Ciaran Laval

December 22, 2012

Marketplace Categories Still Open For Discussion

Having mentioned in a recent post about Linden Lab’s lack of discussion, I’m now going to embark on a couple of posts about Linden Lab inviting discussion and communicating! We’ll start with Marketplace categories.

On December 20th, CommerceTeam Linden updated a post on the official forum:

To make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for when shopping the Marketplace, we have updated the proposed new categories based upon your feedback. But it doesn’t end there! You have until January 10, 2013 to review and share any additional comments you may have.

Here are the new categories we have already added to the Marketplace. Enjoy!

Under Celebrations/Holidays/Christmas

Added “Women’s Seasonal Apparel”
Added “Men’s Seasonal Apparel”
Added “Christmas Trees & Ornaments”
Added “Christmas Lights”

Under Celebrations/Wedding

Added “Wedding Dresses”
Added “Wedding Tuxedos”
Added “Bridesmaid Dresses”
Added “Wedding Decorations”
Added “Wedding Rings”

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and comments on any other categories!

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December 21, 2012December 21, 2012

Jira Changes Are Hurting Collaboration

One thing not mentioned in Linden Lab’s look back at 2012 was the change to the Jira. Now it would be easy to rant and rave about why this was a poor decision, but I’ll try to be objective and try to understand what Linden Lab are trying to achieve here.

The one issue I can see with the old way the Jira worked is the amount of noise, with the new Jira there has certainly been a reduction in noise, because except in cases such as the CHUI Project, where people can comment on other people’s Jira’s, we largely end up with Jira’s where only a select few residents, the reporter and Lindens can read and comment on.

Less people commenting will in some cases make it easier to identify the issue, but it also hits collaboration, where people with good feedback, are unable to provide it in the original report. Reading someone else’s comments, can help focus your own comments in important areas.

I recently created a Jira, it got imported to a project that I couldn’t see, so in effect, even as the reporter, I couldn’t see it. This was fixed, but then I couldn’t comment on it. The only way I could update my report was by editing my own report. Now by this stage I could see other Jira’s in this project, so I was able to reference another report, the reporter on the other report then referenced my Jira to update their own report. We had collaboartion between two reporters.

Now to be fair to Linden Lab here, they explained to me that there was an issue with editing permissions in this project, this was very politely explained to me by a Linden and I appreciate that they took the time to inform me about the issue.

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December 21, 2012

Linden Lab’s Lack Of Communication Means They Even Miss Their Own Progress

Linden Lab have blogged about improvements to Second Life during 2012 and a look forward to improvements to Second Life in 2013. As a long term critic of Linden Lab’s every increasing ability to imitate a Harpo Marx convention when it comes to communicating with the community, I welcome this blog post. However the post itself highlights why Linden Lab’s lack of communicating is in itself a bad thing, because there are things within the blog post itself that haven’t exactly been highlighted well during the year.

They talk about new premium perks, which is something they have at least made some effort to communicate about. They talk about the advanced creator tools and pathfinding. These are two areas where I don’t feel there has been anywhere near enough discussion, these issues should be being blogged about.

They talk about the Good Building Practices Wiki, which is something I found out about from Nalates Urriah’s blog, not Linden Lab’s! Seriously, this should be something they promote, it’s a nice resource getting built there.

There’s talk of how 1,200 new and original entries have been added to the destination guide, but where was the push for what averages out at 100 a month new entries during the year?

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December 20, 2012

The Digital Economy Can Broaden Horizons

There’s an article in The Times today from James Dyson: Make Things For The Real World, Not The Web. Unfortunately The Times is a pay site so unless you’re a subscriber you won’t be able to read it, or a luddite like me and you read the paper version, I still much prefer reading on paper.

The article opens with the following:

Though I use Google every day (I confess I am not on Facebook), I believe the next revolution of industry will be in the real world: tangible. Steve Jobs had it right: you want to be able to lick new technology, not just “like” it. But there is a risk that the development of tangible technologies is being overlooked in favour of fashionable web development.

Further into the article James Dyson talks of how Caterpillar, who make tangible items, are a far bigger company than Facebook. This is undoubtedly true, but I disagree with some of James Dyson’s premise. This is of course a quandary for me as James Dyson is a man of invention whom I admire greatly, I even have a Dyson vacuum cleaner and a bloody good product it is. However I feel the world is turning and whereas the really big companies will be making tangible goods, opportunity is knocking for those making digital goods and products for the web.

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December 18, 2012December 18, 2012

Threaded Region Pile On Testing

When I was a lad there were a few things likely to leave you bruised, bumps for your birthday, scramble when someone would throw sweets into the air and you’d all scramble for them, the chicken run where you had to run through a corridor of people who were trying to punch and kick you and a pile on, where the unlucky sod at the bottom of the heap was likely to be gasping for air.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered Linden Lab were inviting people to a pile on, of course being a virtual world the unlucky sod at the bottom is unlikely to be battered and bruised. However on further reading from Inara Pey I can see that this is not the sort of pile on I’m familiar with!

Caleb Linden, whom is not a breedable as far as I am aware, announced the details in the official forum:

In an upcoming server build, Linden Lab has changed the way agents and their attachments get carried over in the event of a region crossing. And we need your help to test region crossing in a pile-on fashion.

On Wednesday, December 19th at 16:00 PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) please join IRC (EFNET -> #sltest) to launch Second Life and join us via the following SLurl GC Test 9

The details of the tests are here

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Threaded_Region_Crossing_Beta_Tests

In the meantime, please let us know if you need access the the test regions mentioned on the wiki or have additional questions.

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