Indigo Goes With Web Groups Whilst Hamlet Looks To Achieve

Linden Lab’s invite for people to send suggestions to them via a new feedback process is gaining some interesting commentary outside the suggestion box. Indigo Mertel has gone for greater web functionality for Groups and communications whereas Hamlet Au over at New World Notes goes for achievements. Neither of these are new territory but they are good discussion territory.

I’m very much onboard with Indigo’s suggestions as they are largely suggestions I’ve made myself in the past. The benefits of web based groups are many but some key areas would mean that you wouldn’t have to receive a notecard, landmark and texture advertising events. The idea would be you’d get a notification pointing to the group web page. This allows communication channels to do what they do best and web pages to do what they do best.

Indigo has added some depth to the broad based group web page idea suggesting that they could have a forum, a wiki, an option for people to subscribe to notifications and the ability to make the group page viewable on the world wide web or not.

In short Indigo is thinking along the lines of the functionality that Facebook and Google + offer. Now you may think that if Facebook and Google + already offer this added functionality then why not go with them for Groups? Many people do, I get event invites sent to me on Google +. However not everyone has or wants an account on Facebook or Google + whereas people who are members of Second Life groups are already happy to be members of Second Life …. one would hope!

Now obviously this isn’t easy to achieve but going forward, I think there might be a pointer or two on how to try and manage groups in the future. Groups are a social experience and they require greater resources than the inworld Second Life experience can provide. Groups are essentially a social media tool and they really need a social media solution but one that can link into the inworld experience.

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Should We Be Looking To Streamline Messaging?

So I’ve reached that age whereby I listen to BBC Radio 4 when driving to and from work. Tonight I caught a part of Digital Human, where Alexs Krotoski was investigating whether we were all becoming techno-fundamentalists, which makes a change from people being called techo-communists.

The part that most caught my attention was email, or more to the point, how bloody annoying it gets. Email is a curse at times, people hit and run with email, especially when it’s a work email, personal emails often have some substance to them, with work emails, we set out of office replies, which were once frowned upon as being wasteful, now they’re expected. Some people are apparently setting out of office emails that tell people the email will be deleted, which is a step too far in my eyes but I understand the point to a degree, the person isn’t there to handle the email.

Another issue was to do with mobile phones and how people often set them to airport mode when they’re out of work, because if they don’t, the messages keep coming. Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to Second Life and the joys of messaging.

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SL is still amazing

I know I haven’t blogged in awhile, but today a note card was passed my way that I want to share with you.
First I want to explain why this note card hit me the way it did. Last night I was reading a chat window of fellow bloggers and one person went on to say how SL has become a pit. That it has lost its shine.  “This place is rapidly turning into a shit hole of a has been.”  His summation of SL, obviously, was not good. I just closed the window as I didn’t want to listen or read the negativity anymore.
So, today a dear friend of mine passed out a note card which follows:

Phoenix McGann
One of the things I loved about performing online in Second Life was the opportunity to touch the lives of people all over the world. SL is a godsend to some…particularly those with disability or disease that confine their world. In SL they could run, dance, and soar through their imagination…doing things the weight of real life would not permit. One of these wonderful, joyful spirits, Phoenix McGann, passed on recently. For several years Phoe battled courageously with late stage Parkinson’s Disease. But nothing could stop her. SL allowed an outlet for her indomitable love of life. She was an amazing, crazy woman. Funny how people you’ve never met can sometimes touch your heart so. She was a Shantu fan from the very beginning…over 5 years ago. She was a wonderful human being. I’ll miss her.

This Thursday, Feb 2 at 7pm SLT I’ll be singing in SL for a tribute for her being put on by people who loved her. I hope all of you will find the time to stop by and celebrate here life. A landmark and further details will follow.

Shantu

So next time you want to “rag” about SL and what it DOESN’T do, remember what it does do too.

Till next time,
Your friend, Jez

Why Aren’t Linden Lab Talking To Us?

So, after a break from blogging of Avril Korman like proportions, I’m back! However unlike Avril, I’m not back with a challenging and epic blog post to create a great deal of discussion and my break has largely been a result of just wanting a break. There are many interesting issues I could blog on, Shava Nerad (Shava Suntzu in Second Life) has an interesting campaign about Google + and their profiles rules. However it’s Friday night here in blighty and I’ll end up singing Safety Dance if I blog about that.

So let’s look at what’s been happening on the official Linden Lab blog, on July 21st they blogged about Mesh and on July 28th, they blogged about Mesh! Now don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to Mesh, indeed during my break I’ve been playing with Blender and volunteered one of my regions to be put into the Mesh RC Channel. However, there are a couple of other things that seem to have happened in the last week, new profiles have gone live and the hidden avatars feature, that I blogged about back on July 5th appears to have gone live, I haven’t checked it but the settings are in the latest viewer.

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New Web Based Profiles In Beta?

After reading this thread on SLUniverse, which references this tweet, from Opensource Obscure, it appears that there are some different looking profiles on Linden Lab’s servers, profiles with additional functionality, such as  a feed. I don’t know whether this is a new project, or whether it’s an old project that never got finished but it does work, although the data appears to be from the beta grid and is therefore old.

My beta profile is here, to check for your own go to https://my-demo.secondlife.com/firstname.lastname, where firstname.lastname are your first and last Second Life names. Alternatively go to:

https://my-demo.secondlife.com/

Then login, you see more options when you login, you should see something like this:

Feed

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