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The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond
This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture. We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.
Linden Lab acquires OnRez, Xstreet. OnRez to close
Linden Lab has acquired the two largest Web-based commerce sites for Second Life. Electric Sheep Company's OnRez and Jay Geeseman's Xstreet were both acquired according to a Linden Lab announcement yesterday. Electric Sheep's OnRez (formerly called SL Boutique) seems to be the their last, lingering connection to Second Life and we don't expect that the OnRez system cost Linden Lab a whole lot, especially as Linden Lab is closing the doors of the OnRez service on Wednesday, 11 February.
Second Life fashionistas declare war on bling
We've all encountered obnoxious bling in Second Life. There's the girl who blinks from head to toe, or the guy whose dollar sign neck chain lights up the entire room. Then there's the girl on the right, whose entire face has been obscured by her Rudolph nose.Celebrity Trollop, of Second Style Fashionista, recently polled her readers to find out their stance on bling. At this time, 153 residents have participated, with 64% totally hating bling, 27% merely disliking it, 7% liking it, and 2% totally loving it. Comments on the post include expressed frustration at attempting to remove bling scripts and complaints about the Linden Lab-endorsed jewelry line, First Bling.In order to combat this epidemic, Celebrity has taken a freebie bling script, originally written by Lyra Walcott, and modified it to be more tolerable. By default, her script has bling set to off, and it is menu driven. She's offering it full permission on OnRez.
Optional update to OnRez Second Life Viewer
Metaverse developers, Electric Sheep Company have released an optional update to their custom Second Life viewer, the OnRez viewer, which was developed in conjunction with the recent CSI:NY launch in Second Life. The optional update has two minor ease-of-use tweaks, relating to voice calls and the integrated Web browser, plus a number of bug-fixes including (thankfully) adjustments to the color scheme for improved readability, and the ability to use the search system for two-letter region names. The OnRez Second Life viewer can be downloaded from the usual place.
