Ciaran Laval

April 5, 2013April 5, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 3 – Eshi Otawara

Episode 3 of The Drax files features Eshi Otawara, I’ll embed the video at the end of the post. Whereas previous episodes have highlighted the benefits of Second Life in areas such as recreating real world objects and activities, this episode sees Eshi make a strong case for use of Second Life for things that aren’t really possible in real life, or as Eshi describes it, physical reality, which sounds more sensible than real life as a virtual world exists within real life, which is another point Eshi makes. A virtual world exists within a real universe …. well the ones we use anyway!

Eshi is an artistic person, a classical paint and brush art type person, who has managed to crossover and embrace art within Second Life by making dresses, which have a lot of flair by the looks of it. I’m not a fashionista by any stretch of the imagination so I can’t really comment on the style of Eshi’s designs.

Again Draxtor succeeds in getting behind the avatar and showing the real person, which ties in with Eshi’s views on using Second Life, it’s a real person projecting on the screen. I find this getting behind the avatar one of the most compelling aspects of this series, it’s the real person that pulls the strings but going into a virtual world gives the person the option to pull new strings.

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April 4, 2013

CHUI Hits The Main Viewer

Linden Lab have announced that CHUI is now part of the main viewer and will appear either by automatic update or when people update to the latest release of the main viewer. This is likely to be a Marmite issue for many, with people loving or hating it, although for me, I sort of like it, unlike Marmite, which should be illegal.

CHUI (Communication Hub User Interface) has pro’s and cons, one of the cons is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate. This is fine when you’re chatting away but when you’re roleplaying or getting immersive, it gets in the way and when you minimise it, you can easily lose track of what messages are arriving, although over time you’ll get used to it.

I’ve been using CHUI for quite some time, first in the form of the project viewer and then in the form of it being incorporated in the beta viewer. Over that time it has undoubtedly been improved, the issue with local chat not staying undocked being one major improvement, but there are issues with it that I still find irksome.

There are some good pro’s with it, the way you can view chat history being a really big improvement, no longer do you need to search through your hard drive for those old chat logs, once you’ve im’d someone, the viewer allows you to view a chat history. I’m not sure why you need to im someone for this to work, once im’d the setting sticks, you don’t need to im them again to view chat history.

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April 4, 2013

MetaReality Podcast – More Words Less Bleeps Please

The latest edition of MetaReality Podcast – The Return Of The Reed has some interesting discussion, which you’ll find between the bleeps and even then the bleeps don’t always hit their target! This episode is a good one because the discussion goes beyond Second Life and into other areas, such as the recent launch of Sim City and and DRM in games and yet it comes back to Second Life even with subjects like that, by pointing out the unfortunate realities behind content theft, which mean that some measures to try and stop content theft can also be a massive pain in the backside for end users and ultimately self defeating.

This episode features of course, the return of William Reed Seal-Foss and boy can he swear. He mentions at one point that he only played Diablo III for about fifteen minutes because of the DRM issues, it’s a good job he wasn’t a victim of the digital download fiasco, I had to kill The Skeleton King for days because progress was halted there for people who purchased the digital download. This was another security issue type thing and yes it annoyed plenty of folk.

However if you do follow the link to the episode, the bleeps to cover profanity are off the scale, all of them are at it, that’s Qarl, Draxtor and even Gianna too! This is a shame because there’s really no need for that level of profanity in one episode, there’s enough to fill ten episodes in this one episode.

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April 3, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration – Demos Disappear

With the clock ticking on Direct Delivery, one area where merchants may have been taken by surprise is in the category of demos, which will have been unlisted today if you haven’t migrated. Linden Lab did warn merchants about the need to migrate, so why would demos have caught merchants by surprise? Well it’s more than likely to do with how some busy merchants think.

Demos are not an item merchants consider they are selling, they are there to demonstrate an item, so when a merchant gets an email telling them items they sell that are priced lower than ten linden dollars need to be migrated, quite a few merchants would be thinking that they don’t sell any items in that range, as they don’t consider a demo an item that they sell.

This issue harks back to the days when The SL Marketplace was first acquired by Linden Lab and people were asking for demos to be included in the item listing, something that still hasn’t been achieved.

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April 2, 2013

Direct Delivery Migration Clock Ticking On Items Priced Ten Lindens Or Lower

The end of magic boxes is nigh, sort of, as the clock ticks on deadlines for people who haven’t yet migrated unlimited items. Today is the end of the road for listing new items in magic boxes for items priced at ten Linden Dollars or lower, which would not be a smart move anyway as the item would be unlisted tomorrow!

Commerce Team Linden has updated a forum post with the latest information:

April 2, 2013 has arrived, and we have begun the first phase of Magic Box Shutdown. As of today, Merchants are no longer able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes. By noon PT tomorrow,

April 3, 2013, any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted. Note that the following will still be allowed:

Magic Box listings priced at L$11 or higher.

All Magic Box listings with limited quantity items, regardless of price.

Note that the second deadline is fast approaching. On April 16th, 2013:

Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price.

Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price.

For the time being, limited-quantity items can continue to use Magic Boxes and will not be affected. “Limited-quantity” refers to items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy (such as breedable animals that are “no copy” for the seller).

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