it , and we love it all.But for a moment, if I you'll indulge me, please just share your appreciation in the comments here for the team that has worked so hard to deliver Viewer 2. They deserve lots of love. Your kind thoughts are a great motivator as we dive into the next batch of improvements and fix those gnarly bugs.And, if you haven't tried Viewer 2 yet -- please do. Downloads are available here.Thanks!Howard
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/jJI64_H5CPo/behind-the-scenes-of-viewer-2
Check out Shared Media on YouTubeThe Viewer 2 Beta is finally here, and with it comes a whole host of amazing improvements and new features. There’s so much to be excited about that it’s impossible (and unnecessary!) to pick a favorite. But -- if I really had to pick -- I’d choose Shared Media, since I'm the Product Manager for Shared Media. So, let me tell you about it.Shared Media Brings the Web Into Second LifeSecond Life Shared Media, a new Viewer 2 capability, makes sharing standard Web-based media in Second Life easy and seamless. It enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Basically, Shared Media brings the Internet inworld. For the more technically inclined, what this means is that you can now put media textures on any prim in Second Life. More specifically, the viewer uses WebKit to create a fully interactive, dynamic texture from a Web URL. This even includes support for Web-browser plug-ins, like the Adobe Flash Player. And, you can place dozens of them on the same region. (We still don't know what the upper limits are. I'm sure that you'll let us know.)A World of New Experiences and Businesses PossibleBy seamlessly integrating the Web into Second Life, Shared Media unleashes a new wave of creativity and new business opportunities. Imagine the richness of a SL store with interactive signs and displays. Think about Flash-based games, theaters, and innovative Web-based services appearing inworld. Display your Twitter feed on the front of your house! (Okay, don't.) Build a HUD to read your email inworld. Interact with walls that encourage graffiti or use your signature to sign guest books. Educators and their students can now interact in even more immersive classrooms. For the enterprise community, online collaboration tools (such as Google Docs, EtherPad, Webex, and Acrobat Web Connect) combine with the power of Second Life to make working inworld much easier and more powerful.You're in Control of Shared MediaViewer 2 introduces a new UI for controlling Shared Media. Shared Media authors have the option to offer a 2D menu bar (similar to a browser-like URL bar) that will appear in front of a Shared Media object when any Resident mouses over it. Also, a new Nearby Media control will enable Residents to more easily control what media is allowed to play.Web Skills Will Drive New Inworld Building TechniquesThere are also new Second Life build features for Shared Media: assigning URLs to objects and faces, controlling auto-play, auto-scale, size settings, etc. With Shared Media, SL building now extends well beyond SL into the vast and varied skill set of Web development. Suddenly, skills like PHP, SQL, ActionScript, Apache and FMS can be used to create compelling inworld content. Flash and Flash Media Server (FMS) become particularly useful tools for creating animated, interactive Shared Media that can be kept in sync. Flash media server hosting services, such as Influxis, offer low-cost hosting.Synchronicity is Content- and Context-SpecificBehind the scenes, Shared Media is different. Second Life always stays synchronized for all Residents. That is, the simulation takes place on our servers, and each person's viewer renders their perspective on that simulation -- everyone is looking at the same thing. Shared Media, on the other hand, can look different to different people -- sometimes. Everyone’s instance of the Shared Media is always presenting the same URL. However, not everything will stay in perfect sync unless the content is specially designed to do that. For example, a simple Web browsing session will keep the pages synchronized, but not the position of the scroll bars. We may both be looking at the same Web page on the same inworld object, but I might be looking at the top portion, while you might be viewing what's below the fold.Consider a URL that doesn't always serve the exact same page, perhaps a Web page that displays a random background color each time it loads. If an inworld object's surface displayed that page, I might see a green background while you might see a blue one. Even more striking: if an inworld object's surface was pointed at a site with user login like Gmail, you and I could both log into it, and we'd be looking at our own inboxes, not at each other's. What’s really cool is that sites that are specifically designed for synchronous collaboration, like EtherPad, for instance, will stay in perfect sync. So if it's the intention, it is possible to design content that uses a back-end server to stay perfectly synchronized in all cases. In short, synchronicity is content- and context-specific, making possible a world of new applications and interactions.We Look Forward to Your Feedback and CreationsWith this release of Shared Media, we’re just at the starting line; we need your feedback. Please post your thoughts and experiences on Shared Media to the Viewer 2 Beta Forums. And if you build cool stuff and want to share it with us for inclusion in a Shared Media Showcase, please let us know in comments.Ok, enough reading about Shared Media. Go download Second Life Viewer 2, now in beta, and try it out!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/LtrZG-YI_lw/shared-media-bringing-the-web-inworld-with-viewer-2
Viewer 2 Beta Has ArrivedToday, we're excited to announce the launch of Viewer 2 Beta, the next generation of Second Life viewers -- combining an easy browser-like experience with shared media capabilities -- providing what we believe is the best experience yet for accessing Second Life, and a new option to choose from among Viewer 1.23 and other Third Party Viewers. We looked carefully at the experience design of other successful social media and technology platforms--such as the web browser, Facebook, the iPhone, Twitter, etc.--and the key elements that enabled them to reach mass adoption. You'll see much of that thinking baked into new Viewer 2 experience design. Our primary goal was to create a more consumer-friendly viewer--an imperative to bring in a new wave of Second Life Residents. After all, more people in Second Life means that there will be more amazing content, more customers to purchase virtual goods, a thriving economy, more friends and communities, and we can do even more to improve the experience. All very good things for all of us.Viewer 2 Introduces a More Intuitive User ExperienceViewer 2 has all of the capabilities of Viewer 1.23 and more; it has just been reorganized into a more intuitive user experience. In fact, it's chock full of cool features. Once you learn your way around, you'll definitely appreciate:A browser-like navigation bar with forward and back buttons. You can even save favorites and review your teleport history.A sliding right-hand panel that surfaces the most frequently-used features and makes managing your profile, contacts, groups, landmarks, inventory, and appearance easy. Improved Search, powered by Google Search Appliance technology , makes it easier to find friends, places, and cool stuff to buy. A superior alternative to invisiprims for non-human avatars. In Viewer 2, a new wearable type, called Alpha Masks, allow you to "mask out" parts of your base avatar to make entire body parts disappear. And, you'll enjoy the new contextual help to help you acclimate to the new viewer experience.Those are just a few highlights. There's much more! We'll be going into more depth on many of these features in future blog posts.Viewer 2 Brings the Web Into Second LifeYes, you heard that right. Shared Media™, a standard capability in Viewer 2, makes sharing standard Web-based media and content in Second Life easy, and enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Content creators can now place Web pages, video, Flash content, and other web media, onto any surface in Second Life. We expect that Shared Media will inspire a creative renaissance in Second Life as Residents explore more immersive and integrated inworld experiences and business opportunities such as gaming or theaters. And, for enterprises using Second Life as a work environment, Shared Media allows everyone to more effectively collaborate and share documents. We'll be publishing a blog post tomorrow focused on Shared Media--so keep your eyes peeled for that.It's the Little Things, TooWhile much of the focus on the new viewer will be on the design and marquee features like Shared Media and Search, there are lots of little improvements that should be sources of delight. Customization. Favorites. Inspectors. The right-hand panel. The notifications tray. The clickable names and SLurls in notifications. Icons for Residents. Outfits. Recent conversations. The notifications well. Clickable URLs. Selecting SLurls in the navigation tool bar. Global audio controls. Quick access to your audio preferences. Improved performance on the map. And, view controls with presets for over the shoulder and "What am I wearing?"And a Lot Under the Hood Search and the Home panel are web content. That means that we can continue to make updates to the content, design and interactions without forcing you to download a new version of the viewer. We believe that this will make a big difference for new users, because the content in that panel will help users discover the richness and depth of Second Life. Since it's web content, some of our recent acquisitions in the web space may soon be making an appearance--watch this space. We also focused on performance and stability. In fact, we believe this the most stable beta that we've ever released. But, it's Still BetaAnd that's why we're putting it into your hands now. So, put it through its paces, stress test it, and give us your feedback in the Viewer 2 Forum.Getting StartedViewer 2 is different enough from Viewer 1.23 and a few minutes perusing the Quickstart Guide will save you the frustration of "How do I do this?" or "Where is that?" Contextual support also available now within the viewer itself. If you're chomping at the bit to get going, then here are a few "high nails" that can help you get up-and-running quickly in Viewer 2.A couple of features you may be looking for:Camera Controls: Located on the Bottom Bar, labeled "View." Voice Controls: The "Speak" button is now located right next to the nearby text chat entry field. Sound preferences can be set by clicking Me > Preferences in the menus at the top, then clicking the Sound tab.Moving Around: Located on the Bottom Bar, labeled "Move."Teleporting: You can teleport a number of ways: Double-click a Landmark in the Places Panel in the Side Bar.Type a Region or Landmark name in the location field in the Top Bar and hit enter. Paste a SLurl into the location field and hit enter.A few handy tasks:Sharing Inventory: To share Inventory, start a Conversation (IM) with the person you to share an item. Click the "Share" button in the Conversation window which pops open the Inventory side panel. Then, drag the Inventory item over to the Conversation. Pay L$ to Someone: There are two quick ways to do this: A) Right click on the person, then select "Pay" from the context menu. B) Click "Pay" in the Conversation window. The "Pay Resident" floater will appear. Choose the amount you wish to pay and then click "Pay."But Where is My ?We tried to balance the needs of existing Residents with the general consumer, and made some dfficult choices like replacing pie menus with context list menus -- a broadly used design feature in most consumer software. If some of these changes are important to you, then the good news is that you still have choice.The Choice is YoursWe celebrate and encourage viewer choice. When it ships in its final form, Viewer 2 will become the primary viewer, included in the registration flow for all new Second Life Residents, but there are many other third-party viewers based on Snowglobe, our open source viewer, that are designed for Residents that have specialized needs and requirements. Viewer 1.23 will continue to be available for the foreseeable future and we will continue to support it as long as it makes sense. A Word about Third-Party ViewersWe're also announcing the Viewer Directory and the Policy on Third-Party Viewers. The Viewer Directory is a list of third-party viewers for Residents with specialized interests or viewing needs, such as languages that we do not support or additional navigation and accessibility features. To apply to add a viewer to the Viewer Directory, the software developer must be a Resident in good standing, and self-certify that the viewer complies with the Policy on Third-Party Viewers, which prohibits griefing, fraud, theft of passwords, and infringement of intellectual property. It is important to note that we will not tolerate malicious viewers that violate our policies. Enough said on that topic. To learn more about our announcement, read today's blog post on the new directory and policy. Snowglobe, our open source viewer program, will release later today. Snowglobe 2 is based on the Viewer 2 Beta code base. If you're a third-party developer interested in Snowglobe 2, visit our wiki page where you will find information and the downloads.Resources to Help You Learn Viewer 2Viewer 2 Help Portal (links to everything below)Quickstart Guide (SL Wiki)Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)Release Notes (SL Wiki)Video Demos (YouTube)SL Answers (SL Answers)And, if something breaks or you're really stuck, then contact Support and we're happy to help.This is Only the Beginning and We Want Your FeedbackWe're excited about what you'll experience today and we're only at the beginning. There's so much more that we'll be adding to Viewer 2 in the coming months. And, one of the most exciting things for folks at Linden, is that the Viewer 2 code base will enable us to improve the product at a much faster pace than ever before. So, that's where you come in. We need to hear from you! Participate in the Viewer 2 Forum and share your experience and suggest future enhancements. And, if you find a bug, then please log it in PJIRA. Then, go tell your friends! If you Twitter, then use the #SLViewer2 hash tag.So, go download Viewer 2 here and try it out. We hope you like it.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/j3kzpZdvD1Y/second-life-viewer-2-beta-now-available
It is our great pleasure to announce that today Linden Homes have launched for all existing and new Premium subscribers.Linden Homes are private, individual homes that are a new feature of Premium Subscription and are provided at no additional cost. In addition to a Linden Home, Premium members also receive other benefits, including a weekly L$ stipend and additional support. You can read all about Linden Homes, including where they are and why we built them, in the original blog post.During the Beta period we surveyed our Linden Home testers and got some great feedback, which was detailed in a previous blog post. Over the past two months we've been concentrating on putting the final touches on the homes and neighborhoods to get them ready for launch. And we plan to make more changes in the future to incorporate some of the great feedback we received.One example is a desire for more variety of homes. As a result, we've developed a control panel for each home that will be available a few weeks after launch. Through the control panel, a Linden Home owner will be able to configure the home via a web page of options, accessed by clicking that control panel. Owners will be able to choose from a variety of wall, floor and roof textures and colors, adding more variety to the homes. And to help Linden Home owners customize and decorate their homes, we will be making the base textures available to our merchants so that they can build furniture and other items that fit with each home's theme. Special search categories will be created on XStreet to make finding these items as easy as possible.We plan to add new Linden Home themes over time and make improvements to homes as necessary. We also plan to make the building scripts available to those that want to use similar techniques on their own land. And stay on the lookout for a more in-depth blog post coming soon on how we made Linden Homes.I'm a Premium member, how do I get my free Linden Home?All Premium members are now able to have a Linden Home as part of their subscription. If you are a Premium member, you will be receiving an email within the next week or two that will explain how to claim your new home. Not every Premium will receive this email at the same time as we're going to stagger them a little to avoid too much load up front. You will also be able to sign up from today through your account pages on the website.How do I become a Premium member?In addition to a Linden Home, premium members receive a sign-up bonus, weekly rewards, mainland building rights and live access to customer support. If you want to become a Premium member, you can do so through the Change Membership Page. It's very quick and easy. Here are more details on what is provided in the subscription package.What is a Linden Home?This is a new feature of the Premium subscription package. Along with a L$ stipend, additional support and a free Mainland tier allowance, all Premium members will be able to opt to own a free Linden Home using their free Mainland tier. The homes themselves come in a variety of themes and designs, and are placed ready for you to move straight in! Remember, you can only have a Linden Home if you are a Premium member.We are providing Linden Homes because we want to help residents to experience the benefits of owning their own home in Second Life. Land can be complicated for new and existing residents to understand, so Linden Homes is designed to be an easy, predictable and safe introduction to land.If you'd like to take a look at the Linden Homes for yourself, here are some SLurls you can explore.Elderglen Infohub: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Elderglen/128/155/30Tahoe Infohub: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tahoe%20Springs/155/143/28Shareta Osumai Infohub: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shareta%20Osumai/110/210/118Meadowbrook Infohub: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meadowbrook/65/187/41
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Our thoughts today are with the people of Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake yesterday (read more at the US Haitian Embassy). We here at Linden Lab send our condolences to any Second Life Resident who is directly or otherwise impacted by this horrible event.The global Second Life community has a long history of drawing together to raise money and provide support for those who are impacted by great tragedies. You can still visit the Big Easy region, which was originally built to raise funds for 2005's Hurricane Katrina and more recently, events were held to support those impacted by the Typhoon in the Philippines last fall.If you are involved in organizing or are aware of any inworld events being planned, please post a link or more information about them as comments to this blog post. Also, read more about other Second Life Resident-driven efforts at Hamlet's blog.Those interested in making contributions to help the victims in Haiti can get more information by visiting the Center for International Disaster Information or visit www.interaction.org to obtain a list of credible responding agencies for international emergencies.[EDITED TO ADD]Here is some early information (as it surfaces) about a few Second Life related efforts that are being pulled together, contact the organizers if you want to help:Resident Rhiannon Chatnoir is tracking inworld relief efforts in this blog post, she has also offered her catherdal in Darkwood as a space to light a candle with your thoughts and prayers.Resident Katydid Something is organizing a relief benefit and is looking for musicians and artists to help. IM her inworld for more info or to get involved. Resident Kali Idziak is planning to hold an inworld event for the the Haitian Sustainable Development Foundation, this Facebook cause page has more info: Also, Kudos to long-time Second Life Resident and real life pilot Ham Rambler (who owns the Dublin sim/pub), he's been hard at work flying search and rescue teams to Haiti.Please continue to post any additional information below in the comments!
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Google is the industry standard for Internet search, and Google's technology has much to offer Second Life. We are investing in refining -- and eventually expanding -- our use of the Google Search Appliances (GSA) to give you the best tools for discovering the great things Second Life has to offer. For some time, we have been using Google Search Appliances for parts of Search, such as the "All Tab" in the Viewer, and we've been monitoring its effectiveness. What we've found is that the All Tab is one of the most used search tools, and Resident feedback tells us that it gives them a largely successful search experience. That's great, and we will build on the system to do better. In the year ahead, you'll see many improvements to all the search tools, as well as ongoing refinement of search result quality. Some of these improvements will be available in the next few weeks.In the second half of January, we will release an upgrade to the GSAs that adds some new features. This update will only affect searches that are served by the GSAs. These are searches conducted in the All Tab and Group Tab in the Viewer, on secondlife.com, including the World Map, and in the Second Life Wiki and the Knowledge Base contained in the wiki. The changes will not affect Classifieds (in the Classifieds Tab or alongside Search results) or search on XStreetSL.In this release, we will upgrade the GSAs to the latest version. Version 6 not only offers some great improvements for creating better search results for Residents, but it also gives Linden Lab better control over performance and fine-tuning of our relevance rules. Some release highlights:Better phrase searching. This release has important improvements to make multiple word searches work better. Using more than one keyword really helps you narrow in on the right results quickly, and now, searching on phrases will return even more accurate results.Keyword stemming added. The search engine will now return results for the keyword you enter as well as results for words that are based on the linguistic root of that keyword. For example, a search for any of the words dancing, dancer, dances will also be matched to dance (and vice-versa) by the search algorithm. All listings that include a word related to the root word dance will then be displayed in the results.Relevance improvements. We've made some changes that will lower the rank of keyword-stuffed or gamed listings. This means that high-quality destinations and listings will rise to the top of Search results, creating a more satisfying search experience for Residents by connecting them with the best of Second Life.If you are a Second Life merchant, a Place, Group or Event owner, or if you just want to be sure your People Profile shows up in searches by your target audience, then please visit this updated Knowledge Base article to learn more about how to create effective listings and be found in Search. Stay tuned to this blog for the final release date on this upgrade and for future communications on Search and Classifieds. Thanks!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SecondLife/~3/CdWoZ3eya6Q/search-upcoming-release
Welcome loyal Eureka reader(s) to the next phase of your beloved (and much neglected) Second Life travel blog! I had originally started Eureka as a means to share stories of not simply the inspirational places and things to do in SL, but of the smart, talented, and just plain cool people and communities behind them. Thanks to SL blogs like Working Inworld and Learning Inworld you regularly get to hear about the amazing things real world groups are doing in SL, but just as compelling and deserving of documentation are the stories of our home-grown heroes, the residents.I dreamt of revealing every single one of these cool people and places, but 2009 has been crazy-insane busy and let's face it...I came up a bit short. But that's no reason to shelve the dream! As such, we're going to go ahead with the original long-range plan and bring on some other notable explorers to expand this into a multi-author blog, and share with you MORE coolness than ever before. With "More" being such an easy target, I'm declairing victory right here and now...wewt!So welcome to the Eureka - The Destination Guide Blog!I would like to introduce and welcome Limey and Silver Linden, socialites and explorers of distinction, who will be the first Eureka bloggers joining me in sharing their personal stories of inworld discovery. With their existing experience, working to uncover amazing SL stuff for the Destination Guide, they are a most welcome addition. Please give them a warm welcome and stay tuned as they make their inaugural posts in the upcoming weeks!See you inworld,-BlueP.S. Wondering how to get YOUR cool location in the Destination Guide? Check the wiki right here for more info!
