Hypergrid 1.5: Building the Metaverse, one grid at a time
Linden Lab has announced at the SLCC their continuing support of the open source efforts: the launch of Snowstorm, the project for a new viewer (based on the Snowglobe 2.X codebase) which will get Lindens and third-party volunteer developers working much, much closer together to develop what Philip Linden hopes to be the ultimate viewer, or, as he says these days, “to bring Linden Lab back to the lead in…
Linden Lab turns residential; OpenSim embraces business and education
I’ve just read Prokofy Neva’s very insightful post on the official end of Second Life Enterprise — both as a product, as a division of Linden Lab, and, well, as being part of LL’s vision. Prok was very straightforward and asked the question to Philip directly: has SLE been dropped? The answer was “yes”. So of course we already knew that Linden Lab is turning back to where their core…
Self-entertainment and the end of newbies
Sometimes, discussions after the Thinkers meetings prove to be even more interesting than the meeting itself (sorry, Extie! ) — mostly because the group tends to become very small and we can throw around a few wild ideas to see if they stick One of those is something that has bothered me for several years. You might remember that one of the major strategies for M Linden was how to…
Good-bye, meshes!
Well, with the untimely firing of Qarl Linden, following in the steps of Pastrami Linden, it seems that Philip didn’t really mean that meshes would “merely” be postponed. They seemed now to be completely gone from the drawing board and its existence at the ‘Lab relegated to merely another one of the hundreds of failed and/or incomplete projects. Worse than that, it seems that the only person at LL with…
What have you achieved??
I found it rather amusing that Hamlet Au, a.k.a. Wagner James Au in RL, did generate a lot of fuss with his proposed achievements system for Second Life, published first at Social Times and later on New World Notes. While some of his other suggestions are mostly fine (“better text chat” will definitely be an improvement worth developing, specially when Philip sort of promised to remove it from the sim…
Fast, Easy & Fun!
Search for “Fast Easy Fun Second Life” in Google, and you get two million results. By now, it’s quite hard to believe that anyone vaguely familiar with Second Life hasn’t heard the new motto, launched by Philip Linden during his Town Hall meeting last Friday (July 30, 2010). If you missed all the fun, you can still watch the archived video stream from Treet.TV. If, like me, you’re too lazy…
Town Hall Wishlist!
As promised, Philip Linden is holding his first Town Hall meeting after coming back as interim CEO. While I personally subscribe to the mainstream opinion that this is going to be mostly the announcement that Bob Komin (aka BK Linden) is going to replace Philip as the new CEO — if not this Friday, possibly in the near future. In the mean time, while Philip is temporarily at the helm,…
On the multi-cultural environment of Second Life
I wrote a short article on meta-culture and the multi-cultural environment in SL for a new blog/magazine for Portuguese speakers called “Convergences Magazine”. It’s an intriguing project by Gper Aeon and Gabriela Pinelli, mixing art, culture, and philosophy about and around Second Life. If you’re fine in reading Portuguese, or don’t mind the awkward translations provided by Google Translate, you’re welcome to take a peek at it If there is…
Some thoughts on the first-hour experience, on the Herald
It’s been ages since I wrote anything for the Alphaville Herald, but Pixeleen Mistral has been pestering me (in the good sense of the word!) to write an Op/Ed article related to the latest changes at Linden Lab and what we can hope to expect from them. Well, I was a bit devious and did not write exactly what Pixeleen had in mind But you’re welcome to add some comments…
King of Spades Out, Ace of Hearts In
Wow, what a ride! The Second Life Birthday events are usually full of drama (mostly regarding of what constitutes “art”, and bickering among the organisation managers, usually a mix of residents and Lindens… and where the Lindens, close to the end, sometimes have to kick the residents out and do whatever they need to do to get it rolling). This time, however, it was a box full of surprises. When…
[Reset] and do a 180º turn
Today, Linden Lab turned another page on the history book for virtual worlds and entered another chapter… or, to be more precise, they turned a page back. Which is surprising. Linden Lab normally doesn’t do that. So, what happened? First of all, I feel terribly sorry about the long list of Lindens that lost their jobs. Some of them have been around for eons and were good friends. Some, which…
ALT! Who goes there? – Part 5 – An essay by Extropia DaSilva
Now Extropia DaSilva has her own blog! This essay is republished with kind permission of Extie — Gwyn Remember that moment in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, when the bears are heading for home while Goldilocks is sleeping in baby bear’s bed? Small children find her behaviour rather strange, and an experiment involving a tube of sweets can help explain why. In this experiment, a child is offered a tube…
Transcendence through Second Life
While I’m burning eyelashes on my other computer, swallowed by much-delayed work, I came up with the idea of writing about a topic which you will find, well, unusual. If it makes you smile and laugh, I’ll be happy If it makes you think a bit, because in my usually light tone, I touched something quite profound, well, I’ll be even more happier, of course. Around mid-2004, when I first…
Loading ...
