Linden Lab are preparing to roll out a new auction system for land, and are anticipating 1-2 more weeks before release. Supply of new and recycled mainland territory is frozen until the new system is ready, and then will be resuming at previously announced rates.

Linden Lab plan to release more information about the new system in advance of it rolling out.

Linden Lab has announced that the floor bid for mainland auctions will be increased 25% from $1,000 USD per simulator to $1,250 USD per simulator. There are typically four simulators per server, so this represents a price rise of $1,000 USD per server.

It seems unlikely that this is covering a price-rise for server hardware - the obvious alternative is that it is being used to compensate for either increased costs elsewhere, or reduced revenue in some areas.

The new eastern continent, Nautilus, is nearly complete. It sports more than 740 sims, 40 of which have just gone onto the auction block. Nautilus started rolling out earlier this year, in an effort to reduce overall land prices.

The new continent, Corsica, is due to appear north of Nautilus and will contain a much higher percentage of waterfront parcels than we have seen in mainland sims before. Residents perceive waterfront land parcels as being more valuable than non-waterfront parcels, and their value per square metre is usually higher.

For those of you living in a mainland sim, how many of you know the name of your continent?

Anshe Chung Studios Limited (known more commonly as ACS) maintains the private continent called "Dreamland". Dreamland consists of at least 150 sims existing as themed communities, positioned northwest of the Second Life mainland continents.

According to a tip, confirmed through one of the ACS support staff, the whole continent is going to be moving -- likely next week -- to make space for further expansion. It's not hard to see why, there's not a lot of wiggle room left up there. In theory, the relocation of sims like that should be a relatively straightforward job, but we're talking about a lot of them. There's plenty of room for error.

Love her or hate her (or scratch your head and try to figure out where you heard the name), Anshe Chung's business seems to show no signs of slowing.