Cloud Party Removes Facebook Only Restriction

I’ve blogged about Cloud Party a couple of times and both times I mentioned that to have an account you needed to use Facebook. This is something I simply do not support, although as I said in both posts, I can understand why startups turn to Facebook for logins, it fills a hole in the starting process but the longer a product continues to be Facebook login only, the more it becomes an albatross around the neck of a product. Facebook should simply not be the only login in town, keeping Facebook logins as an option is sensible, but there should be other options.

Kitely was initially Facebook login only, so that’s another example of a startup turning to Facebook, but Kitely moved on and now I’m pleased to say, so has Cloud Party. Hamlet Au over at New World Notes blogged about the change yesterday. They have also added flight, which along with other changes, such as their marketplace and royalties system, shows that Cloud Party is developing rather nicely.

Cloud Party has some interesting people involved in its development, such as ex Linden Cory Ondrejka and Cryptic Studio’s ex-CTO Bruce Rogers, who are I believe investors, I don’t know if they’re hands on. Cloud Party is also developing with previous worlds in mind, for example one of the reasons cited for Facebook logins is to minimise griefing.

So how does this new accout creation work? Well I, as a fearless hero, dipped my toes into the water.

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CHUI Project Viewer Gets An Update

The Communicaion Hub User Interface (CHUI) Project viewer has been updated, as announced by Viewer Linden. There have been improvements to the viewer, based on feedback and Jira reports, they include:

  • Addition of notifications and notification preferences
  • Smaller Conversations and People windows with increased resizability
  • Adding more ways to get to certain functions. For example, we added a speak button to the Conversations window toolbar
  • Improved performance
  • Bug fixes and polish

If you’re not familiar with CHUI then I suggest you read the blog post from Linden Lab on 22nd October, which you can read here. The idea of CHUI is to improve inworld conversations as well as to allow you to more easily find old conversations, including chat histories, so you don’t need to file through your hard drive to find them, chat histories will appear in the viewer.

An Image Should Be Here
New Chat History

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Marketplace Categories Still Open For Discussion

Having mentioned in a recent post about Linden Lab’s lack of discussion, I’m now going to embark on a couple of posts about Linden Lab inviting discussion and communicating! We’ll start with Marketplace categories.

On December 20th, CommerceTeam Linden updated a post on the official forum:

 To make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for when shopping the Marketplace, we have updated the proposed new categories based upon your feedback. But it doesn’t end there! You have until January 10, 2013 to review and share any additional comments you may have.

 Here are the new categories we have already added to the Marketplace. Enjoy!

 Under Celebrations/Holidays/Christmas

  • Added “Women’s Seasonal Apparel”
  • Added “Men’s Seasonal Apparel”
  • Added “Christmas Trees & Ornaments”
  • Added “Christmas Lights”

Under Celebrations/Wedding

  • Added “Wedding Dresses”
  • Added “Wedding Tuxedos”
  • Added “Bridesmaid Dresses”
  • Added “Wedding Decorations”
  • Added “Wedding Rings”

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and comments on any other categories!

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Jira Changes Are Hurting Collaboration

One thing not mentioned in Linden Lab’s look back at 2012 was the change to the Jira. Now it would be easy to rant and rave about why this was a poor decision, but I’ll try to be objective and try to understand what Linden Lab are trying to achieve here.

The one issue I can see with the old way the Jira worked is the amount of noise, with the new Jira there has certainly been a reduction in noise, because except in cases such as the CHUI Project, where people can comment on other people’s Jira’s, we largely end up with Jira’s where only a select few residents, the reporter and Lindens can read and comment on.

Less people commenting will in some cases make it easier to identify the issue, but it also hits collaboration, where people with good feedback, are unable to provide it in the original report. Reading someone else’s comments, can help focus your own comments in important areas.

I recently created a Jira, it got imported to a project that I couldn’t see, so in effect, even as the reporter, I couldn’t see it. This was fixed, but then I couldn’t comment on it. The only way I could update my report was by editing my own report. Now by this stage I could see other Jira’s in this project, so I was able to reference another report, the reporter on the other report then referenced my Jira to update their own report. We had collaboartion between two reporters.

Now to be fair to Linden Lab here, they explained to me that there was an issue with editing permissions in this project, this was very politely explained to me by a Linden and I appreciate that they took the time to inform me about the issue.

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Linden Lab’s Lack Of Communication Means They Even Miss Their Own Progress

Linden Lab have blogged about improvements to Second Life during 2012 and a look forward to improvements to Second Life in 2013. As a long term critic of Linden Lab’s every increasing ability to imitate a Harpo Marx convention when it comes to communicating with the community, I welcome this blog post. However the post itself highlights why Linden Lab’s lack of communicating is in itself a bad thing, because there are things within the blog post itself that haven’t exactly been highlighted well during the year.

They talk about new premium perks, which is something they have at least made some effort to communicate about. They talk about the advanced creator tools and pathfinding.  These are two areas where I don’t feel there has been anywhere near enough discussion, these issues should be being blogged about.

They talk about the Good Building Practices Wiki, which is something I found out about from Nalates Urriah’s blog, not Linden Lab’s! Seriously, this should be something they promote, it’s a nice resource getting built there.

There’s talk of how 1,200 new and original entries have been added to the destination guide, but where was the push for what averages out at 100 a month new entries during the year?

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