Ciaran Laval

June 3, 2011June 3, 2011

We Wanna Be Free To Do What We Wanna Do And We Wanna Get Loaded

One of the beauties of Second Life is the freedom to create, it’s why the old tagline of “Your World, Your Imagination” was so wonderfully apt, and why it was disconcerting when it was removed. Some people of course don’t like creative freedom because creative freedoms lead to situations where people don’t like what others create. However one should always remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I still get excited when my scripts come to fruition and actually do what I want them to do, to me that makes it a beautiful day.

However with creative freedom also comes responsibility, which is why people aren’t free to create anything they like, there are certain items that will earn you a one way ticket to palookaville, there’s a distinctly “Don’t be Evil” subplot to these creative freedoms, hence why you get asked for permissions to do things.

Rules are of course seen in some quarters as a bad thing and being careful what you wish for is another concern, which has been exemplified by the official forums which are being rejigged again.

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June 1, 2011June 1, 2011

No Sex Please, We’re Lord British

With a hat tip to Cristiano at SLUniverse for his post on the subject, it seems that Richard “Lord British” Garriott is planning a virtual world social hub called Centerport, which you can read about here. The blurb starts well:

“When it makes its debut in 2012, CenterPort will be the virtual world social hub for the OpenLife ecosystem, a broad yet fully integrated meta-community. And, it’s also a robust game unto itself.”

There’s talk of reward systems, games, friends lists and when it’s initially launched it will be as a social network app for the likes of Facebook, MySpace and hi5 …. will Myspace still be around in 2012? Facebook will be and that’s going to be one of the problems for this venture, but that’s a different issue for a different post.

However before folk get too excited, let’s look a bit deeper:

“Learning providers can create entire campuses composed of multiple learning environments. Game designers can create custom games Virtual world providers can provide any type of environment (within similar constraints as the Entertainment Software Ratings Board [ESRB] content ranges, we intend to avoid the issues that Second Life is wrestling with due to the adult/erotic/pornographic flavor of so much of their content).”

Hmmmm……..

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June 1, 2011June 1, 2011

Cheers Blondin!

I was extremely disappointed to learn that Blondin had left the lab, and all the more disappointed to see it via a post at SL Universe. That post was inspired by a notice from Marianne McCann in the Bay City Alliance Group where Marianne thanked Blondin for his care and attention and wished him all the best for the future.

Why Blondin has left, I have no idea, but I certainly hope that it is for the right reasons, because Blondin worked hard with communities of all ranges and whereas I largely spoke to him at Zindra user group meetings, or office hours, he’d also been at the community tools user group meetings, the events users group meetings, he was here, there and every bloody where.

I must admit that I did wonder aloud whether he was bored at a recent Zindra group meeting, they really can be like Groundhog Day but he IM’d me to say he wasn’t bored:

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May 25, 2011May 25, 2011

New Search Project Viewer Released

Just when you thought it was safe to go searching again, it seems that Linden Lab are tinkering with search and this time it’s apparently, bigger, longer and uncut… I mean Fast, Easy, Fun …. no no wait wait it’s delivering more relevant, faster results! The blog post, here, will also cause some consternation because new search will not be implemented by Linden Lab in viewer 1.23 and the consequences of that are hidden away in the FAQ :

What will happen to old search?

The new search system will replace the current SL Viewer search when testing and quality assurance are completed. Viewer 1.23 search will not be affected until the new search system is released for general availability in the released Second Life Viewer. At that time, Viewer 1.23’s search functionality will be impaired; specifically, All and Group search will no longer work in Viewer 1.23.

However for now, let’s take a look at this new search, there’s the good, land sales is vastly improved, it really couldn’t have got any worse, but it’s vastly improved, events are also improved, however paging has gone away to be replaced with a never ending scrolling…well it ends eventually, if you’ve used new Twitter you’ll be familiar with this functionality. There’s also the issue that there is no search button still as well as no way to sort your maturity ratings for search. However it does look rather funky if you open search without entering a search term:

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