Seriously, this is like the age old adage of waiting ages for a bus and then three come along at the same time! Linden Lab have blogged again, this time about a new project viewer with a new communications hub. This post is not statto geeky like the last one and has some very interesting features in it.
So earlier in the evening, I was talking about communications, mostly email and how we can become overwhelmed with messages. However I also questioned whether we needed to receive im’s to email for sales or when someone touches our welcome boards. There’s nothing in the Communications User Hub Interface (AKA CHUI) blog post that suggests we will be able to choose to select which messages get sent to email, but it does say:
“We are still working on making notifications more consistent and user-controllable. Depending on the type of incoming communication, you will be able to choose a notification style, such as a flashing button, a sound, or no notification at all. You’ll also be able to choose distinct notification types for friends and non-friends, as well as for those times when you’re busy and you’d prefer to be interrupted only by friends.”
Which does sound like it has potential. There are also other goodies mentioned in the blog post.
You will no longer need to browse your hard drive for those chat logs, as long as you’ve set the option to save them, there will be a conversation log option available to you. This will contain IM’s that were sent to you when you were offline, will this mean we won’t need to receive im’s to email? Hmm that could have potential, although plenty of people like IM’s to email because they can respond without the need to be inworld.
There are imrpovements to conference calls which will mean you can add people after the chat has started, improvements to voice chat options and interface improvements to make it easier to find communications options. This all sounds pretty positive and when I’m not keeping my eyes open with matchsticks I’ll take a proper look.
Linden Lab are seeking feedback on how this works, and this is where the only negative I see arises, not so much that they are asking for feedback, there will be a survey available in a week or so too, no where the negative arises is that they tell us to check a special Jira section for open bugs, you know, like we used to be able to do with the Jira in general!
However let’s not let that spoil what looks like some potentially impressive improvements to communications.
It’s funny you post about going blog crazy, because for a long time now the last post I could see here was from 12th July I think. I checked back every week, then every couple of weeks, and eventually thought you might have stopped blogging, but today I clicked the bookmark by accident and here we are, 23rd October and a load of blog posts I never saw! lol
Ouch! I walked right into that one Magnet 🙂
Been burned too many times on the communication front.
I don’t think this is a policy change. Just happens that two events have come to a head at around the same time.
One is communication – the one from yesterday over an obscure technical fix that should actually have a big impact. That one -IS- a sign of them trying to get the message across that they are fixing lag issues (they have been ever since V2 launched – but the V1 crowd is still around so many people still don’t see that last, now almost 4 years, of changes to SL).
The second we’re seeing because they need ‘beta testers’.
Its not enough for me to feel they’re unclenching their rears any yet… It just appears to be a timing coincidence.
Most social media companies would be putting out 2-3 blogs per day… everyday…
So they still have a long ways to go.
Coincidence almost certainly, but as you touch upon, the performance improvements are something they should be shouting about, the new communiations viewer is something they need to make a noise about, we’ll see more on that and hopefully more from other areas but yes, one swallow doesn’t make a summer.