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.
The Stanford Summit featured a keynote panel discussion with Philip, IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Gaia's Craig Sherman, and Sun's Chris Melissinos, moderated by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier. It's a nice lengthy page of notes that I won't summarize here. The tone is upbeat and positive, with a lot of casually-tossed in quips that bear further thought. We'll keep an eye out for a full transcript if one ever becomes available.
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 ...
An hour-long program hosted by CNN's Kristie Lu Stout will cover the topic of Virtual Worlds, and how they're shaping our future. The program will include panelists from all over the industry, including Trip Hawkins, formerly of 3DO; Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, and of course, Our Philip.
You can read more about this here, and the program itself will run on Wednesday 13th June at 1500 BST / 1600 CET, Saturday 16th June and Sunday 17th June at 2000 BST / 2100 CET.
The inestimable Mitch Wagner reports on his recent interview with Philip, where they spoke on topics such as identity, anonymity, and compliance with the law. I love interviews like this because they get me thinking (as opposed to the simple stimulus/response behavior that I, as a single-celled organism, typically exhibit). In the spirit of this, then, I'd like to offer my thoughts on the printed exchange between Mitch and Philip.
"The ability to increase communication between people and so improve the world is what motivates us as. It's why we all come to work," says Philip. And yet, the best intercommunication comes either in the form of Forum debates, which typically take the form of a user's rant or screed, and then another user's response to that; or, the Town Hall Meetings, which amount to "Here's what we're doing. Questions?" and then a one question/one answer event occurs.
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?
Welcome to the fourth episode of On the Inside, Second Life Insider's Official Podcast! This episode features our interview with Eureka Dejavu, investigative journalist, blogger for the Huffington Post, and author of her upcoming book about her journeys and spiritual growth. Aimee Weber co-hosts with me, and we talk a little bit about the Belgian police patrols and Open Sourcing SL's servers. As always, feel free to leave your questions and comments!
Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to On the Inside directly in iTunes (MP3) [RSS] Add the SLI Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically [MP3] Download the MP3 directly
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.
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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 
