On #1, wouldn’t the addition of meshes be a pretty a major new feature? It would certainly change the building experience, and eventually the look, of the world…

On Prokofy’s comments on Twinity: I tend to agree it will last out 2009, but I don’t see it becoming any less boring. On what measure is Germany the richest country per capita in the world, though? All the sources that I can find put it down around number twenty…

- announce the new Class 6 servers
- available only on the mainland at first, for the reduced price; later, Class 6 might be available
- auctions for whole sims start much lower, AND they include Estate Tools
- a new “move back to the mainland” programme where LL will forfeit the moving costs of getting all your sims connected to somewhere in the mainland (using the USS model: allow just one edge to be connected so that the community can expand)
- introduce a “mainland community programme”, where existing mainland rentals, specially the larger ones (one sim or more), can get a free “upgrade” to Estate Tools (of course, very fragmented sims won’t benefit from that “upgrade”)

That should get the ball rolling

Well, for 6., perhaps the problem is with the word “all” I mean, what is the percentage of US and UK universities already offering some educational options to their students (and usually this starts with post-docs and docs, not graduates)? I have heard some numbers like “over a third”. In my backwards country, all major cities (curiously, except for Lisbon…) have at least one university already doing that — although this is by far not a third, and most just offer a few courses. Still, “all” might be an exxageration… but I remember when Moodle started to be introduced in the universities, and these days it’s almost mandatory for every university out there…

7. True hehe. I don’t think we’re seeing any, either. Some existing ones under development will never leave beta testing, or will postpone the launch to 2010… if they manage to survive 2009.

8. By “massively” I’d say that at least half of what LL counts as “regular active users” will use a third-party viewer (note: I’ll be happy if it’s just 10% by the end of 2009, of course — it’ll still show a trend!)

9. A few more offices elsewhere in the world, a few more information (in-world) in more languages, a few more available Liasons and tech support, and a way to make sure that newbies drop on ‘welcome areas’ with the language of their choice (again, quoting wildly from memory, LL at one point claimed that 10% of all new users already came from “communities” — SL Brazil is the typical example, with 1 million registered members — and not from LL’s default login page. What is the percentage today?). At this stage, dealing with newbies on the help islands still faces the barrier of language — although we can usually get the appropriate Mentor easily enough, the newbie will still be surrounded by signs, boards, and people that don’t speak their language at all. So I see the push towards welcome areas done for each different language, and have these clearly labelled the moment someone views the http://secondlife.com site. Right now, the site is only available in 4 languages; it would make a huge difference to have at least a first page in several different languages, with just brief pointers to the “right” place to log in. Also, there is plenty of translated information everywhere on the SLogosphere, LL just needs to get permission to use it…

10. was the easiest prediction to make for 2009 I got it right all the other years — and this one won’t be different

1. Disagree, though I do think it will be limited.
2. Yeah, agree, especially with the big names behind it like IBM.
3. They’re already doing this. So, I don’t think this counts as a “prediction” unless you had some specific new ideas?
4. Disagree. There’s a lot of developers, yes. There’s *not* a lot of RELIABLE developers.
5. Good call! Agree. I think we’ll see a continued trend especially in education.
6. Whoa whoa. Experimenting is one thing, changing university policy, though, is another. That takes for-e-ver. Disagree. I’ll be happy if we see a couple of them offering it to any student.
7. Not a prediction – it’s already a reality. There’s a gajillion virtual worlds out there. Some have already come and gone, too *cough* Lively *cough*. However, VCs are hurting with the economy – they will stick with existing companies and shrink their new investments. I don’t think we’re going to see many more VW’s this year.
8. Interesting. Define “massively”, though. I think you’re on to something, though, then again, LL’s policy for distribution of the browser other than open-source is costly.
9. Not really more than a technicality, Gwyn. SL’s already multi-lingual. What more is there?
10. INDEED!

@Andabata, you’re right. Since LL abandoned the work on their in-world browser and further HTML-on-a-prim development (after the cute feature of being able to point anywhere on a prim — an important step to allow clicking on links — the last news I’ve heard was that LL was dropping Mozilla and trying WebKit instead), we have no clue what is going on.