Popular SL News During April 2011

This is the April 2011 edition of popular Second Life news, during this month with links and dates below.

• www.8020studio.com/ mentioned Viewer 2 – 5th
• Spook House in Noya has closed & moved – 6th
• Dash Deal Test Program – 6th
• Introducing the Updated SL Viewer Beta with Enhanced Avatar Physics – 7th
• SLCC 2011 will be hosted in San Francisco – 7th
• AM Radio announces the closure of his regions in six months’ time – 10th
• Second Life user-concurrency falls to lowest levels in two years – 10th
• Feathers Boa announces early retirement from Second Life – 13th
• Tweets from Rodvik Humble keynote speech at IFOG2011 conference – 15th
• New interactive SL Signup pages – 17th
• IBM Closing Second Life Exhibition Art Sims – 18th
• Second Style Farewell – 18th
• New World Notes Turns 8 – 23rd
• Linden Lab is worth roughly $232M, according to Sharepost –  25th
• VWBPE 2011 attendance statistics – 27th

Previous monthly recaps can be found here.

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VWBPE 2011 attendance statistics

After waiting many weeks for VWBPE 2011 data, here are the results for this year’s VWBPE 2011 attendance statistics. Thanks to the VWBPE team for providing the data.

Overall 2011 Attendance Statistics

• The overall attendance not including those watching via Treet TV or MBC was 2, 440
• Unique Avatars: 2, 447
• Total Minutes: 437, 397 (7, 290 hours) & (304 days)
• Avg. Minutes per Avatar: 178.75 (2.98 hours)
• Avg. Age of Avatar: 30 months

Overall 2010 Attendance Statistics

• Unique Avatars: 2, 077
  
• Total Minutes: 427,597 (7, 126 hours) & (297days)
  
• Avg. Minutes per Avatar: 205.87 & (3.43 hours)
• Avg. Age of Avatar: 24.3 months

VWBPE 2012 Preparation 

The planning for VWBPE 2012 is already underway. Recommendations, comments, and feedback can be submitted to info@vwbpe.org. The VWBPE is community based and we welcome input from all segments of the community. Look for information on the 2012 conference starting with the “VWBPE 2011 Call for Organization Committee Volunteers” at our booth at the SL Communities Conference happening this August.

Linden Lab worth roughly $232M today via Sharepost

According to Sharepost, Linden Lab is worth roughly $232M at the moment. Ener Hax has been keeping an eye on Linden Lab venture index for the past year or so. Here are the statistics from the past year up to now.

• $395 million – March 2010
• $345 million – 19th July 2010
• $248 million – 6th September 2010
• $271 million – 9th October 2010
• $237 million – 11th November 2010
• $220 million – 29th December 2010
• $240 million – 2nd April 2011
• $244 million – 6th April 2011
• $232 million – TODAY!
  

It’s going to be interesting what happens to the venture index during the rest of 2011 into 2012. I have added Sharepost stats section on my SL Metrics page for future reference. 🙂

SL Mesh, Update 4

I went along to the weekly SL mesh meeting today hosted on the beta grid in Mesh HQ 1 and here’s the latest Mesh news this week. Still no confirmation on a date or timeline for the release officially. We are now into week 17 and I think it may be released during early May or June 2011. My guess is that the release would come in version 2.7 but that’s to be confirmed.

Latest Progress

• [11:09] Charlar Linden: Can you give us an update on recent progress and what your priorities are? [Vivienne Daguerre]
• [11:09] Nyx Linden: we’ve been hammering on the merge with vs2010 so we can merge down to viewer-development
• [11:10] Nyx Linden: that’s been our primary focus for the past week

User Testing

• [11:11] Charlar Linden: next: Is there anything in particular you need us to test? [Vivienne Daguerre]
• [11:12] Nyx Linden: so we *believe* the merge candidate should be good to be used on maingrid as a general viewer
• [11:12] Nyx Linden: (or at least not more buggy than the main codebase 🙂 )
• [11:13] davep (runitai.linden): bugs on the mesh grid are taking a back seat for now while we focus on making sure the mesh viewer can be used on agni

The full transcript can be found here of the meeting.

Meta7 to shut down on 1st May 2011

It looks like Meta7 will be closing down on 1st May 2011 because of trademark/legal issues apparently. Laurent Meta announced this sad news on Thursday 21st April 2011. Hypergrid Business blogs about this closure in more detail with statistics.

