Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
InWorldz has been working on a new project recently called InWorldz InShape which is a new application that “reads data from the accelerometer on your smart phone to provide the InWorldz virtual world with data on your movements that let us connect your stationary walking, running, or biking in real life with your avatar”.
This sounds awesome for sure and it’s a good way to keep healthy regularly.
Watch the Demo Preview!
Today Linden Lab have published a new SL video showing many big improvements that the lab has introduced during 2013. The video runs for 57 seconds showing many new features and improvements. It’s a really good video for Second Life to highlight 2013 and everyone should watch this I think. I’m sure there will be more new features to come in late 2013 and next year in 2014. I guess we will have to wait and see.
(first 10 seconds)
(after 10 seconds to 56 seconds)
(40 seconds)
(44 seconds)
What SL improvements have you liked this year and what improvements do you want to see introduced in the near future ?
Today Linden Lab has announced SLShare on the official SL blog which is a brand new feature to share content with SL friends on Facebook. This may be a useful feature to have in the viewer instead of logging and sharing things directly from Facebook. SLShare is a “100% opt-in Viewer feature” to share updates, snapshots and check-in SL locations from in-world straight to the Facebook wall which sounds great. In the coming days/weeks this feature will be rolled out to all Second Life residents. Once it’s rolled out it comes with a opt-in feature with default privacy settings and a way of opting out again. This feature will be very similar to https://my.secondlife.com/ which has been very successful over the years.
Can I try this out now ?
SLShare isn’t yet available for everyone, but starting today, a certain percentage of users will begin to be able to access the feature, and we’ll soon rolling it out to everyone.
Check out the new video introduction by Torley Linden for more details…
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UPDATE: On the SL wiki release notes page there is now a download link to try out SLShare on v3.6.7 (281331).
Second Life Share Viewer
In this limited release viewer, we offer a 100% Opt-In way to share status updates, upload photos and check-in to locations in Second Life, to Facebook. Users access this feature via a new floater button found in “Me>>Toolbar Buttons…” called Facebook.
The new floater includes tabs to access the three features along with an “Account” tab to log in and/or connect SL to your Facebook account. You can access the Help page for this floater. For more information on the feature itself, read the Knowledge Base article.
Until this feature reaches the default Release viewer, users must be running this viewer for this feature to be used.
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My snapshots of the new SLShare feature today!
On the homepage of The Verge there is a new interesting article about Second Life written by Chris Stokel-Walker and so far there’s been 157 comments which ranges in views. Most are talking about the layout choices and how they don’t like SL. However the other half are positive and are supporting Second Life. The actual article looks at Second Life during the past ten years mentioning stats and the community that still exists today.
Here are the parts that I found interesting in the article ..
You might not have heard a peep about it since the halcyon days of 2006, but that doesn’t mean Second Life has gone away. Far from it: this past June it celebrated its 10th birthday, and it is still a strong community. A million active users still log on and inhabit the world every month, and 13,000 newbies drop into the community every day to see what Second Life is about. I was one of them, and I found out that just because Second Life is no longer under the glare of the media’s spotlight, it doesn’t mean the culture inside the petri dish isn’t still growing.
In Linden Lab’s vast experiment, the end has no end
When mainstream media outlets touched down in Second Life seven years ago they tended to focus on the strangeness of it all. People were having sex through a game and dressing up as foxes and kittens. The reality, says Tom Boellstorff, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, is more prosaic: “Humans already live many different kinds of life: online is just one more of those kinds of lives.”
“You can do anything in Second Life,” Boellstorff continues, his voice rising in a lilt. “You can do crazy stuff. You can be a ball of light or you can be 500 feet tall, or you can be a child, or a dog, or whatever.”
“We thought of Second Life as complementing your first life,” Hunter Walk, one of the original Linden Lab team members working on the universe from its launch, tells me. It was conceived as a space that gave you a set of choices that were missing from reality. “In your first life you don’t necessarily get to fly. Here you can fly. In your first life you can’t choose what you look like. Here you can choose what you look like — and it’s malleable.”
People come to the Second Life universe for different reasons: some go there to escape their reality and to stretch the boundaries of their lives in ways forbidden by the constraints of their bodies or the norms of society. Some go to meet friends and family; there are some who want to create buildings, paintings, and whole new worlds. And some — big companies and small entrepreneurs — hope to make a living.
Second Life has survived its first 10 years, but every society rises and — inevitably — falls. So what of Linden Lab’s creation? Will people still be living Second Lives in 2023?
What are your views on this article and do you think Second Life will be still online in ten years time ?
Drax recently shared The Drax Files: Episode 11 featuring Dwarfins which is absolutely brilliant and very cute. The episode runs for five minutes and I have to admit that I don’t know either about them so it was good to learn something different in Second Life. Every month Drax creates exciting different ideas for his Drax Files series. It’s really worth subscribing to The Drax Files channel because it’s genius.
Watch The Drax Files: Episode 11 below
Watch previous episodes (1-10) of The Drax Files here. One thing that I would love for Drax to produce is machinimas from OpenSim grids which I’m sure would be a good thing to do. In the mean time I really do love the new episodes of this current season. 😀
WordPress has notified me today that my SL blog has been liked 1, 000 times and I would like to say thanks so much for your support. Woooot!!!
