This is the 11th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.
Mecha's a charming, witty, intelligent, warm and kind person who devotes a lot of time to helping new residents. She's frequently a gothloli with a gigantic bunny-decorated hammer, but she has plenty of other visually impressive avatars, too.
A rare post from Philip Linden confirms recent reports we've been getting that randomly selected Second Life users have been being polled for user satisfaction. Residents are asked if their Second Life experience is getting better or worse, with an option to provide a line of feedback as to why.
Several people who were at my office hours yesterday were among those polled. 1angelcares Writer (whom we interviewed separately) had to change her answer:
"I had such a hard time filling it out that I changed my 'better' answer to 'worse'," she said. She's not alone. Several people have said that they had trouble getting it to respond well enough to fill it in properly.
It seems like a good move to sample broad user opinion this way, but I suspect the actual interface for doing so needs a little more work.
There's a lot of shoddy reporting out there, and I'm thinking it was high time we rounded some of it up and laughed at it (as it deserves) or simply slap our foreheads in dismay (as much of it engenders). There's a couple howlers out there at the moment, and it's time to put up the white sheet and shoot them.
One of the ones that's really making some waves right now is from news.com.au. It is, what Second Life users would generally describe as a steaming pile of Shirky. It's really that outrageous.
As we head towards the final deployment of 'bHear' or voice (we'll call it bHear for simplicity further down) in the official viewer (possibly as soon as next week or the week after, depending on which sources you listen to), debate is getting stronger - not on anything to do with the segregative issues surrounding text and voice, but on a rather more interesting practical and psychological effect: The user interface cutting you off from the virtual world.
Rob and Phoenix will be discussing why opening more and more of the source code is a key strategy for Linden Lab, and possibly even making allusions to how Linden Lab plans to make a buck when they do.
As a fan of trinkets and memorabilia, I was thrilled when I saw someone wearing a pewter pendant of the Second Life logo. According to lore, LL hands these out to their new employees, as well as special visitors to the Lab, such as Views attendees. They're worn out in just the right places, with a string I can only describe as possibly plastic looped through it. They seem to carry a special meaning for their owners.
That's why I'm a little put off by First Bling and their replicas of this necklace. I'm sure it will be wildly popular among the SL crowd, but it just doesn't have that old feel to me. They're shiny and new, like many of the residents. I once saw someone trying to hawk their necklace on a website for 80 USD, and wondered how it could possibly sell, because it mostly holds priceless sentimental value.
What can you get for your money there? For $25, you'll get a sterling silver pendant that appears to be the size of the LL version. If you want the larger one, it'll be $35. Not a fan of sterling silver? For $135, or $220, you'll get a large or small gold, or white gold pendant. That's not L, folks.
Read on to find out about their shipping and payment policies ...
Philip arrived on the scene a short time ago and spoke with the leader of the protesters, who are calling off their protest satisfied that their concerns have been duly communicated.
"I was very impressed with the way King Philip handled the issue and was left with the impression that he was a man who took personal responsibility for his and the companies actions. I have great respect for King Philip as a caring and concerned individual and applaud him for his actions in this instance." said Magi Merlin after the discussion.
Camping out in Philip Linden's office this weekend three angry residents are looking for a show of unity in protesting what they see as an ill-timed update, breaking functionality across the weekend. Magi Merlin, Nicole Aferdita, and Pearl Cazalet have eschewed their weekend activities to demonstrate their ire at Linden Lab's conduct in this matter.
They feel very strongly that the update was unprofessional, ill-advised and unnecessarily risky given the timing.
Kal-Philip is interviewed by The Guardian. The interview ranges over most of the usual topics, and there's not really anything very new as far as information goes. It is very much the same interview you have seen with Philip over and over again. There are a couple of interesting tidbits however, and what will likely be more interesting to you is how Philip says things, rather than what is said.
"It is a virtual real estate business but it is a little less abstract than a lot of people suggest. What we are really selling you is computation. We are selling you CPU core. If you buy a 16-acre piece of land, which is about four city blocks, what you are renting is one processor." Read the interview here.
While I was digging for information on this piece over the weekend, I received several anecdotal reports of alt accounts being closed down - sometimes while in actual use (logged in at the time). Today, Linden Lab reports that they are indeed clamping down on alternate accounts, apparently those with inadequate 'contact' information - we're not entirely clear on what that means, as the third party registration interface requires only a date-of-birth and a valid email address that has never been used for Second Life currently or previously.
