Seanchai – Ciaran Laval

In this post I will review 2014 from a largely virtual world perspective for the months January to June. This is part 1 of 2 as part 2 is still a work in progress but will hopefully appear tomorrow. I’ll combine both posts into another post for easier future reference once they are both completed. These posts will miss lots of big and interesting stories because the nature of the beast demands some brevity. These post may well look longer than they actually are at first glance because of images and pictures. The aim of posts such as these are to give a brief overview of the year, rather than an in depth review. An in depth review is too long for a blog post, it may make for an interesting book.

Anyway, on with the show, as they say.

January

January started with a look back to 2013 and the number of private region losses. The scores on the door from Tyche Shepherd displayed a slow down on the number of regions leaving the Second Life grid, something that would continue during 2014.

2012 Net Private Region Losess – 2865 (12.0%)
2013 Net Private Region Losses – 1719 (8.2%)

The virtual world of Kitely moved to a different pricing model which largely did away with the pay by the minute options as these had not been popular.

Blackened Mirror poster should be here — The Blackened Mirror Poster

Season 2 of The Blackened Mirror was taking a mid-season break but would return by the end of January. The show was recorded in Second Life.

Linden Lab were Raising The Roof : The HTTP Project. This project, which had started in 2012 was aimed at improving HTTP communications to improve the end user experience. Linden Lab would continue working on improvements during the year.

Second Life users were getting frustrated by tax and account information requests from Linden Lab. They would continue to be frustrated by these requests throughout the year despite Linden Lab improving their communications and information on these issues.

Second Life got a mention in the comedy show, 2 Broke Girls.

Then came the storm to warm up many a chilly January evening, Cloud Party announced that they would be closing their virtual doors on February 21st.

This was quickly followed by even more news to warm up January, Aston Villa fan and Linden Lab CEO, Rod Humble, was leaving Linden Lab. This created a Twitter storm.

Continue reading “2014 Reviewed Part 1 : January To June”

So my ususal Monday trick of listening to Digital Human on BBC Radio 4 for blog inspiration failed this week because they were talking about Cyborgs, transhumanism and whether we are all subsconsciously becoming Cyborgs and try as I did, I couldn’t find an angle to get to Second Life from that material, a jolly good listen however.

So I decided, after urgings, to investigate e-books. This was a tale of woe, first of all I tried to get an e-book from Waterstones. However to read e-books on the PC I needed to download Adobe Digital Editions, this was a breeze and now I was cooking on gas, all I needed to do was remember my Adobe password and I could install my soon to be purchased e-book on different mediums, if I didn’t register, I’d only be able to read it on my PC. At this point things went tits up, I couldn’t remember my password. Aha, there’s a password reset request and sure enough, I was informed an email was on its way. Several hours later and I’m still waiting.

So instead I went to Amazon, installed their Kindle for PC reader, realised I’d forgotten my Amazon password… oh heck but this time a password reset request actually worked. The only annoying thing left was having to pay VAT on my e-book, in the UK we don’t pay VAT on physical books but an e-book is considered an electronic service, not a book, even though it is a book, I’ll save that rant for another day, although Remember Remember, the fifth of November is an ideal day for a rant about The Government! The real moral of this story is to remember your passwords.

Then I read a little and decided to quickly take a look at the Second Life storytelling scene and popped to the Seanchai Library.

Continue reading “Books And Libraries”