Ciaran Laval

October 21, 2011October 21, 2011

The Marketplace Elephant Looms Larger In The Room

The potentially funky new beta viewer can be downloaded from the downloads section of the Second Life website. I’m not going to review it, I don’t generally have the patience to do reviews, however if you do want to read a review of it than I suggest you read the review by Inara Pey, who is an excellent and patient reviewer (patience is not one of my virtues) or/and the review by the wonderfully positive Daniel Voyager.

I’m here tonight to talk about the big Elephant in the room, well actually I’m contemplating whether The Villa will beat The Baggies in tomorrow’s big local derby match, it has been a long time since The Baggies won at Villa Park and I’m seriously hoping that continues but I’m suffering from pre-match tension … where was I? Oh yes, The Marketplace Elephant in the room, in the new beta viewer, it has started to loom even larger and I’m quite bemused as to where this is all heading. The top bar in the beta viewer has a shop link, which takes you to The Marketplace.

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October 21, 2011October 21, 2011

USD$295 For An Estate Sim – This Weekend Only

Linden Lab have engaged in a weekend sale whereby you can pick up a shiny new estate region for a record low price of just USD$295.00 (excluding VAT). The USD$295.00 fee will be due upon delivery, which pays tier for the first month, this is how private region tier works, you pay tier in advance. The fee for the first month is usually included in the setup fee, which runs at USD$1,000 (excluding VAT) so you can make a saving of around USD$705.00 on this deal.

Homesteads are also available on this deal, although you need to own a full region to purchase a homestead, the fee is usually USD$375.00 (excluding VAT), with this deal it will be USD$125.00 (excluding VAT). Personally I don’t feel Homesteads offer good value at that price, but for those who want to add a Homestead to their portfolio, this is a good time to do that, I don’t see many Homesteads being sold second hand. the best use for second hand Homesteads is, I imagine, combining three and turning them into a full region.

For those whom were considering a private region but were put off by the whopping setup fee, this is a great deal, although it should be noted that there is a second hand sim market in Second Life, one which Linden Lab support very well and have over the years improved greatly to make much more secure, Linden Lab charge a transfer fee of USD$100.00 in these cases, so they make money on the deal but they also help facilitate it too. Inworld groups such as For Sale By Owner are quite active in this market, the problem is the transfer time eats into the value of the sale price as the next tier date moves closer. Having said that, sims can be purchased there for a lot less than USD$1,000 and even a lot less than USD$705.oo, so there is better value to be had for those who seek it.

However, in terms of this weekend’s sale, I have never seen a better deal than this, if you’re fortunate enough to want a sim this weekend, this is a wonderful deal.

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October 20, 2011October 20, 2011

Linden Lab Cuddle Adult Content

There has long been an argument put forth that users of Second Life should be able to discuss adult content on the official forums, there has also long been a response along the lines of “Not bloody likely” from Linden Lab. There are concerns about poor promotion and people labelling Second Life as being full of perves, however that happens anyway.

However there have been chinks in the armour, the adult continent of Zindra and moves to an adult rating in Second Life were well intentioned, although I still maintain they were poorly executed, that’s ancient history though and this isn’t the time to go over that.

Then there was a super secret adult forum, created with the assistance of Blondin, where selected users could discuss adult issues in an adult forum. Then along came Viale, there were still calls for a wider adult forum, along came an adult section on the destination guide, which helps adult ventures get promoted to those whom are seeking that kind of content.

Today I was browsing the official forums when I noticed, a lot of recently created threads in a new Adult Forum section. This took me by surprise for two reasons, one I didn’t actually think they’d do it, two, I noticed something on the official site without having to stumble across it on SLUniverse!

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October 19, 2011

Land Impact Hits The Main Grid

I’ve discussed the issue of land impact before, however that was when the feature was on the beta grid, now it has arrived on the main grid. First of all, another complaint about the blog, I found out about this because I read Darien Caldwell’s post on SLUniverse, I’d have found out about it soon enough from looking at my parcels but why oh why have Linden Lab buried such an important blog post here? This hasn’ even made featured news, come on Linden Lab, this is important stuff.

Now moving on, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, those of us who use the official Linden Lab client got an update yesterday, there also must be some server side jiggery pokery going on, but if you look at a parcel you will notice some changes:

Don’t panic …. well not yet anyway, they’ve just engaged in some rewording when it comes to parcels, the real devil is in the detail of what it all means.

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October 17, 2011October 17, 2011

Scripted Tools For Estate Owners And Managers Coming To A Sim near You Soon

As we ponder what the hell is going on with Olivia Dunham Torley it’s time to take a peek at what those sneaky Lindens are doing at the beta server office hours. Cerise Sorbet was quick to spot a new LSL scripting command being announced, and posted to the official forum about it. Coming soon, well if you’re on BlueSteel it’s already here, is llManageEstateAccess:

integer llManageEstateAccess(integer action, key id)
Use to add or remove agents from the estate’s agent access or ban lists or groups from the estate’s group access list.
Only works for objects owned by the Estate Owner or an Estate Manager.
Calls are throttled at a rate of 30 calls per 30 seconds.
Returns TRUE is action is sent to the database.
Returns FALSE if throttled, invalid action, invalid or null id or object owner is not allowed to manage the estate.

Actions for llManageEstateAccess:

ESTATE_ACCESS_ALLOWED_AGENT_ADD: Add the agent to this estate’s Allowed Residents list.
ESTATE_ACCESS_ALLOWED_AGENT_REMOVE: Remove the agent from this estate’s Allowed Residents list.
ESTATE_ACCESS_ALLOWED_GROUP_ADD: Add the group to this estate’s Allowed groups list.
ESTATE_ACCESS_ALLOWED_GROUP_REMOVE: Remove the group from this estate’s Allowed groups list.
ESTATE_ACCESS_BANNED_AGENT_ADD: Add the agent to this estate’s Banned residents list.
ESTATE_ACCESS_BANNED_AGENT_REMOVE: Remove the agent from this estate’s Banned residents list.

This has potential!

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