Popular SL news during May 2011

This is the May 2011 edition of popular Second Life news with links and dates below.

• Second Life concurrency stabilises – 3rd
• New look SL welcome screen – 3rd
• Eldars of Elf Clan Vs Linden Lab – 5th
• Q1 2011 Linden Dollar Economy Metrics Up, Users and Usage Unchanged – 6th
• Mass-deletion of staff user-pages from Second Life wiki – 9th
• Linden Lab alerts third-party viewer developers to active security exploit – 12th
• Bay City’s Third Anniversary – 13th
• SL listed on The 11 Most Influential Online Worlds of All Time –  17th
• New Voice in Basic Mode of Viewer 2 – 19th
• Facebook removes hundreds of SL FB avatars – 20th
• Linden Lab launches new Search Project Viewer – 25th
• InWorldz Phlox rollout – 25th
• Blondin Linden leaves Linden Lab – 27th
• Save the historical SL Globe Theatre – 30th

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1000 Avatars book launch party

Come along to the launch party for the “1000 avatars” book event tomorrow evening starting from 5pm SLT/PDT in Second Life hosted by Gracie Kendal. Congratulations to Gracie on her successful project in SL and now in RL.

LAUNCH PARTY FOR “1000 AVATARS” BOOK
Tuesday May 31, 2011
5-8pm SLT

at the new 1000+ Avatars installation at CSU Nothridge…                                    

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cal%20State%20Northridge/58/88/121

Upcoming Volume 1 photographs will be released…

I have collected these portraits into two printed books. Volume 1 of the first 1000 avatars photographed will be released on May 31, 2011.

It is a 160 page softcover book, 8″ high by 10″ wide, printed on premium quality paper to show the portraits to their best advantage.

Details about shipping and copies…

“1000 Avatars” lists at $62.95 USD plus shipping (see below) All copies ordered through me by May 31st will be autographed by Kristine Schomaker/Gracie Kendal.

You can reserve your signed copy by sending $62.95 USD plus shipping to my Paypal account at krisartlvr@verizon.net.

*Shipping
$5 North America
$11 Europe
Please contact Gracie Kendal inworld or by emailing krisartlvr@verizon.net for shipping charges to other parts of the world.

Pre-order now

Spread the word

Save the historical SL Globe Theatre

SLURL: Visit mShakespeare theatre venue today.

Over the weekend I heard the news that the historical SL Globe Theatre is in danger of losing two regions in Second Life. Ina Centaur SL account profile has been disabled which is terrible news I think. In the past I have visited this amazing theatre and attended some great live performance events. Ina Centaur posted a message on SLNP on the 27th May 2011 explaining details about payments and happenings. I really hope Linden Lab will listen and will not remove these regions. Another good thing to do is to enable Ina Centaur SL account again.

• Save the 4 sim venue from closure!  
• Snapshots of the SL Globe Theatre with SLURL

Check out this full message from Ina on the Shakespeare situation.

Inevitably, the 4-Sim SL Globe Theatre will be losing two sims, and Second Life would be losing a rare historical theatre for live performance with large audience capacity. The timeline for deletion is uncertain, and it might happen any day now. But…

Myself and several others have made appeals to Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble on saving my account and these two sims, and thereby the 4-Sim SL Globe Theatre. It’s not yet clear what his decision is or how divine intervention might come to play. Perhaps, there’s still hope…

Hopefully the SL community can come together and make sure that SL Globe Theatre survives into the future with enough funding etc. I will post more soon.

Blondin Linden leaves Linden Lab

Just heard the news that Blondin Linden last day at Linden Lab was yesterday, according to this recent Bay City Alliance group notice sent out today. The reason for him leaving is unknown at this stage. Snapshots of Blondin Linden on Flickr here.

Blondin joined Linden Lab in May 2008 and was involved in many different roles and projects at Linden Lab including:

• Marketing lead by Amanda Linden
• Community Partnership Program
• The Mainland
• Zindra and Adult Content

It seems that https://twitter.com/BlondinLinden does not exist anymore. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Blondin_Linden is still up and running for now. I knew Blondin Linden on Twitter, inworld events and during inworld office hours. Blondin will be missed!

SLCC 2011 planning details announced

The SLCC 2011 blog team published a new post on 26th May 2011 called Second Life Community Convention 2011 and Beyond, announcing some planning details for this year’s event which will be hosted in San Francisco, CA / August 2011.

We have some new ideas that we’d like to share and we want to invite you to join us on the planning committee to help make this year’s convention a community event like never before!

Interesting bits from the post mentioning the future for SLCC.

This year we are excited to announce what we call the “Bi-Coastal Convention Plan”. Moving forward, we plan to hold the convention in the Boston area in even numbered years, and in the San Francisco area in odd numbered years, and always in the first half of August (the first or second weekend, depending upon venue availability).

The reasons for this are pretty simple. It’s partly out of convenience, since AvaCon is headquartered in Boston and Linden Lab is headquartered in San Francisco

In addition, we also feel it is a very good thing to visit Linden Lab in their own back yard (so to speak) every couple of years to ensure that our voices are heard.

We’ve also done extensive surveys of attendees and both Boston and San Francisco have been the highest rated cities. Finally, though no date is good for everyone, early August tends to catch the majority of Residents after summer vacations but before the start of the school year.

Of course this decision probably still won’t please everyone, but we believe that establishing a set schedule of convention cities and general dates will be of great benefit to the community and to the planning team. 

 This means that we can announce today that we plan on having next year’s convention in Boston!

SLCC 2011 location and dates announcement next week.

We look forward to announcing the exact location and dates of the Second Life Community Convention 2011 next week, and we’ll have more information for sponsors, volunteers, and the call for proposals for presenters very soon.

In the meantime, thanks for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

New Second Life Search System Beta Review

Linden Lab has released a new Search Project Viewer for testing which provides a brand new Second Life search system. Check out the Search Project Viewer FAQ for more details. I’m glad to see Linden Lab are spending time on improving Search at last with help by the SL community.

View screenshots of Second Life Search in previous years.

The Search Project Viewer provides an early look for testing and feedback on the new Second Life search system. For more information, see the Search Project Viewer FAQ and read the Test Out New Search! blog post.

Linden Lab mentions in the blog post that this is a big improvement from the current version of search and that 75% of residents that did a quiet test preferred the new search results.

It has been a while since we last updated you on search and that’s because we’ve chosen to take a big leap forward versus smaller, incremental improvements. We believe that new search is a vast improvement over current search both in terms of usability and relevance. But we’re not the only ones who think that. We conducted a quiet test with a savvy group of Residents who preferred new search results over 75% of the time compared with current search results. 

At the end of the blog post Linden Lab mentions that they don’t plan on implementing the new search engine for the 1.23 viewer. It’s another nail in the coffin for viewer 1.23 as it’s lifetime nears the end.

“Will new search work in Viewer 1.23 and Third-Party Viewers?”  New search will soon be available to you in the official SL Viewer and we will not be implementing it for the 1.23 Viewer. To be clear, you can still use the 1.23 Viewer, but search functionality will be impaired once new search is released into general availability, after the test period.

Soon after the announcement I installed the new search viewer and used it for some time. It looks pretty good and looks promising I think. It’s faster trying to find SL stuff and I like that the search results are now scrollable. The 15 minute window of searching for stuff in the new search I like as well. Improvements I would suggest is the following..When the Find menu opens everything is too quashed in and it needs to be separated out a bit. Another improvement is to have a filter for the maturity ratings and for search to link to SL wiki pages. There is more to add. Search results time…

• Everything: Searching for “Doctor Who” returned a lot of helpful location links
• Destination Guide: Navigating through SL showcase places was cool
• Events: Likes the Happening Now tick box
• Groups: Worked rather well when searching
• People: Didn’t work when I searched for my name “Your search for “Daniel Voyager” did not return any matches”
• Real Estate: Worked okay when searching
• Places: Worked okay when searching

This is a good step forward for Search for Second Life and hopefully it will be better when it comes out of beta testing stages later in the year.

Feedback and discussion links

• Forum Feedback to Linden Lab 
• Lindens Launch New Second Life Search Engine – NWN
• Try out the new Second Life search, without the new viewer – Tateru Nino
• New Second Life Search Beta – Nalates Urriah

InWorldz Phlox rollout

On 24th May 2011 overnight there was alot of excitement about the new InWorldz Phlox rollout. The new Phlox script engine rollout is now enabled on the InWorldz grid. Apparently the final Phlox build version is InWorldz 0.6.2 R1070 and you can check the server version by clicking on Help > About InWorldz. Back in March 2011 there was a post about Introducing InWorldz Phlox to the grid.

R1070 Grid Update Changes

Over the past year or so InWorldz has been making great progress and i’m sure there’s more to come during 2011. If you log into InWorldz today and you will be able to enjoy the new phlox rollout engine. Well done to the phlox team for improving grid performance, fixes and stability. Yay!

SL Mesh, Week 21

This week there were alot of interesting mesh questions on the agenda during the Mesh user group meeting. Still no confirmation on any ETA on Mesh dates so I guess that Linden Lab will either announce the timeline details later this week or early next week. According to a Lab PR earlier in the month, Linden Lab will be publishing a timeline before 31st May 2011.

Latest this week…

•  Are we there yet? It seems we are getting closer. Can you give us a rough ETA yet?
• “not there yet” – Runitai Linden

Here are the poll results for Are you looking forward to Mesh on the Main Grid?.

• Yes – 48 votes – 76%
• No – 15 votes – 24%

By the sounds of things most people are looking forward to Mesh coming out of beta.

MetaMeets 2011 starts on 17th June 2011

MetaMeets 2011 conference will be starting on 17th June through to 19th June 2011. The three day event will be hosted in Amsterdam for the 3rd annual innovative hybrid conference. Check out this year’s MetaMeets program and speakers. The event will be streamed live this year hopefully.

Last year I blogged about MetaMeets 2010 and I hope to do the same this year. Last year Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdon talked live at the conference last year which was interesting. I am not sure if Rod Humble will be speaking at MetaMeets 2011 because that would be cool.

MetaMeets 2011 will feature the following discussions and presentations:

• Designing Virtual Worlds and other 3D platforms
• Software that can and should be used for creating a virtual world
• Creative Commons and what it means for my virtual content
• Developing a successful virtual world and other 3D platforms
• Organizing and planning a Virtual Conference
• How to make a Machinima
• Streaming Music and online Broadcasting
• 3D platforms as Gardens for Co-Creation

A THREE DAY  EVENT NOT TO BE MISSED!

Look forward to seeing you all in Amsterdam!

The MetaMeets Team

Useful Links 

• Official MetaMeets website
• For the latest updates follow MetaMeets on Twitter
• Ticket information and location details can be found here
• MetaMeets on Flickr

New record of SL views on my blog reaches 989

I’m pleased to announce that on 21st May 2011 was the busiest day yet for SL views on my blog reaching a total of 989.  Almost reached the 1, 000 views milestone…

On average per day I receive normally around 200 – 500 blog views and overall on a monthly basis it’s much higher. The last high record of views on my blog was 953 views on 7th September 2010.

I now have over 90 regular active subscribers following my blog which is great. I’m 69 blog posts away from reaching the 1, 000 SL posts milestone.

Thanks so much for reading and more to come soon. 🙂