Ciaran Laval

June 17, 2012

Flickr Pickle

Linden Lab have recently found themselves in a user permissions pickle over their use of pictures for their pic of the day blog posts. Wizard Gynoid pointed this out to me in a recent comment, whereby Whiskey Monday surprisingly found that her picture had been used.

The main issue is a lack of communication, nobody from Linden Lab told Whiskey that her picture had been selected. Photos submitted to the Second Life group pool on flickr were being used on sites such as Facebook, Tumblr and Google +, no matter which rights had been selected by the author on flickr. There are two problems here, one is ignoring permissions but probably the larger issue is not informing the author. Most people would be happy to allow Linden Lab to use their photos for promotional purposes, as long as there’s attribution and communication.

However in this case, Linden Lab have decided to make some changes, as Whiskey Monday outlines here and create a new Flickr Group, with new terms and conditions.

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June 16, 2012

A Year To Forget, But I’ll Never Forget It

This post may be a bit rambly, is rambly even a word? This post is also likely to be a bit disjointed, but on with the show!

2012 has not been a good year, to be frank, and Frank isn’t my real name, it has been the worst year of my life. The Villa were crap, in a painful way, but that was put into perspective by a bigger personal tragedy for me that I’m struggling with and will continue to struggle with, which is why my blog has been a bit awol for the last couple of months, emotional pain scars and it leaves long lasting marks but that’s life and we all have to deal with things like this, no matter how painful it is, it comes to pretty much all of us.

The weather has been crap too, here in England it has been raining for two months and in a land where rain is not a surprise, this amount of rain is depressing, of course we also have a Tory Government and misery and Tory governments do go hand in hand, so there’s that to consider.

On the virtual world front, I’ve sort of lost my mojo this last year, the excitment has gone, that’s what happens I guess but I’m so out of the loop when it comes to socialising in Second Life. A performer handed me a notecard the other week asking if she could perform at my sim, it actually made me smile that someone made the effort to say they wanted to sing. I’ve always felt that LL have been missing a trick in not promoting Second Life as a live music venue.

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June 15, 2012

Take Me To Your Leader

I’ve been spending way too much time in Blender, building, thinking I can do this better, fretting about the lighting, so then lights go out, walls come tumbling down, yes they do …. anyway! So Linden Lab seem to have gone on a communications strike, the blog isn’t being updated and Rodvik is missing in action! What the bloody hell is going on?

One theory doing the rounds in the forumsphere is that Rodvik got to know the users and then pondered “What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a Monster?” However that doesn’t explain why the main blog is so bereft of … well blogginess. They already know us!

So what the bloody hell is going on? Your guess is as good as mine, but we can ponder.

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June 12, 2012June 12, 2012

Podex Advertise Visa Electron Card That Can Be Funded With Linden Dollars

Podex, a company who have been running Linden Dollar Exchange Services for a while are now offering a VISA Electron Card that can be loaded with Linden Dollars and then used as a normal VISA Electron Card outside of Second Life.

This is a novel move, it’s a prepaid card, you can load it via bank transfer or via an inworld Podex exchange, it’s also as far as I’m aware, unchartered territory, and with no announcement of Linden Lab of the existence of such a card, it’s a move that will raise questions regarding its legitimacy, as exemplified by this thread on the official forums asking if it’s a scam.

The card isn’t free, you pay L$10,000 at a Podex terminal, or you can purchase it via Paypal for 30 Euros, USD$40 or £25. The cost of the card is explained here. However, with Podex being relatively unknown outside of Second Life, and not that well known within it, this is something that will make people nervous.

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June 4, 2012June 4, 2012

Desmond Shang is Up To Something

There is a thread over at SLUniverse from Desomond Shang, entitled “Second Life 2015” in which The Caledon Governor ponders what may be happening with Second Life in 2015. The opening post ponders tier, vitality, seismic changes and such like. This isn’t unusual for a post from Desmond.

There is also pondering on The marketplace, which I often ponder on too and I simply can’t understand why in a 3D virtual world, Linden Lab are so obsessed with a 2D Marketplace, to the extent that they have shop links in the viewer to it, undermining the land market as it goes. Tier is way too high for Linden Lab to be playing this tune.

However it’s further into the thread that Desmond Shang reveals that he’s up to something, and then teases people by not saying much about what it is!

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