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Hello Residents!The first decade of the new millennium is now officially behind us. What a roller-coaster ride we’ve had!The decade began with fears of a technological catastrophe (Y2K) that never materialized. Just as we put that behind us, the dot-com bubble burst…then came the attacks of 9/11. Eventually the dark days ended and a renaissance began. New companies were born that used the web to connect people and information in unprecedented ways. As the decade came to a close we entered a hugely painful worldwide recession that, in time, will lead to a period of renewed innovation.Despite the historic challenges, this decade gave us RSS, WordPress, Wikipedia, QQ, Skype, Firefox, YouTube, Gmail, Yelp, LinkedIn, Flickr, Amazon’s EC2, the Wii, Zynga, Webkins, Club Penguin, Tuenti, Facebook, the iPod/iPhone and iTunes, Twitter and, of course, Second Life.This decade will go down in history as the decade where the internet became a momentous and inexorable part of everyday life, everywhere. Broadband super-charged the internet, moving us from linked pages to moving images. Virtual worlds gave the internet the beginnings of a rich and engaging third dimension. User-generated content, virtual goods and micro-transactions gave rise to wholly new business models and a new creative class. The internet got vocal with VOIP, went mobile and ascended into the cloud. It came back to earth with local, personal and social tools front-and-center. It became synchronous and real-time as instant messaging and status updates drove new forms of social currency.To me (and admittedly I am biased) Second Life illustrates the enormity of innovation in this past decade:Broadband ubiquity: Philip’s knowledge of streaming video and his early bet on broadband ubiquity paid off.Cloud computing: Cloud computing (7,000 servers with more than 300 terrabytes of data and 20 gigabits of network traffic) -- powers our vast, synchronous virtual world.User-generated content: By democratizing content creation, Second Life enables anyone to create a world limited only by their imagination.Virtual goods: Content creators populate Second Life with 250,000+ new objects each day that can be bought, sold, traded, collected, shared or gifted.Micro-transactions: The ability to make, own and sell content has created a powerful Second Life economy in which user-to-user transactions exceeded $550 Million in 2009, up from $360 Million in 2008.Social tools: Second Life, an inherently social experience, has spawned more than 446,000 active groups, while Residents type more than 7.5 Billion words of text chat every month.VOIP: Residents consume more than 1 Billion minutes of voice per month (delivered via VOIP). The next decade promises to be more bountiful than the last, for the internet and for Second Life. If the first decade of the new millennium was about the internet, the second decade will be about virtual worlds. In the second decade, Second Life will take the internet from black-and-white to technicolor.When I set my draw distance out 10 years and envision Second Life then, here is what I see:Everyone has an avatar. Avatars have the ability to travel across virtual worlds, maintaining their unique identity (and inventory) as they go. Some are stunningly vivid fantasy avatars and others are hyper-real. You express yourselves through your avatar using interfaces we weren’t able to imagine in 2010.Second Life is galactic. With a massive influx of new Residents, Second Life becomes a collection of interconnected (and independent) worlds – some terrestrial, some extra-terrestrial. In terrestrial terms, Second Life grows 10x from being the 170th largest country in the world to the 134th (as measured by landmass) – right between Denmark and Switzerland. SLHD blurs the distinction between real and virtual. New tools and capabilities for content creation and animation together with enhanced graphics and multi-sensory rendering enable SLHD (Second Life in High Definition) to blur the distinction between real and virtual. You pet a chicken and feel the smooth texture of its feathers. You bend down to smell a rose and, well, you smell a rose. We are able to explore the edge of possibility. Combining SLHD with innovations in display technology gives us powerful and flexible new augmented- and mixed-reality environments that enable us to explore the edge of possibility – that fascinating edge between virtual and real. Walls in your office become portals to the metaverse. Imagine the possibilities for information visualization.The walls come down early in the second decade. Second Life quickly spreads beyond the walled garden of 2009. APIs connect it to commonly-used social utilities. It’s available on mobile devices. It’s part of real life experiences. All together, this makes Second Life a natural, practical extension and enhancement of everyday life. Imagine you are out shopping one day. You see a great dining table in a real life store and scan it with your mobile device. Moments later it appears in the dining room of your Second Life home – visible on your mobile device, projectable on the wall of the store. You see it in context but you’re still not sure it’s right so you check your friend list to see who might be available to offer a second opinion. You send an invite and your best friend pops in, looks at it and gives you two thumbs up. You still have reservations. Later in the evening, you visit your Second Life home again to see how the table looks. You love it. With a few clicks, you purchase it and arrange for delivery to your real life home.The Second Life economy becomes meaningful among real world economies. The Second Life economy -- powered by a robust marketplace, a stable Linden Dollar and superb tools for content creation, management, protection, sharing and consumption continues its high double-digit growth -- and zooms from number 175 to number 150 among world economies (as measured by GDP). The availability of a robust and secure global marketplace gives people in emerging economies education and income-earning opportunities they don’t have domestically.Second Life becomes a standard in business, education and government. All sizes of companies use Second Life as their preferred collaboration, simulation and learning tool to connect with customers, suppliers and employees all over the world. Universities funnel expansion funds into the virtual world, eschewing expensive real world building projects in favor of Second Life. Essential government services are delivered virtually. It’s fun to push your draw distance 10 years out. I’d love to know what you see when you push your draw distance out ten years. Please share your thoughts in the forums.Let’s come back to the present...2009 was a year of intense renovation. Many of the projects we began in 2009 will launch in the first half of 2010. Our goal with these projects is to make the Second Life user experience more intuitive, more accessible, more reliable and more connected to the social web. We must reduce dramatically the “Time to Delight” (i.e., the time it takes to get to that wonderful “AH HA!!” moment in Second Life) from several hours to several minutes. This will benefit both user acquisition and retention. We’ve also been working on improving the support we give to the ecosystem of content creators, merchants, landowners and solution providers since they/you are the lifeblood of Second Life. Finally, we’ve been working on platform projects to improve stability, reliability and quality of the Second Life experience which is top-of-mind for all Residents.Here’s what we accomplished in 2009: 1. Experience improvements:We built a new Secondlife.com, localized for our major markets around the world (with help from many Second Life Residents) and began our effort to enable more of the Second Life experience to be accessible via the web.We worked on Viewer 2.0, simplifying the interface and adding some compelling new features (Viewer 2.0 will launch in the first quarter).We introduced new policies, filters and controls for adult content in order to deliver a more predictable experience for a wide range of users.We launched a new product called Linden Homes, to make it “web easy” for new Residents to find their first home in Second Life and to create a gateway product to bring new Residents into the Land market.We launched Second Life Answers to help Residents help other Residents with their questions. Your contributions have been amazing – Thank you! Answers had more than 70K page views in December. We moved the Knowledgebase to the wiki to harness the power of Residents' collective knowledge. We added toll-free telephone numbers in major international markets.We worked on viewer, simulator, network and infrastructure improvements to deliver a more stable, reliable and higher quality Second Life experience. 2. Ecosystem improvements:We acquired two virtual goods e-commerce sites and began integrating them into the Second Life experience so that Residents can buy virtual goods both inworld and on the web. Since the acquisitions early in 2009, web sales of Residents’ virtual goods have doubled.We started work on a content protection roadmap that will empower content creators to better manage and protect their content. Read more here. As part of this effort, we also began a dialog with the community on Third Party Viewers.We launched a Solution Provider Program, created a new directory and held the first-ever Solution Provider Summit (inworld, of course). The program is designed to help Enterprise customers find the high quality services they need to build a compelling presence and experience in Second Life. 3. Platform improvements:We released Second Life Enterprise in public beta – a new behind-the-firewall solution for enterprise customers. Follow Enterprise developments here.To improve platform stability and deliver a better user experience, we commissioned our own private network (LLNet) and significantly upgraded our network infrastructure, reducing the hours lost due to downtime. Plus we extended our data center infrastructure to the eastern United States, as we prepare to move our infrastructure eastward to Europe.We upgraded the simulators to the next generation processors so that all regions are operating on the highest performance, most up-to-date hardware (Class 5s or better). So, what’s ahead in 2010? Before I jump into this, a caveat is in order. Linden Lab is not a traditional software company. Historically, roadmaps were simply not part of the Lab’s DNA. This kind of project planning is new for the Lab. That being said, we are trying to share our plans in advance, in the form of dialog with the community because we know many of you are building your businesses on our platform. OK, so what’s ahead in 2010? 1. Experience improvements that attract more new Residents, get them acclimated and part of the social fabric of Second Life:Viewer 2.0 with new tools that will add richness inworld. Continued localization of the Second Life experience in our key markets, including additional payment choices.New discovery tools that enable Residents to find the people, places and things most meaningful to them (search will be fixed!).New social tools that will enable Residents to find and make new friends, and entice and invite existing friends to join by sharing the richness of Second Life.A new orientation experience inworld that makes it easier for new Residents to acclimate to Second Life and a revamped Community Gateway program with a rich set of new entry paths for new Residents and new benefits for Gateway managers.The ability to choose either real names or fantasy names in Second Life. 2. Ecosystem improvements for consumers, landowners, merchants and creators to enable continued growth:Content management and protection tools, including a viewer and seller directory.A rebranded and redesigned e-commerce experience, simplified for shoppers and merchants, segmented for play/work, supported by filtered search and giving merchants new tools to manage their product lines and businesses. A renewed focus on opensource development. 3. Platform enhancements that continue to improve Second Life stability, reliability and quality of experience Second Life Enterprise in public release, with a marketplace for work-related content.Extension of our data center and network infrastructure to Europe.Implementation of service-oriented architectures to improve reliability and extensibility to new applications. Expose of more functionality (like HTTP-IN) and new API to the developer community as fuel for new innovative, user-generated content and tools.Continued work on our scripting roadmap. [You’ll recall that we replaced the original LSL virtual machine with Mono in 2008 -- which runs LSL much, much faster. Next up is allowing content creators to use a much richer language for scripting (C#) that will open up Second Life to a larger community of developers]Last but not least, “Technical Must Dos” that improve inventory management, lag and other sources of Resident frustration through a global infrastructure, parallelization in the simulator, enhanced viewer to simulator data communication and improved caching.* * * * *Second Life is a wondrous, world-changing phenomenon and all of us at the Lab recognize there is much to do. Working together with you -- our Residents -- I am confident we can make Second Life all that we together desire it to be. I’d like to hear from you on what you imagine and desire Second Life to be. I have set up a discussion thread so please share your thoughts by joining the discussion...Let me close on a personal note. Almost 30 years ago, I lived in Germany for a year to study German immersively. I knew I’d internalized the language and culture when I began to have dreams in German. In early 2009, I started having dreams that take place inworld and that’s when I knew I’d internalized this amazing thing we call Second Life. I can’t easily share my dreams with you (and I wouldn’t want to, even if I could ) but if you’d like to follow my travels across Second Life, follow me on Flickr or Twitter. My 2009 New Year's resolution was to spend more fun/social time in Second Life and I did, as you’ll see.Thank you and Happy New Year!M.Photo credit: Daniel Voyager
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Observed on November 11th, Veterans Day is an annual American holiday honoring military veterans. For the past two years, a group of Second Life Residents has been organizing a Veterans Day Tribute in Second Life as a non-political and educational event to honor all the men and women who have served or currently serve in the Armed Services. The group also raises funds in Second Life to support Operation Uplink, a non-profit organization that provides phone cards to deployed service members and hospitalized veterans.The third annual Veterans Day Tribute in Second Life runs all this week through November 14th, and you can visit it here in Second Life. I had the opportunity to chat with one of the organizers to learn more about the Tribute and the people behind it. Read on for details! (left to right) Pathfinder Linden and Flattop Ewing in front of a recreation of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Pathfinder: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, Flattop. Can you tell me about the history of this event? How did it start? Where do you see it going in the future?Flattop: It started in 2007 simply as an event in a club. I contacted a few designers in Second Life and they offered up their skills/services to those visiting the celebration. The event was just that one night, but I received many messages from people that weren't able to attend, all asking if it was still happening the next night. So we held it again. It was then that I realized the need for a "community built" tribute to the veterans, in which people across Second Life could donate their time, their skills and talents to a single venue honoring veterans across the globe.Flattop: In 2008 we had a staff of 6 people, 15 live entertainers and DJs volunteering their time as well as a handful of builders/designers bringing content honoring veterans. Now in 2009, we have 8 tribute coordinators, over 25 volunteers as guides, over 40 DJs and live entertainers and an ever growing number of contributors throughout Second Life offering their skills building and designing. Through our website, we are able to accept names being submitted to the Veterans Wall as well as providing the ability for a number of US active duty soldiers around the world to be able to listen to the live entertainment and DJs. The Veterans Wall in Second Life Flattop: Where is it going in the future? Each year we've made plans and each year the Tribute has seemingly had it's own "plan." It seems to have its own life - it touches visitors in ways and depths we hadn't imagined. From a small area in the first year, to a half sim in 2008, through to a full sim kindly donated by Dream Seeker Estates in 2009. We dream and plan big, but the Tribute dreams bigger! Next month we start planning for 2010 - four major sponsors, many sponsors prepared to donate their creations for fundraising efforts, two full sims and live entertainment. All of it is accompanied by the kind donations of so many Residents of Second Life.Pathfinder: That's incredible growth! It sounds like you have an amazing team of people who work very hard to make this all happen. Can you tell me about them?Flattop: The folks involved in making this happen range from the primary coordinators to the guides that are here to show people around and listen to the amazing stories of veterans from people of all walks of life. The primary coordinators of the Tribute are as follows:Flattop Ewing -- "I served in the US Marine Corps from 1992 - 2000, seeing action in Somalia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. My dad and several other family members are veterans of the US Military, spanning back to before WWI. Being a veteran is one of the greatest honors I have had in my life. My appreciation and passion for our veterans is something that will always be close to my heart."wellhung Bagley --"US Navy veteran of six years. Served aboard the USS Yorktown (CG-48) as well as other duty stations. I am proud to be a veteran and this tribute is a way for me to be involved in showing appreaciation for all of the other veterans around and for those currently serving to protect the freedoms that we enjoy and sometimes take for granted."SexySarah Svenska -- "I am the wife, daughter, granddaughter, niece and friend of Veterans. This is one small way I can do my part to support all they've done to make my world as safe as it can be today."Wildroses Pevensey -- "My family has a long history in the military. I have been a military wife, not knowing where my husband was sent or when he would be coming home, but knowing that he was doing his duty for our country. I have friends that have been in the military for 15+ years that are still active duty. I can think of nothing better to do than to honor our veterans and let them still in the military know we care and simply say thank you for protecting our freedoms."Classy Patton -- "My father and my grandfather were both veterans of WW2. Being involved in the Tribute allows me the opportunity to offer thanks to veterans worldwide - their service, past and present, gives me the wonderful life and freedom I enjoy."Jill Mackenzie -- "My dad served in the Royal Canadian Navy in WW2, and a close personal friend served in the US Army in Vietnam. Its important to me to give something back to the Vets who served so I can be here today. "Dena McMahon -- "I am the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran, Granddaughter of WWII Veteran, Great-Granddaughter of Spanish-American War Veteran. I do this to pay tribute to my dad and grandfathers who have served and to ensure those friends I've lost are never forgotten and all soldiers are HONORED for what they do"Silver709 Darkstone -- "My father served in Korea. I have been involved with DJing through Second Life to troops overseas for over one year now." Pathfinder: Outstanding. I can't wait to see what you all accomplish next year. Can you tell me a bit about how visitors have responded to the Tribute? What kind of feedback are you getting from the Second Life community?Flattop: The response is absolutely amazing, to say the least. We have seen such a wide range of emotion from people: from a wife of a veteran in tears kneeling at the Veterans Wall, to the laughter and joy hearing veterans gathering around telling stories The response from the Second Life community has been tremendous. Many different organizations, groups, venues and Residents have opened up their arms and their hearts to the Veterans Tribute in so many ways; from Second Lifemagazines and various forms of media (talk shows, etc) to the best advertising of all.....'word of mouth'.Flattop: We receive comments and messages on a daily basis from people around the world who tell us how the tribute has touched their lives both in Second Life and Real Life. One woman said of the Veterans Wall that she is finally able to see her Real Life husband's name on a wall of honor for his service to his nation. Another Resident told us how he is physically unable to attend any Veterans Day celebration or parade in Real Life. But through Second Life, he can attend the Tribute and connect with people from around the world.Pathfinder: Wow. Thank you for your time, Flattop. I look forward to seeing you and lots of other folks at the Tribute in the coming days. Here's the main entrance to the event in Second Life. The Mess Tent and Dance Floor at the Veterans Tribute - Pathfinder Linden
