Hello? Akela? Moo?! Where did everybody go?!

*tries door*

Is anybody in there? HELLLOOOOO?? Come on guys, this isn't funny anymore! I'm cold and there are wolves after me!

This is like that episode of Star Trek where everybody kept disappearing and only Picard noticed it was happening because everybody else thought the missing people had never even existed in the first place. And that kept happening until Picard was the only one left and it turned out he was just trapped in some shrinking universe-type thing and when he himself disappeared he was back with his crew. That was massively cool.

*whistles to self*

Well. I don't think they're coming back. I guess I may as well go too.

Bye.

If Linden Lab couldn't find any evidence of wrongdoing at Wonderland, perhaps they need to hire some journalists to investigate incidents like this. It seems that most everyone else found something broadly offensive in the place, and well, the journalists apparently found the worst sort of offense in next to no time.

Linden Lab has apparently shut Wonderland down now - we don't know if they found evidence of wrongdoing themselves, or if it is a reflexive reaction to the mainstream media putting the story in front of about 150 million people so far.

I've been reading about the resident survey that Linden Lab has been randomly sending to Second Life residents via their client. I was surprised to find it on my screen the other day. It asked the question, "Is your Second Life experience getting better or worse?"

The brown noser in me immediately wanted to answer "better", but when I thought about it, it hasn't gotten any better. As you can see by my answer on the right, I chose the simple response that the grid seems to be buckling under the large amount of logins. I don't know if this is the real cause of the problems, but we've had more inventory loss, texture issues, and transfer problems than ever.

Did you receive the survey? How did you/would you answer? Leave a comment!

Following up on yesterday's post, here's a link to Daniel Terdiman's interview with the Video Game Venture Capital interview, in which he's asked ten (actually 11) questions about entrepreneurship in SL. Despite usage of the word 'disconnect' as a noun, there are things of value here to be had.

Again and again, Daniel emphasizes hard work, talent, commitment, and having a plan. This flies in the face of what I'm sure the uneducated believe about building a business in SL -- that it's about having a big brand and just showing up. In fact, we've seen that happen repeatedly, and this is social Darwinism in action. I can vouch for the fact that those who work in SL do work very hard to keep afloat, but this is balanced against the sheer love of the platform. Is it all worth it in the end? Those of you who have a business in SL, I'd love to hear your answers!

(Via VGVC)

As you'll know if you read my earlier posts, I use Barney Boomslang's Mac-port of the Nicholaz patch. (You may know that I also use the Release Candidates, at least when they're vaguely stable.) Barney was moved to comment on why he makes the effort to write open source material - and he has a long history of it. You might not agree with him: you might think he's stupid and giving his work away for free; you might think he's some kind of wicked communist; you might think he's a hero.

Personally, money isn't the be-all-and-end-all of my life. You can read some of my thoughts about the American drive for money and the English class system from an online class if you want. Obviously for open source coders money isn't the be-all-and-end-all either. I'd just like, again, to say a big THANK YOU to all the open source bug fixers for their work and efforts. Some of us, I'd like to think almost all of us, appreciate what you do. The world is a better place for it.

Kelly Services, a human resources employment resource, has opened its own island in SL, making it part of what seems to be a growing trend of such businesses attempting to shift around the way we think about seeking work.

I started to wonder, though: isn't part of the evaluation process how someone presents themselves, how they perform? Or is it all taken on faith after receiving an applicant's resumé? How much of this can be done virtually? I'm sure Kelly's a worldwide business, but is there an expectation of physical presence at some point? Do papers need to be signed? I've been extremely fortunate to have had a fairly steady job for the past few years, so I've not been keeping myself up-to-date on job seeking practices. Is this the new way?

(Via CNN)

Well, I lucked out a bit and peeked in on the state of the OnRez viewer about a minute after it went live. It takes about as long to download as the regular viewer (about a minute and a half) being similarly sized (not like LoTRO's 900MB update today).

First impressions? Nothing is where my fingers expect it to be, and my visible view of the world is a bit reduced. Second impressions? I rather like it. The location bar (and embedded browser) can be hidden or revealed at the touch of a button (though the much larger new Linden Dollar balance display remains onscreen at all times).

IEEE Spectrum has a piece available decrying the need, and even the desire for the concept of avatar portability -- the idea that it's possible to take your favorite avatar from one virtual world to another, and have it keep its attributes. They've enlisted a four-point set of reasons why this can't and shouldn't work. Their ideas are cogent, but do make a few assumptions.

"A company wants people to stick with the game that funds the company, not play games by other companies." Well, if you port your avatar to someone else's game, you ARE playing that game, with its associated fees. I'd think this would be a good way to experiment with a different platform, leavening the risk for those typically fearful of change.

"Games have different purposes, and thus different requirements of the art." Part of the point of developing portable avatars means that by the mere ability to enter a different space, they will already be equipped to deal with the rigors and strictures imposed by the game's mechanics. I'd imagine that IBM and LL are aware enough of the need for this that they'll work it into the standards.

More after the jump!