Milestones so far:
Hopefully more new records to come in the near future. Please continue to Like my blog posts and spread the word. Thanks! 🙂
Special thanks to Gentle Heron today on sending out the IDRAC 2013 panel participants list notecard and its great to be one of the first to receive a copy. For those that don’t know there will be big conference called International Disability Rights Affirmation happening on 27th/28th September 2013 on Virtual Ability Island at the The Sojourner Auditorium. The theme is “Let Me In” which sounds good and this year there will be international presenters speaking at the annual conference.
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International Panel #1- FRI Sept 27, 5:30pm SLT
Moderator- Svea Morane (US)
Panelist from Brazil- Roth Grut
Panelist from Ecuador- Losairam
Panelist from Denmark- Jens Nerido
International Panel #2- SAT Sept 28, 7am SLT
Moderator- Tom Bukowski (US)
Panelist from Germany- Letty Pienaar
Panelist from Portugal- Winter Wardhani
Panelist from Australia- JayJay Zifanwe
International Panel #3- SAT Sept 28, 1pm SLT
Moderator- Blu Heron (US)
Panelist from Italy- Slatan Dryke
Panelist from Greece- Libido Siemens
Panelist from Egypt- jihan wonder
International Panel #4- SAT Sept 28, 5:30pm SLT
Moderator- Kopilo Hallard (Australia)
Panelist from Canada- LifeSkillsWorker
Panelist from Malaysia- Loquacia Loon
Panelist from Japan- Kiremimi Tigerpaw
Panelist from United States- Zsuzsa Tomsen
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Read the latest press release for the upcoming International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference 2013
The time for Virtual Ability’s annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference is upon us once again. This year the theme is “Let Me In” and the dates are Friday and Saturday, the 27th and 28th of September on Virtual Ability Island.
We are so excited! We invite you to attend the conference if you can, and tell your friends about it – bring them along!
The slate of presenters is broad and varied. We’ll have:
– Panels talking about disability rights around the world
– A keynote address about how young children with disabilities can learn through play
– Another keynote presentation about the World Report on Disability
– A discussion about making buildings more accessible
– Empowerment medicine
– Autism in India
– Reproductive health literacy in Ghana
– Emergency preparedness
– And morePresenters hail from places as diverse as Germany, South Africa and the Netherlands. Panelists come from places as widespread as Brazil, Italy, Japan, Ecuador, and Denmark.
You can find more information about the conference, the speakers and the schedule on Virtual Ability’s website at http://www.virtualability.org and the blog at http://blog.virtualability.org.
Join us on the 27th and 28th as we celebrate successes, identify issues and re-affirm the rights of people with disabilities across the world.
International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference (IDRAC)
September 27 & 28, 2013
The Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island
Earlier this month OSCC13 took place and the Pixie Viewer team did a presentation about the Pixie Viewer which is web browser-based for virtual 3D environments including OpenSim. I signed up to Pixie Viewer on 19th March 2013 and then I blogged about version 2.0.0 on 3rd April 2013 with a revamped user interface. On the Pixie Viewer blog there is presentation slides and a mp4 video worth checking out. In the PDF I managed to find some interesting stats worth pointing out.
Pixie Viewer Timeline..
Pixie Viewer release plans…
At the moment the Pixie Viewer is in the commercial phrase (May 2013 to December 2013) and it’s due to go into the public phrase sometime between December 2013 to May 2014 which should be very interesting. I’m sure once it goes public then there will be more interest in the Pixie Viewer. I would love to see more developments in the user interface and in-world experience. There is potential for the Pixie Viewer and hopefully next year it will be very successful indeed.
Ilan Tochner who is the CEO founder of Kitely announced a major revamp of the Kitely Welcome Center on the Kitely official blog and today I have managed to visit the new look welcome island. Last time I visited it was named Kitely Plaza which looked good but apparently there were problems that couldn’t be resolved. The Kitely Mentors group worked for many weeks on replacing it with the Kitely Welcome Center which went live this month. It’s amazing and soon there will be events taking place which should increase visitor numbers.
This is just phase 1 of a big project happening now and there are new upcoming developments are in the pipeline for the Kitely new user experience. 🙂
The new Kitely Welcome Center looks wonderful and the layout/landscape is very welcoming with updated Kitely information areas to visit. I’m sure it’s going to make a good first impression for new users joining Kitely in the long run and I’m sure this time the new Kitely Welcome Center will be very successful in the years ahead with new developments. My snapshots taken today of the new Kitely Welcome Center:
New welcoming layout…
New Kitely Mentors meeting area…
New Kitely useful information areas…
Hall of Kitely Merchants area…
Kitely Worlds showcase area…
Visit the new Kitely Welcome Center and comment below on your first impressions?
hop://osgrid.kitely.com:8002/Kitely Welcome Center/55/112/24
A big milestone was reached earlier this month which was the 6th anniversary of Metaverse Week In Review. Every sunday for the past six years at midday the show went on air to the metaverse hosted by Malburns Writer and Tara Yeats which is just an incredible amount of time. I watch the show on a weekly basis on sundays evenings in the UK (12pm SLT) and sometimes the repeats in the first part of the week to catch up on SL news.
It’s one of the longest SL live shows and one of the most interesting shows out there for Second Life news. I highly recommend anyone interested in the metaverse to watch the weekly sunday show. The first broadcast was aired on 12th September 2007 which was presented live through Operator 11 and today it’s streamed though livestream.
Happy 6th Birthday and lets hope the 7th year will be amazing.
Daniel Voyager 