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I spent a few hours of my Halloween this year in the UK at the Open University's party in a castle in Second Life. I had the Halloween honor of announcing the new name of the OU community village, chosen by the community itself--OUtopia. While OU community members were dancing the night away, one OU staff member, in an outstanding Trick instead of Treat, made the castle vanish suddenly, hurling us all to the ground scratching our virtual heads. Dancing resumed instantly with hardly a treat dropped. Open University understands the importance of nurturing community and is developing some significant expertise in that area. They do it in playful style.I had an opportunity to speak with Anna a few days after the party. Anna, I think your team at the Open University is an exemplar in growing and supporting community. From what I understand, your community has been an overwhelmingly successful aspect of the OU efforts in SL. What is your next step in community activity? Our next step is to give the community a stronger sense of ownership of the island, beginning with the opportunity to rename the island. This ties in with our name change from Open Life to Open University on our main region space. We're putting an infrastructure in place to enable more participatory management of the land. Initially, community members could build within their house or allotment spaces and organize activities, but management was done centrally by a few OU staff. We're now turning that over to the community and experimenting with governance. We're starting by creating a Community Council -a small group, with fixed areas of responsibility, initially appointed by management from volunteer applicants but possibly elected in future. A Village Rep will actively seek out opinions of residents and feed these back to the council. A Council Chair elected by the council members will organise Council meetings and pass info to/from management. Events Officers will plan social events and have SL permissions to set up objects/media in certain areas. There will be other supporting roles such as a Prim Litter Warden, and a publican for the Open Arms. What outcomes would you like to see by giving the community more powers? We're interested in open-ended outcomes. We're looking forward to seeing and learning from what the community does. For example, what if the elected council decides there should be no houses on the island. I think the only way community will flourish in the long term is if they have ownership. There is already a strong sense of this. The buddy board is a great example. These boards are just within the nOUbie Centre, which is where people land when they visit the core Open University island for the first time. Buddies are volunteers, and when they're online their board becomes active with their picture. If a visitor clicks on that picture, it sends an IM to the buddy, who will then teleport to the nOUbie Centre and offer support. People are very proactive in being buddies, responding to newcomers and wanting to bring them inworld with a positive start. Seeing this enthusiasm has encouraged us to give them total ownership. One of the strengths we see being in Second Life is that an open island and open membership group encourages people to come in and become part of the community. People have registered for their first Open University classes after being a part of the OU community inworld. Looking toward the future, what are some developments on the horizon? In the immediate future, our new Vice Chancellor Martin Beam will be speaking on Open University island on December 16 about the future of innovation in learning technology. It will be a live inworld event, limited to 50 inworld visitors, which we will record and make available for download, possivly through iTunes University. We have lots of other plans for teaching and learning activities in Second Life – more news on this in the new year . Anna, what would you say differentiates the Open University's work in Second Life from other academic projects? We can teach subjects in Second Life. Several of our faculty are doing that successfully. But the thing that really works for us is the extraordinary way Second Life enables community. As the OU is primarily a distance learning institution we have to work hard to reach out to students in social spaces and help them find an identity as a member of our student body. Second Life has enabled us to do that with a new dimension on anything we’ve tried before, and I think it is the way that we’re embracing and exploring that which is different to the many other interesting teaching and learning projects going on both within our own university and the work of other academic bodies across the grid. Thanks, Anna. Do keep us posted on how the next phase in participatory governance goes. We look forward to hearing your insights and emerging best practices. You can download the Open University case study with a focus on community best practices here.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/cHXzAxwsvdQ/announcing-outopia--open-universitys-innovative-experiment-in-community
We’re ListeningOver the last few years, the number one request and core business requirement of many of our enterprise and government customers has been the need for a behind-the-firewall Second Life solution. The extra layers of security and administrative control in a stand-alone product would allow these organizations to explore virtual work as a powerful and effective collaboration and communication tool—if it was available. We listened. Last year, Mark Kingdon (SL: M Linden), Linden Lab’s CEO, announced that we were working on a behind-the-firewall solution in response to customer needs.Ready for WorkToday, we’re excited to announce the beta launch of Second Life Enterprise, formerly known by our internal code name “Nebraska” and now known as SL Enterprise. SL Enterprise is the most secure, content-rich, and flexible enterprise-ready virtual workplace solution available today, built on the world's leading 3D virtual world technology platform--Second Life. The SL Enterprise solution enables large organizations to bring distributed colleagues together into a persistent branded immersive space to collaborate, meet, learn, and prototype new offerings, while cutting travel costs and working greener. Customers including IBM, Intel, Case Western Reserve, New Media Consortium, DefenseWeb Technologies, Northrop Grumman, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and many others, are maintaining and growing their presence in Second Life while also working in the SL Enterprise environment for certain uses that require higher levels of security and control.Product DetailOk, let’s talk nuts and bolts for a minute. The solution itself runs 8 regions simultaneously while storing over 25 additional regions that you can take up and down in a flash. With 8 regions, the system can support a maximum of 800 avatars. From a user perspective, SL Enterprise feels exactly like Second Life with all of the benefits including a 3D rich immersive environment, spatial voice, text chat, and the LSL building environment. But, you can use real names and connect those users directly to your network directory. Oh, and let me croon about the control panel where administrators use a web-based dashboard to manage users, regions, content, and systems—complete with backup and recovery, LDAP integration, and bulk account creation. The solution comes standard with 7 pre-built regions and 10 multi-cultural SL Work avatars with business attire and accessories included.Deck Out your Workspace with ContentWhat about content, you ask? Great question. There are three ways to create or bring new content into the SL Enterprise environment. First, the solution has the same rich LSL building tools as Second Life so creating new content within the solution is easy. Second, if you own the intellectual property rights in content you created in Second Life, then you can transfer that content into the SL Enterprise environment. Now, you’ll need to affirm your IP ownership prior to moving any content—you must identify the Second Life names of your employees who created content for you, and if you wish to transfer any content created by a Resident who is not your employee, you must provide Linden Lab with a signed written permission from that Resident content creator. (So for SL merchants, those who purchased your content within Second Life cannot move it to the SL Enterprise environment without your express written permission. But, keep reading because there’s a business opportunity for you….)Coming Soon! The SL Work MarketplaceAnd, there’s a third option that we’re very excited about. Today, we’re also announcing the Second Life Work Marketplace, set to launch in Q1 2010. The SL Work Marketplace will be the first virtual world application and solution marketplace in the world. It will allow large organizations to download entire regions of collaboration tools, meeting and event solutions, training solutions, work avatars, business-oriented environments, and much more, into their stand alone SL Enterprise environment and make enterprise-wide use of that content under an organizational site license. For Solution Providers and content creators, this opens up a whole new market for work-related content. Initially, we’re only accepting content from Gold Solution Providers and Recommended Application Providers, but we will open up the application process to a broader audience soon.Business-Friendly MainlandOne other important thing to note: The Enterprise Team is not just working on SL Enterprise and the SL Work Marketplace. We’re also hard at work making improvements to the main Second Life environment—to make it easier to use and useful for organizations using Second Life today and for those that will be joining in the future. We’ll have more to share on some of those improvements in the coming months.Learn MoreIn the meantime, you probably have a million questions and we look forward to answering them in future blog posts and in our upcoming office hours (days and times posted to the left). But, before you dive in, I wanted to share some materials that will hopefully anticipate a few.Second Life Enterprise and Second Life Work Marketplace Press Release Comparing Second Life and Second Life EnterpriseSecond Life Enterprise Product PageSecond Life Enterprise Datasheet Second Life Enterprise FAQs Second Life Enterprise Flickr Images Second Life Work Marketplace Solution PagePricing begins at $55,000 USD. If you’re interested in learning more about SL Enterprise, then contact us and let’s explore how the solution can dramatically improve your internal collaboration and communication and decrease your travel costs.Please join us in discussing SL Enterprise!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/LzTamAlzl3s/introducing-second-life-enterprise-now-in-beta-and-second-life-work-marketplace
Second Life economy hits major milestones in Q3: 1 Billion Total User Hours, 1 Billion in User-to-User transactionsIn Q3 2009, The Second Life economy reached a significant milestone marking the continued success of Second Life. See the release here.Second Life Residents enjoyed strong economic growth in Q3, despite the ongoing impact of the Bot policy on total user hours and concurrency.Highlights of Q3 include:150M USD in User-to-User Transactions, 54% growth over the same quarter last yearA new all time high and continuing rapid growth for the Xstreet online marketplace 3.1 Billion Voice minutes, up 27% from the same quarter last yearAs predicted last Quarter, total user hours and peak concurrency dropped compared to last quarter as a result of the new policies banning bots.This Quarter, the spotlight section focuses on international usage of Second Life, highlighting the top countries for user hours and User-to-User Transactions.Let’s take a look at the trends and data for Q3 2009, starting with User-to-User transactions.User-to-User Transactions peak at 150M, up 54% from Q32008 - The total of all transactions in Second Life reached a new high in the quarter. The sum of all of the transactions in the Second Life economy equaled a total of USD 150 million dollars in Q3 2009. This is 4% growth over the previous quarter and 54% over the same quarter one year ago.Trading Activity on the LindeX – The volume of exchange on the LindeX, the marketplace for Linden dollars (L$), the Second Life virtual currency, reached USD 29 million in Q3 2009. This is flat compared to the previous quarter and 3% growth over the same quarter a year ago.Total Xstreet sales reach a new all time high in Q3 2009 – In its third quarter under the Linden Lab banner, XStreet, the web marketplace for Second Life virtual goods, had gross sales of 420M L$, or approximately USD 1.6 million.This represents 13% growth over the previous quarter and 72% growth over the same quarter one year ago. XStreet remains small by comparison with Second Life overall, at approximately 1% of the USD 150 million Second Life economy in Q3 2009.User hours reached 118 Million in Q2 2009 – As predicted in the Q2 2009 Economy Blog Post, User Hours declined in Q3 when compared to Q2 2009. This is due to Q3 having three months reflecting a reduction in the number of hours contributed by bots compared to one month in Q2. See the chart below (User Hours by Usage Band) and the SPOTLIGHT of the Q2 2009 Economy Blog post for an explanation of this dynamic.The Q3 figures show a 6% decline when compared to Q2 2009, and a 15% increase when compared to Q3 2008, and this is directly in line with our forecast for user hours in Q3.Bot Policies continue to have an impact on user hours – In Q3 2009, the user hours by usage bands showed some summer seasonality. The 300+ hours per month usage band continuing to decline with the enforcement of the policies around the usage of scripted agents, aka Bots. We continue to invest in our ability to track and identify bots, including the ability to set the status of a self-identified scripted agent.Second Life Residents use 3.1 billion voice minutes in Q3 2009 – Total Voice Minutes grew 27% compared to Q3 2008 and declined 1% compared to Q2 2009. This metric measures all VoIP traffic across all types of voice sessions – Resident-to-Resident calls, group voice chats, and local voice.Voice minutes remaining flat despite the fewer overall user hours is a function of the ongoing impact of Bots on user hours, which do not show up in the Voice minutes, as Bots generally do not use voice.Monthly Unique Residents with repeat logins reaches 750K in September – In September 2009, Monthly repeat logins peaked at 750,446. Year to year, September 2009 repeat logins grew 23% from September 2008 repeat logins and are slightly down from the peak of 752K set in May of 2009 before the Bot policy went into effect.While the number of total unique logins (including users who log in to Second Life only once in a given month) is much higher, we use repeat logins (which captures all unique users with more than one login in a given month) as a metric to track the number of users who are engaged with Second Life.Peak Concurrent Users hit 77,367 in Q3 – Within the quarter, peak concurrency was steady around the 77K mark. This decline in peak is a function of the new Bot policy. Median concurrency for Q3 2009 was 54K, compared to 61K in Q2 2009.SPOTLIGHT: International usage of Second Life indicates global nature of the Second Life Economy – This quarter’s spotlight explores International. By every measure, it’s clear that Second Life is a global phenomenon and that our efforts to invest in the experience for international Residents is paying off. Let’s start with the basics – the below chart summarizes the mix between the US and International in Q3 across a variety of metrics.US Residents account for largest portion of Economy in Q3 – Residents from the US accounted for 37% of User- to- User Transaction volume on a dollar basis, with Italy, Germany, France, the UK, and Japan rounding out the top 5.Germany, UK, France, Brazil account for 25% of user hours in Q3– Turning to usage, Residents from the US generated 41% of the total user hours in Q3, followed by Germany, the UK, France and Brazil. Note that these numbers are inclusive of Bot activity.For additional countries, see a complete listing of the countries with their user hours and User-to-User transactions here.Continued Stability supports the in-world economy – Our work on scalability and stability continued in Q3 2009 (see Updates from the Grid and Grid Monitoring and Support). In Q3, total downtime as a percentage of total user hours was 0.15%, our smallest percentage of downtime ever. This was better than Q2 2009 (at 0.24%) and our previous best in Q1 2009 at 0.21%.We measure total user hours lost to downtime (planned and unplanned) as a percentage of total user hours as a gauge of stability as well as a factor in the growth of the economy. Because this metric includes planned and unplanned downtime, it is key to understanding the total user hours that are available for economic activity in Second Life.We use this metric because a outage on Sunday at noon when concurrency is at its peak does not have the same impact on the economy as an outage Tuesday night at midnight when concurrency is at its lowest. For those Residents seeking a measure of system uptime independent of the total number of user hours or user hours lost to outages, the system uptime in Q3 was 99.85%.Resident-owned land expands to reach 1.8B square meters – In Q3 2009 Resident-owned land increased to reach a total of 1.808 billion square meters. This is 3% growth over Q1 2009 and 6% decline over the same quarter one year ago.The year-to-year comparison is unfavorable as September and October of 2008 were the high water mark of the explosion in Islands due to the introduction of Open Spaces in June 2008.Homesteads and Full Regions increase in Q3 – Total Private Regions (Islands) owned by Residents reached 23,566 by the end of Q3 2009. This represents an increase of 3% over the previous quarter end in June of 2009. In Q3, the number of Homesteads grew 6%, the number of Full regions grew 1%, and the number of Open Spaces declined 6%.A solid Q3 for Residents and for Linden Lab – Overall, it was a solid quarter for Linden Lab and the Second Life economy. Though fewer Bots continue to affect the trajectory of user hour and login growth, user-to-user transactions, voice minutes, and private regions continue to highlight the resilience of the Second Life economy.Thank you – We owe a thank you to all Second Life Residents – the merchants, creators, builders, educators, enterprises, businesses, estate owners, and others – who helped us reach the 1 Billion User Hours and the 1 Billion in user-to-user transactions.Please join me in discussing the Q3 2009 results.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/17uA2FfJ_cY/the-second-life-economy--third-quarter-2009-in-detail
In April, we announced that "Second Life Lives Behind a Firewall," and that our new product was in Alpha. Since that time, the Enterprise Team has been hard at work evolving and deploying our software into many organizations--both as an Alpha and closed Beta. Now, I'm proud and excited to share that we're ready to announce general availability of the Beta product next week.On Wednesday, November 4th at 11:15 am - 12:00 pm PST, Doug Thompson (SL: Dusan Writer) will moderate a mixed-reality panel at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco and Metanomics inworld with Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, Neil Katz, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director IBM Virtual Spaces, CIO Office Innovation Initiatives, Steve Aguiar, Program Manager at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center's (NUWC's) Metaverse Strategic Initiative, and Douglas Maxwell, Program Technology Lead also at NUWC's Metaverse Strategic Initiative.As shared on the Metanomics site,"Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, will unveil “Nebraska”, a stand-alone solution based on the technology that runs the popular Second Life virtual world. “Nebraska” is the much-anticipated behind-the-firewall solution which will allow enterprise to host their own virtual world environments within their organizations. Mark will talk about the benefits of the platform, the intended audience, and how it fits into the broader challenges and opportunities of “enterprise 2.0”. Mark will be joined by a number of customers who have used Nebraska during the closed beta phase of development. The panel will explore the benefits, lessons learned, barriers and opportunities which arise from integrating virtual world solutions into the enterprise.The event will include panelists appearing live in San Francisco and others who will join from the Metanomics Main Stage in Second Life."So, mark your calendars and come join us--physically in San Francisco at Enterprise 2.0 or virtually on Metanomics that will also include a webstream, courtesy of Treet.tv, starting a bit earlier at 11:00 am.For additional details, check out the Metanomics site.Looking forward to a blockbuster announce!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/AMgLLvC-Im0/announcing-second-life-behind-the-firewall-product-on-nov-4th
Linden Lab supports an open platform with opportunity for all. The flexibility of the content creation tools and open viewer allow for great creativity and innovation, but that openness also carries a responsibility for those developing on our platform and those using third party tools with our platform.In our recent blog post Our Content Management Roadmap we addressed the responsibility Residents have to respect the intellectual property rights of others inside or outside of Second Life, and we urged developers of third party copying tools to adopt standard industry practices that protect intellectual property. Similarly, developers of third party Second Life viewers must act responsibly in how they develop and distribute their viewers. We are currently working on revisions to our policies regarding the use and management of third party viewers. To support those policy revisions, we will be implementing tools and programs to help us protect our Residents and their content, and enable them to have better, more predictable Second Life experiences.Resident ResponsibilitiesThere are currently many third parties who create and distribute viewers. Most of these viewers are useful because they are innovative and many enable a more customized Second Life experience for those who use them; however, it appears that some of those third party viewers also contain functionality that is being used to copy content without the right to do so, facilitate griefing, enable phishing, collect user data without clear disclosure of such practices, and distribute software that contains harmful elements. When our revised policy goes into effect, any viewer containing functionality that can be used to impede our efforts to manage Second Life will not be tolerated. We will collaborate with developers to work towards a clear set of expectations and guidelines; however, we will also, if necessary, take action against those who actively seek to disrupt our service or violate our Terms of Service.Residents who use third party viewers with the functionality described above to violate our Terms of Service or Community Standards, will be warned and then suspended from the service.What will Linden Lab do?We will create new guidelines and policies outlining the standards that third party viewers must meet in order to connect to our platform, as well as tools and programs to help the developers of third party viewers and the wider community learn about and comply with those guideline. One of the tools will be a "viewer registry" that will allow developers to list their viewer in a third party viewer directory maintained by Linden Lab, identify the features of their viewer, and represent to the Second Life community that it complies with Linden Lab's guidelines for third party viewers. Over the next few weeks we will be holding a series of 'brown bag' meetings designed as working groups to help us with these challenging issues. In addition we will have a forum for feedback to help all of us make good choices going forward.We're sure we will get many great ideas, more probably than we are able to implement, and we may not be able to use them all right away, but we will evaluate and incorporate Resident input. Please participate and make your voice heard! Watch this blog for more information on how you can get involved. ***10/21/09 UPDATE***Hey all, as stated in the original post, we support an open platform. We've been receiving feedback from many in the development community that have interpreted yesterday's post as an attempt to ban all 3rd Party Viewers from Second Life, but this is not the case. We wish to take proactive steps in providing protection to Residents who are using 3rd Party Viewers (and their content). As a part of creating these new tools and protocols, we will explain the standards that third party viewers must meet in order to connect to our platform. We will also provide a registry which will list the viewers that we have verified as complying with predetermined guidelines. All Residents will have access to this list and will be given the opportunity to decide which viewer they prefer to access Second Life.As for what is on that approval list, we have some ideas but we are looking to you to for further guidance. What functionality works for you and why? What DON'T you want to see? Let us know! That is the purpose of this conversation - we want to be sure that when we do finalize this policy and the criteria for reviewing third party viewers, we do so with a clear understanding of the importance specific functions have to your experiences. In the post, and in emails to developers, we offered a few examples of the types of functionality that might make sense to be included in the criteria, but nothing is set in stone at this point unless it actively violates our current Terms of Service.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/hcU7bG9GQxE/third-party-viewer-policy