So, here's something to chew on. This article talks about how parents might not be aware exactly how expensive virtual world items can be, and how easy it is to just keep buying things. After all, it's not Real, is it?

But here's what opponents of the Age Verification service have been saying all along. Anyone can use a credit card, even if it doesn't belong to them. There's just no good way to verify that you are who you claim to be. What's needed instead? A random monitoring system? Someone to come along and ask generation-appropriate questions? "Who were the Mamas and the Papas? Who was Taft? Don't know? You must not be old enough." I'm just throwing it out there. That's obviously not a good method either, but at least it does require more than static information presentation.

How many teens do you think are on the Main Grid? How easy was it for them to get there? Is it time to collapse the Teen Grid yet?

(Via stuff.co.nz)

Over at Tech Digest, Stuart Dredge makes his case for 5 companies who ought to have virtual worlds of their own. It's an interesting list, and one could argue back and forth the benefits of any of the 5. Being a fanboy, I'll admit to being excited by the thought of a Nintendo space, and an Apple space.

In fact, the Apple thing could be its aborted 'eWorld' with a new lease on life. Nintendo could have a ton of different areas themed after any number of their more popular franchises: Mario, Metroid, Pokémon, Zelda, etc. Google is something I think everyone's curious about, and Microsoft is fearful of. The BBC has been interested in the whole virtual worlds topic for a while now, witness their various SL events. Nokia? Ehnh. Any companies we should add to this list? Send 'em in!

The other day I was in a class, and in the wrap up at the end I was asked to say what I thought the differences between working for an educational institution and a commercial one were in SL. It's a situation I'm fairly well positioned on, I've worked with a range of both types of organisations. One group I haven't worked with is the "city council" or similar who try to sell their city and build it anew.

I came up, at short notice with a few differences. I've had a think and refined them a bit, and thought I'd share them and ask for your input and thoughts. You never know, it might be a good tool for one group or the other to learn (I'd suggest commercial to learn from educational - education seems to be booming in SL, although there are some corporate good practise elements from the commercial end too).

1. Build type:
• Educators are more likely (say 50%+) to eschew a "corporate build" - the administration office block or similar. Of those that do have such a thing a high proportion are likely to subvert it somehow elsewhere in their build.
• Corporate types are much more likely to go for "the office block" - I'd say 95%. They clearly identify their office as their corporation.
2. Build nature
• Educators tend to focus on the results. That's both in terms of meeting the educational needs, and being relatively happy if nothing happens, nothing happens, then a finished build appears.
• Corporate types tend to want regular reports, plans, milestones etc.

So, they're my thoughts. What do you think? Just Askin'

Now, before you all start shouting at me, lemme 'splain what I mean. Two of the hallmarks of the Web 2.0 experience are Interconnectivity and Transparency. Interconnectivity in the sense that it's becoming increasingly possible to share information between online applications -- store photos on Flickr, share them with Tumblr, link to them with Pownce, etc.

Transparency is the ability to see, at a glance, what a connected user's life contains. You can see what music they listen to, read their opinions, know who they call friends. Think of the networking involved in MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Now, try to imagine SL with these concepts in place. I'd like to see which residents you and I have in common. I want to see your Snapzilla photos in a window in your profile. I'd love to stream my iTunes music directly into my avatar, not my land, for others to hear by simply subscribing to my stream. I need to be able to IM my friends from without SL. If people are going to keep touting SL as the 3D Internet, and LL isn't going to disabuse them of that notion, then these things need to be done. What will it take? What coding is required? Someone tell me I'm smoking hash just by thinking this is possible!

Many of you who have used the latest release candidate, 1.18.4(0) have probably noticed that the tooltip popup on the map that shows you the number of people in a sim/region.. well, doesn't actually show you the number. Instead it relentlessly reports zero for every sim except the one you are in, where it reports one (that's you).

How did this happen? Well, when you modify or refactor code, there's two important requirements. First, you have to know how to code. Second, you have to understand what is going on. Lacking the first is less dangerous. You can go safely stick pencils up your nose. Lacking the second, however, means you risk sticking pencils up everyone else's nose. This bug was relatively harmless, if irritating.

In a few days we're going to have people using the new OnRez Second Life viewer. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe a whole lot of people. The OnRez viewer differs from Linden Lab's version most obviously in that the user-interface has been completely reworked to make it easier and less overwhelming on new users.

That's got to be a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily. It brings some challenges of its own.

Oooookay. When I posted about this the last time, I was more than cautiously optimistic that maybe someone in the mainstream media would take SL seriously enough to do more than provide a backdrop of seedy sex and perversion. And this newest commercial for the upcoming episode of CSI: NY does still keep some of that feeling, but then in the latter half, turns it on its head.

Character creation has never been faster, according to this commercial. You can apparently do it all from the keyboard, too, from the sound of it. Whatever; that's all well and good. It's when they get to the gladiator arena that I begin to worry. "He's serious, Mac." Then, a shot of the SL expert character using some sort of gamepad, or input device to wage combat? Then a decapitation, Mac shouting "Log off! Now!", and the sound of my suspension of disbelief being smashed with a hammer. Well, at least it's different.

(Via youtube.com)