{"id":2538,"date":"2012-12-26T15:01:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-26T15:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=2538"},"modified":"2012-12-26T15:03:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T15:03:15","slug":"2012-reviewed-october-to-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=2538","title":{"rendered":"2012 Reviewed – October To December"},"content":{"rendered":"

October<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Away from Second Life, Kitely announced<\/a> that were now offering unmetered regions. Prior to this Kitely had charged for metered usage… I think maybe you could have worked that out yourselves!<\/p>\n

Linden Lab emailed those who had signed up for their affiliate program to inform them it was ending on October 16th<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Merchants were calling for a meeting with Lindens<\/a> regarding concerns. This would lead to further issues later in the year as Merchants struggled to be heard.<\/p>\n

Tyche Shepherd’s weekly survey on the size of the main grid revealed that private regions were down 9.9% for the year to date<\/a>, this would get worse before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab reported performance improvements<\/a>, informing us that there had been a 7% improvement in teleport performance in peak concurrency hours and an 86% reduction in group query times. Good stats.<\/p>\n

The Communications Hub User Interface Project Viewer was unleashed<\/a> as Linden Lab worked to improve communications in Second Life. At this point I pondered whether these recent blog posts indicated that Linden Lab were going to continue to make better use of their blog, unfortunately they didn’t.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab continued to work on improvements as Oskar Linden posted in the forums<\/a> that the snack release channel being used to test large group fixes.<\/p>\n

Copyright infringement reared its head as claims were made that CBS were clamping down on infringing Star Trek related content in Second Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buzzfeed carried an article<\/a> as part of a tech confessional from a former Linden who talked about walking in on users having (virtual) sex, being a Second Life celebrity, and why it was such an inspiring job, oh and furies!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

November<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Oskar Linden confirmed that speculation about his departure was unfortunately true<\/a>. This was greeted with disappointment in many quarters.<\/p>\n

The Third Science Fiction Faire opened<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"TheGarden2_001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A new Interactive game sim appeared in the shape and form of The Garden<\/a>. Grace McDunnough, Trav Rexen and Salome Strangelove were the brains and beauty behind it.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab launched a contest<\/a> for proposing new marketplace categories. They also launched a 50% discount for new premium sign ups<\/a> on the quarterly plan.<\/p>\n

\"Unhinged<\/a><\/p>\n

Unhinged – A Festival for Eku’s head was launched. This was a month long festival to help pay for surgery for Eku and was promoted by Nephilaine Protagonist<\/a>. The event was a roaring success with Eku being able to pay for the surgery with the help of this fundraiser.<\/p>\n

A boost for Machinima arrived this month in the shape and form of The Machnima Expo<\/a>. Sponsors included iPi Soft<\/a>, Unity3<\/a>, 3DConnexion<\/a>, Muvizu<\/a>, Reallusion<\/a>, Moviestorm<\/a>, Open This End<\/a> and AViewTV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Merchant frustrations were starting to boil over and this was exemplified by a petition<\/a> asking Linden Lab to address the concerns of merchants.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab were getting positive press for their other products, with TechCrunch running an article looking at them<\/a>. Creatoverse<\/a> and Patterns<\/a> have both been launched but we’re still waiting for Dio and the very interesting looking Versu, which is a result of the purchase earlier in the year of LittleTextPeople.<\/p>\n

I noticed that the graphics subsystem in the beta viewer seemed to have been improved<\/a>, although I was confused as to why my graphics settings were ultra. This was more evidence of performance improvements this year.<\/p>\n

New World Notes readers voted Inara Pey’s blog as their favourite Second Life related blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I discovered the marvellous machinima of Flufee<\/a>!<\/p>\n

The Register listed Second Life in a list of ten technology fails<\/a>, this came as a surprise to those of us still using Second Life! Failure is way off the mark for Second Life.<\/p>\n

Nalates Urriah blogged<\/a> about issues surrounding the beta grid. We’re still awaiting Linden Lab’s decisions on how to best go about addressing the issues.<\/p>\n

Away from Second Life, the citizens of Paragon City found themselves left without heroes (or villains) as MMO City Of Heroes closed down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

December<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The usefulness of third party viewers was exemplified by the release of Firestorm (4.3.1.31155)<\/a> , this included some funky photo tools.<\/p>\n

Darrius Gothly launched virtual landmarks<\/a>, a product inspired by Toysoldier Thor<\/a>. The idea is basically that if your store moves, these virtual landmarks will follow you.<\/p>\n

\"Xmas<\/a><\/p>\n

The Christmas Expo<\/a> opened and contained many delights, including a new breedables game in the shape and form of Dwarfins<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"Dwarves<\/a><\/p>\n

The usefulness of an open Jira was exemplified by the feedback and bugs reported on the Jira for the CHUI project viewer resulting in Linden Lab putting a survey regarding the viewer on hold<\/a>. Unlike the main Jira, the CHUI Jira section is open to all, there’s a moral in this story.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab started to improve resources on the Wiki with Jeremy Linden embarking on putting together a good building practices section<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Away from Second Life, Cloud Party unleashed a Marketplace<\/a> with cashing out available for US residents. That link also includes information about the royalties system merchants can utilise, which is a nice idea. Alas Cloud Party still required a Facebook account to fully utilise, many of us booed and hissed.<\/p>\n

Annoyed merchants exemplified a lack of a merchants user group by turning up at Nyx Linden’s mesh user group meeting<\/a> to voice their discontent. This was unfair on Nyx and the regular participants in the meeting but the involved merchants felt they had no choice, let’s hope this doesn’t happen again.<\/p>\n

Education in Second Life appeared to be alive and well as Indiana University North West carried a story that they were utilising Second Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Phoenix team announced they were ending development of the old Phoenix viewer, this came in the light of the onset of project sunshine<\/a>, server side baking. This will build as an issue in the next couple of months as the code gets rolled out, but most folk should be fine if they change to a viewer that is still being developed.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab continued to demonstrate steps to improve the Second Life experience by inviting residents to test threaded region crossings<\/a>. This is an ongoing project.<\/p>\n

Linden Lab announced proposals for new categories on the marketplace<\/a>. There’s still time to have your say on this, with the survey open until January 10th.<\/p>\n

The CHUI project viewer got another update<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Away from Second Life, Cloud Party, which had earlier this month announced improvements announced that you no longer need a Facebook account<\/a> to use the service fully, however you will need to link a credit card. However, this is a good improvement in the options stakes.<\/p>\n

Private regions and mainland had contrasting fortunes during the year, with Tyche Shepherd informing us that private regions losses for the year were now 12%<\/a>. However on the other hand, Tyche’s mainland census<\/a> revealed that there was only a small drop in land ownership on mainland during the last quarter. Mainland appears to be holding up well, although Abandoned Land is at a record high, Linden home regions still enjoy 97% occupancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October Away from Second Life, Kitely announced that were now offering unmetered regions. Prior to this Kitely had charged for metered usage… I think maybe you could have worked that out yourselves! Linden Lab emailed those who had signed up for their affiliate program to inform them it was ending on October 16th. Merchants were … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “2012 Reviewed – October To December”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[469,19,1022,259],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6rJUK-EW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}