June 2013 – Page 4 – Ciaran Laval

June 13, 2013

Under The Sea Expo

An Image Should Be Here — Under The Sea Expo

Whereas SL10B will grab a lot of the headlines over the next few weeks, the whole of Second Life doesn’t stand still and next week, between June 20th and 26th, The Under The Sea Expo will be taking place. What on earth is The Under The Sea Expo? Well it’s an expo for those who love the Second Life oceans, from the blurb I was handed:

The Under the Sea Expo brings you the ruins of Atlantis, reborn and transformed into a thriving market to be shopped and explored! The Lost City has been found and you are invited to join us for this very special event, Thursday June 20- Wednesday June 26!

There’s also a hunt during the expo, but this will be a guided hunt from my understanding. Each Vendor has agreed to donate one free item to the Treasure Hunt Event and visitors to the Expo will be taken on a guided hunt to each vendor location at the Expo to collect these prizes. One gift per avatar, per Vendor!

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June 11, 2013

A Brief Look Back To 2005

The theme of SL10B is looking back and looking forward, it’s far easier to look back because the information is there, some hidden, but it’s there, I could write a book with this, actually I’m surprised someone hasn’t, or that the Lab haven’t released a commemorative screenshots magazine inworld with old pics, there are some in Governor Linden’s mansion. I’m going to take a very brief look back to 2005 here, but first, let’s look forward.

The Second Life blog has recently reminded us that there’s more to SL10B than bear avatars, they’re also giving away T-Shirts, baseball caps as well as competitions. However the bears are cool, admit it. Now ten years is a long time for an online experience, especially these days.

Personally I feel they should do a Doctor Who type special event where three version of the CEO all meet in the same space, causing potential mayhem with the laws of physics, so we’d have Rod Humble, Mark Kingdon and Philip Rosedale on stage at the same time, all wary that something may explode if they get too close, actually Philip may be there twice as we’ve had two versions of Philip as CEO.

Now looking back at Second Life is more fun that looking forward, largely because you have depth to the backwards glance. I’ve taken a very quick and random look back to 2005, a year when people were complaining about not being able to login, Linden Lab were announcing plans for a teen grid, people were asking what exactly Second Life is, Magellan Linden was exploring new land and there were eBay auctions for billboard space in welcome areas, Catherine Linden was asking for people to let her know what they used Second Life for so she could post it on the website and a nifty new way of posting snapshots from Second Life to a blog were being plugged. Let’s start with an old classic, Problems logging in anyone?

Usagi Musashi posted in that thread, and it’s as confusing a post as I recall Usagi posting, I wasn’t here in 2005, but I remember Usagi posts on the forum. I was going to do a tongue in cheek list of ten years of problems logging in forum posts, but I figured that might sound too negative, even by my standards, although it is actually fun reading them, honest!

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June 8, 2013June 8, 2013

Follow The Bear

So you’ve got your new free SL10B avatar from Shopkeeper Linden on The SL Marketplace and now you want to record the magic of being a bear in Second Life. There are ways to share the love, one way is to post pics in blogs, especially when it’s a Strawberry Singh bear on a moped! I wonder if that would get more feedback if it was Strawberry Singh bare on a moped, but I like the bear!

However there are other places to share photos of the bear and one place is Flickr, yes I said Flickr. I know that some people are watching twirling balls and singing along to the Three Degrees singing “When Will I See You Again” as they try and battle with the new “More Awesome” Flickr but groups are still the same as they ever were and Crap Mariner has created Second Life SL10B Bear Avatar Photos group where you can share the love of all things SL10B bear related.

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June 7, 2013June 7, 2013

SL10B Bear Takes A Hazardous Journey

I was looking for a place for my SL10B Bear Avatar to visit, so I decided to visit The Destination Guide and check out the Photgenic spots. There are some really nice looking places to explore but I wanted a place out in the open and then I spotted it, a hazardous looking location:

So off I went in search of adventure and found a place that is beautifully presented but has a creepy feeling that something or someone may reach out and grab you if you don’t pay attention. Therefore I was glad to be in my Bear avatar, someone or something is far less likely to attack a bear, but this may not be the right place for child avi’s, there’s a chance you’ll be sold to The Circus!

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June 7, 2013June 7, 2013

Are Flickr Going For Tumblr Intergration?

I’m still using Flickr, despite my serious reservations about the new design, which I think is quite frankly awful. I’m not complaining about change for the sake of it, the new Flickr landing page for signed in accounts is full of too much noise and only offers the justified view. Despite performance improvements, large images and infinite style scrolling are bandiwidth and RAM hogs.

However Flickr is still a good place for storing images and groups are pretty much the same as they ever were, with a variety of views available. The way groups work should be the norm, not the exception. However Flickr, despite the howls of protest from users, have steadfastly refused to allow people to customise their views on the landing page, or when they explore. Why? I have no idea but I’m going to speculate that it’s part of a longer term plan to intergrate with Tumblr, because the idea that they’re annoying so many users just to implement adverts holds little water, if they haven’t got website designers who can incorporate adverts into different views, they should hire some who can. I believe their staff are more than capable of serving adverts in different views.

So my guess is that there is going to be some intergration with Tumblr. Coincidentally enough Tumblr’s homepage has had a revamp this week and one that, according to Mashable’s Samantha Murphy is : “a photo-rich design very reminiscent of its new sister site Flickr”

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