It's official: Our Knowledge Base (KB) has been moved to the Second Life Wiki! Now that our massive migration is complete, we can offer several tremendous, hands-on benefits to improve your knowledge-seeking and knowledge-sharing experience, including:Direct linking--at long last! The link you see is what you copy and paste to share helpful articles with others. It's that simple.|Unified help resource! When the KB and the Wiki existed in two different places, some were confused over where to look for help. Viva la unification! Now there's just one place to find everything you need.Link hotlist integration! Have a few articles that you refer to over and over again? Take a few minutes to make a Wiki page, link to those on-Wiki pages, and then share it with others with similar needs.Robust internationalization! The Wiki is already used by numerous volunteers to provide translated versions of KB articles. Multibyte character encoding support, which our previous system didn't have, means that languages like Japanese and others with extended characters will be retained as intended.Accelerated article revision time! The team effort makes updates a breeze. Not only does wikifying the KB make it easier for us to release content updates, but you can also review articles for even faster dissemination of information. Heck, if you spot a mistake, you can correct it in minutes or even seconds.You may notice that articles under the "Linden Lab Official" name space cannot be altered by Residents. These articles have been set aside and locked to protect them from external editing, as they are related to service, billing, and other Linden policies that can only be changed by Linden Lab employees. All other articles in the Wiki are open for your input. Our Flagged Revisions extension (aka FlaggedRevs) allows our review team of Residents and Lindens to evaluate changes made to Wiki articles before drafts go live.And now for some WIKI TRIVIA, courtesy of Torley. Some of the most popular Wiki pages OF ALL TIME are Resident-contributed compilations, such as:https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorialshttp://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Tools Much love goes out to the KB2Wiki team and our volunteer reviewers throughout the Wiki pilot and the final migration process! Now, go forth and get Wiki!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/APlUqHGS5Es/long-live-the-wiki
^ The Cambrian Explosion by Sledge Roffo and Jewel MacMoraghAfter almost 2 months of diligent preparation by around a thousand residents, we have reached opening day for Burning Life '09! This is the 7th annual virtual burn in Second Life. Amazing. And what an amazing community we have! So what should you do and see? Well, with over 400 camps and art works to visit, that's entirely up to you, but the Department of Mutant Vehicles recommends the following, and we all concur:be hereencourage participationhave a partyreach out to people and invite them ingive gifts like crazy dance make new friends BE A PART OF IT!Information Central:Burning Life opens around 12:00 Noon SLT. But pu-leeze don't all pile in on top of each other when the clock strikes 12... this isn't a race, the event goes on for 9 days, and you won't miss anything!If you are new to Burning Life, the best place to begin is at the Main Gate http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-%20Hualapai/253/3/24 or http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-%20Deep%20Hole/4/3/24. Walk up the dirt road to the Greeters Station-- they will get you oriented, give you info and fun things to do and play with! If that is too crowded for comfort, try Gate 2 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Guru/123/5/24 or Gate 3 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Star%20Glo/125/62/24Otherwise, if you are a veteran Burner, just click your map button and search for "Burning Life". All 34 regions will pop up and you can teleport anywhere that strikes your fancy. If you like being more choosy, visit ourInteractive Map http://burninglife.secondlife.com/clickmap which lets you teleport direct to any camp. Prefer to read the details before you go? Here is the Camp Directory: http://burninglife.secondlife.com/whatwhereWant to start right out with an event? The camps have listed a zillion things to do already on our official Events Listing: http://burninglife.secondlife.com/eventsbrowseHere are a few events to get you started at Noon:Fire Performance and Fireworks.http://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Trego/37/242/26The ChangHigh Trinity Sisters Fireshow of Light, Life and Love welcomes you to the opening of Burning Life 2009Mankind Tracer Launches Toyko Stagehttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Steamboat/38/228/2Mankind Tracer, SL's Premiere Rock Performer, kicks off Burning Life at the Tokyo Stage. Don't miss your chance to catch SL's Superstar Rocker LIVE at Burning Life's Launch!Tokyo Open Mic Stagehttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Steamboat/38/228/2BL Open Mic Party going on all day and night round the clock. Ask the stage manager for available time and get on up and share your talent. DJs, Performers, Live Music come on down. You are the show. Come on over and Burn with us...Pop/Soft Rock DJ Iknow Tomorrowhttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Quinn/155/31/24Miss Bridget's Dance School has moved to the desert for Burning Life. Come celebrate with DJ Iknow and his Pop and Soft Rock tunes.Milk N Kookies Showhttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning Life-Granite/53/246/26The Milk N Kookies Show will be visiting Inner Child Camp! The Milk N Kookies Show is broadcasted weekly with hosts Koffeekid Smalls, Yuki Eliot and Sage Kostenbaum. This kid based show features news & events from the kid community, interviews with kids who are of special interest to the neighborhood and even live entertainment from some of the best musical acts in Second Life.Party at the Wormholehttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Tungsten/134/246/24Party hearty the Starfleet way at the Wormhole! The music's going 24/7, and Quark is serving up the drinks. Don't forget to get your gift, and join in on our treasure hunt!Salvage Missionhttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Elko/15/20/25A ship has crashed in the desert, some of it may be worth keeping. Come strip the ship of its useful partsShort Movie showinghttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Bluewing/10/200/24Watch the inspiration of this plot build - Magic Kingdom's Carousel of Progress. This is a you-tube video being shown in the tent on the Evolution of Progress plot. Then find the various freebies scattered around the plot. These are items from the build.Dream Catcherhttp://slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Leadville/117/67/24Cerdwin Flanagan DJ's dark ambient/electronica for the opening of the Splintered Art Gallery & BLU282 campHere's the event trailer again for those who missed it the first time around: MACHINIMA: LOKI ELIOT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/DP54P13h4Q8/burning-life-opens
Second Life is full of pioneering educators and academics, and innovative growth in the use of Second Life for learning continues every day. It has been my pleasure and privilege to meet many of these educators and learn about their projects. In my experience, I've noticed that the most successful projects typically involve interdisciplinary collaboration, expanding on the work of others, and sharing strategies for success. An amazing example of this type of innovation, on a statewide scale, is the University of Texas System.The University of Texas System is starting a year-long project to explore the use of virtual worlds for learning, and they are bringing their entire 16-campus system into Second Life. For all the details, please see the Press Release at the bottom of this blog post.I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee), the primary investigator for this statewide virtual initiative, to learn more. Read on for the details! Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee), in the virtual version of the Ash Conference Room at the University of Texas System. Pathfinder: This is an extremely large and ambitious project. You've successfully launched it after 4 years of research and preparation. What were the biggest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them? Bluewave: Challenges for winning this initial 1-year launch included finding the most effective language and concrete examples from within the generous educational community in Second Life itself to craft a proposal that would be hearable by key administrators. When an opportunity arose, a real time demo of SL using Voice with real educators and Linden Lab officials answering the Chancellors¹ questions right there on the spot was more effective than 100 pages of textual description. Very pragmatic, concrete, visionary at the same time.A key challenge has been rigorously ensuring that our provision of the virtual infrastructure for 15 campuses and information and training support will not be dictating which directions each campus will take as they discover and create their own unique learning and research journeys. We¹re meeting this challenge with the overriding mission of creating together a virtual learning community. Virtual worlds are a new human dimension for educational activity, and we¹re constantly exploring and learning alongside one another. Left to Right: John Lester (SL: Pathfinder Linden) and Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee) meet in front of the virtual version of Johnson Claudia Taylor Hall at the University of Texas System. Pathfinder: A new human dimension for educational activity! I love it. I'll point readers to some of your published writings to learn more about that concept. You've chosen Second Life as the specific virtual world platform for this system-wide project. What were some of the key factors in this decision? Bluewave: The goals of UT System Transforming Undergraduate Education initiative require that a winning project must enrich quality of the learning experience, simultaneously lower costs of delivery of instruction, and useable across a very diverse array of campus environments (9 academic campuses; 6 medical health science center campuses). Second Life aligns with those goals in several very concrete ways. Most importantly, it¹s what I¹ve called an embodied rapid collaboration platform, providing researchers, instructors, students, staff, and administrators access to one another in very new ways across geo-spatial and brick and mortar boundaries. Second Life itself is an open-ended complex learning system, with massive user created content, continuously moving the horizon of what known or understood. Finally, and powerfully, Second Life gives educators and students the developers tools, thereby making Second Life a tool-making tool itself. It has inherent robustness.Having said all that about Second LIfe, ultimately it has been the foresight and boldness on the part of the Chancellors of the University of Texas System that has made this initial entry year possible at all. All kudos must go to them and their vision. Pathfinder: Sharing strategies and best practices that will help other universities succeed in Second Life is a key part of your project plan. How do you plan to share this useful knowledge with the greater academic community?Bluewave: We believe that this initiative is going to help so many people. It's founded on the ethic of sharing. IRB-approved research is being conducted at 3 levels (system, individual campus, individual course), and so there will be many publications generated as we all continue to learn and understand more. After a year, we¹ll be able to share failures, challenges, and successes of what it means when a large statewide public university system extends operations into the virtual world. And the virtual learning community, of course, already extends and will continue to grow far beyond the UT System campuses themselves. Collaborations with other educators, already emerging, will continue to grow and extend more deeply into disciplinary and interdisciplinary domains.We¹re very excited about the location of the soon-to-emerge UT System archipelago in close proximity to the wonderful SciLands continent in a mutually beneficial engagement of communities. Finally, the project calls for an undergraduate educational conference to be held both on actual campus sites and in Second Life at wherever students have begun collaborating and conducting research alongside our faculty and scientists. Campus leads from each of the 16 campuses of the University of Texas System meet to discuss strategy.Thanks for a great interview, Leslie! Read on for details about the project and how to learn even more. -Pathfinder Linden (RL: John Lester) ------------------------------ Press Release ------------------------------The University of Texas Initiates a System-Wide Rollout into Second Life:Sixteen Campuses will Serve as Virtual Learning Model for Other Statewide SystemsToday, Linden Lab, the Makers of Second Life and Second Life Work are announcing the first statewide rollout of a virtual learning environment in the world. The Transforming Undergraduate Education Program, at the University of Texas System, recently awarded a grant to fund the initiation of a pioneering statewide virtual learning community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators in Second Life, that offers an innovative, low-cost approach to undergraduate instruction.“The System’s virtual collaborative learning community of students, faculty, researchers, and administrators will allow participants to learn, share, collaborate and grow alongside one another,” said Leslie Jarmon, Ph.D. , the primary investigator for this statewide virtual initiative for the University of Texas 16-campus System, and a Faculty Development Specialist and Senior Lecturer in the Division of Instructional Innovation & Assessment (CIE/DIIA) at the University of Texas at Austin. “Step by step in this evolving system-wide virtual learning community, all of these players—and especially our undergraduates—will be seen as learners with expanded roles: learners as scientists, learners as designers, learners as researchers, learners as communicators, and learners as collaborators. We see endless possibilities on the virtual learning horizon.”Like many higher learning organizations, the University of Texas System’s has an imperative to continually enrich the learning experience for students while reducing—or even eliminating—expensive brick-and-mortar costs while becoming energy efficient. These are the key drivers that led the University of Texas to invest in a virtual learning environment in Second Life.The yearlong rollout involves all 16 University of Texas campuses and will be designed for extensive inter-campus, intra-campus, and out-of-state collaboration and will occupy over 50 Second Life regions. The UT System is a complex and multidisciplinary organization with 9 academic university campuses and 6 medical and health science research campuses. Each campus will be developing its own SL project plan according to its needs and priorities. Throughout the project, evidence-based research data will be collected and shared with the Second Life education community on best practices to offer to all educators—and other similar organizations—that are interested in holding classes and building campuses in Second Life.“Since it was launched in 2003, hundreds of educational institutions from around the world have used Second Life as a compelling and cost effective platform to augment an existing curriculum and explore new models of learning. But, the University of Texas System’s ambitious system-wide program is not only an industry first, but it will also create the largest virtual learning community in existence,” said John Lester (SL: Pathfinder Linden), Customer Outreach Advocate at Linden Lab. “This announcement also provides another strong proof point that virtual campuses can be effectively controlled and managed to create a safe and secure learning environment. Needless to say, we’re very excited and look forward to watching the program develop and grow.”For more information, plesae see the TUE Learning Community website or please contact:UT System VLCI Initiative: Dr. Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee) LJarmon@austin.utexas.eduLinden Lab: Amanda Van Nuys (SL: Amanda Linden) amanda@lindenlab.com
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/M9Fi6QanIGg/the-first-statewide-rollout-of-a-virtual-world-learning-environment-the-university-of-texas-system-in-second-life
You all knew that it would be! For the past few months, Linden Lab has been running a Pilot program to evaluate the benefits and possible pitfalls of moving our current Knowledge Base to a Wiki solution. The project was met with much enthusiasm from our Resident community, especially given the fact that they would be able to participate not only in updating and creating of articles but also the reviewing of proposed articles and article changes.After evaluating the work involved in maintaining the Wiki, the traffic differences between the KB and Wiki articles, the participation of our Resident Reviewers, and the functionality of the current Wiki, we have decided to move forward with a full migration from KB 2 Wiki! We're working right now in preparation for the big move. The contents of the Knowledge Base are being prepared for a bulk upload to the Wiki, links are being updated and we are configuring the Flagged Revisions extension for the new articles."FlaggedRevs", as it's known for short, allows Reviewers to evaluate changes made to Wiki articles before the draft is published publicly. During the pilot we had group of Residents who participated in article reviews. In addition, there are Lindens dedicated to helping these articles meet the Knowledge Base's quality standards.The majority of the Knowledge Base articles moving to the Wiki will be editable by Residents, with the exception of certain articles related to service and policy. These articles will live in a Linden Lab Official namespace and be clearly marked as such.Keep checking back here for more news about the migration and its schedule. We are working diligently, and hope to get it out to you in a timely fashion. Much love to our KB2Wiki team and our team of Resident Reviewers! Stellar work all!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/QhFzsI21GP0/kb2wiki-pilot-a-success
Hi all. Callen Linden here. A few months back, we launched the Dashboard Beta and asked for your feedback. Your response was enthusiastic and very constructive. We've implemented a number of your suggestions and more are slated for future releases. The dashboard was the tip of the iceberg.I'm delighted to say that the rest of the Second Life web site is launching today. We've given our web properties a top-to-bottom overhaul to make your Second Life experiences easier (and more fun) than ever. As always, we'd love your feedback on the redesign.The magic of Second Life...The first thing you'll notice is the new look. You got a glimpse of it with the new home page back in December, and now we've extended it to the rest of our web properties. Our aim was to create a visual style that would highlight the magic of Second Life and showcase your artistry. The images that light up the site were selected to reveal the extraordinary range of experiences and emotion that Second Life offers.Not just a pretty face...As lovely as it is, the changes are not merely a visual face lift. We sent surveys, held office hours, read your comments on blogs and forums, talked to our support folks and the old timers at Linden Lab. We heard that community, exploration, land and shopping are what Second Life is all about for you, so we mirrored that in our new main menu. We know that Second Life is an amazing palette for creativity and building, so we collected resources for designers, coders, merchants and promoters to help you hit the ground running. We heard you say that while shopping on the web is convenient, shopping in world is wonderful because it is an emotional, social and visual feast, so we made sure to highlight both. We learned that many new users think Orientation Island is all there is to Second Life (!!), so we created a web-based world map and linked it tothe Showcase. And we know that what makes Second Life stick are the relationships you form, so we collected our community resources together to help you connect with other like-minded people.But perhaps the most important part is what you can't see. To respond to your ideas and suggestions, we are re-architecting our back-end systems so we can improve our current features and performance, and provide an ever-expanding set of tools for discovery, sharing, creativity and customization.Here's the skinny...The Dashboard is the first step on a path to richer web-based social tools for Second Life. On it, we've collected the most popular Second Life web features for easy access to the tools and resources you need to manage your Second Life. In future releases, we'll provide better tools for communication, social networking, customization, personalization and management.For new users, we've improved the path into Second Life. Registration has been completely redesigned with a streamlined flow and better messaging for new users. Coming soon, you'll see further improvements in the new user experience with better basic training in world, a new approach to designing starting locations, and of course, the redesign of Viewer 2.0.For international visitors, we've made it easier to find non-English language registration options and browse community gateways by language preference. We've also been working on the plumbing to make it easier to offer all of our web properties in more languages, and providing toll free support numbers for non-English language speakers.The new web-based Second Life Map harnesses the power of Search and the Showcase to bring a real-world feel to exploring the virtual world. We think it gives new and old Residents alike a great tool for discovering Second Life, making it easier for you to find (and teleport to) the store, concert, club or peaceful beach that suits your mood. The new Map is just one of the milestones on our roadmap for improving Search and Classifieds, and connecting you with the great content and communities of Second Life.We've also completely redesigned the Land Store experience to make it easier to use and understand. As part of this redesign we are pleased to announce the launch of Themed Private Regions, where you can purchase a private region in move-in condition. We are starting with Linden designs for a Baronial Castle, Moonbase, Conference Center, and Theater. In the future, the Themed Private Regions option will provide an excellent opportunity for creators to have their content available for sale in our land store. For more information visit our FAQ.Shop 'til you drop! Now, from the main menu and throughout the site, we promote the spectacular diversity of stores offering everything from shoes to submarines. As the world's largest virtual goods marketplace, we've now extended our platform to the web, giving Residents new shopping opportunities; and merchants additional visibility with links from secondlife.com.Thanks!Sincere thanks to all who contributed to the dashboard beta by providing constructive feedback. Let's continue the conversation after you take a look at the new site. We want to hear what you think, what you need, and what you imagine.Finally, if you do nothing else, check out the Machinima video in the "What is Second Life?" section of the site. I've seen it 100 times, and it still gets me every time!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/_ADPmj5wGMk/the-new-secondlifecom