“Meta7 closing May 1st”

“It is with sadness in our hearts that we have to inform you of the imminent
closure of the Meta 7 grid at such short notice. Legal proceedings have led
us to a point where we now must comply with this court order, or endure
heavy fines and possible personal complications for the Meta7 team members.
After almost 3 years of pioneering history, creating this unique place in
the internet landscape, we have had to make a very hard and unpleasant
decision and shall be closing Meta7 permanently by May 1st 2011.”

“We would like to thank all our loyal metazens for using Meta7 as a homebase
over the last few years. We hope you use these last few days to make sure
you can keep in touch with your friends as you move off into different
grids. Obviously a number of you will have question concerning Land, credits
and inventories. Please read about this in the special goodbye-FAQ.”

“As for us, we are going to take a break for a while.”
“Thank you all, it has been an amazing ride.”

“The Meta7 Team”

Check out the FAQ for more information.

Happy Easter Everyone

Wishing you a Happy Easter 2011

Yummy!

New World Notes Turns 8

Happy Birthday NWN

New World Notes turned eight years old yesterday and I wish NWN a happy birthday.

Estimated NWN Statistics 

• Launched on April 22, 2003
• About 7 million pageviews
• About 30, 000 total comments
• About 6000 total posts
• Average post of 300 words long – translates into 1, 800, 000 words
•  7,200 pages long

I have been reading NWN blog posts since late 2006 and it’s one of my favourite SL blogs. This milestone is a big achievement to write about virtual worlds for eight years. Great job Hamlet!!

Just as important, New World Notes’ readership has grown with this blog, and at the moment, is the largest on average that it’s ever been.

My fondest wish is to keep writing about Second Life and immersive virtual world culture and innovation for the rest of my career, and as long as you keep reading, I’ll do everything I can to keep writing New World Notes. Thanks again.

Thanks for mentioning my blog over the years – much appreciated. 🙂

Screenshot of NWN

Cool machinima on a Journey into the Metaverse

Check out this wonderful SL machinima uploaded by TutsyNavarathna on YouTube.

My entry to the University of West Australia Machinima Contest III.

This machinima as a metaphorical tale, is a questioning on relations established now between reality and virtuality through our avatars.

The Metaverse is our collective online shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet. The word metaverse is a portmanteau of the prefix “meta” (meaning “beyond”) and “universe”.

Impressive work!

3 months later since LL merged grids

It’s been 3 months since (21st January 2011) when Linden Lab merged the grids and Teen Second Life became no more. There have been some updates on progress since the grid merger happened including Chimp Labs regions developments, lower traffic in former teen resident regions and former teen organizations sending out regular group notices. Still teens aged 13-15 still have their accounts frozen while 16-17 years olds can use their accounts on the grid today. Here are the latest updates since the merger that I know of.

Chimp Labs

• Since January 2011 Terrance Linden and teens have formed a group to build a teen-only space to hang out and have regular meetings on progress of the Chimp Lab regions. Chimp Lab regions buildings are done and i’m sure there will be more developments during 2011.

Teen Treehouse

• Virtual Ability community has welcomed teens by opening up a Teen Treehouse on 16th April 2011.

Lower Traffic Numbers

• There have been reports that the former teen resident owned regions have not been visited as much since the merger back in January 2011. Low traffic at Eden, Epic, Eros, the rest of the former teen grid regions traffic has been falling since the merger.

Former Teen Organizations

• YFC and The TechTG have been sending out regular notices which is good news.
• I’m sure there are others that are still active.

Former Teen Bay City regions join MG

• On 10th February 2011 the former Teen Bay City regions moved and were attached left of the main grid Bay City regions.

TSL Network

• Moles of the LDPW have been adding new parts to the TSL Network during 2011.

VWBPE 2011 Mentioned TSL

• Barry Joseph (Global Kids) mentioned TSL during VWBPE 2011 conference. “A Funeral For Teen Second Life: A Presentation From Beyond the Grave on the Future of Mixed-Age Education in Second Life”.

SL8B, Update 1

On 21st June 2011 Second Life will officially turn eight years old and the celebrations will kick off. The SL8B regions have appeared this month on the grid and I believe that there is a group that are in the process of clearing the birthday sims ready for SL8B. SL8B news will be out soon apparently and we will know more then. Update 2 will be published when more SL8B news becomes available.

Here is a screenshot of the SL8B regions today.