The Drax Files Radio Hour – Page 3

March 22, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 11 – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Gray

Episode 11 of The Drax Files Radio hour opens with Bill May introducing the show and visiting Drax in real life. The show as usual covers a variety of topics, with the main attraction of this week’s show being an interview about virtual reality with Ben Lang of the road to VR Blog.

Ben talks about virtual reality hardware and its uses, where the technology is heading and why it isn’t as difficult to use some of this hardware as some may feel. This is a subject that Mona Eberhardt has been covering and Mona recently blogged : VR headset designs: Maybe we’re missing something? The interview with Ben makes for very interesting listening, this is something that Drax pulls off so very well.

They were due to interview Emily Short of Versu fame, but Emily has politely declined. Has Emily been knobbled? Has someone made her an offer she can’t refuse? Is this a case of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Gray wherein Emily is put in an impossible position by unknown forces? Well no, the reality is likely that Emily has said her piece on the subject and now wants to move on. I remain deeply disappointed by Linden Lab’s decision to turn their back on Versu, but the decision has been made and although it’s a massive loss, it remains Linden Lab’s right to make that call.

Then there’s the issue that has been irritating many people, especially Drax’s co-host Jo Yardley who recently blogged : Second Life advertising hits new low. The issue :

Second Life advert example — Second Life Advert

Bikini Babes without machine guns. Yes this is a tacky advert in many ways and yet it will appeal to some and that’s the aim of any advertising campaign. Are there better ways of advertising Second Life? Absolutely and Botgirl Questi touches this subject matter in a post entitled : Second Life Advertising: Beyond Bikinis and Vampires

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March 14, 2014

Draxtor Despres – A Dish Best Served Independent

Second Life’s public image could be revolutionized through a PR campaign with stories like those in the Drax Files. http://t.co/niVgJRBx66

— Botgirl Questi (@botgirlq) March 12, 2014

Botgirl Questi recently tweeted the above and whereas I wholeheartedly agree that Second Life’s public image could be revolutionised via such a campaign, I would hope it would be one done without Draxtor Despres and I say this for totally selfish reasons.

The Drax Files and The Drax Files Radio Hour are absolutely superb mediums of promoting Second Life. However one of the reasons Drax can reach the parts other mediums cannot reach is because he’s editorially independent. I doubt this would be the case were Draxtor working on behalf of Linden Lab, rather than working on behalf of his love of Second Life.

An example here is that Drax will soon be talking to Emily Short who was a lead developer of Versu. Linden Lab have of course, very disappointingly ditched Versu, but I would certainly fear that a Linden Lab sponsored Draxtor Despres would be unable to engage in an interview like that or with any other former Linden due to a conflict of interests.

This works in other ways too, for example on The Drax Files, Drax has interviewed content creators, would he be able to do this were he sponsored by Linden Lab? I ask this question because I feel a lot of content creators would cry foul about Linden Lab playing favourites by promoting certain content creators if Drax was endorsed by Linden Lab. However as Draxtor is independent, he can interview who he likes, when he likes and not be questioned over his choices. This allows for some superbly positive interviews and Draxtor delving into all sorts of areas.

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March 8, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 9 – SL Go

Not surprisingly, the latest edition of The Drax Files Radio Hour is mostly about OnLive SL Go. The show opens with Draxtor trying to order coffee…. it’s $2.50 and then Drax orders breakfast, after getting Marissa in the cafe or coffee shop to introduce the show. Marissa has never heard of Second Life but she does know about virtual worlds.

Now you may be feeling jaded by all the SL Go talk but I highly recommend you listen to this because Draxtor interviews Nate Barsetti. Now I hadn’t been paying attention to whom Nate was and listening to him I thought “This guy has done his homework, he knows what he’s talking about regarding Second Life“. Then I was made aware of the fact that Nate was once also known as Scout Linden.

Actually I need to pause here because the problem of a podcast is that people pronounce words funny. For example route should sound like root, it shouldn’t sound like rout! Then there’s beta, which should sound like beeta, rather than bayta! Fortunately nobody mentioned anything about a buoy, which should sound like boy. Ok where was I? Oh yes, Nate! The Nate interview is really interesting, he talks from, as I said, a viewpoint of someone who knows Second Life.

The thing is that because Nate knows Second Life, he knows about latency, he therefore knows that the way SL Go works will get away with a little bit of latency. The feedback on latency for SL Go has been good, people have reported scenes rez faster than they do on their own machine, it did for me. So you know, in this sense, the product is on to something.

Nate is also a Second Life resident and involved in some sort of roleplaying according to the interview, the bottom line is he knows his onions. I really enjoyed this part of show.

Drax follows this with an interview with Dennis Harper, a senior product manager at Onlive. Dennis has a long history of the gaming industry and has previously worked at companies such as Turbine, however he explains that he wasn’t familiar with Second Life when the project landed. However Dennis read a book, the title of which I can’t quite catch in the podcast. Dennis explored Second Life, as a beautiful female avatar … and found that people would give him free stuff!

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February 21, 2014February 22, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 7 – Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before!

Episode 7 of the excellent Drax Files Radio hour opens with an introduction from Karl Stiefvater, aka Qarl Fizz, aka Qarl Linden. This week’s episode is unashamedly Linden Lab centric, with the Ebbe Altberg meet and greet being the central attraction.

However they do cover other issues, for example Draxtor wants to see sim cams, like web cams, covering selected sims 24/7 …. this won’t end well! I seem to remember someone going around recording in sims and it wasn’t popular.

They talk of Ebbe discussing the TOS in the forums, the thing there is that the TOS changes remain poorly implemented. The language really is not the problem, the old TOS should have been suffice, I have no idea what these strange edge cases were.

Then they have a recording of the meeting between Ebbe and the officially sanctioned SL media, however if you’ve already heard this via Inara Pey’s post then you may want to skip this part, although really it’s worth listening to again. as this has been covered and discussed so very well in Inara’s blog, I’m not going to discuss that, I may have to whistle for a while though.

You may need to play some music, watch some youTube videos, login to Second Life if you don’t want to listen to the recording again. Maybe we could hangout here and talk about getting the Versu project going again … oh wait Versu is my next post!

When that’s finished they get into a really interesting discussion with Harvey Crabsticks. I don’t agree with everything Harvey says, but he has some really interesting views. Draxtor gets into a discussion with Harvey on whether Second Life could have a marketing campain along the lines of the Chuck Norris campaign for World Of Warcraft….. actually who would be a good celebrity to advertise Second Life? I know Kim Stanley Robinson was once active in Second Life. Ok, he’s not Chuck Norris of course.

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