Second Life Private Regions Drop Below 19,000 Mark

Tyche Shepherd reported yesterday that private regions have dropped below the 19,000 mark for the first time since June 15th 2008. There are currently 18,988 private regions on the grid. However it should be pointed out that the rate of loss has slowed down and that is particularly apparent for this year, although the last couple of weeks have accelerated the fall to below the 19,000 mark.

This comes around 53 weeks after private regions dropped below the 20,000 mark. Then the private region count stood at 19,997. However by the end of 2013 there had been a further net loss of 724 private regions, leaving the score on the door of 19,273. At that point a fall below 19,000 looked likely to come in the first couple of months of 2014, but private regions have fought a brave fight against that until the last fortnight. Two weeks ago there were net losses of 39 private regions and this week a net loss of 26 private regions. That means that 65 of this year’s net loss of 285 regions have came in the last fortnight, or to put it another way, 22.8% of this year’s losses have came in the last fortnight.

There’s no rational explanation as to why private region net losses have risen like this, at around this time last year, give or take a week because Tyche went on holiday, there was a net loss of 29 private regions during a fortnightly period. Back in 2012 at around this time of the year there was a fortnightly net loss of 154 private regions. Actually, a fun with numbers quirk from that fortnightly net loss shows that in the first week private regions dropped by 59 and a week later those numbers flipped around with a weekly loss of 95 regions ….. ok it’s just me who finds that interesting isn’t it?

If we go back to the heady days of 15th June 2008, Tyche reported things a little differently, so I don’t know what the net change was but 593 regions were added to the grid that week. Yes that’s right, 593 new regions came online. This was also at a time when Linden Lab could auction new mainland regions and in another, fun facts incident Tyche reported :

Only one new mainland sim was added this week , or more to the point a mainland region has returned to the Grid “The Corn Field” is back since last Monday.

Play spooky music now!

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UWE Teaching MA In Virtual Worlds Within Second Life

UWE Education In Virtual Worlds MA

The Education Innovation Centre at The University Of The West Of England are teaching a MA Education in Virtual Worlds with the course taking place in Second Life. Learners will have the opportunity to :

  • Explore the application of teaching, learning and research theories in a virtual environment,
  • Develop potential learning activities of their own and test them out
  • Explore the use of non-player characters and bots powered by forms of “artificial intelligence”
  • Design and develop curricula specifically for delivery in virtual worlds
  • Research education in virtual worlds

…and more

The MAEVW is a flexible programme of study, which is taught entirely in the virtual world Second Life. It is supported by online technologies that include virtual learning environments, collaborative tools and video conferencing. This flexibility enables the course to be studied anywhere in the world (with some requirements regarding time zones).

The whole course is a two year programme, although you can choose to take the modules individually if you want. The full programme structure can be read here. There are a number of modules, some are compulsory and some are optional. The compulsory modules are :

  • Orientation in Virtual Worlds
  • Designing Curricula in Virtual Worlds
  • Simulations and Role Play
  • Scripting and Building Learning Environments
  • Research Methods in Virtual Worlds
  • Sociology of the Metaverse
  • Artificial Intelligence, Bots and Non-Player Characters
  • The Philosophy of Education in Virtual Worlds

The programme structure page goes into a lot more detail about the course and all the details.

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The Cost Of Windows Updates For Developers And Users

Oz Linden’s recent blog post on Tips for Reducing Viewer Crashes urged people to upgrade their operating systems :

Upgrade your Operating System

There is a very clear pattern in our statistics – the more up to date your operating system is, the less likely your Viewer is to crash. This applies on both Windows and Macintosh (Linux is a little harder to judge, since “up to date” has a more fluid meaning there, and the sample sizes are small). Some examples:

  • Windows 8.1 reports crashes only half as often as Windows 8.0

Those of you who stuck with Windows 7 (roughly 40% of users of our Viewer right now) rather than upgrade to 8.0 made a good choice at the time; version 7 still has a much better crash rate than 8.0, but not quite as good as 8.1 (now about 15% of users), so waiting is no longer the best approach.

