SecondLifeCasinos.com entrepreneur SL Loonie is launching a new way to screen your real life and SL movies into Second Life - by paying for them. In a world of cheap server space and free hosting options for Quicktime movies, such as blip.tv, I have to wonder how she plans to profit from this venture. Her prices range from 5 dollars all the way up to 80 dollars USD for 30 days of viewing. In addition, she has hosting and sponsorship options for parties. Maybe she didn't get the memo that residents have been doing this for free since the movie stream was introduced?
On the plus side, she's also hosting a contest where you can win L prizes and free screenings of your film. They are looking for the Tube2SLYouTube Film Producer of the Year 2007. What does this mean? They will take your work, which has already been compressed down to a low quality flash file and download it, then re-encode it to Quicktime format. I see Oscar potential. Or do I? The quality is pretty bad so I can't actually tell.
I'm all for showing off your hard work in Second Life, but I simply cannot endorse a pay model when there are so many other choices out there. If you're genuinely interested in earning the 25,000L price and seeing your movie highly pixelated on the big screen, you can get the rules and info here. The contest ends on September 14th, with the winners being announced on the 29th and 30th. Will you be participating?
If you've been wondering how LL's new Boston office is shaping up, wonder no more. This article is a nice piece on what's going on there, and more importantly, who's staffing the place.
The guys formerly known as Windward Mark are now official Lindens, all five of them. The article also profiles John Lester, operations director and academic programs manager. There's also a bit in there about how the spreading out of LL is an experiment in virtualizing its own offices. From the article: '"We talk the talk about the Metaverse, and being plugged into a global data-space," says Lester. "Now we want to walk the walk. Instead of all being in the same building in San Francisco, we'll see the world from more points of view, and we'll live where we want to live."'
Of course, this is just the beginning. If and when LL makes it possible to run versions of SL on anyone's computer, then someday YOU could be Linden Lab!
Consero Global Solutions now numbers Linden Lab among its clients. Consero GS provides financial and accounting services, accounts payable, payroll, procuring, inventory and so forth. According to WebCPA, Linden Lab hopes to save a million US Dollars over the next 36 months, compared to doing all this in-house.
It's not really a very surprising move. Most startups outsource their accounts/financial operations as they grow, to take advantage of economies of scale. I don't recall the last time I worked for a company that did any of this in-house.
A lovely roundup for your Tuesday morning on the grid. Linden Lab has finally put forward some enlightening information about the recent issues with the grid, claiming a combination of a poorly-thought-through configuration for database systems.
Surely, the prolonged attack over the weekend contributed to overall system strain, but apparently it was far from the whole story. An interesting question is why, if the problem was identified as a system configuration issue 24 hours ago, didn't someone actually say so at the time? Reconfiguration work has been in progress for a full 24 hours without any word until now.
Town Halls have been a part of SL culture for as long as I can remember. As times change and new rules are set in place to govern our virtual lives, this is precisely when you want to have an open line to help maintain transparency.
In all reality, the Town Hall events have a limited reach and most of them leave a lot to be desired in terms of resolving issues. However, with the Linden Lab forums closed and huge changes on track, a few office hours here and there aren't enough to pacify all the confusion regarding the recent client instability and policy modifications. It's been nearly two months since Cory's straight-to-the point talk on technical aspects, aren't we due for another chat?
I'd particularly love to hear a moderated conversation where both Lindens and residents can weigh in on, for example, any foreseen effects of the wagering policy on SL culture. I am curious to see what factors LL is considering on their end and what worries residents/thinkers/random folk have. There are some neat comments on the TerraNova blog wondering about these effects.
According to Gigs Taggart, he and several others were scammed for a combined $10,000 US dollars or so, and while Linden Lab appears to have banned the perpetrator, Taggart says that Linden Lab are basically allowing the fraudster to get away with it.
Bargaining in good faith, Taggart made an offer on an island for sale, unaware that the seller was receiving money for the sale of the same island from other would-be purchasers. The first purchaser ended up with the island, but everyone else has nothing to show.
In April of 2007, Jesse Malthus passed away, leaving an entire community saddened by their loss. He was known for his involvement in libsecondlife, Open Source, and OpenSim. A kind individual often found in #opensl on EFnet IRC, he would help anyone that needed it. His enthusiastic attitude lives on today in those that carried on his work, including his mother, who joined after his death.
That is why otakup0pe Neumann has chosen to nominate Jesse Malthus for Best Open Source Community Organizer. According to him, it has nothing to do with the fact that he is gone. If Jesse were still alive today, he would be nominated just the same. If you were ever encouraged by Jesse, or he helped you in some way, please consider voting for Jesse, leaving a comment, or both to help him get the recognition that he deserves.
According to Linden Lab (who are taking pains to make the schedule for voice deployment clearer) a new First Look viewer will be made available "within the next few weeks" that supports voice on the main grid (Agni). Like other First Look viewers before it, it will be beta-code, in flux for testing, but being on the live grid, anything it does is as permanent as the official viewer.
After all the testing and tuning is done, the final version of this First Look branch will become the official mandatory download, becoming in essence, the official Second Life viewer. Linden Lab have also partnered with GBH (as anyone from the UK or Australia will laughingly tell you stands for "Grievous Bodily Harm" in conversation) to provide deals on headsets.
Residents are reporting issues with teleportation, inventory loading, teleportation slow or failing, object rezzing (slow or failing), group IMs (slow or failing), login problems, and the presence issues (that's the friends list to most of us) problems that became more of a problem after yesterday's update have apparently significantly deteriorated.
Approximately thirty minutes after resident reports began to reach us, Blue Linden has reported same on the Linden blog and tells us that Linden Lab developers are in the process of trying to diagnose and correct the problem.
Well, maybe there will be tea there. There will certainly be booze and food. Linden Lab Boston is getting into gear under the leadership of Pathfinder Linden, and is recruiting. If you're in the area, and meet the requirements, Linden Lab wants you to submit your details.
Lucky candidates will get a chance to make fools of themselves in front of Linden Lab staff and recruiters at the party - an open bar is a wonderful tool.
When most single-celled organisms grow, they divide. Mitosis. Linden Lab is growing too, and a little cellular division seems to be in the works this weekend. San Francisco based residents report that Linden Lab is moving what appears to be about half of their staff to a new larger office literally just around the corner from the Sansome Street offices.
The new office is in Battery Street, not quite in range of Nerf weaponry, by all accounts. We can only assume that the rapidly growing Linden Lab HQ is getting too cramped to support the increasing number of staff. Hopefully this move brings minimum disruption to the lab.
Yes, folks, "sculpties" will soon arrive on the preview grid. Torley Linden made a blog entry on the official Linden blog regarding this momentous occasion. SLI reader Tao Takashi was able to get some information out of Robin and Joe Linden, with the announcement that sculpties will be added to a beta client next week. I guess we'll have to wait just a bit longer to taste the forbidden fruit. *sigh*
What will sculptable prims mean for us? Watch this machinima and see for yourself. Imagine being able to bypass the 31 prim limit of a vehicle because you molded the shape. Imagine lower prim avatars and furniture. Hell, just imagine, in general! This is truly the biggest news that has come out of Second Life since flexi-prims!
The ARG ended on a positive note, with qDot explaining the reasoning behind Cubesque and CubeOverload. For those curious, Funk Schnook appears to be the "winner" for finding that old blog entry. What was your opinion of the mystery?
Wow! Information is coming in from everywhere this morning. With just a few minutes left until 9:46am PDT/SLT, it seems as if the puzzle has been solved!
CubeOverload was updated with another jumbled song, this time, to the tune of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." The text says:
THE CUBE WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA LOOKIN' FOR A SQUARE TO STEAL HE'D LOST HIS MIND 'CAUSE HE COULD NOT FIND THE SPHERE THAT MADE THE DEAL
Qarl Linden informed Tao that they would be introducing "sculpties", which are something like NURBS. Apparently the pictures from his blog entry won't be possible until revision two, but for now, he hinted that they might be on the preview grid today or tomorrow.
This will change Second Life as we know it!
[UPDATE: Some readers pointed out that there was still some block room on Cubesque. A quick look at the GDX schedule points out that calculations were off. qDot will be speaking from 12:30pm-1:45pm PDT/SLT.]
Since this is getting a bit spammy trying to fit everything together, I'm going to put down what we have so far in hopes that we can finish this soon:
We first saw Cubesque, given to us by a Linden. Soma-X speculated that it was owned by one Kyle Machulis with cube@lindenlab.com as an email. Mars Rickenbacker gave us the address on the domain registrar which leads to Linden Lab's headquarters.
The title of the page is, "perfection is not 90." The beginning of the page says "the journey begins here", while the end of the page says "the journey ends here."
Cubesque had variables which OneBigRiver Stork calculated to lead up to an event at exactly 9:46am PDT on Friday.
Nicholaz Beresford pointed out that the blocks were given a corner number.
Maxx Monde pondered about whether we would get chamfered cubes.
Click to read more conclusions as this will be long-winded, but hopefully clarify some things ...
CubeOverload has been updated, but it appears as if nothing has been added, except a pair of eyes. At least I *THINK* that they're eyes. I certainly hope so. The frame appears unchanged.
As for Cubesque, the blocks to the left have been growing at a reader-calculated once per minute, with the color frequency going faster as time increases. It has also been mentioned that the URL for the color blocks has changed to say "qarner" instead of "corner." One reader speculated that this would all culminate on Friday morning. I guess only time will tell.
SecondLifeCasinos.com entrepreneur SL Loonie is launching a new way to screen your real life and SL movies into Second Life - by paying for them. In a world of cheap server space and free hosting options for Quicktime movies, such as blip.tv, I have to wonder how she plans to profit from this venture. Her prices range from 5 dollars all the way up to 80 dollars USD for 30 days of viewing. In addition, she has hosting and sponsorship options for parties. Maybe she didn't get the memo that residents have been doing this for free since the movie stream was introduced?
Consero Global Solutions now numbers Linden Lab among its 
A lovely roundup for your Tuesday morning on the grid. Linden Lab has finally put forward some enlightening information about the recent issues with the grid, claiming a combination of a poorly-thought-through configuration for database systems.
According to Gigs Taggart, he and several others were scammed for a combined $10,000 US dollars or so, and while Linden Lab appears to have banned the perpetrator, Taggart says that Linden Lab are basically allowing the fraudster to get away with it.
With 
Residents are reporting issues with teleportation, inventory loading, teleportation slow or failing, object rezzing (slow or failing), group IMs (slow or failing), login problems, and the presence issues (that's the friends list to most of us) problems that became more of a problem after yesterday's update have apparently significantly deteriorated.
Well, maybe there will be tea there. There will certainly be booze and food. Linden Lab Boston is getting into gear under the leadership of Pathfinder Linden, and is recruiting. If you're in the area, and 
When most single-celled organisms grow, they divide. Mitosis. Linden Lab is growing too, and a little cellular division seems to be in the works this weekend. San Francisco based residents report that Linden Lab is moving what appears to be about half of their staff to a new larger office literally just around the corner from the Sansome Street offices.
Wow! Information is coming in from everywhere this morning. With just a few minutes left until 9:46am PDT/SLT, it seems as if the puzzle has been solved!
Since this is getting a bit spammy trying to fit everything together, I'm going to put down what we have so far in hopes that we can finish this soon:
CubeOverload
