March 2013 – Page 5 – Ciaran Laval

March 8, 2013

From The Huffington Post – Second Life: How a Virtual World Became a Reality

I saw a post over at SLUniverse from Cristiano (SLU head honcho) linking to an article by Peter Diamandis on The Huffington Post – Second Life: How a Virtual World Became a Reality. The article is based on an interview with Philip Rosedale, AKA Philip Linden, once Second Life’s head honcho. The post makes for an interesting read, although it should be pointed out that Peter Diamandis is a friend of Philip Rosedale, which he states in the article.

This means the article is positive, hurrah! What I like about the article is that you get a glimpse of how excited Philip was about creating a virtual world, Second Life may or may not have turned out how Philip expected, I’m pretty sure he once said he expected it might look like New York. However he envisaged a virtual world and he got one and it will go down in history as being revolutionary.

The key to a virtual world going from being a dream to reality was, it seems, tied to broadband over DSL. This breakthrough left Philip realising that a virtual world was indeed a possibility. However just how expensive these dreams can be is also explained in the article, Philip had USD$1million to invest , largely due to making money when Real Networks, where he worked, went public. However this was not enough to get started, Phlip is quoted as saying: “Unfortunately, even with my $1 million it wasn’t fundable.”

However some people such as Mitch Kapor of Lotus 1-2-3 fame were on hand to provide help and Second Life was born.

Continue reading “From The Huffington Post – Second Life: How a Virtual World Became a Reality”

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013

RELAY FOR LIFE KICKOFF

The 2013 Relay For Life of Second Life season is ready to launch. On Saturday, March 9, 2013, at 10am SLT, the Relay For Life Kickoff Celebration will be held on 4 special “kickoff” regions bordering the American Cancer Society Island.

More than 107 teams have pre-registered to participate in this year’s Relay For Life fundraising season in Second Life, but there is plenty of room for more. Anyone who has registered, or is interested in registering a team is encouraged to attend the Kickoff Celebration to learn more about this year’s Relay For Life season. If you are interested in learning more, contact Gem Sunkiller inworld, or you can join the Relay For Life Volunteers Group, or you can visit Relay For Life of Second Life.

The 2013 Relay For Life of Second Life theme matches that of the American Cancer Society’s 2013 campaign: Celebrating 100 Years of Hope.

“2013 marks the 100th birthday of the American Cancer Society. Our teams voted last year to use this as an opportunity to align with the organization to celebrate the many successes that we’ve had over the last 100 years of fighting cancer…and to re-commit ourselves to doing as much as we can to finish the fight,” says Stingray Raymaker, American Cancer Society Manager of Digital Platforms. Continue reading “RELAY FOR LIFE KICKOFF”

March 7, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Private Region Survey For February

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s private region survey for February 2013 revealed a couple of stark points:

The large estates now hold a bigger percentage of the grid.
Older hardware in the shape of class 5 regions is declining, whilst newer class 7 and 8 regions rise.

As this is a survey there are margins of error in the results, so they may be slightly out, but not by much …. I think I’ve got that right! Now February continued the decline in private regions on the grid, there was a net loss of 146 regions, so if you held steady during February you’d hold a larger perentage of the grid. Let’s take a hypothetical example here, imagine you owned 10 regions and there were 100 regions on the grid, you’d hold 10% of the share. However if 10 regions disappeared, you’d now own 10 regions out of 90, making your share 11.1%, so without doing anything yourself, your percentage of land holdings increases when there’s a decline.

However February’s overall decline was 0.7%, which is healthier than January’s 1.5%. However when it comes to the top twenty landowners, their holdings went up by 3.8% (+/- 1.3%) in February, giving them 38.9% of private regions. Tyche also comments that taking list prices, their holdings are up 2.3%, meaning they pay around 31% of all private region tier.

Tyche also looks at the top 10 owners and figures out that they hold 29.1% (+/- 1.2%) of regions and pay 21.4% of private region tier. This backs up Tyche’s statement that larger estates own more homesteads than smaller estates.

The big mover in February was the ACS owned Azure Islands, up 0.8%. Anshe’s estate holdings don’t show so well in the full list as there are individual estates, but overall they amount to 14.7% ( +/-0.9%) which is up 1.6% on January.

Continue reading “Tyche Shepherd’s Private Region Survey For February”

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013

Magic Boxes To Be Semi Retired In April

Commerce Team Linden (AKA CTL) has announced on the official forums that Magic Boxes will start to be retired in April, although they aren’t being fully retired as there’s an issue still with Direct Delivery and no copy items.

Magic Boxes have traditionally been used to list items on the SL Marketplace. However the time is now approaching whereby you will need to switch to Direct Delivery, the important information:

April 2, 2013:

Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes.

Any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted.

April 16, 2013:

Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price.

Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price.

However if the items you’re listing aren’t unlimited, for example a breedable for which you have no copy rights and therefore have to sell it as a limited quantity item, there is no migration date yet.

Continue reading “Magic Boxes To Be Semi Retired In April”