Every parcel of Land on every region inworld has a Traffic score. Traffic is a measure we developed some years ago to show Land owners how much time other residents spent on their parcels. It's been used in various ways throughout our History to help reward and highlight popular places. More recently it became a part of the way we rank Search results.This was fine whilst we had fewer regions and lower concurrency but as we approach 30000 regions calculating the amount of time that every resident spends on every parcel they visit, every 24 hours, has become an increasingly heavy burden on our systems. Over recent weeks the Traffic calculations have sometimes failed to complete during the 24 hour cycle causing frustration for Land owners. So we have been redeveloping the way that Traffic is being processed. The aim has been to make it more reliable and scalable as we grow.Along with improving the process to remove load from our core systems, we have also taken the opportunity to improve the calculation itself. Liana will be posting more details on the specific changes on the technology blog; the new Traffic score will be simpler, more granular and therefore more accurate than previously.Traffic will be the cumulative minutes spent on the parcel by all visitors to the parcel within the previous day. It will be calculated from the total seconds spent on the parcel, divided by 60 and rounded to the nearest whole minute (up or down). It is calculated in real-time, and will be updated every morning at 1am PST for the previous day.Over time we expect the Traffic scoring used for Search ranking to develop away from the measure used by Land owners; it makes sense that the two diverge and the Search team will be talking more about their plans on their blog.We will be moving across to the new Traffic scoring process on Monday 31st August, which means that the Traffic scores you see on Tuesday 1st September will be the new ones.For the large majority of parcels the impact of this change will be negligible. Your traffic score may be a little higher than usual but your ranking relative to other parcels will remain close to where it is now. A small number of parcels may see a drop in Traffic score, especially if those parcels are visited only briefly, for example where residents are just flying through on the way to somewhere else.Lastly, we realise how important our continued efforts to deal with Search gaming are. The announcement has had a clear impact but there are still venues out there that are gaming the Traffic score so we will be pushing harder to make sure that unfair use of Bots or other means to game Search are stopped.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/WPeqv_Ofa7A/changes-to-the-traffic-scoring
Economy grows 94% year to year, hits new all time high in Q2World expands and voice usage hits all time high; Bot policy affects user hours and loginsIn Q2 2009, Second Life Residents enjoyed the sixth consecutive quarter of record growth and activity in the in-world economy. At nearly USD 50M per month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is now on a annual run rate north of half a billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry. The highlights of Q2 include:USD 144 million dollars in total user-to-user transactions, an increase of 94% from the same quarter last year Voice minutes totaled 3.2 billion minutes, up 48% from the same quarter last yearLindeX and Xstreet hit new all time highsResident-owned land in Second Life increased 11% from last year Growth in total user hours for the quarter slowed, while monthly repeat users and concurrency declined, primarily because of a new Linden Lab policy limiting the use of automated, scripted avatars (Bots) used for the purposes of improving search results in Second Life. In contrast, economic indicators that track human activity (such as Voice minutes, LindeX transactions, and Xstreet gross sales) grew nicely. Let’s take a look at the data, trends and comparisons for Q2 2009, starting with the economy. User-to-User transactions increased 94% from Q2 2008 – The total of all transactions in Second Life reached a new high in the quarter. The sum of all of the transactions in the Second Life economy equaled a total of USD 144 million dollars in Q2 2009. This is 20% growth over the previous quarter and 94% over the same quarter one year ago. This means that in the space of one year, the Second Life economy has nearly doubled, which is a testament to the creativity, dynamism and energy of Second Life Residents. By way of comparison, In Q2, the US Economy decreased 1% from the previous quarter and decreased 3.9% when compared to the same quarter a year ago (see page 40 of the full release and tables from the US Government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis). Trading Activity on the LindeX reaches a new all time high – The volume of exchange on the LindeX, the marketplace for Linden dollars (L$), the Second Life virtual currency, grew to a new all time high of USD 29 million in Q2. This represents 4% growth over the previous quarter and 8% growth over the same quarter a year ago. Total Xstreet sales reach a new all time high in Q2 2009 – In its second quarter under the Linden Lab banner, Xstreet, the web marketplace for Second Life virtual goods, had gross sales of L$ 372M Linden dollars, or approximately USD 1.4 million. This represents 13% growth over the previous quarter and 70% growth over the same quarter one year ago. Xstreet remains small by comparison with Second Life overall, at approximately 1% of the USD 144 million Second Life economy in Q2 2009. User hours hit a new all time high of 126 million users hours in Q2 2009 – This is up 33% from Q2 2008 and up 2% over the previous quarter. However, the monthly figures trended down slightly in the quarter, with April, May, and June clocking 43.2, 43 and 39.8 million user hours per month respectively. This monthly trend is primarily the result of the new Bot policy introduced in late April. See the SPOTLIGHT section below for a detailed discussion of the impact of the new policy. Second Life Residents used 3.14 billion voice minutes in Q2 2009 – Total Voice Minutes hit an all time high in Q2 2009, an increase of 3% compared to the previous quarter and 44% when compared to the same quarter a year ago. This metric measures all VoIP traffic across all types of voice sessions – Resident-to-Resident calls, group voice chats, and local voice. It is important to note that the bulk of Second Life voice minutes are Residents using local voice in small groups rather than person-to-person in-world “calls”. As a result, measuring voice minutes in Second Life is more similar to measuring voice minutes for a teleconferencing service provider, because in teleconferences there are generally more listeners than there are speakers. However, as each user is connected to a voice channel, they are counted for the purpose of calculating total voice minutes. Voice minutes grew faster year-to-year than overall user hours – 44% growth for voice compared to 33% for user hours. This is a function of two factors: increasing penetration of voice usage in Second Life; and the impact of Bots on user hours, which do not show up in the Voice minutes, as Bots do not use voice. SPOTLIGHT: Bot policy change affects usage – Each quarter, we will drill down on a particular part of the Second Life economy that is timely or topical. We will rotate through topics and go deep into each area. Last quarter, the Spotlight section focused on land ownership and the effect of the Homestead/Open Space changes. This quarter, we will drill down on our understanding of the impact of our new policy regarding Bots. For background on the change to our policies regarding the use of Bots to increase search ranking, please read conclusion to the blog post on Bots. In short, the policy (effective April 23, 2009) made it a violation of our Terms of Service to use Bots to inflate traffic to inworld destinations in order to improve ranking in search. As a result, we have already observed what we believe is a change in the pattern of Bot usage. In order to understand the impact of the new policy, we looked at the unique logins and user hours for June, dividing the Residents into usage bands based on the hours spent logged into Second Life each month. Here are the bands we chose for our analysis: 0 to 3 hours per month4 to 50 hours per month51 to 200 hours per month201 to 300 hours per monthGreater than 300 hours per month The below graph tells a very interesting story. When the count of users and the sum of total user hours by the amount of usage are calculated as percentages of their totals, you can see an interesting insight about Second Life usage: There are very many light Second Life users who account for the minority of user hours, and the 18% of monthly users who spend more than 50 hours per month in Second Life drive 87% of the user hours. This highlights the deep commitment and engagement of Second Life Residents, but it also raises the question of how much of that heavy usage is the result of Bots. This also points up the opportunity to increase the engagement of new users, a task which Linden Lab is focused on in 2009. When you look at these numbers trended over the course of the quarter, it’s clear that a change to small number of accounts with greater than 300 hours per could have a significant impact on user hours. A trended view for Q2 2009 makes the picture very clear. The “greater than 300 hours per month” segment had a big impact on user hours in Q2. It is also interesting to note that the middle bands of 4-50 hours per month trended positive in the quarter. To further understand the phenomenon, we took a sampling of 1182 accounts that with greater than 300 user hours per month were logged-in in May and were not logged-in in June, as these accounts were likely to represent accounts affected by our change in policy in April. Of these 1182 accounts, 86% had their last login using something other than an official Second Life release client, which is an indicator of an account being a Bot. Given that ~85% of all logins are with an official life viewer, we’re relatively confident that the change in the usage pattern is due to our change in policy. As a consequence, we expect that Q3 2009 user hours will likely be lower than Q2 2009 as we will have three months in the quarter – as opposed to just May and June in Q2 – without Bots. Turning to other usage metrics, we see a similar pattern, but the effect is not as pronounced as it is with user hours. Monthly Unique Residents with repeat logins peaks in May – In May 2009, Monthly repeat logins peaked in May at 752,035, and then declined slightly in June to 741,945. Year to year, June 2009 repeat logins grew 24% from June 2008 repeat logins. While the number of total unique logins (including users who log in to Second Life only once in a given month) is much higher, we use repeat logins (which captures all unique users with more than one login in a given month) as a metric to track the number of users who are engaged with Second Life. Peak Concurrent Users hit 88,065 early in Q2, but concurrency trended lower over the course of the quarter – In April, we hit a high of 88,065 concurrent users in April 2009, 200 users short of the all time high set in Q1 2009 of 88,200. Within the quarter, May and June saw lower monthly peaks of 82,203, and 80,265 respectively. We believe this trend is a function of the new Bot policy. Continued Stability supports the in-world economy – Our work on scalability and stability continued in Q2 2009 (see Updates from the Grid and Grid Monitoring and Support). In Q2, total downtime as a percentage of total user hours was .24%. This was slightly worse than Q1 2009 (at .21%), but on a par with the previous four quarters. Q2 also marked an 81% improvement over Q2 2008. The data for this metric does not extend any earlier than Q2 2007. We measure total user hours lost to downtime (planned and unplanned) as a percentage of total user hours as a gauge of stability as well as a factor in the growth of the economy. Because this metric includes planned and unplanned downtime, it is key to understanding the total user hours that are available for economic activity in Second Life. We use this metric because a outage on Sunday at noon when concurrency is at its peak does not have the same impact on the economy as an outage Tuesday night at midnight when concurrency is at its lowest. For those Residents seeking a measure of system uptime independent of the total number of user hours or user hours lost to outages, the system uptime in Q2 was 99.89%. Homestead sales drives addition of 109 million square meters – In Q2 2009 Resident-owned land increased to reach a total of 1.743 billion square meters. This is 7% growth over Q1 2009 and 11% growth over the same quarter one year ago. The increase was driven primarily by the addition of new Homesteads in the month of June, which added approximately 98 million square meters to the world. Many Residents purchased new Homesteads to take advantage of the $95/month pricing, which ended on July 1, 2009. Using the CIA factbook as a source, Second Life is 189th in the list of autonomous regions ranked by size, ahead of the Faroe Islands, Hong Kong and the Seychelles, and closing on Mauritius and the Virgin Islands. Homesteads increase in June – Total Private Regions (Islands) owned by Residents reached 22,885 by the end of Q2 2009. This represents an increase of 8% over the previous quarter end in March of 2009. The chart shows that the bulk of the increase in private regions came primarily in June and primarily from the Homestead product. A solid Q2 for Residents and for Linden Lab – Overall, it was a respectable quarter for Linden Lab and the Second Life economy. Though fewer Bots affected the trajectory of user hour and login growth, the growth in user-to-user transactions, voice minutes, and private regions underscores the resilience of the Second Life economy. Thank you for your continued passion and engagement – We owe a thank you to all Second Life Residents – the merchants, creators, builders, educators, enterprises, businesses, land owners, and others – who made this Q2 2009 a new high water mark for the Second Life economy. Please join me in discussing the Q2 2009 results.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/FQ5OzOOa4AM/the-second-life-economy--second-quarter-2009-in-detail
Things are definitely buzzing in Berlin, Frankfurt, Koln, Koblenz and Munich - in Second Life that is! Last week we wrote about a sneak preview of Germany in 3D and promised a little more information about this community inspired project. The teams behind some of the major German communities inworld wanted to provide a focus for German speaking Residents and an opportunity to have fun, explore new places and discover new things in the virtual world.There are many active clubs, music performances and fun things to do, explore the city builds to learn more about the architecture, the culture and city life. For new German speaking Residents there is a lot of help at hand including an area in the centre of the build where a group of Second Life mentors have spent the last few months creating a help area in the German language to welcome and help newcomers to the Second Life experience. Germany in 3D also has participants from the world of Education, fascinating projects around language learning, science, business and technology, a place where students, staff and teachers can explore the possiblities of virtual worlds.To find out more about Germany in 3D go to: http://germanyin3d.comJoin the Fun! Teleport: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Goethe%201/113/158/22There will be a Grand Opening of the 22 sims on Saturday 1st August begining at 10am SLT Es passiert was in Berlin, Frankfurt, Köln, Koblenz und München - und zwar in Second Life!Letzte Woche haben wir Sie über die "Sneak Preview"-Party des deutschen inworld Kontinents "Germany in 3D" informiert und Ihnen mehr Informationen über dieses von unseren Einwohnern und Communities geführte Projekt versprochen. Die hinter diesem Projekt stehenden deutschen Communities konzentrieren sich auf die deutsch-sprachigen Second Life Einwohner und wollen ihnen mit diesem Projekt Second Life als einen Platz zum Spaß haben, zum Erkunden neuer Orte und interessanter Aktivitäten in der virtuellen Welt näher bringen.Erkunden Sie die verschiedenen Orte und erleben Sie tolle Clubnächte, mitreissende Konzerte und bestaunen Sie die Architektur und das Stadtleben in seiner virtuellen Form. Im Zentrum von Germany in 3D befinden sich Regionen, die von unseren Second Life Mentoren in den letzten Monaten erbaut wurden, um deutsch-sprachige Second Life Einwohner bei ihren ersten Schritten in Second Life zu unterstützen und ihnen den Einstieg in diese virtuelle Welt zu erleichtern. Auch das Thema Bildung kommt in Germany in 3D nicht zu kurz. Erfahren Sie mehr über faszinierende Projekte zu Themen wie Sprachen, Naturwissenschaften, Wirtschaft und Technologie. Hier gibt es Orte, an welchen sich Studenten, wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter und Lehrer treffen, um die Vorteile der virtuellen Welt von Second Life für ihre Arbeit zu nutzen.Erfahren Sie mehr über Germany in 3D auf: http://www.germanyin3d.comBesuchen Sie uns und werden Sie Teil dieser Community! Teleport: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Goethe%201/113/158/22Die große Eröffnungsfeier von Germany in 3D wird am Samstagabend (01.08.2009) ab 10am SLT - 19 Uhr deutscher Zeit auf 22 Regionen stattfinden.Wir freuen uns sehr, Sie dort begrüßen zu dürfen! - Wir sehen uns inworld!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/TlDTiMNsoGg/friends-music-shopping-culture-city-life--germany-in-3d
This week, CNBC is airing a five-part series titled ‘Social Climbing,’ a report about social media, its importance for business, and its future. The series includes Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – and Second Life.CNBC’s Julia Boorstin came out to San Francisco a while back to tape an interview M Linden about businesses using Second Life – a topic she knew something about from having reported on virtual conferencing and IBM’s cost-saving use of Second Life back in February.The segment on Second Life is slated to air on CNBC on Wednesday (July 29) around 7:15am SLT, but it sounds like some of M’s interview may be included in the segment due to air on Friday at the same time. The series will be available online after it airs, and I’ll post the links to the Second Life segments up here when they’re available. In the meantime, you can watch the first segment here.UPDATE: Wednesday's piece aired this morning, and is now available online here.One example of how businesses are currently using Second Life - Northrop Grumman training and prototyping; you can read more about it in the case study here.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/pBqcFL6ED_Q/second-life-on-cnbc-this-week
I recently learned about a new museum opening this weekend in Second Life dedicated to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably the greatest American architect of all time. Visiting museums is one of my favorite things to do both in Real Life and Second Life, and I have always been a fan of Wright's design genius. I sat down with Frey Bravin (Director) and Rosalie Oldrich (Curator) to learn more. Left to right, Rosalie Oldrich, Pathfinder Linden and Frey Bravin Pathfinder Linden: Rosalie and Frey, thanks so much for giving me a tour of the museum and an opportunity to learn more about this project. Can you tell me a bit about your individual roles in this project and how it all started?Frey Bravin: About a month and a half ago I was Invited to attend a lecture in Second Life on Frank Lloyd Wright given by Debe Wise. Being a lifelong fan of fan of Mr. Wright and his work, I was most excited to attend and jumped at the chance. Out of this lecture and talking with others in attendance the idea for a Second Life Museum on FLW suggested itself to me. I started building the museum and putting the collection together, and the old line of "If you build it, they will come" proved to be true. I discoverd just how large the number of FLW fans there are in Second Life and was just blown away by the numerous offers of support and and assistance I received.Rosalie Oldrich: I got involved less than a month ago, when the museum project was already rolling. I have a background in Real Life of many years in the museum biz and thought I'd be able to provide some skills that would see the project into its next phases. I'll be working on future exhibits and - most importantly - raising funds to keep the sim up and running. No one will be safe!Pathfinder Linden: I see you have not only created historical displays about Wright's personal life and family but also full-scale recreations of some of his most famous buildings. Can you speak a bit about your current exhibits?Frey Bravin: We currently have 5 buildings, The Frederick C. Robie House of Chicago, Illinois, the Herbert Jacobs house 1 of Madison, Wisconsin; the Herbert Jacobs house 2 also of Madison, Wisconsin, The Edgar Kaufmann house of Mill Run, Pennsylvania and the Seth Petersen Cottage of Lake Delton, Wisconsin. In addition we have a recreation of the Water Dome foutain from The South Florida University of Lakeland, Florida. In the museum itself we currently have on exhibit a collection of photographs of Mr Wright, a sample of hus many drawings, and a large exhibit on Fallingwater. The main entrance to the museum, which spans an entire region (16 acres) in Second Life Pathfinder Linden: Who have you been collaborating with in Second Life to make this all happen?Frey Bravin: This museum would not be possible without the support and assistance of some truly talented people, Jasmyn Sugarplum, Rosalie Oldrich, Sage Carrasco, Supremius Maximus, Sensuous Maximus, Troy Vogel, Miltone Marquette, Ethos Erlanger, Terra Tepper.Pathfinder Linden: Have you reached out to the real life estate of Frank Lloyd Wright? What do they think about this project in Second Life?Frey Bravin: Yes, we have established contact with members of The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust and The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, they are very supportive in our goal of exposing the works of Mr. Wright to people worldwide.Pathfinder Linden: I think there's so much potential for your Museum to be a resource for real life architects and educators. Imagine bringing groups of students and classes through interactive recreations of Wright's buildings instead of just looking at photographs! Are you currently working with any real life architects or educators?Frey Bravin: We currently have a number of both real life architects and educators in our membership and are in the process of setting up educational programs where we will be working closely with a number of Universities and providing opportunities to learn more about the Wright style.Pathfinder Linden: Nice. What have you got planned for the future?Frey Bravin: Future plans include replacing our current museum building with a replica of the Marin County Civic Center, the establishment of a meeting and conference center, a school of architecture in conjunction with a Real Life university and an outdoor amphitheater based on a unbuilt design that Mr. Wright did for a major project in Baghdad. We will also be adding additional Wright homes and buildings on a rotating basis. Exhibits inside the Museum galleries will be changing on a regular basis as well.Pathfinder Linden: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all this information, and I can't wait to see how your museum grows! The Grand Opening of the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in Second Life will be held on Saturday, July 25 from 1:00pm PDT into the evening and Sunday, July 26 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm PDT.There will also be a Museum Members Only party on Friday, July 24 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm PDT. You can become a Member by joining the museum group for free.This weekend will feature live music performances, fireworks, a black tie gala, roundtable discussions on Wright's design concepts, and more. Hope to see you there!-Pathfinder Linden
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/wbAwL0LPZh4/new-museum-celebrating-the-work-of-frank-lloyd-wright-in-second-life
Translations: Espanol - Portuguese - Deutsch - Francais - 日本語We are pleased to announce the activation of several toll-free phone lines that are now up and running for our Residents from around the world!Toll-free lines are now available in France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.Our English-speaking customer support agents will be on call to help you with all your billing and account questions. Should you need help in your preferred language, please submit a ticket through our support portal and choose from our current language options. An agent will respond to you as soon as they are available in your preferred language. Help is also available through our German support portal.These lines are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your support needs.France: 0805.101.490 Germany: 0800.664.5510 Japan: 0066.33.132.830 Portugal: 800.814.450 Spain: 800.300.560 UK: 0800.048.4646Our support team is standing by from Germany to Japan to answer your billing and account questions! Give them a call toll free
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/EHCvfekEjvk/toll-free-billing-support-now-available-to-more-countries
In this post:—Second Life Birthday Survey Released—Thanks to you all—Some Event Statistics—Teens Crash-Land New Region at SL6B—Gates Remain Open til July 6th— We have a short survey online where you can tell us what you thought of the Second Life 6th Birthday celebration. It's only 10 questions, but it will really help us make things better next year. Your comments on a similar survey last year were very helpful as the Resident staff prepared for this year's event, and we hope that those of you who made suggestions last year were pleased to see some of them implemented in 2009.Please tell us what you thought here.— Thanks so much everyone, for your amazing participation. Thanks especially to the Resident staff, who together put in a truly terrifying number of hours to organize this event. There were at least 50 of you. (I think I'm missing a few infrastructure builders— let me know if so.) And thanks also to all the exhibitor/builders without whom there would be no reason to celebrate! The Lab is proud to have been a partner, and pleased to be able to donate the land.— First Week Event Statistics:Resident Staff: 50+Mentor/Greeters: 68Exhibitors: 300+People who helped build those exhibits: 899Futurist & Android Stage DJs: 103Main Stage Live Musicians: 100+Regions: 20 (plus one from the Teen Grid)Scheduled Events: 815Unscheduled Events: LOLUnique visitors: 17,712Hours spent: 23,662Countries represented: 140Advertising kiosks placed: 698Event Calendar page views: 23, 260People who caught Alien Gift Thieves: Only 94! Most Aliens caught by one person: 139— If you haven't yet noticed, the industrious people on the Teen Grid have sent an entire region across the age gap for our amusement. The Region is named (appropriately) SL6B Teen. It has appended itself to the side of the main event, and can be reached by a causeway from SL6B Polaris. It's a lovely piece of work, and the Teens are undoubtedly the Future of Virtual Worlds. Come see how they are going to knock you off your pedestal, gramps.— BUT WAIT! It's not over yet! The gates will remain open at the SL6B regions for your further exploration and reflection. If you haven't managed to see it yet, do drop by The Paradox for a journey across "Dallier's Hope". The regions will remain open til around July 6th.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/TUDSzrs-lcM/second-life-birthday-news-review
Hi there. Callen Linden here. I'm executive director of product management and user experience at Linden Lab. In the past few months, I've been working with Lindens, Residents and partners to improve your experiences and create new features to enhance and support your activities in Second Life – both inworld and on the web.A bit of my background: Back in the day, I was fortunate to work with virtual world pioneers on projects like Lambda Moo and The Palace. After a promising start in the Web 1.0 days, virtual worlds took a brief hiatus from "most exciting Internet category," and I co-founded a consulting company called Tangibility. For ten years, we worked with a variety of companies to create new kinds of online services. I'm thrilled to dive back into my old passion and work with such a great team at Linden Lab.What's the dashboard?Today we're introducing the beta version of a new dashboard on the Second Life website, and we want to know what you think! We fully believe that the immersive nature of Second Life is the way to go, but we're also excited about how the web can help you stay in touch with your Second Life community at times when you can't be inworld. The dashboard is the first step on a path to richer web-based social tools for Second Life. On it, we've collected the most popular Second Life web features. Whether you want to find your friends online, buy Linden Dollars, follow the blogs and forums, go shopping, update your account information or manage your land holdings, the dashboard provides quick access to everything you need. Check out the Map Widget, where you can search for interesting things to do, see results displayed in map-view, and teleport directly to events or showcase locations inworld. How does the beta work? Right now, only a portion of logged in Residents will be able to try the beta because we are carefully monitoring the load. In the next few days we'll open the beta to everyone.When you login to SecondLife.com, you may see a banner asking you to try the new dashboard. Clicking on that banner will let you test drive the new features and functionality. Additionally, you will have the option to provide feedback through our beta survey. You can always get back to the old version by logging out.What's next?In future releases, you'll be able to customize the dashboard with your favorite features and preferences. We'll make it easier to invite friends and add content from your other social networking sites – and integrate Xstreet shopping with the rest of your web experience. Beyond the dashboard, we have a million ideas for how to use the web to enhance your Second Life – and most importantly, we want to hear your ideas about how we can make the dashboard more useful and engaging. Check it out, tell us what you want!We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the first version of the dashboard. Once you check it out, please take a few minutes to provide comments using the feedback link at the top of the dashboard page. Thanks for participating in this exciting new venture!Check out the Dashboard FAQ in the Knowledge Base
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/aosWebYaods/sl-website-dashboard-beta
Second Life has had a thriving German community for quite some time and with the help of this vibrant community, Linden Lab has recently been able to expand our product offerings to German Residents. I realized we have not really blogged about it before and wanted to give a shout out to our great team of volunteers and say "thank you!"First of all, check out the new 1.23 Viewer in German. You'll notice our new PC Installer, Viewer Tutorial and other little helpful bits all neatly localized.In addition, de.secondlife.com has been revamped and more completely localized over the past several months with new Registration, Land Store, Support, Account and Whatis sections. The homepage now features wonderful images of areas built by our inspiring residents Conny Quaggy, Computerschule Fredriksson, January Lightfoot, Goldie LeSuere, Syberia Rhiano, and Dane Zander, as well as members of Dresden Gallery, MunichSL Building Group and Seminal 3D. Many more exciting features are currently in the works for our German website and will be going live throughout the summer. Keep an eye on it!!!Our Knowledge Base in German has been completely overhauled and now it is being moved to Wiki with dozens of new articles and Second Life Answers is growing in German.How did we get all this done in such a short time you ask? Our amazing Residents, of course! Led by Simone Linden, our German Community Localizers have produced German Second Life glossaries, carefully choosing every term. This Power Posse has then worked on Viewer translation and editing, moved on the Knowledge Base revamp, fiercely adding a huge number articles that can be of help to new Second Life users. And that move to wiki? Well, that happened because of our amazing German Residents too. The stunning images on the homepage were taken by Gunter Gustav and Lara Shepherd.We are all thrilled and honored to have such dedicated contributors as Zai Lynch, Lara Shepherd, Torben Trautman, Lore Lamont, Gunter Gustav, Gren Yifu, Celestin Uxlay, and Aquiel Saru.Finally, I'd like to note that the Second Life Viewer is now localized into 15 languages - ALL through the hard work of our amazing international community. Those 15 languages include a full revamp of Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese (big thanks to Agathos Frascati, Tiamat Bingyi, Geneko Nemeth, Irene Muni and our large Spanish Translator Team). That also includes brand new languages to the viewer like Italian, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Turkish. More giant thanks to Bulli Schumann, Lisa Lowe, Biancaluce Robbiani, Sergen Davies, Salahzar Stenvaag, PF Shan, Ringo Tuxing, Ann and Flemming Congrejo, Vixen Heron, Malwina Dollinger, Magnus Balczo, Maciej Maciesowicz, Princess Niven, Tue Torok, Ian Kas and SecondKiev, and many others). We are all humbled by your generosity, dedication and brilliance, guys!Go CT Team!Danica (Brinton) Linden
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/Y6dnvVF6Kcw/second-life-germany-and-more
In this edition of Support Talks, Courtney Linden sits down with Cyn Linden, VP of Customer Relations for Linden Lab, to find out more about Cyn's role at the Lab, her favorite RL and SL pastimes, and the future of Support in Second Life. » DOWNLOAD VIDEO (MP4, plays on iPod and other mobile devices) » DOWNLOAD AUDIO (MP3)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/EJLprczObb8/support-talks-an-interview-with-cyn-linden
Many of you have been waiting patiently for the chance to explore the new adult continent known as Zindra. In coordination with the final release of the 1.23 viewer, we are pleased to announce that the waiting is over! Today, Monday, June 15th, Zindra will be officially opened for the Residents of Second Life. For those of you who have been following this topic since it was first announced back in March, the lack of a solid timeline for implementation may have been frustrating. The final release of 1.23 however, has allowed us the ability to specify certain key dates in the process of moving adult content. Zindra will be open for two weeks, allowing Residents the convenience to explore as their personal schedules permit. Bring pen and paper with you on your journey as once the two weeks are up on the 29th of June, the ticket submission process will begin and those applying for the land swap will be asked which parcels they prefer. The specific details on how to request a swap and submit a support ticket can be found in the knowledge base article located HERE. We will be offering a box of themed content (including roads, buildings, textures, and other Zindra-specific stuff) to Residents, much like we did for Nautilus. It will be available before the migration starts. Also, Torley has created a Tips and Tricks wiki page with some helpful hints on how to physically move objects. If you are going to be relocating, you can find the article HERENot sure which part of Zindra to explore first? You can find a list of SLurls provided below that will take you to some areas of interest. While the 1.23 viewer will allow you to see regions flagged as Adult, Mature and PG, it is not needed to access Zindra. You will however need enough information on file to be considered account verified, otherwise you will not be able to teleport to the region. Check out the knowledge base article HERE to learn how to verify your account! Keep in mind that if you use the 1.22 viewer, regions will appear as mature rather than adult. If you are feeling adventurous you can download 1.23 HEREThe outer end of Cinyris Island, a premier vacation spot! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pimuenti/64/247/27Welcome to Kama City! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mosh/125/21/24One of the hydroelectric dams on the River. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Oritz/230/136/38Another mighty dam! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pengallen%20Bridge/200/240/38The third dam. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terri/227/199/39Greetings from Shell Beach! http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shell%20Beach/221/23/36As always, you can catch up on past blogs and forum posts below: How to Verify your Account: Knowledge Base article1.23 Blog Post Search and Adult Content Blog Adult Content Update Blog The compiled Adult Content wiki page Discussion ThreadDefinitions of Adult / Mature / PG Press Release FAQ
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/xRx-aBgWCbI/welcome-to-zindra
Greetings,As some of you may have seen, a resourceful Resident got her hands on a very early build of Viewer 2009.What we ship later this year will be very different from what appeared in that post. We'll share a sneak peek of the "real" Viewer 2009 later in the year, with plenty of time to receive and incorporate feedback before the final iteration ships.I blogged about our goals for Viewer 2009 earlier this year. As active Second Life Residents, you know that the redesign of the Viewer is a huge undertaking. We're very excited about the progress we've made so far but there is still much to do.Thank you for your excitement and your passion for Second Life.Cheers, Howard
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/Sfim6AdUSG0/viewer-2009
This just in from the fantabulous Resident Team that is making SL6B an event to remember. They've added up their no-shows and looked in the closets for unused space, and they've got a bit more land that they can parcel out. If you'd like to jump in at the last moment, read on!VIDEO: TOXIC MENGES************Dear Residents of Second Life,Due to a large number of requests, we are re-opening applications for SL6B for 3 days. Starting now, you can submit a new proposal if your first was not accepted, or submit for the first time. Here are the rules for re-entry!1: DO make your exhibit anything you like - AS LONG AS YOU ATTEMPT TO ADAPT IT TO THE THEME. We're asking you to share with us your vision of the "Future Of Virtual Worlds" as you see it applied to you. If you make pet animals, that's fantastic, stick an astronauts helmet on them! Explore the concept of animals in the future, have fun with it. Don't be afraid to play the game. Use the theme as your springboard, make the future what you want it to be.2. DO explain what you intend to exhibit in your application. Not asking for a three page proposal justifying the necessity of every prim you rezz, but tell us what your vision is. Use the text space you've got! Don't simply say "Content I've created..." what is the content? If you have trouble explaining in English, please supply links or slurls to examples of your work.3. DON'T utilize the Exhibit Info space to tell us all about YOU and nothing about your exhibit or your intentions. Your Exhibit info is not your bio. While we'd love to hear your life story, there is a dedicated section for that. The Exhibit Information section is not that place... unless you're exhibiting you and you alone as some form of Life art.4. DO make sure where it requests your name to put in the name of your Avatar - not your real name. We don't need that info because as much as we like you, you're not on our Christmas card list in real life. We cannot contact your virtual self with your real life name. We can't drop you relevant notecards or send you an IM when the name does not exist in Second Life. By the way, if per chance you're getting odd inventory offers on your real life avatar, see a doctor about that immediately.5. DON'T offer to put up a stage and invite musicians to sing. We have music coordinators who have gone to great lengths and invested great amounts of time to create a musical schedule on three stages for 24 hours of the day for the entire 7 day duration. If we let everyone have a stage to invite their favorite performers to sing, your neighbor with the Octo-Alien frog on his 512 beside you would be shooting death rays from his eyes at you and your 40 friends who have lagged the region to a standstill, and used up the entire allotment of avatars for the region.6. DON'T tell us that the only space that will accommodate your vision is a half a sim. While bigger is always better honey, unfortunately the reality of this event and the magnitude of participation doesn't allow us the leisure of handing out full regions to anyone who asks - or anyone at all for that matter. We've tried to give you a diverse selection of plot sizes to accommodate as many ideas and installations as possible. Feel free to request the largest we have to offer, but make sure you justify the necessity! If you request a 2048 and your tell us your exhibit is simply "Cats." Well, that might not be a guaranteed sell.7. If you choose to disregard these suggestions because you have to have a replication of Ma and Pa Kettle's cabin in the woods, I urge you to remember that a panel does review these applications and an application does not guarantee a parcel.8. DO remember: This is ONLY a 3 day application extension in consideration of the many, many inquiries we've received. There will NOT be another. This is your last chance to participate. No further extensions will be made this year, there simply isn't time. Rest assured we want you here!Apply here: http://tr.im/sl6bform2Applications will close for review on this date: Monday June 15, at 1pm SLT— The SL6B Team
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/VJRXBunKB7U/sl6b-applications-re-open-for-three-days
Search UpdateHi, I’m Liana Linden. Before getting into the meat of this post, I’d like to give you a quick update on Second Life Search. A few months ago Linden Lab formed a new team to work on improving the search experience for all Residents. I’m thrilled to be working as the search product manager alongside some of our most innovative developers and most productive personnel. We have some very ambitious work ahead. In broad strokes, we’re planning an end-to-end overhaul of search, from databases to UI design, with special focus on improving relevance and discoverability in search results. Our goals are to:Provide an informative and delightful search experience for all Residents, andIncrease fairness and reliability of the search service for people who place listings. Linden Lab knows that search is a critical tool for new Residents to discover and engage with Second Life and for inworld businesses and experience providers to reach their target audiences. We also know there is a lot more we can do to make that tool work better. Here’s what we’re currently working on:For searchers, we have several usability improvements in the works. For people who place search listings, we are analyzing failure points in the search logic that allow users to game the system, as well as addressing the issue of poor-quality descriptions in listings. We’re still in the early stages of research and testing, but you can expect that the direction these improvements will take is to apply many tried-and-true best practices of Web search engines to provide high-quality, organically validated results to searchers. We will also work to provide better guidance on how to create successful search listings. As details become available, I’ll post them to this blog with the tag “search.”Search and Adult ContentAs previous posts have outlined, the upcoming changes to adult content will include changes to search functionality, which will take into account the new maturity ratings for content. The biggest change you’ll notice once the transition is complete is that, unless you have been account-verified, if you enter adult keywords in search, you won’t get any search results. Second Life Web search already does this kind of content filtering. When we carry this over to Viewer search, you will have the ability to opt-in to search for adult content and adult-designated regions. As before, Residents will continue to have the choice to view mature or PG content in Viewer search. More information on the timing of this transition and how to verify your account and opt-in will be published soon. Note that, once the transition period is complete, searching for adult content will only be possible using Viewer versions 1.23 and later (download).How to prepare for these changesThe important thing to know is that we are giving you the ability to control the type of content and spaces you want to encounter in your Second Life.Additionally, this is a good time to review the name, description and maturity level of your search listings to ensure that your target audience can find them in search. Content types indexed by search include profiles, parcels, regions, groups, events and classifieds. For more information, please read the maturity rating guidelines. Here’s an example of how these ratings will affect search:Parcels, events and classifieds that have an adult keyword in the name or description will only be viewable in search if they are tied to an adult region. They will also only be viewable by Residents who are account-verified (and have enabled adult search results). For instance, if your PG parcel’s description contains adult keywords, that parcel will not viewable in search unless either the adult words are removed or the region is set to adult. If the adult words are removed, the parcel will then be viewable in search results by Residents who check the PG search option. If the parcel moves to an adult region, the parcel will be viewable in search results by Residents who check the Adult search option. As always, please be sure to comply with the Community Standards and flag the maturity level of your content appropriately and locate it on a region with a compatible maturity level.I’d like to call out some other search changes you may see as maturity ratings are implemented and some things you can do to make the transition as smooth as possible.FilteringFiltering of adult content from search results will affect all types of search, including places, people, groups, events and classifieds. There will be a transition period while parcels with adult content move to new adult regions. You can find more information about parcel moves here. The way search will be affected during this period is that some adult content may still be visible in PG and mature search results. When the transition period ends, adult content can only be found if you are account-verified, have opted-in to see adult results and are using Viewer 1.23 or later.Filtering adult content is not an exact science, unfortunately. There will be outliers -- some legitimate listings may get blocked and some adult content may get through. We will use the parcel transition period to continue to refine the filtering parameters, and you can help. If you are using Viewer 1.23 and you think a listing has been blocked in error, please alert us by submitting a support request. Also, after the parcel transition period is complete, if you find adult content in non-adult search results please submit an abuse report. Your help in refining these filters is appreciated.ClassifiedsIn addition to the search result filtering described above, classified ads will also be filtered based on the maturity rating Residents select for their searches. That means that only account-verified Residents will be able to see adult classifieds. By the same token, Residents who select PG searches will only see PG classifieds, and mature searches will return mature classifieds. Please read the maturity ratings guidelines to find out how to choose the right settings and word choices to reach your target customer.PicksPlease note that if you have created picks for parcels that move to new adult regions, you will need to update those picks to the new location. Teleports to the old parcel will not redirect you to the new location. During the parcel transition period, though, if you teleport to the old location, you will find a landmark dispenser. Please follow the landmark to the new location and reset the coordinates in your picks.Parcel MovesFor parcel owners moving to adult regions (e.g. migrating to Zindra, the new adult continent), please be advised that these parcel moves will be just like other parcel moves or re-parceling events in that the new parcel will start out with no traffic score and picks pointing to the old parcel will not “redirect” to the new parcel.In order to help build the popularity of your new parcel, we recommend that you use your groups and contacts to spread the word of your move and notify people to update their landmarks and picks. As your customers and communities visit your new location, traffic will accrue based on the standard process.To SummarizeDuring the transition period while we help adult parcels move to adult regions, you will still be able to search for adult content as usual if you are using Viewer 1.22. If you are using Viewer 1.23, you may start noticing some filtering of adult content, and you will need to be account-verified to select the adult option in search and see all adult results. When the transition is over, Viewer 1.22 will no longer show adult search results. At that point, in order to search for adult content, you will need to be account-verified, opted-in to adult content and using Viewer 1.23. We will publish more information on transition timing and account verification soon.Here are some things you can do to prepare for this transition:Review your search listings to ensure that your target audience can find them in search.If you think a listing has been blocked in error, please alert us by submitting a customer support request.If you have picks for parcels that move, you may want to update those picks to the new location.If you move your parcel, spread the word and remind people to update their landmarks and picks.We think that giving you the ability to control the type of content and spaces you want to encounter is a great addition to Second Life, and with your input, we will continue to improve on the feature. It may feel a little new and different for a while. To help the transition, we will keep providing tips and updates here and in the Knowledge Base. Thanks for your support.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/4Tw2bow4DHg/search-and-adult-content
Got land questions? Well, you're in luck. It just so happens that we're kicking off our very first Land Expo next week -- June 9th - June 13th. The Land Expo will provide an opportunity for Residents of all levels of experience to come together to share best practices, compare land development offerings, and encourage the exploration of innovative uses of land. For all Land Expo details, visit the following Second Life wiki page: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land_Expo_09 Please see the conference agenda here for the complete agenda and a short description of each session. Over 60 Resident Exhibitors will be showcasing their work in diverse areas such as: * Estate Management * Construction * Land Development * Parcel Rentals * Non-Profits * Building Design Demos of the 4 new Linden Lab Prefabricated Regions: * Moonbase * Baronial Castle * The Theatre * The Conference Center 5 Linden Groups will be in attendance: * Concierge * Documentation Team * Developers (Mono) * Customer Market Development * XStreet Over 23 confirmed presenters. Topics include: * New Island Owner Orientation * Cross Media and Reality Events * Land Sales Strategy * Developing Land for Rental * How to Find and Keep Your Customers Happy * and Many more! Please see the schedule here for the complete agenda and a short description of each session. Handy SLURLs to remember: To the Presentation Stage: http://slurl.com/secondlife/LandExpo4/9/246/21 To the Welcome Area: http://slurl.com/secondlife/LandExpo4/53/194/33 Look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday! -MJ Linden
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/rLPbSvsHKOQ/land-expo-2009--starts-tomorrow-tuesday-june-9th
Got land questions? Well, you're in luck. It just so happens that we're kicking off our very first Land Expo next week -- June 9th - June 13th. The Land Expo will provide an opportunity for Residents of all levels of experience to come together to share best practices, compare land development offerings, and encourage the exploration of innovative uses of land. For all Land Expo details, visit the following Second Life wiki page: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Land_Expo_09 Please see the conference agenda here for the complete agenda and a short description of each session. Over 60 Resident Exhibitors will be showcasing their work in diverse areas such as: * Estate Management * Construction * Land Development * Parcel Rentals * Non-Profits * Building Design Demos of the 4 new Linden Lab Prefabricated Regions: * Moonbase * Baronial Castle * The Theatre * The Conference Center 5 Linden Groups will be in attendance: * Concierge * Documentation Team * Developers (Mono) * Customer Market Development * XStreet Over 23 confirmed presenters. Topics include: * New Island Owner Orientation * Cross Media and Reality Events * Land Sales Strategy * Developing Land for Rental * How to Find and Keep Your Customers Happy * and Many more! Please see the schedule here for the complete agenda and a short description of each session. Handy SLURLs to remember: To the Presentation Stage: http://slurl.com/secondlife/LandExpo4/9/246/21 To the Welcome Area: http://slurl.com/secondlife/LandExpo4/53/194/33 Look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday! -MJ Linden
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/yLVhapTgFTY/attend-land-expo-2009--starts-tuesday-june-9th
My name is Ram Linden, I’ve been with Linden Lab for almost two years, and I’ve recently been assigned to the role of Product Manager of the Economy. My core responsibility is to focus on the LindeX, user to user transactions, and anything else that drives economic activity in-world. As we focus on improving the shopping experience on XStreet SL, these underlying services are getting some attention too. Be sure to follow this post to the end for an important viewer change in version 1.23.Average L$ Per Shopping SessionTo improve the services we need to learn more about how they are used. I recently examined shopping experiences in-world and found some interesting data. When I looked at what an average shopping session in Second Life was like, I found residents spent on average a total of L$1,700 on about 4.4 transactions, paying an average purchase price of about L$380. Note that this only counts in-world transactions and not XStreet SL purchases.Most Popular L$ Buy SizesWe can see this sort of behavior reflected in average L$ buy order sizes on the LindeX as well. On the web, where the auto-populated L$1,000 amount is not present as it is in the viewer, L$5,000 is the most popular order size and L$2,000 is a close second. As the chart below shows, the auto-populated amount in the viewer has a strong influence on the popularity of L$1,000 as an order size, pushing it to almost three times the popularity of the second place amount.New Default Viewer SettingWhen considering what this means for new users, there’s a disconnect. A block of L$1,000 would only partially service an average shopping session. If new users have at least as many L$ as are spent in an average session, most should be able to avoid running their L$ balance dry prematurely. Not only that, but more L$ jingling in the pockets of new residents means more sales for our merchants and better engagement with new residents. In the next version of our viewer, 1.23, currently available as a release candidate, we have changed this default amount to L$2,000 to help accomplish this. It is our hope that this will generate more customers and more sales for our merchants in addition to a better new resident experience. I'll be in and out of the forums to respond to any feedback or questions; click the link below to join the discussion!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/tXJEBmCaxMc/introducing-ram-linden
About a month ago, we posted an update on the progress toward the upcoming changes to Adult content. Since then, we held another inworld meeting with Residents to further discuss the proposed definitions of Adult, Mature, and PG that were posted in the Knowledge Base. A link to an audio recording and transcript of this and the other inworld brown bag discussions can be found below. Following that meeting, we have finalized the definitions, and we felt that another blog update would be helpful to address some of the most commonly discussed themes and to be sure that the links to all of the current documentation and discussion on the initiative could be easily found in one place.Introducing: ZINDRA! Ursula was the working name for the mainland continent building project. Now that we are reaching completion and will be ready soon to roll the continent out, we are pleased to announce that the official name is Zindra.The Definitions: Towards the end of April, we posted a draft of the definitions on the Knowledge Base and feedback from the community was both instantaneous and insightful. After discussing these definitions further with Residents, we wanted to be sure to clarify two important issues that seemed to be source of some common confusion:a) the term photo-realistic and and how that pertains to Adult content. Photo-realistic nudity will be considered Adult, BUT there is now a subsection that talks about exclusions. This section used to only talk about sexually-themed content. Now it will include all Adult content. Educational and cultural content will be exempted. b) new PG guidelines appeared to be much more strict than our previous PG classification. In fact, the definition of PG has not actually changed, and this is written up more clearly now. Enforcement will not change.The final definitions can be found HEREThe Physical Move to the Adult Continent: Check out this Knowledge Base Article for the latest information!! Many Residents in the forums and inworld have been asking the same question: When? When can we see the new continent? When will we be allowed to move? When can I submit a ticket to move? Currently, there is no set date for the beginning of the transition period, but the best estimate would place the time frame somewhere in the middle of June. The LDPW and The Moles are putting the final touches on the new continent, and as soon as it's ready, the doors will open for all to come and visit. The process of submitting a ticket to request a move can be found in the Knowldege Base Article HERE. Tickets will be accepted a week or two after Zindra is opened to the public and the tickets will be addressed in the order they are received. As for precisely how the move will work, we understand that this is going to be an arduous task for all of you involved and are currently exploring different ways in which to make this as easy as possible. Possible suggestions will be made in the discussion area. As soon as we think we have the best solution, KB articles and Tutorial videos will be made and distributed. We'll keep you updated via this blog.The RC Client: Work on the main viewer is still in progress but many Residents have already had a sneak peek at the new search filtering and maturity rating features by downloading the Release Candidate for Viewer 1.23. The final release is still tentatively scheduled for the middle of June, at which point, the full implementation process will begin - all regions will need to be maturity-rated, search will be filtered for everyone, Adult content on the mainland will need to move to the new continent, and access to Adult regions and search results will be limited to Residents with verified accounts. We expect this process to take several months and begin to wrap up towards the end of August. As a reminder, you can verify your account in a number of ways, including having a payment relationship with Linden Lab or XStreet or through age verification with Aristotle.Getting the Word Out: Again, a specific timeframe is not yet set for the beginning of the implementation of the upcoming changes. Currently, we expect to be able to begin accepting tickets for moves to the new continent in late June and these will be handled in the order they're received. We predict that Viewer 1.23 will be ready for final release in the middle of June, at which point we'll begin the transition period during which all regions will need to be maturity-rated, and search will be filtered for everyone. We will continue to keep everyone updated via this blog, and will also use our other communication channels, including Login Messages, to be sure the community is aware of what's happening and where to find documentation of the details. In the meantime, links to the current materials and discussions on the changes can be found below: BLOGS Update - Upcoming Changes for Adult Content April 21 https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/04/21/update--upcoming-changes-for-adult-content Follow Up: Adult Content Changes March 25 https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/03/25/follow-up-adult-content-changes Upcoming Changes for Adult Content March 12 https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/03/12/upcoming-changes-for-adult-content PRESS RELEASE Linden Lab Ushers in New Era of Second Life with Initiative to Customize The Experience for Each User (translated text in French, German and Japanese can also be found at this location) http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/releases/21_04_09 Brown Bag / Inworld MeetingsDefinitions Meeting - Part TwoMay 11Audio: http://s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/media/mp3/Definitions_BB.mp3 Text: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6317 Definitions Meeting Part OneApril 17Audio http://clearspace.s3.amazonaws.com/podcasts/Brown_Bag_Meeting_to_Discuss_AO_Definitions.mp3 Text: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6287 Land Owner Brown BagApril 16Audio http://clearspace.s3.amazonaws.com/podcasts/Brown_Bag_Meeting_with_Landowners_on_AO.mp3 Text:https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6286 Merchant Brown BagMarch 27Audio http://s3.amazonaws.com/clearspace/podcasts/Brown%20Bag%20Meeting%20with%20Merchants%20on%20AO.mp3 Text: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6285 Educator Brown BagMarch 25Audio http://s3.amazonaws.com/clearspace/podcasts/Brown%20Bag%20Meeting%20with%20Educators%20on%20AO.mp3 Text: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6284 Solution Providers Brown BagMarch 24Audio: http://s3.amazonaws.com/clearspace/podcasts/Brown%20Bag%20Meeting%20with%20Solution%20Providers%20on%20AO.mp3 Text: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Adult_Content_Forum_Transcript FINAL DEFINITIONS - Maturity ratings:https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6010 FAQS Adult-oriented content controls FAQ https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6032 French: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/FAQ_sur_les_restrictions_concernant_le_contenu_r%C3%A9serv%C3%A9_aux_adultes_(KB) Japanese: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/アダルト向けのコンテンツの管理に関するよくある質問集_(KB) German: https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6032 FORUMS RC Questions http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?p=2413766#post2413766 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?p=2375407#post2375407 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=312352 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311514 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311513 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Account Verification for Accessing Adult Content http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311512 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Filtering Adult Content in Search and Classifieds http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311511 Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Geographical Separation of Adult Content http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=311510
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/GkbH2A4sBm0/adult-content-changes-in-summary
The Future of Virtual Worlds is the theme for Second Life's 6th Birthday Celebration this year, (June 23, 2009) and hundreds of Residents have applied for space to exhibit there. I've been watching the applications roll in, and there are a lot of awfully interesting ideas popping up, as well as a number of laugh-out-loud funny proposals that I can't wait to see realized. Who said the future had to be dull? I'd like to remind any slackers reading this that your time to apply for space officially closes on the 20th, so if you want to build at the event and haven't filled out that form yet (http://tr.im/sl6bform) you'd better put it on your list of things to do! (if you've missed the conversation about the event thus far, you can still catch up by reading the wiki on the subject.)^ More scenes from the developing event site....I don't know about you, but this particular theme is a favorite of mine, and something that I think about often, both in Second Life and Real Life. I'm pretty convinced that in... oh... about 4 years... we won't even bother to refer to such things as "Virtual" Worlds any more. Much as the Nearly Mystical ARPANET became the regular old "Innertubes" in such short order, the amazingness of today's VWs will soon seem ordinary. It will be that thing we all use everyday for communication, research, socializing, etc. (Duh!) But what a world it will allow us to access! Singularity, here we come.Glenn Linden found this (short) video of my favorite Mad Inventor, Ray Kurzweil, where he describes his vision of the Future of Virtual Worlds, from a technological perspective. Check it out, and if you have your own favorite links on the subject, let the rest of us in on it. It would be useful to gather a repository of ideas like this, to help us get our Creative on. The SL6B Regions will be opening for building around June 2, and you don't want to get caught with your creative juices still in a bottle in the fridge.Here's my personal biggest question about Virtual Worlds... when you can have anything you want in a virtual world, will Western Civilization's desire for Real World Stuff decline? What will be the perceived value of... huge blingy handbags? Will anyone really care if you have a RL yacht so big you need two helipads on it? What will this do to our RL sense of how we present ourselves? Will Cartier go the way of General Motors? Will RL just become the search for food and shelter and.... well, you know? Hey, just wondering.By the way, it's not mandatory that you follow the theme to participate in the exhibiting... if you have another idea that just doesn't fit it, go ahead and apply anyway, and we'll see if we can fit you in. In the final analysis, it's all just an excuse to build stuff and celebrate our achievements!Dusty EDIT: Discussions are now enabled for anyone logged in, sorry for the inappropriately restrictive setting -Blue
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/3ZhZDdYwAHY/the-future-of-virtual-worlds
Second Life Land Expo 2009In Second Life, land is what gives your content presence, boundaries, and a sense of permanence. It creates both a shared space for exploration and a place to call home. And in the last six years, Second Life's land mass has grown from 11 regions up to a total of 27,483 regions (at last count)! Land in Second Life is often reminiscent of the untamed Wild West, and in true frontier style many land owners have found great opportunity settling in Second Life. They’ve discovered that land enhances their business, community, and friendships, and creates a space for collaboration in creative and innovative ways.In an effort to share these best practices and support the growth of innovative uses of virtual land, Linden Lab is proud to announce the inaugural Second Life Land Expo!What is the Land Expo? The Land Expo is an opportunity for Residents to share best practices, compare land development offerings, and encourage the exploration of innovative uses of land. When is the Land Expo? The event will take place from Tuesday, June 9th through Saturday, June 13th and will encompass a total of 12 regions open to everyone! What can you expect?During the Expo, Linden Lab will be showcasing our NEW four prefab regions as well as many examples of innovative uses of land. There will be space available for land retailers to set up booths to advertise their land offerings. In addition, we will be providing a central pavilion where presentations on best practices in land management and land development can be shared.RETAILERS: If you sell land in Second Life and have a compelling product or creative land offering, we encourage you to sign up for booth space. Booths must be able to fit on 2100 m/sq (750 prims) and may include landmarks, visual displays, and video stream explaining your offering. Space will be limited and we will not be able to respond to all applications. To sign up for a booth to advertise your land offering, please submit your request for space with this link. We will follow up with the approved applications individually so please provide accurate information when applying.LAND MANAGERS: Do you have expert advice or tips for developing immersive land experiences? When it comes to innovation and creative uses of land development do you have best practices to share? We encourage all land gurus who have advice on developing land to sign up for a 30min or 60min time at the central pavilion the week of 6/2-6/6 to present your ideas. Please submit your topic for discussion, a brief summary, and requested time for delivery with this link. We will follow up with the approved presenters individually so please provide accurate information when applying.Please note the focus of the presentations should be on sharing best practices for developing land, innovative uses of land and administering land management. Not all times may be available for presentations and in the event that a time is requested by more than one person, the first to submit will receive the time requested. Further details on what the Land Expo offers will be posted to the blog soon, so please check back. We look forward to future growth and the further exploration of the virtual frontier! -MJ LindenGot questions? A discussion link will be posted below.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/sLHOvhnqYmE/land-expo-2009