Having brought up the matter with my ad-hoc 'unfocus group', it's been speculated that perhaps the suspension of population reporting may be concealing wholesale account deactivation. It doesn't seem likely to me, but with population reporting down for 133 hours now, you've got to wonder why it's taken so long to fix what is unlikely to be more than a minor bug - after all, you can reasonably bet that Linden Lab's internal feed of those population figures are probably working. Philip would be casting disappointed gazes at people otherwise, right?
If you're new to Second Life you might not know that you're in "the future of the internet" according to no less a person than Phillip Linden. I remember these sorts of statements from my early days in SL, but this one is cited in an article written in the dim distant days of last December, so it looks like Phillip's dream is still alive.
There is nothing wrong with having a dream of course, nor aspirational targets. In fact it's great that Phillip still does. But sometimes you have to bed your dreams and targets in reality. What we are noticing in SL at the moment is growing pains. We don't call them that, rather we swear when logins fail, teleports fail, clothes vanish and become "Missing Image", our L$ balance vanishes, the new toy/dress we've just bought doesn't get delivered, friends online falls over, search breaks and so forth. It seems that Saturday and Sunday evenings GMT, lunchtime SL Time, are the times that these things happen. Not once or twice, but week after week after week.
Well, this particular posting bypasses the gauntlet of Human Resources - your application goes to Philip directly. Basically Philip's looking for someone to head up technical operations. In his own words: "We are managing thousands of Linux-based servers in 2 locations, use over 6Gbps at peak, do 100M MySQL transactions daily, will soon need to have datacenters in multiple locations around the world, and are watching all these numbers grow at 10-20% monthly."
That would be your job, understanding every aspect of that, and managing the team that handles it - and you'd better kick ass at it, otherwise pretty much every Second Lifer will kick yours, and Philip will probably help them. And face it, Pakka's Rule says 20% of them will be cursing your name every day even if you are getting it right. If you've been a very hands-on CTO, this could be the thing for you. If you haven't handled thousands of servers in a dozen countries, and have a thick skin besides this is likely not the job for you.
The implications are quite tantalizing. The grid is obviously going global.
It's always nice to be given an award, if it's in a spirit of honest good will. I've got to say, though, that I've never heard of the Cullinane & Green Report, the people who are giving Philip their first EDGIE Award for creating SL, the 'Next Big Thing'.
You can listen to their podcast here, wherein they interview Philip, and discuss all manner of ways in which SL can be influential in the time to come.
Many of you knew that Philip was presenting SL to the hardware-besotted throngs at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (or CES), but this particular section of his presentation may have escaped your notice. ESC is working on building a replica of the starship Enterprise (presumably the original) for CBS, whose President and CEO Les Moonves hopes will " ... allow the Second Life community to mash-up a slough of Star Trek episodes. It's a great way to give back to the fans who make the show as successful as it is."
The accompanying video (actually part of Philip's presentation, but leading into Mr. Moonves's) is a cute poking fun at the standard tropisms of Trek culture, though I know some Trekkers in SL who will be bristling with outrage at the shenanigans. I can't wait to see the hardcore fans get their hands on this build; though come to think of it, they've probably already built a much vaster playground of detail-oriented ships and environments. Oh, well, Les: Kapla!
This is the 11th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.
A 
There's a lot of shoddy reporting out there, and I'm thinking it was high time we rounded some of it up and laughed at it (as it deserves) or simply slap our foreheads in dismay (as much of it engenders). There's a couple howlers out there at the moment, and it's time to put up the white sheet and shoot them.
As we head towards the final deployment of 'bHear' or voice (we'll call it bHear for simplicity further down) in the official viewer (possibly as soon as next week or the week after, depending on which sources you listen to), debate is getting stronger - not on anything to do with the segregative issues surrounding text and voice, but on a rather more interesting practical and psychological effect: The user interface cutting you off from the virtual world.
Got plans to go to 
As a fan of trinkets and memorabilia, I was thrilled when I saw someone wearing a pewter pendant of the Second Life logo. According to lore, LL hands these out to their new employees, as well as special visitors to the Lab, such as Views attendees. They're worn out in just the right places, with a string I can only describe as possibly plastic looped through it. They seem to carry a special meaning for their owners.
While I was digging for information on 
If you're new to Second Life you might not know that you're in 
Well, this particular posting bypasses the gauntlet of Human Resources - your application goes to Philip directly. Basically Philip's looking for someone to head up technical operations. In his own words: "We are managing thousands of Linux-based servers in 2 locations, use over 6Gbps at peak, do 100M MySQL transactions daily, will soon need to have datacenters in multiple locations around the world, and are watching all these numbers grow at 10-20% monthly."