  • Mac OSX 10.9.3 reports crashes a third less than 10.7.5

OSX rates do not have as much variation as Windows versions do, but newer is still better, and there are other non-crash reasons to be on the up to date version, including rendering improvements.

Upgrading will probably also better protect you from security problems, so it’s a good idea even aside from allowing you to spend more time in Second Life.

However there’s a massive elephant in the room here and it’s the cost of upgrading Windows. OSX is a different kettle of fish and the recent Mavericks OS was even free. Microsoft Windows is different and this highlights an issue for developers as well as end users.

Here in the UK, Windows 8 upgrade for Vista and XP users is £99.99. The upgrade to Windows 8.1 after that is free.

Windows 8.1 itself, which is the path Windows 7 users will likely want to tread, is also £99.99.  These are hefty fees in all reality and a lot of people would rather wait until their computer reaches the end of its life before upgrading.

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Authors In Second Life And Beyond Are Forming Good Virtual Communities

Book Island Landing Zone

Book Island isn’t new to Second Life, it has been around since 2007 and claims to be the oldest dedicated literary sim in Second Life. They’ve recently welcomed back a renter by the name of V.L. Dreyer who is the author of The Survivors series of books.

The sim exemplifies what virtual worlds do well, community, it’s clear that there’s community work here with events advertised for a 500 word writing challenge, Open Mic where you or one of the regulars can read in voice, live literature where one of Second Life’s regular live performers reads.

Then there are events aimed at writers, such as an Improv writers challenge and writers chat. There’s also something called Promptly Erotic, which you will have to ask Freda Frostbite about!

I’ve seen communities such as this inside and outside of Second Life. Earlier in the year I took a trip to Opensim to look at the Hypergrid Stories Project. Indeed this community were so nice that even though Second Life isn’t part of the Hypergrid, it was included in the Hypergrid stories project!

One of the reasons for that is of course related to Second Life having an audience that it worth engaging with. This point arose recently in my blog post about Seanchai’s discussion of Second Life and Kitely. The discussion in the comments is quite interesting as we see that authors in particular are not happy with Linden Lab’s TOS but they still want to engage with Second Life.

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The Mysterious Case Of Inworldz Cash Outs

There’s an odd forum announcement over on the Inworldz forums :

Over the course of the last couple of months or so, it has become apparent that Linden Labs has been tightening the cash outs, or taking longer, etc., thus forcing people to make accounts over here to attempt to cash their L’s out.

For clarification: InWorldz economy stands on it’s own, we are not tied to Linden Lab, nor any other grid for that matter. When you attempt to cash out against our merchants and residents who are growing this economy, while not being a part of it, we will remove the cashout.

From a business standpoint, we are not about to start absorbing a loss for Linden Lab and their cash outs. This would be very foolhardy on our part to even try to absorb those. If you wish to cash out in our world, then you need to be a part of it, otherwise expect us to put a hold on those monies and not cash them out (as this also sets off my fraud flags when I look over the accounts).

If you are encouraging people to bring their cash outs over here, please stop. This is not helpful to our merchants or residents who do normal business daily in our grid. If you know someone who is encouraging others to do this, please let them know to stop or send them to this thread 🙂

Thanks everyone!

The odd part about this is that I’m not sure how anyone is exchanging money from Second Life to Inworldz or vice versa, as far I was aware this sort of exchange ended long ago. In their TOS update thread, an October 2012 announcement stated :

Unfortunately, at this time, our losses due to Fraud have become too high to sustain and we are effectively shutting down any ATM business. Owners that we are aware of have been notified, and we will no longer allow intergrid currency exchanging.

Furthermore the InworldZ TOS states :

InWorldz, LLC further establishes that any service designed to transfer I’z into or out of it’s service may result in account termination. This includes, but not limited to: ATM machines designed to transfer I’z out of InWorldz into other currency, people or accounts created to transfer I’z out of InWorldz into other currency, or any other system deemed by InWorldz staff to be accommodating such transfers.

So I am somewhat bemused as to how anyone is using Inworldz for cashing out, rather than cashing out via Second Life.

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