April 2013 – Page 7 – Ciaran Laval

April 4, 2013

MetaReality Podcast – More Words Less Bleeps Please

The latest edition of MetaReality Podcast – The Return Of The Reed has some interesting discussion, which you’ll find between the bleeps and even then the bleeps don’t always hit their target! This episode is a good one because the discussion goes beyond Second Life and into other areas, such as the recent launch of Sim City and and DRM in games and yet it comes back to Second Life even with subjects like that, by pointing out the unfortunate realities behind content theft, which mean that some measures to try and stop content theft can also be a massive pain in the backside for end users and ultimately self defeating.

This episode features of course, the return of William Reed Seal-Foss and boy can he swear. He mentions at one point that he only played Diablo III for about fifteen minutes because of the DRM issues, it’s a good job he wasn’t a victim of the digital download fiasco, I had to kill The Skeleton King for days because progress was halted there for people who purchased the digital download. This was another security issue type thing and yes it annoyed plenty of folk.

However if you do follow the link to the episode, the bleeps to cover profanity are off the scale, all of them are at it, that’s Qarl, Draxtor and even Gianna too! This is a shame because there’s really no need for that level of profanity in one episode, there’s enough to fill ten episodes in this one episode.

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April 3, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration – Demos Disappear

With the clock ticking on Direct Delivery, one area where merchants may have been taken by surprise is in the category of demos, which will have been unlisted today if you haven’t migrated. Linden Lab did warn merchants about the need to migrate, so why would demos have caught merchants by surprise? Well it’s more than likely to do with how some busy merchants think.

Demos are not an item merchants consider they are selling, they are there to demonstrate an item, so when a merchant gets an email telling them items they sell that are priced lower than ten linden dollars need to be migrated, quite a few merchants would be thinking that they don’t sell any items in that range, as they don’t consider a demo an item that they sell.

This issue harks back to the days when The SL Marketplace was first acquired by Linden Lab and people were asking for demos to be included in the item listing, something that still hasn’t been achieved.

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April 2, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration Clock Ticking On Items Priced Ten Lindens Or Lower

The end of magic boxes is nigh, sort of, as the clock ticks on deadlines for people who haven’t yet migrated unlimited items. Today is the end of the road for listing new items in magic boxes for items priced at ten Linden Dollars or lower, which would not be a smart move anyway as the item would be unlisted tomorrow!

Commerce Team Linden has updated a forum post with the latest information:

April 2, 2013 has arrived, and we have begun the first phase of Magic Box Shutdown. As of today, Merchants are no longer able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes. By noon PT tomorrow,

April 3, 2013, any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted. Note that the following will still be allowed:

Magic Box listings priced at L$11 or higher.

All Magic Box listings with limited quantity items, regardless of price.

Note that the second deadline is fast approaching. On April 16th, 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.

For the time being, limited-quantity items can continue to use Magic Boxes and will not be affected. “Limited-quantity” refers to items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy (such as breedable animals that are “no copy” for the seller).

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April 2, 2013

Fantasy Faire 2013 Call For Bloggers

Picture by Tamzin Xiglia

Design by Alia Baroque

Logo by Marcus Inkpen

A few days ago those of us in the blogging community … yes we’re all one happy family … found ourselves dumped from the Fantasy Faire group. This was due to some spring cleaning for this year’s event and a group notice was sent but I know from talking to some people that, for one reason or another, the group notice wasn’t received by all. However there was nothing malicious going on here.

Now a call for bloggers has been sent out for this year’s event which runs from April 20th – 28th and you have until April 5th to apply, which you can do by going here.

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April 1, 2013April 1, 2013

Private Sims Show Growth For First Time Since June 2012

In her regular weekly report on the state of the nation regarding land mass, Tyche Shepherd has reported that private sims grew by 13 sims during the last week. This is the first time they’ve shown growth since June 2012, a period of 40 weeks of pretty much decline has been reported since then.

The last reported growth came week ending June 24th 2012, when Tyche reported growth of 30 private regions. At that stage we had 22,864 private regions on the grid. This week’s report shows that the growth of private regions now puts private region numbers at 20,482. That’s a loss of 2,382 private regions over the period of 40 weeks since growth was last reported, around 10.4% loss by my calculations.

Whether this is a sign that grid losses are stablising, it’s way too early to tell but the decline in the number of private regions has been slowing in recent weeks, here are the recent changes

24th Feb -36
3rd March -55
10th March -18
17th March -6
24th March -23
31st March +13

Another way to look at this is to compare the last report of each month so far this year:

January -242
February -179
March -89

So there are definitely signs of a downward trend in the number of sims leaving the grid, although those monthly reports can be skewed, for example there are five weekly reports during the March period, as opposed to four in January and February, so not an exact science.

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