Author: Ciaran Laval

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Marketplace maturity ratings off to shaky start

The new marketplace maturity ratings system, as announced here in the merchants round table on the official forum has got off to a shaky start, the first shaky start being moving the discussion thread to the merchants roundtable, because unless Linden Lab have changed something, plenty of merchants won’t even have access to that forum…..ah someone has their eye on the ball, since I first posted this and people mentioned it being in the rountable, someone at Linden Lab has sensibly moved the discussion back to the commerce forum where people do have access.  Another part of the shaky start being people wondering why their items have been set to a certain maturity level, general, moderate or adult being the levels.

This is a sensible approach from Linden Lab, maturity ratings on the marketplace should match those inworld, so this is a sensible move. This really should have happened long ago, but one wonders whether Linden Lab departments actually converse with each other, not only because this change has been brought in because of the arrival of teens on the grid, meaning it really should have happened prior to the grid merge, but also because the maturity ratings appear to be different to those inworld in terms of content. Continue reading “Marketplace maturity ratings off to shaky start”

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Creepy Facebook Advertising Should end Widgets

The news that Facebook will soon be using likes in a new advertising initative should be enough for Linden Lab to get those widgets off web profiles and quite frankly it should be happening now. The idea is that someone will like a brand and this will appear on their Facebook profile in an initiative called Sponsored Stories, as reported here at Cnet. Oh it’s organic advertising, it’s a revenue stream for Facebook which is a free to use service, there’s no harm in it, right?

Well it’s not just sponsored stories that are an issue,  let’s take a case of a Second Life user who decided to like his Second Life profile, and then went and signed into Facebook,as described in this forum thread. The Second Life user found, upon signing into Facebook, that that Like had been recorded on his Facebook profile, even though he doesn’t believe he was signed into Facebook when he clicked the Like.

Now Facebook does like to try and get you to stay signed in and there are of course cookies, but the whole thing is quite frankly creepy. There are also issues of just how easily one can link Second Life to First Life via clicking likes and engaging with Facebook. Linden Lab have not been upfront about the consequences of running Facebook and Second Life on the same computer, maybe they aren’t aware of them, but this is another reason why those widgets should be taken off people’s profiles right now. Continue reading “Creepy Facebook Advertising Should end Widgets”

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Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat

He looks like Steve Bruce, he looks like Steve Bruce, Carlos Tevez, he looks like Steve Bruce…ahh what a night of excitement at Villa Park last night where the twenty four Million pound man struck the winning goal, but this isn’t the place to discuss that, although I’ve slipped it anyway.

No here’s where we discuss the grid merge, Linden Lab’s apparent security through obscurity policy and some glaring issues. Linden Lab have been absurdly and almost childish in their refusal to do the decent thing here, they should have built a family friendly continent at the time of the adult continent fiasco, yes this has been discussed plenty enough but we still go back to Linden Lab not listening to a solution that was not only perfectly sensible, it’s one that would have made the merge easier not just for sixteen and seventeen year olds, but also for the thirteen to fifteen year olds who have been cast aside. Continue reading “Are Teenage Dreams So Hard to Beat”

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New CEO Gets a Warm Welcome

New CEO Rod Humble (Rodvik Linden) has received a warm welcome after his first blog post. As others who are more eloquent and elegant have said, there’s nothing earth shattering about the blog post, but it is a refreshing and almost humble (I couldn’t resist!) post.

Rodvik talks of immersing himself in the world, and shows pictures complete with toga. He talks of building, scripting and creating his own little piece of Second Life, let’s hope he can continue to build from the ground up and put himself, or someone on his team at least, in the shoes of residents because one thing that stands out as the older Lindens have left is that the newer Lindens are employees firstmost and foremost and whereas they can’t all be Torley, it would be nice if more of them went through the processes that we residents go through in terms of change, policies and that bloody awful search system. Continue reading “New CEO Gets a Warm Welcome”

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Social Networking Still needs to be a two way Street

Here we go, the optional linking of our profiles to Facebook and Twitter is here, as blogged by Q Linden. First of all let’s be fair here, the blog post does have information about a useful feature of being able to login to a place that you have on your favourites bar, this sounds like a nice move.

There’s also information regarding improvements to how textures rez due to the KDU library being upgraded to 6.4, so we have three big points being made and two of them being given the thumbs up, the third point however, about improved web profiles gets a massive thumbs down.

There are people who don’t see what the fuss is about , just to add some balance and show there are differing views on the issue. However as someone who passionately dislikes Facebook, this is a big deal. I don’t want that sharing or like tab on my profile. This should be an opt in feature, I’ll happily utilise the Twitter link because I use Twitter and Twitter, unlike Facebook, isn’t so anal about having to share your real life details. Continue reading “Social Networking Still needs to be a two way Street”

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