Episode 46 of The Drax Files Radio Hour sees Draxtor Despres visit Linden Lab HQ in San Francisco whilst Jo Yardley stays in an attic in 1920’s Berlin. Drax gets to talk to the Great Bug Hunter Of Olde Linden Town, in the shape of form of saying hello to Alexa Linden! I’m so jealous, Alexa is a legend and yes she does usually work in the Seattle office.
He gets to talk to Michelle Linden who ensures that Ebbe Altberg doesn’t spend all day on Twitter. He talks to Xiola Linden, who has a very cool hat inworld.
He also gets to talk to Ebbe Altberg, Monty Linden who talks about the content delivery network, Brooke Linden who talks about the SL Marketplace and he goes to the basement of the Linden Lab HQ to talk to Shaman Linden and Kona Linden. I used to love playing Monty Mole on the Sinclair Spectrum. Those were the days! Where were we? Oh yes, back to the future. Drax also got a glimpse of the next generation virtual world Linden Lab are producing, whose project name is currently a closely guarded secret, to such an extent that when someone mentions the name in the radio hour, it gets bleeped out and this also meant that an interview with Bagman Linden had to be pulled from the show.
The interview with Monty Linden is excellent and this time Monty doesn’t speak pure geek when he explains how a Content Delivery Network (CDN) works. The idea, Monty explains, is that, content gets moved to more geographical locations, therefore if the content you pull down is closer to your physical computer, then performance will improve for you.
However, Linden Lab aren’t replicating everything to all these geographical locations, they replicate content that is live. Live content is content that exists inworld, which makes sense, there’s no point in sending your inventory items that no longer see the light of day all over the world, that would be a waste of resources.
There is of course a lot more to it than this and Monty talks a lot more about it, this is really well worth listening to.
Ebbe showed Drax around Linden Lab HQ and allowed him play with Second Life on the Oculus Rift DK2. However one interesting point raised here was that Second Life does not have the ideal rendering engine and frame rate for use with Oculus Rift. However Linden Lab’s next generation virtual world will have those capabilities. Obviously this doesn’t mean that Second Life can’t work with Oculus Rift because people have reported success using the Oculus Rift.
Drax talked to Brooke Linden, whom I’ve smooched, twice! I had to fight her off, that’s my version of the story and I’m sticking to it!
Brooke revealed that the big challenge with the SL Marketplace is the sheer amount of use it gets. Brooke also talked about search and hinted at some forthcoming improvements for the Marketplace. I would imagine that the new Viewer-Managed Marketplace is amongst those improvements.
Brooke would not be drawn too much on what may or may not be happening with a Marketplace for Linden Lab’s next generation virtual world, but it seems that there will be one.
Then Drax went down to the basement where Shaman and Kona spoke to him and showed him some of Linden Lab’s inhouse merchandise, which includes FIC Cups! I’m not making this up, they also have FIC magnets too. Q&A and Engineering are in the basement of Linden Lab’s HQ, I’m not sure what to make of that! The last time I saw Kona inworld he was powering around The Cornfield and seemed to be having way too much fun, maybe I should have told Michelle about that!
This is another great episode of The Drax Files Radio Hour, it’s an hour long but if you get the time, it’s well worth listening to.
Smooching Brooke? That is soooo NOT fair ;(…..jealous……