I have just been to a meeting with Callum Linden, the person who is bravely, and perhaps foolishly, pushing ahead with streaming web-media into SL. The plan doesn't include HTML on a prim next week, but that is the longer term outcome of this path, and explicitly addressed. If you would like to read more about the plans you can check out the wiki page about it here. Callum is also looking for examples of how you would like to use it so he can get the priorities of the later stages correct. For example, after the meeting, forms as a minimum of interactivity have become a higher priority than expected.

Whilst you are welcome to comment in general terms here, please add your specific cases to the wiki page above. Why did I describe Callum as perhaps foolish? There are tentative times for delivery of the first milestone - 1st December. Whilst we all wish him every luck with this, please bear in mind this is only tentative and he might well miss it. Overall I'd like to see these plans contain MORE such tentative time markers, so please don't give him a hard time if it slips a bit. Havok (originally to Havok 2) has slipped for more than 3 years (It was due "soon" when I joined SL) but it has made it.

Just over a week ago I asked how should we, the users, and LL communicate with each other.

I laid out four groups of communication as well:

1. Business decisions - raising the starting price of mainland sim auctions
2. Emergency content - OMG the grid is really poorly
3. Development issues - anything from the interface of the new communications system to the plans to totally rewrite the UI
4. Technical issues - why can't we have 100 groups?

So, what are my takes on these issues?

For purely business decisions, these should be taken internally and announced, much as they are now. I would like to see the bias lie at the "if in doubt, consult" end of the spectrum, but some things must be available to be internal decisions.

Emergency content: this has been dealt with rather well recently I think. Posting to the blog asap, regular updates, and a reasonably detailed post mortem as well. Keep this up and consider adding more inworld and log-in messages.

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.