Second Life – Page 43

September 3, 2015

Second Life Blog Enhanced With New Snapshot Widget

So there I was, minding my own business, reading the official Second Life blog page. Something did not feel quite right and initially I didn’t quite grasp what it was. The colour scheme was the same, there were no shocking new blog posts and then I noticed a section that must be fairly new; “Latest Photos Inworld“.

The widget that contains the photos is a clickable and there are a couple of places you can click. Those places are on a picture itself or by clicking “View All“. The only real difference is that by clicking on a picture, that picture becomes the centre of the next screen, whereas when you click “View All“, the first picture in the series will be the centre.

Hopefully you can see the above image. One picture in the centre and a series of pictures at the bottom. There are a few things you can do from here.

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September 2, 2015

Bright Canopy Get The Notion That Customers Might Tip The Boat Over

Bright Canopy, the company behind running Second Life (and OpenSim) in a web browser, recently announced that they were ready for launch. An inital price of $17.00 a month was announced, with an advisory that this may change if demand exceeded expectations.

Linden Lab then blogged about the service :

This weekend, an exciting new service is launching: Bright Canopy. With Bright Canopy, you can use either the official Second Life Viewer or the Firestorm Viewer to access Second Life in your web browser, and you can enjoy great performance and graphics, without a high-spec PC.

Customers flocked to the ship on the ocean, sailing with an inventory of love and devotion for the bold new product. Alas, it quickly became apparent to the Bright Canopy that customers weren’t just going to rock the boat, they were going to tip the boat over. This was of course not the desired outcome, forcing the Bright Canopy team to blog; We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat :

We’ve had so much response that we are going to have to make a change and offer a different plan to make sure we are sustainable and can be around long enough to take advantage of much more affordable hosting options from Frame in a few months.

New signups were put on hold and Bright Canopy were transparent about what had happened :

We burned through our contingency in a few hours. We tried modifying some things, but it just wasn’t something that could be fixed with a knob. We talked over our options and looked at the numbers. In order to be able to offer a service of any sort, we knew we would have to make changes.

There will be a limited time offer of a $10 credit for the first month, meaning the first month will be $7. This is our way of thanking you for bearing with us. This offer expires 12AM SLT on Sunday, September 6th. After that, each month will be $17. The plan comes with 20 hours, and additional time is available for $0.013 per minute.

This isn’t what we planned, and making the change is hard, but we believe it is the only way to keep this service available for the people who need it.

One thing was very clear, there was a larger demand for this service than had been anticipated.

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August 28, 2015

Live Music And DJ’s This Weekend At The Country And Folk Festival By Romea

This weekend, 29th – 30th August, Romea have organised a Country and Folk Festival featuring live musicians and DJ’s. The festival will take place of the Manifesto region, which definitely has a country feel to it.

The lineup for Saturday is :

Saturday 29th August 2015

Live Singer – Jeffah24 – SLT 10 PDT/ 10 AM – Europe: 19:00 / 7:00 PM
Live Singer – Jade Berry – SLT 11 PDT/ 11 AM – Europe: 20:00 / 8:00 PM
Live Singer – Clyde Barrow – SLT 12 PDT/ 12 AM – Europe: 21:00 / 9:00 PM
Live Singer – Nance Brody – SLT 14 PDT/ 2 PM – Europe: 23:00 / 11:00 PM Live Singer
Live Singer – Zoree Jupiter – SLT 14 PDT/ 2 PM – Europe: 23:00 / 11:00 PM
Live Singer – TUKSO OKEY – SLT 15 PDT/ 3 PM – Europe: 24:00 / 12:00 PM

There’s more on Sunday.

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August 28, 2015

Strings By Cica Ghost Courtyard Entertainment Through Art

Strings by Cica Ghost is a delighful art installation in Second Life. The premise is straight forward :

In the courtyard of an ancient villa, set amidst a surreal landscape, a band of musicians performs for onlookers and visitors.

The delivery is impressive to say the least.

What makes this impressive though is that beyond the initial premise you can explore the homes in the area and get a glimpse into the lives of the people watching and observing the entertainment. This leaves much to the imagination, but that’s the beauty of it.

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August 27, 2015

Linden Lab Reduce Cost Of Monthly Premium Membership For Second Life And End VAT Charges On All Premium Plans

The Taxman’s taken all my dough and left me in my stately home, lazing on a sunny afternoon.

In a pleasing but rather bizarre announcement, Linden Lab have blogged; Cheaper Monthly Premium & the End of VAT Charges. First of all let’s take a look at those cheaper monthly premium charges :

Now, we’re reducing the standard cost of a monthly Premium subscription to just $9.50 a month. Enjoy all the benefits of Premium Membership for less!

The price of a monthly Second Life premium membership has been reduced by 45 cents a month, down fro $9.95 to $9.50. The quarterly plan remains $22.50 for three months and the yearly plan remains $72.00 a year.

On a month by month comparison the quarterly plan works out at $7.50 a month and the yearly plan works out at just $6.00 a month, so they both offer better value than a regular monthly plan but some people prefer a monthly fee, there’s a good choice for different use cases here. The rates and other Second Life related costs can be found here.

Premium Membership in Second Life offers some perks, including :

A personal and private home or free 512m tier if you want to buy a plot of mainland.
Expanded support, including Live Chat.
Exclusive Experience: Magellan’s Grid Hunt.
Exclusive Activites: Dune Buggy Racing in Racer’s Gulch.

For more details on Premium Membership perks in Second Life, go here.

Where the blog post gets bizarre is with the next part of the announcement :

We will also no longer charge VAT for Premium subscriptions. If you live in a region where VAT applies, this means an effective savings in some countries of more than 20% below what you would have previously paid!

I’m not sure what exactly Linden Lab mean by this. Are they really saying the aren’t charging VAT or are they actually absorbing the VAT? Let’s go into speculation mode and look at a couple of scenarios.

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