The Drax Files Radio Hour – Page 4

February 7, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour – Episode 5

The fifth episode of The Drax Files Radio hour, presented by Draxtor Despres and Jo Yardley is yet another excellent listen. Naturally the show discussed Ebbe Altberg’s arrival as CEO and has input from Strawberry Singh, Vic Mornington and Robin Harper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately Robin didn’t surprise me and turn up as CEO but it was really nice to hear Robin talk. Vic raises some excellent points about Linden Lab embracing the community, because that has been lacking for a number of years and a perfect person for the community would be Robin Harper!

The show is critical of Mitch Wagner’s information week article about High Fidelity, which I’ve covered here recently. The reason for the criticism is that Drax took umbrage at Mitch saying of Second Life : “it’s mostly forgotten”

Personally, I disagree with Drax’s assessment, not because I agree with Mitch’s comment, but because I feel Drax may have taken it a little bit out of context, the full comment was :

“Second Life proved bewitching for many people. I was one of them. But most people sneered. It’s still around, and it got a lot right, but it’s mostly forgotten.”

When you consider that many articles about Second Life have comments along the lines of “Second Life, is that still around?” it’s refreshing to see a journalist say that it is still around. However more to the point, Mitch Wagner’s Second Life experience was not fly by night, he put a lot of time and effort into his Second Life ventures and although he sounds a bit jaded by it all these days, he was most definitely an enthusiast at one point and knows a lot about Second Life. Maybe they could invite Mitch onto the show?

Moving on, this week’s episode has a wonderful interview with Mike Mikula, a former teen grid resident who talks of how he surprised his parents with his Second Life income and how the old teen grid worked and why teens really wanted to be on the main grid. Mike also talks of what he’s doing now as well as talking of other former teen grid residents, one of whom is employed by Disney these days.

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January 31, 2014February 1, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 4 – The Breaking Of The Fellowship

When I was a lad, Friday was Crackerjack day and people could win a Crackerjack pencil. Many moons later Friday is Draxtor Despres day, aided and abetted by Jo Yardley (not Yo Yardley, Yo Yardley is a greeting) and you can’t even win a virtual pencil. As I write this post, there has still been no update from Linden Lab about anything regarding the CEO, but there is a post about the latest episode of The Drax Files video show, which I did say the smart money was on! Alas there was no betting available for that prediction.

The latest edition of The Drax Files Radio hour not surprisingly covers the departure of the beloved CEO, or not so beloved by some, there is balance in the opinions. The show is introduced by Flufee McFluff.

There’s an interesting interview with Venturebeat’s Dean Takahashi regarding Rod Humble’s departure. Second Life artist and Dwarfins legend Jaimy Hancroft calls the show from Belgium.

There’s something in the water in Belgium, not content with finding an absurd amount of brilliant footballers, they are also dipping their toes into the virtual world arena, world domination may be on the cards, you heard it here first.

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January 25, 2014

The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 3 – Esteban!

Third time lucky! Hopfully no virtual world CEO’s quit or platforms announce their forthcoming closure whilst I’m finishing this post! I’ll have more on the Rod Humble departure later. The third episode of The Drax Files Radio Hour is out and this week’s episode is a controversial affair with an introduction and interview with the infamous Esteban Winsmore, I’ll be honest, I’ve never heard of him but Second Life is a very big place. Yes, I’m someone who had until now not heard of Esteban, apologies for that.

The show covers many issues, coming out of the virtual closet being one. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, many people prefer to keep segments of their life separate but it does demonstrate very well that many people are happy to share their virtual world experiences with people who are not so familiar with the concept.

There’s an interview with Monty Linden full of geeky goodness about the HTTP project in Second Life.

A feature about a documentary from Loki Eliot regarding the history and future of virtual reality. Jo Yardley and Inara Pey have more on this, I haven’t watched it in full yet but the brief preview looks fascinating.

There’s mention of a Twitter exchange between Hamlet Au of New World Notes, Philip Rosedale, you should all know who he is, Cory Ondrejka, who used to be CTO at Linden Lab and Marc Andreesen, a man who was hugely influential in the growth of the web browser due to his work on Mosaic which turned into Netscape. Younger readers should note that Netscape was once the browser to have before Microsoft came along and unleashed the browser wars.

The extent of these browser wars was highlighted when Microsoft released IE4. The legend is that after the release party for IE4, Microsoft engineers planted a ten foot Microsot IE logo on the lawn of the Netscape HQ. Netscape called it a fraternity style prank to get revenge and then promptly replaced the logo with their Mozilla dinosaur mascot and a sign pointing out Netscape was still far and away the prominent browser. We’re talking back in 1997 here but the importance of Marc Andreesen’s work should definitely be appreciated. I’ve gone off on a big tangent here! Continue reading “The Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 3 – Esteban!”