Virtual Worlds – Page 313

March 19, 2008January 12, 2014

Lights Go Out, Walls Come Tumbling Down

An article in The Economist points out that walled gardens get to the stage where walls need to come tumbling down. Drawing parallels between the mid nineties and the internet boom and services such as Second Life and Facebook they point to how proprietary services such as AOL and Compuserve were swept aside.

If Second Life is going to dream the impossible dream then there’s no doubt about it, those walls are going to have to come tumbling down. Unlike World of Warcraft and Age Of Conan (please be good) Second Life aims to be all things to all men (and women Sarah). This isn’t just a hack and slash world. This is the ruthless cutting edge of future business transactions for generations to come, boldly going where no man has ever gone before …..ok that’s a bit extreme but you get the picture.

Second Life is trying to trailblaze its way to being a standard for virtual worlds, but you can’t do that with huge walls and guards at the city gates. When Robert Scoble was kicked off (and quickly reinstated because he’s Robert Scoble) Facebook for running a data portability tool people were quick to quote the TOS, privacy breaches and such like. However whereas Scoble was wrong to break the TOS, he was in some ways right to point out that data portability is a feature users need. Continue reading “Lights Go Out, Walls Come Tumbling Down”

March 18, 2008January 12, 2014

Privacy And Robin Linden Will Not Be CEO

Just to clear something up, today’s tales from ambleside at the Robin Linden office hour, Robin Linden emphatically denied she was about to become CEO and indeed went further and said she will never be CEO.

This arose after some mischief making from me when I said we were awaiting Robin being crowned CEO and someone congratulated her. So, in case I’m quoted out of context anywhere else and to ensure there are no dirty rumours:

Robin Linden will not be CEO. Continue reading “Privacy And Robin Linden Will Not Be CEO”

March 17, 2008January 12, 2014

The Killer App

It took 116 comments on Uncle Phil’s blog before someone uttered the immortal line “Can I have your stuff”. Come on down Peasan Kuu, you saved the day 🙂

Alan Bamboo recently commented “SL needs a reason for 99.9…% of the population to even have a reason to use a virtual world.” I agree with him entirely. SL is lacking an ingredient. It’s an ingredient that Mitch Kapor is familiar with, it’s the killer app and SL doesn’t really have one.

The history of computing is littered with roads that lead to another road. An event that triggered another event with lots of people pointing to a certain point and yelling “I’m Spartacus”. However Visicalc is widely regarded as a killer app, it gave people a reason to use the Apple II. Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston are the people credited with this, it gave purpose to the Apple II and launched an industry. This allegedly led to IBM believing that people would use computers in their home and office. This in turn led to the success of the operating system marketed by Gary Kildall Bill Gates. Continue reading “The Killer App”

March 12, 2008January 12, 2014

What’s In A Name?

Robin Linden is back from vacation, she’s injured her ankle and she’s talking about intergrating your SL with your RL. More specifically she’s talking about people using their RL names in SL (Stop cheering Nobody). She also told me to go to bed but I’ll worry about that another time!

There are of course several issues with this but let me start by saying this was merely a discussion and not policy so don’t go running for the hills. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow.

However I think it’s worth discussing. Now with the changing of names I believe there’s a worry that it will break things you’ve created. However I also believe that Cory Linden’s name is no longer Cory Linden, well I know it isn’t because I’ve searched for it, but Cory Ondrejka exists and someone told me the other day that that is the name on his creations now. Can anyone confirm this? Continue reading “What’s In A Name?”

March 8, 2008January 12, 2014

You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth

Linden Lab recently announced changes to the island transfer system. Taking great care to point out that they weren’t getting involved in resident to resident disputes they will now assist the process and ensure that party a and party b aren’t trying to rip each off. A very welcome moved indeed. However, they need to do more in other areas to improve integrity in their product.

As someone who participates in the land game I read about disputes over land scams with some disdain. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is being economic with the truth? Estate owners have a big reclaim land button and they can use it any time they like and so can Linden Lab on mainland, and yet, how often do you hear a complaint from a mainland resident that Linden Lab reclaimed their land on the basis of any reason and no reasons? Continue reading “You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth”