Popular SL news during August 2011

This is the August 2011 edition of popular Second Life news in case you have missed something this month with links and dates. It’s impossible to list everything that has been popular during any one month. I try to include stories that I think have been popular during each month in Second Life.

I hope you appreciate the time I take to publish these monthly posts.  🙂

• 1st August > Meeroos master account blocked by Linden Lab
• 2nd August > Announcement of Abbotts Aerodrome closing 
• 2nd August > Jacek Antonelli announces retirement
• 4th August > Fredrik Linden leaves Linden Lab 
• 8th August > August Update from Linden Lab 
• 11th August > Brinda Allen has passed away in her sleep
• 13th August > SLCC 2011 Keynote Highlights
• 13th August > Second Life Q2 2011 metrics and economy analysis
• 16th August > OWN Network Documentary on Second Life
• 19th August > Abbotts Aerodrome saved by Cheshyr Pontchartrain
• 21st August > Hogwarts: Your Story – Role Play Sim Preview
• 23rd August > SL Viewer 3 comes out of beta with Mesh
• 29th August > Grendel’s, so goes the Grid: two sims out of four sims closing, citing lack of Lab support
• 29th August > SL Relay for Life 2011 Raises $375K From 115K Donation

Feedback on August SL highlights?

• Do you have any highlights of August 2011 ?
• Perhaps it was the mesh rollout or SLCC 2011 ?
• Feel free to write in comments your highlights!

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Rod Humble interview with design3

Rod Humble talks about games design, development and Second Life in this recent interview with design3. I thought the interview was interesting and inspiring throughout the 8 minutes / 7 seconds of the video.

design3 got a chance to talk to Rod Humble at the UCSC ‘Inventing the Future of Games’ Symposium.

At 4 minutes in the video Rod Humble talks about Second Life which is always good to hear. Here are my favourite quotes from the interview below.

• Rod says “I think what attracted me to Second Life is it was so unique”
• “The economy is entirely driven by the players”
• “Boy, that connected me”
• “They care awful lot about that”
• “I think that, to me it was this logical progression”
• “Second Life was right there already”

At 4 minutes and 57 seconds the interviewer asks a question about the debate about video games being considered art.

• Rod says “I think it’s over”
• “I made games that I created”
• “At this point you’re in a time machine business”
• “It’s time machine time”

At 6 minutes the interviewer asks about what advice would Rod give to someone who is new to games development.

• “I would say if you’re not a programmer then start with board games”
• “You can make a game this weekend”
• “It’s not hard”
• “It is a learned skill”
• “You don’t have to learn C++ to make a game anymore”
• “There’s tools out there like game maker, there’s dark basic, all these are very easy to use tools”
• “Then you’re off to the races”
• Rod says “I encourage everyone who likes games who thinks its interesting to do it and my hope is that there will be a bunch of ideas”

At the end of the video the interviewer asks Rod what one word he would give to sum up video games design. Rod says “Glorious” which is a great word to use I think.

• If you want to learn about making games and apps visit > http://www.design3.com/.

Two Grendel’s Children sims closed down

Yesterday I heard the shocking news that two of the four Grendel’s Children sims will be closing in Second Life. Today it appears those two sims that closed down have already been sold. The downsizing is due to a lack of support from Linden Lab which is sad to hear about. The good news is that Grendel’s Children will still remain on the grid.

Above: Snapshot of the Grendel’s Children inside and hovering in the sky. 

Grendel’s Children is one of my favourite places to buy fantastic high quality avatars and you have probably noticed that when you see me in world or via online SL snapshots. I enjoy changing my avatar appearance monthly because each avatar I wear has the WOW factor I think. When I visit Grendel’s Children I’m amazed at all the awesome creativity there is when browsing through the different ranges of avatars on the walls.

Above: Snapshot of the Grendel’s 4 regions with two appearing offline/closed

I first heard about Grendel’s during my transfer phrase back in December 2008 and I remember visiting Grendel’s during my first week on the main grid of Second Life. In 2009, 2010 and 2011 I have told new residents to visit Grendel’s for amazing avatars because it has a huge presence in Second Life. I have been to a few Show and Tell events which were fascinating and interesting to hear about how it was made.

I don’t know if you have but I have noticed a big increase of well known sims and landmarks disappear from Second Life this year which is very heart breaking and sad news.

View my snapshots of Grendel’s here

Metaverse Island closing until new theme builds are announced

UPDATE: Region is due to be wiped of old builds after 31st August 2011 and then the team will be working on new builds with a new theme etc on the island. Stay tuned!

Just found out that the well known Metaverse Island after 2 years in Second Life will be closing down for a while. Tomorrow (28th August 2011) is the last chance to look at the current builds before the builds are removed.

There will be a special beach party at 3pm SLT today located inworld here.

After two years the lovely build at Metaverse Island will be coming to a close. The island was built by renowned Second Life architect Lumiere Noir. Noir is most known for his work in creating the Ivory Tower of Primitives, and first stop for users in Second Life who are learning to build. For two years Metaverse TV and the Metaverse Tribune have called it home, but with the introduction of mesh and larger prim size limits we have decided we will rebuild with a new theme to be announced in the coming weeks.

To celebrate the builds closing there will be a beach party event held on Sunday August 28th, 2011 at 3PM SLT/PST (SLURL). Come celebrate and take one more look at this great build. The sim will remain open until August 31st at midnight.

Metaverse Island can be found on SL Destination Guide page here.

This architecturally impressive region is the home of Metaverse TV and Metaverse Tribune, which are online news and entertainment sources for virtual communities.

Inworld location information about Metaverse Island.

FREE scripted tvs for both v.2 and other viewers, live music, events, live tv programmes, hang out at the beautiful sim created by Lumiere Noir METAVERSE ISLAND

InWorldz Homes & Residences Exhibit 2011

Opening day is Wednesday 31st August 2011 for the upcoming InWorldz Homes & Residences Exhibit event. Viewing month is September 2011 and there will be 42 exhibits to see and find out more about. Sounds really interesting!

You can find the InWorldz Homes & Residences Exhibits by teleporting to the InWorldz Events A, B, C & D regions which are shown below.

Also

There is another exciting event coming up this weekend InWorldz which is the InWorldz Freebie Finders Birthday Bash 2011. There will be a special birthday party to celebrate it’s 1st birthday on Sunday 28th August 2011.

Woooot!

InWorldz registered accounts growth so far

Looking around on the InWorldz Forums and else where I managed to find some interesting registered accounts data. After I posted Wizard Gynoid kindly made a graph showing InWorldz Registrations from 2010 to 2011 from the dates below.

• “The first 1, 000 took almost a year.. the second 1, 000 just a bit over a month..”
• 2, 000 members – 14th May 2010 (growth chat)
• 5, 000 members – 20th June 2010
• 10, 000 members – 12th August 2010
• 20, 000 members – 21st October 2010
• 25, 000 members – 12th December 2010
• 30, 000 members – 1st February 2011
• 40, 000 members – 15th July 2011

Amazing growth I think for InWorldz so far and we can expect to see the 50, 000 member join later this year. Woooot!

3 big announcements during August 2011 by the InWorldz Founders

The InWorldz Founders have published a number of well written and thoughtful posts this month on the InWorldz Forums. It’s definitely worth reading these excellent reports about InWorldz.

• The Secret Sauce
• InWorldz Enables Growth
• State of the grid August 15th, 2011

I have always been impressed when I enter InWorldz because the mentors there are helpful and friendly. There have been many exciting events this year so far and it’s nice to spend time with friends on the grid of InWorldz. InWorldz seems to be getting bigger in size every month in terms of regions and residents which is good to be part of as a resident of InWorldz.

Bring back last names in SL update

On 19th July 2011 I blogged about a JIRA called Bring Back Last Name Options and since then there has been a huge SL community effort to try to get Linden Lab to bring it back. There’s been alot of feedback in comments in this JIRA, buzz on Plurk, Twitter and on SL resident blogs in the past month.

Current statistics

• Vote (1254)
• Watch (348)
• Status: In Review

The bad news still is that Linden Lab has not not responded to this yet after a month. It would be nice if a Linden at the lab could at least give the SL community a update about this.

Also check out SLJiraStats which aggregates statistics and data from the Second Life Jira site. Shows hot topics, hated bugs, wanted features, graphs and more.

Deleting my SL Google+ profile

This afternoon I had a rather shocking notice when I logged into my SL Google+ account. Sadly it seems Google found my SL Google+ profile today and issued a warning notice about being suspended on 27th August 2011 if I didn’t change my name. I joined Google+ back in early July 2011 and wanted to try something new out.

I made the decision to later on to delete my SL Google+ profile because I didn’t want to use my real name or send real photo ID to them etc. Another reason for deleting my SL G+ account today was due to the fact I don’t want to lose other Google services when suspended.

I may join at a later date on Google+ but overall I’m really disappointed that this happened today. But the problem about being invited and joining again in the near future is that I may be likely to be suspended again. Is it really worth investing time and effort into something that may be taken away later down the line?. I’m not sure! Google+ is evil until they drop the names policy!

In recent months there have been a number of SL resident profiles on Google+ that have either been suspended, deleted and reactivated. It’s completely out-of-order and really bad Google has this names policy in effect. The SL community has been kicked out of Google+ recently and everyone should think very carefully about joining/remaining with the Google+ project. Many will also know that Google+ has been suspending people with unusual names as well.

It’s been a sad day.

Third party viewers that support mesh now

Linden Lab announced the big news that Mesh is now gridwide and many are asking the question which third party viewers support mesh at the moment. These are exciting times!

From what I’ve been hearing it seems that Kirsten’s viewer is mesh enabled and all the other TPVs will support mesh in the near future.  According to the The Torch: SL Guide blog post it will take some time to update on other viewers.

Due to ownership outside LL of some graphical elements, they can’t release the source code to the third party viewer creators, that’s why all other viewers will take some time to update. It is said that Firestorm will be able to view meshes within a week and users of Firestorm will be able to upload meshes within a month, thou this is still in the rumor state.

According to Tateru Nino’s blog post about mesh on TPVs..

At present, support for mesh in third-party Second Life viewers is rather thin on the ground. Some are planning it, some are planning to avoid it. Also estate managers can apparently turn mesh support on or off for their regions.

I’m sure many are looking forward to TPVs finally being able to support mesh. It won’t be long hopefully and if you know more about mesh on TPVs then feel free to comment. Would love to know more! 🙂