Virtual Worlds – Page 21

June 16, 2017

Take A Step Back In Time To Explore Second Life’s Origins

Whilst we get ready to celebrate Second Life’s 14th birthday, with events starting this weekend, the Second Life Destination Guide gives us a chance to take a step back in time via the Second Life Origins section.

This gives us an opportunity to view Second Life as it once was, with a visit to areas such as Da Boom, Second Life’s very first region.

You may want to visit Boardman where zoning guidelines were introduced all the way back in January 2003. I’ve never been sure why these sort of areas weren’t more popular.

Boardman had/has some zoning rules and the welcome notecards around provide us with some information regarding the project :

Welcome to Boardman! Boardman is a controlled building community. A small suburban area, Boardman is the perfect place to build your home if you’re looking for a nice, quiet region without the stores and looming towers you might find building elsewhere.

Here are some helpful guidelines to help maintain Boardman:

You can own as much land as you want, but your build in Boardman MUST be a conventional residence that might be seen in a suburb. This means that stores, dance clubs, sheep farms, and any other non-house builds are not permitted within Boardman.

Builders are no longer limited to using the Mini-House-in-a-Box. But it’s available at the supply stores located around the perimeter of this region.

Now if you’re wondering what sort of zoning rules applied, read on.

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June 14, 2017

Second Life’s 14th Birthday Moves Closer

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Second Life’s 14th birthday draws closer, the Second Life Community Celebration website currently shows the countdown at 3 days 23 hours. That website is an important one to pay attention to because it will keep you informed about events and happenings. The birthday celebrations are scheduled to run from June 18th-25th, but you will have longer than that to enjoy the exhibits.

The main thrust of the timeline for visitors is as follows :

June 18, noon SLT: Opening Day!!
June 23: The Birthday
June 18-25: Open with Performances
June 26- July 2: Open for viewing–No Performances
July 3-5: Breakdown
July 6: Sims Go Offline

So the performances and spectacular events will take place between June 18th-25th but the exhibits will be open for viewing until July 2nd.

Linden Lab have also blogged about the birthday celebrations and that post involves information regarding a music festival and a couple of parties.

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June 13, 2017

Linden Lab Announce Changes To Lindex Processing Fees and Issue Account Security Warnings

Linden Lab have published two very important blog posts in the last couple of days, one regarding changes to LindeX processing fees and one regarding account security issues.

I’ll post about the unpopular issue first, Linden Lab have announced that there will soon be Updates to LindeX and Credit Processing Fees. This will result in increases to fees in some areas, which, the blog post tells us, will result in the following changes :

The fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase from $0.40 (USD) to $0.60 (USD) per transaction.
The fee structure for process credit transactions (i.e. paying real money into PayPal or Skrill accounts) will remain as a 1.5% fee with a $3 (USD) minimum, but the maximum fee per transaction will increase from $15 (USD) to $25 (USD).

This means that there will be fee increases for those purchasing Linden Dollars and for some who sell higher volumes of Linden Dollars.

The blog post points out that last year, Second Life users processed credit of USD$60m, which is a pretty impressive amount for a platform that is about to celebrate its 14th birthday, but the ability to buy and sell Linden Dollars for real money has to comply with laws and regulations to prevent fraud and money laundering, amongst other challenges.

The blog post explains :

Underlying SL’s successful user-to-user L$ economy and the ability to buy and sell L$’s for real currency is a significant amount of ongoing work to ensure that everything remains compliant with applicable laws and regulations, while also preventing fraud and money laundering.

Investing in improvements to these processes and the ongoing compliance work required comes at a cost to Linden Lab, and we will be making some LindeX fee adjustments in order to share a portion of those costs with Residents active in the SL economy.

Whereas increases in fees are never welcome, the regulations associated with such transactions are likely to become more stringent as virtual transactions gain popularity amongst various platforms and that means increased costs for companies such as Linden Lab who are processing these transactions.

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June 7, 2017

Strawberry Singh Fashion Videos Featured In PC Gamer

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes recently posted an article praising Second Life users videos on YouTube : YouTube Talkshow: SL Blogger Alicia Chenaux On The History Of Second Life.

Hamlet featured Alicia Chenaux’s video and mentioned talk show type videos, but they are far from the only type of Second Life videos on YouTube, which has been exemplified by an article in PC Gamer by Steven Messner : Second Life’s makeup unboxing videos are surreal and wonderful.

The article features videos and a text based interview with popular Second Life fashionista blogger Strawberry Singh. Fear not those who are not fashionistas, the article is actually interesting and makes positive points about Second Life, despite starting out mentioning some negative stereotypes that we are all too familiar with.

In the article Strawberry explains how Second Life is a sandbox environment where people can dress their avatars and are willing to spend money to do so. However Strawberry also delves into the worlds collide scenario where she points out that she doesn’t tell everyone about her Second Life exploits.

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June 5, 2017

The Drax Files: World Makers Ep 45 -Arduenn Schwartzmann And His Flying Machines

Linden Lab have brought us news of the latest edition of The Drax Files : World Makers series, informing us that :

Long-time Resident Arduenn Schwartzman has developed quite the reputation as a prominent inventor, scripter and builder in Second Life. With a career that includes stints as a both a molecular biologist and assistant professor outside Second Life, Arduenn is perhaps best known inworld as creator of the air combat game WarBug.

Enthusiastic is an understatement when it comes to Arduenn.

The episode, which in traditional style I’ll embed near the bottom of this post, explains how the creativity of Second Life can be so appealing, especially to someone such as Arduenn who had climbed the career ladder only to find more responsibility means more administrative work and less creative work.

Arduenn enthuses about creating a plywood box, an enthusiasm that many of us experienced when we first entered Second Life and realised just how much of a sandbox the virtual world of Second Life truly is.

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