Month: June 2011

Posted on

New Web Based Profiles In Beta?

After reading this thread on SLUniverse, which references this tweet, from Opensource Obscure, it appears that there are some different looking profiles on Linden Lab’s servers, profiles with additional functionality, such as  a feed. I don’t know whether this is a new project, or whether it’s an old project that never got finished but it does work, although the data appears to be from the beta grid and is therefore old.

My beta profile is here, to check for your own go to https://my-demo.secondlife.com/firstname.lastname, where firstname.lastname are your first and last Second Life names. Alternatively go to:

https://my-demo.secondlife.com/

Then login, you see more options when you login, you should see something like this:

Feed

Continue reading “New Web Based Profiles In Beta?”

Posted on

Wow Introduces limited Free To Play, Eve-Online Moves Into Virtual Goods Market

This post is largely about developments in World Of Warcraft and Eve-Online, more the latter, but both have made recent changes that have something in common with Second Life, so I felt it was worth talking about these issues.

In a rather surprising move, World Of Warcraft has moved from a 14 day trial, to allowing people to play for free, although they will get capped at level 20 if they don’t move to the subscription model. World Of Warcraft has been losing subscribers but was rumoured to still have over eleven million paying customers quite recently, so it’s not as if they are in the desperation stakes. One does have to wonder if World of Warcraft is approaching the Gillette Mach 3 stage, people just keep damn well using Mach III’s even though it’s old and they want people to use a newer product!

This is also interesting when looking at Second Life because the market seems to be moving more towards the free to play model that Second Life has employed since 2006, several MMO’s have moved to free to play with people being enticed to buy subscriptions or buy items and whereas World Of Warcraft isn’t doing that yet, others have been, Lord Of The Rings Online for example.

Continue reading “Wow Introduces limited Free To Play, Eve-Online Moves Into Virtual Goods Market”

Posted on

Adult Content User Group Still Treading Water

There was a point at yesterday’s Adult Content User Group Meeting where Viale Linden pleaded for no more private IM’s, claiming “I am not a bot” … however questions are still abound whether or not Viale is a bot because he seems to come out with phrases that are straight out of a management course book, take a look at the agenda:

1. Facilitate sustainable, productive communities by partnering with key groups and residents.  (different from executing on a community wishlist).

2. Bring the value forward .

3. Focus on sustainable movements, not discrete campaigns. Source the community for naturally sustaining, organic initiatives that scale and utilize trusted community resources while still aligning with corporate goals. Move away from LL-driven events and start spotting movements with natural momentum.

4. Embrace community content as an untapped, invaluable resource.

Hmmmm.

Continue reading “Adult Content User Group Still Treading Water”

Posted on

Fractured Crystal Invited To Move Onto Other Opportunities By Avination

In my previous blog post I talked about Fractured Crystal’s contract with Avination on their viewer development and whether one of the infamous participants in the Emerald scandal should be trusted again. Avination were aware of his past but wanted to give him another chance to demonstrated his skills. However there’s a new twist to the story, due to allegations that Fractured Crystal still logs into Second Life, despite being permabanned, Avination have now taken the decision to remove Fractured Crystal from their staff and have intivted him to move onto other opportunities, as posted here.

I have no idea if the allegation against Fractured Crystal is true, but allegations surface in this thread over at SLUniverse (Caution, thread contains profanity). This is quite an epic thread, the questions about whether Fractured Crystal still logs into Second Life start at the bottom of page 14.

Continue reading “Fractured Crystal Invited To Move Onto Other Opportunities By Avination”

Posted on

Is It Fair Not To Trust Fractured Crystal Again?

I don’t use Avination very often, this is mainly due to time restraints, the same goes for Inworldz, my virtual world time is mostly invested in Second Life. However I welcome alternative virtual worlds and although Avination and Inworldz are technically inferior to Second Life, that doesn’t mean people can’t have more fun in them than they have in Second Life. One area that interests me is of course the cheaper tier costs, from a roleplaying point of view that is appealing. Those lower costs though have to be weighed up against inferior performance.

I’m also not a fan of third party viewers, so were I to heavily invest in Avination I’d be tempted by the official Avination viewer, well I would have been until I learnt that Fractured Crystal of Emerald viewer infamy had been hired to help develop the official Avination viewer, this means I wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. The question then is: Is it fair to not trust Fractured Crystal again? The answer of course is, who knows? Actions will certainly speak louder than words.

In Cyberspace people not only have long memories, they also have aide memoires of old data to refresh their memories in cached google blog posts. What happened with the Emerald Viewer and Fractured Crystal’s involvement was a massive breach of trust and one I can’t simply overlook, although Avination owner, Melanie Milland, is quite correct in saying that Black Hats can become White Hats, it’s still an issue of personal trust.

Continue reading “Is It Fair Not To Trust Fractured Crystal Again?”

Proudly powered by WordPress
Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: