Tag: Linden Lab

The Meet The Lindens interview with Oz Linden is now available and can be found here : https://youtu.be/lPmpchJ6yfM. I often embed YouTube videos but this one is an hour long and you’re better off viewing it on YouTube at that running time.

Now in my blog post about Oz’s interview I suggested that Oz had teased us with a big hint about future developments for Second Life :

What about the future you may be wondering? Well one thing is for sure, Linden Lab do not sound like they are treading water when it comes to Second Life and Oz teased the audience by suggesting that they have some new features in the pipeline for Second Life that we would genuinely not believe they would ever do.

Now if you want to get to that part, it’s just after the thirty minute mark. I would hope that a lot of you would like to listen to the full interview, I found it very interesting, others are reporting they didn’t, your mileage may vary.

Today’s meet the Lindens is once again a buy one, get one free affair. Xiola Linden, community manager extraordinaire will be there.

Continue reading “SL12B – Oz Linden Video Available And News Of More Lindens To Meet”

SL12B, like previous Second Life birthday celebrations, is in many ways an odd event. Odd, because unlike many events, the main focus at SL12B is on entertainment and discussion, that’s what most blog posts will be covering and that’s understandable because there’s a hell of a lot of entertainment and discussion.

However one should not forget about The Exhibitors. That link takes you to a list of exhibitors, there are a lot of them. The exhibitors are worth visiting because they demonstrate beautifully the wide array of creativity and interests that make up Second Life.

Whereas my exhibitor visits may seem a little narrow, and largely fantasy based, I am looking at other exhibits, honest! I mean I could not spend all day on Serina Juran’s Elven circle wondering if the gifts are a trap!

No, I moved on to my chief Elf’s exhibit for The Medieval Grid Crier, where you will find lots of information about medieval fantasy roleplay in Second Life.

Continue reading “SL12B – Don’t Forget About The Exhibitors”

Oz Linden talked to Jessica Lyon of Firestorm Viewer fame and Saffia Widdershins, of Prim Perfect fame at SL12B this evening. Now if you want the full skinny on the lowdown, you’ll have to wait for Prim Perfect to upload the video, which should not be too far in the future. However, if you want to read some frantically scribbled notes, that may contain inaccuracies, carry on reading here.

Oz discussed current issues, past issues and future issues in what was an extremely engaging interview.

I crashed a few times whilst taking my notes, but I’ll try not to start any blasphemous rumours. However crashing is a good place to start as that was part of the discussion. Oz explained how in the past he had worked for products where a 1% crash rate was considered pretty bad, however the crash rate for Second Life is higher than that and the panel agreed that Second Life users seem to accept these crash rates.

However Oz went to great lengths to point out that Linden Lab do not accept that crash rates should be as high as they are and they have been working on improvements and continue to work on improvements.

One point that Second Life users should bear in mind is that some viewer side crashes are out of the control of Linden Lab, for example, when someone has a graphics card that suffers from a memory leak. This is an issue that the people who create the drivers need to fix, and that’s not within Linden Lab’s remit.

The wide range of hardware that Second Life residents use is of course problematic when it comes to bug fixing, but Oz gave a tip on how to improve one’s Second Life experience, it’s a tip that I heard many many moons ago in relation to Microsoft Windows. Whereas a funky new graphics card can improve your experience in Second Life, a cheaper option may well be to increase your RAM.

Oz also discussed how new features in Second Life are received by the community, some people love them, some people hate them, some people are indifferent. However, Oz pointed out that whether people are criticising or praising a new feature, the level of intensity shows that people really care about Second Life. There was also a discussion of how some features introduced by Linden Lab won’t be appreciated by everyone because they simply don’t have the hardware to take advantage of them. A glaring example here is of course materials, whereby if you can’t see the new texture types, then you won’t see the enhanced texture on your screen. The beauty of this though is that people will still see textures as they’ve always seen them.

Continue reading “Oz Linden Talks Second Life At SL12B”

Second Life’s Twelfth Birthday celebrations kicked off with a bang yesterday and it’s going to continue with bangs and booms for the rest of this week. Today’s Highlights include a live interview with Oz Linden, Linden Lab’s director of Open Development and generally considered to be the main man when it comes to Second Life these days.

Oz is based in Linden Lab’s Boston office and will be at the Auditorium at the Astound Sim at 1pm SLT.

Other highlights include live music, DJ’s, opportunities to meet designers, artists and much more. The agenda is packed, you can find out more by going to the main website : http://www.slcommunitycelebration.info/

Continue reading “SL12B Up And Running”

Second Life can at times be a very welcome distraction from Real Life. I’ve spent the last few days scratching my head regarding the audacity of Camelot, the operator of The National Lottery in the UK. In 2013 they raised the price of a ticket from a quid to two quid. Now they’ve told us that from this October we’ll have less chance of winning any of the cash prizes and in the most bizarre twist, they keep telling us that these changes are exciting!

Meanwhile the lottery regulator, explain why they approved the latest changes :

The Commission also considered the impact of the proposed changes on the odds of winning, and how this may be perceived as a negative change by players. Camelot’s research indicated that the majority of players are more interested in prizes than the odds of the game. The Commission noted the balance between odds rising on individual prize tiers with the increased overall chance of winning a prize and the improvement of the odds of becoming a millionaire, as well as the fact the same percentage of sales as before will go to the prize fund.

Having considered all of these points we were satisfied that permitting the changes to Lotto would be consistent with our statutory duty to protect players.

The regulator were convinced that people would not care about having less chance of winning a cash prize? The new prize is a free go! Seriously, you could not make this up.

Anyway, to save my blood from boiling, I welcomed Linden Lab’s blog post : Free Special-Edition Second Life 12th Birthday Avatar & Snapshot Contest. I then promptly went to Hairy Hippo Fun Land, because it’s a great location, with or without birthday avatars.

Now once you’ve got your avatar, it’s time to explore. Hairy Hippo Fun Land is in the Bay City vicinity and whereas it’s a lot of fun to roam the streets of Bay City and terrify residents, it’s nice to actually explore Hairy Hippo Fun Land.

Continue reading “SL12B Avatar – It’s Finger Popping, Twenty-Four Hour Shopping, In Raptor”