Linden Lab – Page 144

June 22, 2013

SL10B Should Be Extended

Sl10B is a big event, 22 sims worth to be precise. There’s so much to see and do, the agenda is:

June 16 Grand Opening

June 23 Official Birthday

June 23 Final day of performances

June 29 Sims close to the public

July 1 All builds to be dismantled – sims go offline

Now a really decent community birthday gift from Linden Lab would be to allow the exhibits to stay in place for a month or two, because that would give people plenty of time to get around. I don’t know exactly what the arrangement is between Linden Lab and the organisers but the community website tells us:

The SL10B Community Celebration is Second Life’s 10th anniversary resident-run gala celebration, and it happens from June 16 at noon slt to June 29. This year, we have 22 sims cram-packed with art, exhibitions, information, and events.

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June 21, 2013June 22, 2013

BBC Ask – Whatever Happened To Second Life?

I had to do a double take when I saw Ewan Took’s post over at SLUniverse: “BBC asks “Whatever happened to Second Life?” Initially I thought it was a really old necropost because I’ve read an article along those lines on the BBC before: What happened to Second Life?

However no, this wasn’t the 2009 article I’d read before, this was a news story from today and why is Second Life being talked about today? Well because Second Life’s tenth birthday is making news, that’s why. The updated Second Life Tenth Birthday edition of “Whatever Happened To Second Life” can be viewed here.

The blurb:

“Ten years ago, a social media website was launched which some corporations thought would change the face of business forever.

It was called Second Life – a virtual world where users could live, meet, go shopping or make music and art.

Multi-nationals like IBM rushed to be part of it and countries even opened embassies there.

But what has become of Second Life?”

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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 3, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 7 – Rod Humble

The Drax Files contuinue to impress me and as usual I’ll embed the video at the end of the post, in this edition Draxtor talks to Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab and someone who appears to have been missing in action for a while, although I swear I saw that thief style avatar when I was wandering around Fantasy Faire. The only disappointing aspect of this interview is that Rod doesn’t wear an Aston Villa shirt to work, or even a Villa tie!

The interview opens with Rod Humble saying “Most People at Silicon Valley have no idea that Second Life still exists.” The interview is fascinating with Rod making some extremely encouraging comments (for me anyway) in terms of privacy. Unlike those who think we should all be using our real names everywhere we go, Rod sees the value of people having their own space in different environments.

Rod also talks of how he travels around with alts and that this gives him the chance to engage in different ways, ways that he wouldn’t be able to do if people knew he was Rod Humble. This relates to the previous point about privacy and it’s encouraging to see that Rod seems to get the importance of this.

We see Rod in walking into the Linden Lab offices and some of the staff in pose mode, some pondering, others in catalogue style poses, some typing away and pretending the camera isn’t there whilst keeping one eye on it, as you do! There’s talk of performance improvements, with Server Side Baking making an appearance and talk of improvements that will be rolled out this quarter that apparently we will really like.

We see footage of The Dwarfins cave, hurrah! Rod talks of how Second Life is a great platform for creativity and how the content is user created, which we all know of course but as hopefully people who aren’t yet Second Life users will see this, it’s important that the CEO of Linden Lab makes this point.

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May 31, 2013May 31, 2013

A Humble Mystery Unfolds

Sighted inworld less often than Magellan Linden in the past twelve months, there have been concerns about the well being of Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble. Had he been kidnapped? Had he been turned into a High Fidelity Voxel? Did he have clowns to the left of him, jokers to the right and was stuck in the middle with you? The search for Rod Humble has been well and truly on.

When you need to find out some information about goings on in Second Life, sometimes you have to go to dark corners, corners filled with fog, hansom carriages, dens of iniquity, places where you have to wave a purse full of gold coins around to get information and being a fearless fighter for truth and justice I have done all of this to try and uncover more about the mystery of the hidden Humble …. and then I turned to Twitter! (dramatic music plays). I’m scarred by it all but I have heard some whispers!

I’m reliably informed that an avatar in an Aston Villa shirt who isn’t Prad Prathivi or me has been known to be roaming inworld. The word on the streets of Bay City is that he has been spotted in Bay City!

Thanks to Daniel Voyager for the snapshot.

There’s also talk that he has time travelled to 1920’s Berlin and allegedly been interviewed by a Barbarian … I mean Bavarian called Drax. However the details of the interview are sketchy, it has been leaked by Frau Yardley that Rod Humble uses alts …. wait, so do I! However this begs the question, who are Rod Humble’s alts?

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