Ciaran Laval

January 24, 2011January 25, 2011

Moving Back

So after around three and a bit years of Nobody Fugazi’s very generous hospitality it looks as if Your2ndplace.com is coming to an end, the reasons for this are basically that Nobody Fugazi no longer has a Second Life presence and therefore after seeing that he was pondering on what to do with the site I contacted him to say that as it’s only usually me who blogs there that he should concentrate on his own projects.

I have hosting, as you can see, I also have hosting I’ve not been using much, as you can see. This site was where my Second Life blogging all started so it’s only sensible to resurrect it now and I also have other blogs which I should be posting on more regarding my own inworld ventures.

Nobody Fugazi has been a more than generous host, allowing us to blog for free on his site despite his lack of logging into Second Life and therefore not having much interest in that particular virtual world, I am very grateful for the opportunity to blog there that Nobody Fugazi presented me with. Continue reading “Moving Back”

January 15, 2011January 12, 2014

Blue Mars Reverses Several Gears

Blue Mars reverses several gears in their latest announcement. They are moving to being an app for the iPhone and iPad, this is a real shift and one has to wonder how long this will be a viable model, there is also the horrible issue of job losses, including that of CEO Jim Sink.

Blue Mars seems to have suffered from trying to do too much too quickly, I have read comments from Blue Mars users that they went to open beta before it was ready (as Second Life did with viewer 2, but not on as big a scale), the camera controls and movement were painful. Personally I only visited Blue Mars a couple of times, downloading new cities and the extremely slow performance on my computer meant it was never really a venture I’d pursue for long, had it ran better then maybe I’d have visited more often but that would have meant some of the goals of the company couldn’t be met, that it didn’t run well on my computer is my problem to a large degree, but the success of Second Life and World of Warcraft is in a big part due to them both running an older hardware to a decent degree, you have a wider audience there. However users of World of Warcraft and Second Life do complain about the lack of state of the art graphics, so it’s a double edged sword. Continue reading “Blue Mars Reverses Several Gears”

January 9, 2011January 12, 2014

2011 – Linden Lab really need to listen to their users

2011 promises to be an interesting year for Second Life, a new CEO, Mesh, LL finally looking at inworld activities other than shopping if their blog post about games in Second Life is anything to go by.

The Linden Department of public works, who don’t get anywhere near enough credit, have been quietly going about their business of installing switches on the railway network known as the SLRR, as explained here by Michael Linden.

These are the sort of posts we should see more of, more what’s happening inworld, more on developments, more on what people who don’t want to run a business but want to come here and have fun can do, this is the sales pitch, this is where marketing can triumph. Continue reading “2011 – Linden Lab really need to listen to their users”

December 29, 2010January 12, 2014

2010 Reviewed

As the new year approaches and we all get ready to look forward, it’s time to look back on a contentious, frustrating and disappointing year for Second Life. However there were highs as well as lows. This really was a topsy turvy year. This will be a fairly long post, I will warn you of that now, it will also miss some important subjects as my time is restricted, feel free to add your own highs and lows in the comments.

January

We were greeted with a very chirpy blog post from CEO Mark Kingdon. The post looked backwards and forwards and talked of the need to get users to that moment where they really embrace Second Life faster, by the end of the year we were still waiting for that moment, proving just how difficult a step it us but Linden Lab have made some progress there. Continue reading “2010 Reviewed”

December 24, 2010January 12, 2014

Joe Miller Silently Departs

Whereas Jack Linden’s departure was announced on the blog to a largely disappointed public, another senior Linden has quietly departed. Joe Miller (Joe Linden), the VP of technology and platform development no longer appears on the Linden Lab Management page. This was reported by the very astute Tateru Nino, who tracks these changes with the assistance of Linden Lab’s Second Life grid databases.

I’m not sure when exactly Joe departed from the management structure, recently enough to find him still listed in a cached version of the management page, so it can’t have been that long ago.

Joe was a Linden whom I can’t recall ever having any contact with, he was however one of the five members of the executive management team, that team is now down to four. Continue reading “Joe Miller Silently Departs”