Greetings!Memorial University just won a national award in Canada, recognizing their innovative use of Second Life in teaching and learning. This is insanely great. Congratulations to everyone involved! Here are the exciting details:National award recognizes value of virtual world technology in teaching and learningMemorial University’s presence was felt once again at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) conference, winning a national award for the integration of virtual world technology in a course. The winning team received the award at the 2009 CNIE awards banquet held on Tuesday, May 12.Distance Education and Learning Technologies (DELT), in partnership with Dr. David Murrin, adjunct professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and director of R&D/senior engineering specialist at IMV Projects Atlantic in St. John’s, took away the 2009 CNIE award for excellence and innovation in the use of technology for learning and teaching.The project involved the application of Second Life, an online virtual world, as a teaching and learning tool in Engineering 4061: Marine Production Management. DELT’s Second Life team, comprised of Marlene Brooks, Catherine Wicks, Jamie Chang and Donna Downey, worked in partnership with Dr. Murrin and his engineering students to incorporate classroom theories and principles into a simulated, immersive environment where students could enact the role of an engineer, and design and construct their own shipyard.“I was interested in using 3D virtual world technology in my class to better engage students in their learning and generate excitement about the course content,” said Dr. Murrin. “I wanted students to experience and realize the scale of real life shipyards, and gain a deeper understanding about the importance of material flow and the positioning of materials when building something of such enormity.”“We were excited to provide the support and expertise needed to integrate this technology into the course,” added Ms. Brooks, who led the Second Life team at DELT. “It’s very rewarding to collaborate on work that both enhances the students’ learning experience and gets recognized by our peers.”Students were provided with space on one of Memorial University’s islands in Second Life to build a shipyard with given parameters that would be capable of building three vessels in a year. Using this virtual world, students could meet online and walk through the shipyard to evaluate the functionality and suitability of what they had built. If flaws were discovered, students could then go back to redesign and rebuild to make it more effective.Ann Marie Vaughan, director of DELT, is thrilled with the acknowledgement and credits the win to the collaborative effort of both partners.“The insight and creativity of the team on this project were exemplary,” she said, “and it’s inspiring to work with such talented faculty, staff and students. This is our second CNIE award for educational technology in as many years, which speaks volumes about Memorial’s leadership when it comes to exploring and enhancing the way education is delivered, for the benefit of both students and faculty.”Second Life can benefit students’ learning by providing increased interaction with peers, engagement with course content, and reflection on theory in relation to practice. It can also accommodate a variety of learning styles and promote active learning, independence of thought and problem solving.For the students in Engineering 4061, their level of engagement enhanced their overall performance in the course, in comparison to students who had taken the course before the integration of Second Life. The use of virtual world technology provided these students with a unique opportunity for experiential learning, which will be of great value for those who go to work on real life shipyards, or other large-scale projects.DELT offers its expertise and support to Memorial’s faculty in their use of 3D virtual world technologies such as Second Life. The goal is to create and facilitate new, innovative environments for teaching and learning that meet the needs of today’s learners, and enhance pedagogical use of these technologies.For further information, please contact Courtenay Griffin, communications coordinator (DELT), Memorial University of Newfoundland at 737-2611 or cgriffin@mun.ca.---The following statement was issued by the Honourable Darin King, Minister of Education. It was also read in the House of Assembly:"Information and communication technologies are an important aspect of teaching and learning in today’s classroom. Technology improves the students’ overall school experience. Given the rural nature of Newfoundland and Labrador, our province has been a leader in the use of technology and distance learning, particularly at the post-secondary level. That reputation continues to grow. I am pleased to inform this Honourable House that once again, Memorial University’s Distance Education and Learning Technology, or DELT, has won a national award.""For the second year in a row, DELT has been recognized by the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education. At an event in Ottawa last night, members of DELT’s Second Life Team, comprised of Marlene Brooks, Catherine Wicks, Jamie Chang and Donna Downey, together with Dr. David Murrin, were presented with an Award of Excellence and Innovation in Use of Technology for Learning and Teaching.""Second Life is a 3D virtual technology that can be used to create new and innovative teaching and learning environments. The award of excellence recognizes how well the Second Life team integrated the 3D technology into a typical engineering course, helping engineering students build a successful, working, virtual shipyard. The students became the designers and the engineers and their level of involvement enhanced their overall performance in the course.""Our government is a strong supporter of technology in the classroom, recognizing how well it can supplement teaching and learning. At the K-12 level, for example, we recently allocated $2.2 million for computer replacements and $1.5 million over a three-year period for a technology integration plan. At Memorial, $1.5 million has been allocated to increase the number of courses available through distance education. In addition, government has supported the implementation of a common cutting-edge technology for distance learning in the K-12 system, Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic.""Memorial University’s DELT is constantly working to keep the university and the province on the leading edge of new technologies. I ask this Honourable House to join me in offering congratulations to all those involved in this latest endeavour."--- Here's a great video that summarizes Memorial University's work in Second Life. And again, congratulations to everyone at DELT who received this national recognition for their amazing work in Second Life. I can't wait to see what you all do next! - Pathfinder Linden
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/JSWJR3IUBOY/memorial-university-is-nationally-recognized-in-canada-for-excellence-in-innovation-using-second-life
The European Space Agency is launching the Planck satellite this Thursday in Guyana. Most of us won't be able to attend the launch - but we can attend it in Second Life.This event is being brought to you through the CNRS (National Center For Scientific Research) and the APC (Astroparticule et Cosmologie) Laboratory. The APC laboratory lies at the interface between the study of the very large and the very small, and it brings together several communities (experimentalists, observers and theoreticians). It is centered on three themes: cosmology and gravitation, high energy astrophysics, neutrinos.During the inauguration of The House of Astroparticule on 14 May, it will be possible to view the launch of the Planck satellite at Kourou (Guyana) at about 1300 UTC (6AM SLT), to visit its virtual replica and to meet with scientists during the conferences and the projections which will surround the event. APC Laboratories Second Life presence was created by i-Marginal, one of our French Solution Providers. (CNRS Press Release in French)The Planck satellite is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the early history of the universe. (Countdown to launch is on the Planck satellite page.)Of course, this is not the first space event to be viewed in Second Life; NASA has had a long presence, with a model of the Space Station and many activities in Second Life. There's the wonderful International Spaceport Museum which has replicas of most rockets that have been sent into space. And there's Science Friday, NPR's Friday science program in Second Life (and sometimes hosted in Second Life). There's a brief listing of science-related sources and places in Second Life on the Second Life wiki.I think this is a great example of the power of Second Life to take you to a place and event you would otherwise not be able to attend, and put you in contact with people you otherwise would not have any contact with. How cool to talk directly to scientists involved in the creation and launch of Planck! This also is a nice event to highlight the huge science community (SciLands is one manifestation of it) already in Second Life and the content they provide - from DNA experiments to visions of the solar system.So come over to the House of Astroparticule on Thursday, and watch the European Space Agency launch Planck, chat with some of the scientists involved - and help celebrate the entry of a major French science agency as it joins the others that are bringing you real world science in Second Life.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/P4ykJdH9KtU/satellite-launch--in-rl-and-sl
(Please scroll down to read en Español.)Lately I’ve been reading about educators making use of Second Life to support complex training in the real world. I heard about some fantastic work being done along these lines at the virtual campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), but boy was I in for a surprise when I went to investigate! I had the pleasure of meeting with Ernesto Riestra, the Head of the Division of Continuing and Distance Education at the Engineering School for the UNAM, and he was happy to give me a tour.UNAM is the largest university in Latin America, with the Engineering School alone having 11,000 students, and UNAM overall having roughly 300,000 students, ranging from high school to post graduate education. UNAM is currently working on building their campus in SL for their Engineering School Distance Education Programs and is also connecting with companies in the real world to help take engineering design and training to the next level. Developments began in November 2008 but a lot has happened in that short span of time…The UNAM’s main center in Second Life is not your standard campus building; the space is built to look like the Palace of Mining, considered to be where science first set foot in the Americas. Inside, there are a wide range of projects to be found, and I was shown several demonstrations involving mathematics, robotics, and engineering. Many of the 3d robotics models have adjustable vectors (x, y, and z coordinates) for its parts, which can be a helpful visual aid for students. Speaking on motivation, Ernesto explains, “Analytical geometry is one of the most difficult courses for first year college students … but basic scripts can translate into really good teaching.” Ernesto adds that developing demonstrations in Second Life requires far less time and provides a broader access than, say, producing similar robotics learning objects in the real world. Students can even explore the content on site on their own time for autonomous tutoring.One demonstration that stood out in the Palace of Mining was in their hydrology room. A couple dozen developers from the computer engineering department at UNAM got together to create a model of a landscape and city that helps examine how water is used by humans, how it is dispersed, and how it can best be recovered. You can adjust variables within the model, such as weather conditions, to view its impact on hydraulics. This content stretches into the realm not only of education but in training, where providing simulations of cities to explore city infrastructure can help to teach employees about water treatment, purification, distribution, how to handle leaks, how to address metal contaminants—the UNAM is working with the National Association of Water and Sanitation Utilities in Mexico (ANEAS) who are looking for exactly this kind of training experience for their employees. They are developing a region that explores hydraulics at a larger scale for that purpose as we speak!Another set of projects they are working on that has training implications in the real world involve energy. Onsite training for oil rigs in the real world is both time intensive and costly. UNAM has built a Second Life model not only valuable for walking tours or demonstrations, but because of the leeway in Second Life building tools, the rig allows trainees to visualize its internal components virtually as well. The UNAM’s ambition in the field of energy education and training does not stop there: there are plans to explore information exchange between a Second Life power plant model and the real world construct for certain functions, which can allow the Second Life model to act in a way as a visualization of and an interface for the real world plant. Interested in seeing part of the power plant model in action? Check out UNAM’s machinima video here.Ernesto himself has given a handful of lectures last year in robotics at UNAM’s virtual campus, and maybe in a few years he suspects the potential for substituting a real world class for one in Second Life. This year, UNAM hopes to have 1,000 students from their engineering school utilizing the in-world models, and hope for next year to have 10,000 students from 10 different UNAM schools working with Second Life content. A team of professors at the UNAM plan to track the effectiveness of the virtual programs, basing assessments on the learning abilities of their students over time. While the UNAM’s virtual campus in its entirety is not yet open to the public, the main center, the Palace of Mining, will be opening to the public relatively soon, on May 1, 2009. Bookmark the SLURL and mark the date—you will not want to miss checking this out! UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO: LA EDUCACIÓN Y LA FORMACIÓN EN EL MUNDOHe leído últimamente sobre el uso que algunos educadores hacen de Second Life para respaldar prácticas complejas en el mundo real. Aunque ya había oído del fantástico trabajo que en esta línea se lleva a cabo en el campus virtual de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) mi sorpresa fue grande cuando me puse a investigar. Tuve el placer de reunirme con Ernesto Riestra, Jefe de la División de Educación Continua y a Distancia en la Escuela de Ingeniería de la UNAM, quien estuvo encantado de darme una visita guiada.UNAM es la universidad más grande de América Latina. Tan sólo la Escuela de Ingeniería tiene 11.000 estudiantes. La UNAM como tal cuenta con unos 300.000 estudiantes que van desde el Bachillerato a la educación de Posgrado. Actualmente, la universidad trabaja en la construcción de su campus en SL para los Programas de Educación a Distancia de la Escuela de Ingeniería. A la vez, se encuentra en contacto con empresas del mundo real para llevar el diseño industrial y la formación a un nuevo nivel. El proceso empezó en noviembre de 2008, pero muchas cosas han ocurrido en este corto tiempo.El centro principal de la UNAM en Second Life no es un edificio de campus al uso, sino que se ha construido emulando al Palacio de Minería, considerado como el lugar donde la ciencia pisó por vez primera las Américas. En el interior cuenta con una amplia gama de proyectos de los que me mostraron algunos concernientes a matemáticas, robótica e ingeniería. Muchos de sus modelos robóticos en 3D tienen vectores ajustables (según las coordenadas x, y y z) en sus distintos componentes, lo que constituye una eficaz ayuda visual para los estudiantes. Hablándome de la motivación, Ernesto explica que "la Geometría Analítica es uno de las asignaturas más difíciles para los universitarios de primer año (...) pero guiones sencillos pueden transformarla en una buena enseñanza". Ernesto agrega que el desarrollo de modelos en Second Life requiere mucho menos tiempo y proporciona un acceso más amplio que, por ejemplo, la producción de objetos similares en el mundo real para aprendizaje de la robótica. Los estudiantes pueden explorar los contenidos que se ofrecen en el momento que más les convenga, desarrollando una tutoría autónoma.La muestra que destacó en el Palacio de Minería fue su sala de hidrología. Más de veinte programadores del Departamento de Ingeniería de Computadoras de la UNAM trabajaron en equipo para crear un modelo de terreno y de ciudad que ayudara a examinar el uso del agua por los seres humanos, cómo se distribuye, y la forma mejor de recuperarla. Cada quien podía ajustar diversas variables en el modelo, tales como las condiciones meteorológicas para comprobar su impacto en el sistema hidráulico. Este desarrollo se aplica no sólo en el ámbito educativo, sino también en el desarrollo general, ofreciendo simulaciones para examinar la infraestructura de las ciudades, de modo que los responsables puedan aprender acerca del tratamiento de las aguas, su depuración y distribución, el manejo de fugas, o la forma de abordar la contaminación por metales –la UNAM trabaja con la Asociación Nacional de Empresas de Agua y Saneamiento de México (ANEAS), que busca precisamente este tipo de formación para sus empleados–. Actualmente está en construcción una región para estudiar la hidráulica a gran escala con este propósito.También trabajan con otro conjunto de proyectos relacionados con la energía en el mundo real. La formación in situ en el mundo real para plataformas petrolíferas es costosa y larga. La UNAM ha construido un modelo en Second Life que no sólo es valioso para visitas o exposiciones, sino que, gracias a la flexibilidad de las herramientas de construcción de Second Life, permite a los alumnos visualizar en la práctica los componentes internos de la plataforma. Pero el objetivo de la UNAM en el ámbito de la educación y la formación sobre la energía no se detiene ahí: hay planes para explorar el intercambio de información de ciertas funciones entre una planta de energía de Second Life y su equivalente en el mundo real, que haga que el modelo de Second Life actúe como visualización e interfaz de la planta del mundo real. Los interesados en conocer en acción parte del modelo, pueden ver un vídeo de la UNAM aquí.El año pasado, Ernesto dio varias clases de robótica en el campus virtual de la UNAM, y quizá en poco tiempo sopese la posibilidad de sustituir una clase del mundo real por una en Second Life. Este año, la UNAM espera que 1.000 estudiantes de su escuela de ingeniería utilicen los modelos "in-world" (en Second Life). Para el año que viene, las expectativas son que 10.000 estudiantes de 10 escuelas diferentes de la UNAM trabajen con contenidos de Second Life. Un equipo de profesores planea realizar un seguimiento de la eficacia de los programas virtuales basados en evaluaciones de la capacidad de aprendizaje de sus estudiantes en el transcurso del tiempo. Aunque el campus virtual de la UNAM en su conjunto todavía no está abierto al público, el centro principal, el Palacio de Minería, pronto se abrirá al público: el 1 de mayo de 2009. Guarda en tus Favoritos la SLURL, ¡y no olvides anotar la fecha en tu agenda para no perdérte!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/oZiQaixjb0M/national-autonomous-university-of-mexico-education-and-training-around-the-world
We are pleased to announce the Finalists for the $10,000 (USD) Linden Prize:Alliance Virtual Library,American Cancer Society Island,Invisible Threads,Let There Be Night,NonProfit Commons,Skoolaborate,The Space Between the Trees,Studio Wikitecture,The Tech Virtual,Virtual Ability Island,Special Mention: We would like to also highlight three projects whose creativity, innovation, and impact are of outstanding quality: Clinical Scenarios,LanguageLab,New Media Consortium,The Vetting Committee and Finalist Judges sifted through over 230 applications from the United States to the Ukraine. As expected, we saw creative and diverse uses of Second Life, with compelling impact that is both broad and deep. There were exceptional applications that did not make the final cut, and we hope to showcase their stories in case studies, email and other media.Summaries of each Finalist and Special Mentions.We congratulate all Residents who applied, and we encourage you to continue your great work in using Second Life to make significant "real-life" impact. Next year, you might see your name here!Tune in on April 30 to learn the winner of the Linden Prize!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/z4vkLE5JwEc/announcing-the-finalists-for-the-linden-prize
Last month, we announced our plan to begin the process of introducing Adult Oriented content controls to Second Life. Key elements in the transition will include geographically separating Adult content, filtered search results and account verification. A sneak peek at some of the infrastructure on the new Adult Only continent...Following our initial announcement, we've been discussing this initiative in the forums, and in several targeted in-world 'brown bag' meetings that we held to discuss specific groups affected by this initiative and the definitions behind the new maturity rating system. These conversations have been very productive, and Residents have shared some valuable insight with us, which has helped to further our plans and refine the definitions we're working on to ensure that this initiative is implemented in the least disruptive way possible and is aligned with the standards of the community.You can read a recap of some of our key takeaways from the forums and find recordings of the in-world brown bag meetings here:Brown Bag Meeting to discuss AO with Solution Providers Brown Bag Meeting to discuss AO with Educators Brown Bag Meeting to discuss AO with Merchants Brown Bag Meeting to discuss AO with Landowners Brown Bag Meeting to discuss AO DefinitionsWe have heard your concerns, specifically in the areas of: 1) Enforcement 2) Definitions 3) Scope 4) Business Impact 5) Impact on Private Estates 6) Personal Information / 3rd Party partners We've addressed some of these issues in an updated FAQ, which can be found hereSo, what's next?Today, we've published a working draft of the definitions for PG, Mature and Adult here. We want to continue the discussion about our definitions and then finalize them by the end of April. The forums will stay up through the end of this process so we can continue to hear your feedback. Next week, we plan to release the Release Candidate (RC) for Viewer 1.23, which will be the first to include the new functionality related to this initiative. If you want to get an early look at setting maturity ratings and filtering search results, you'll be able to do both with the new RC. Over the next few months, we'll be continuing to work on the main viewer, which we anticipate will be ready by the end of June. When Viewer 1.23 is final and ready to become the main Viewer (again, estimated to be by the end of June), the full implementation process will begin - all regions will need to be maturity-rated, search will be filtered for everyone, Adult content on the mainland will need to move to the new continent, and access to Adult regions and search results will be limited to Residents with verified accounts. This process will of course take some time and the feedback we've received from discussions so far will help guide the details of the implementation process; we currently expect it to last through August. We'll of course update everyone with the details of the timeline as they are pinned down.The level of engagement we've seen has been terrific - the time and effort you have put into explaining your sensitivities and concerns is much appreciated! We look forward to continued dialog as we work on this challenge together.Thanks once again for your feedback!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LindenLab/~3/DuZN8f6RJGw/update--upcoming-changes-for-adult-content
Ok, I admit it. When I first joined Linden Lab to head up Enterprise Marketing three months ago, I wasn’t 100% convinced that working in virtual worlds really works. I mean, intellectually, immersive environments make perfect sense. We’ve all heard the key messages and I’ve been hard at work writing them. Meeting in Second Life [...]
http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/02/10/working-in-the-virtual-world/
Hi Everybody,
I wanted to introduce myself, Judy Wade, or Judy Linden inworld. I’m the new VP of Strategy and Emerging Business. Inworld I look a bit like a green sea fairy, which is what I always wanted to be when I was 6. Little did I know that I’d be able to carry out that [...]
http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/02/05/introducing-judy-linden/
Greetings all!
As those of you who follow Linden Lab have probably noticed, I’ve been expanding the executive team since I joined in May, 2008. Each hire has been focused on major initiatives within the Lab designed to make Second Life more reliable, more relevant and more usable.
We are reworking the user experience end-to-end. We started [...]
http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/01/27/new-members-of-the-executive-team/
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