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Second Life website, some services down
The Second Life website this-morning is directing people to the status page (which cheerfully announces that 'Second Life is open!'). This is causing people problems with Lindex currency transactions, accessing account data, and so on. The failure apparently began at 2:50AM SLT (US Pacific). No word from Linden Lab at this stage(though the Linden blog and application logins seem to be fine). [Update: 6:15AM SLT - The website has been restored and related services are working properly again according to the reports we're getting. No word from Linden Lab about the glitch] [Update: 7:00AM SLT - Linden Lab acknowledged the website problems and reports that they have been fixed. Also that there was yet another networking failure between the colocation facilities. Whatever is up with the networks, lately, it's not good]
Linden Lab readdressing servers
Linden Lab have been restarting Second Life servers all day. Well, since about 1pm, at any rate. Suddenly, with not really any notice, all these servers need new IP-addresses. Linden Lab's operations team is working on assigning the new addresses and restarting the servers. The very first thing that comes to mind is 'new network provider' - and given the network related problems in the last couple of weeks it's certainly not implausible. Linden Lab has told us that they have more than one interconnect provider - but a renumbering seems to change the overall cosmic scheme of things. [Update: 10:00PM SLT: Linden Lab posts from the future (10:40PM) to tell us that the process has run into some snags and is still being worked on] [Update: 4:40AM SLT: Linden Lab reports that the task is complete]
Cinemassively: Frogg Marlowe and Jaycatt Nico in concert
There's something to be said about being plucked from obscurity and ending up on MTV, which is exactly what happened to Frogg Marlowe. ONTOHOLLYWOOD recently blogged about forgetting YouTube and becoming famous in Second Life. They mention how Frogg, aka Jeremy Works, wasn't able to get gigs in real life, but plays to sold out crowds in SL.In this Machinima, by Code Tracer, we see Frogg, and Jaycatt Nico, performing live. You can see that the audience is pretty populated and there's even a mouse cat playing the piano! Couples are dancing, amphibian feet are tapping, and it's all in a virtual world! If you haven't checked out the live music scene in SL, it's a must-see.[Via ONTOHOLLYWOOD]
Strange goings on in the Second Life grid
Throughout Thursday, Second Life users report that the whole grid was acting a little oddly - and the statistics we have bear that out. Starting just after midnight, however, something else odd started to happen. From about 12:30 PM SLT (US Pacific) group and profile information began to load inconsistently along with other "random but inconsistent phenomena". It's nothing people can put their finger on, specifically, but given the day's concurrency curves, it's obviously having a significant impact on Second Life users.
Leatherwood misses response deadlines. Likely win for Eros LLC
Texan teen, Robert Leatherwood, who is being sued by Eros LLC as being behind the avatar Volkov Cattaneo, has failed to respond to papers served to him last month. Eros LLC's attorney, Frank Taney is petitioning the court for a default verdict. In many cases, if you fail to respond or appear, you lose. The default judgement would run at a bit over two thousand US dollars, plus costs. If you're wondering what all this is about, allow me to sum it up.
Linden Lab publishes viewer frame-rates
Linden Lab have been collecting data on Second Life viewer frame-rates and have compiled them into a handy little chart - Okay, so it's a handy big chart. The chart shows the 100 most widely used GPUs, approximate frame rate ranges and medians. Of course some of this data will vary a little. People with more capable hardware tend to crank up the settings until things start to visibly slow down, so we expect the higher-end hardware to show a bit lower as people flip on a lot of extra rendering options and crank up their draw-distances.
Cinemassively: Windlight - Binary Beauty
This one is for all the Second Lifers out there. Linden Lab made an announcement on their blog yesterday that they opened up their Windlight First Look client to the public. Some of the newer additions to the client include water reflection and avatar imposters.Torley Linden has been releasing teaser pictures and videos of Windlight for months. Some content companies and Machinimists have also made videos. However, nothing even comes close to Torley's brilliant displays of color and light, melding together with objects and water. Take a look for yourself and then download the client!
Guide Hawk, and intellectual property - Linden Lab responds, sort of
After Aimee's post on the actions of Guide Hawk (or guidehawk_ltd) with respect to using resident's imagery to promote his guide book, I asked Linden Lab about Guide Hawk's claim that he paid and has authorization from Linden Lab for use of the material and their name for promotion of his auctions. Linden Lab's response was - well, they declined to answer the question.
The Linden dollar - every bit as fake as the US dollar
Caleb Booker (better known as Onder Skall) reports on this week's Metanomics session in Second Life. For those of you who came in late, Metanomics (sponsored by our friends over at Metaversed.com) seeks to study how economies work (or sometimes don't work) in virtual worlds and MMOs, how they develop and how people interact with them. A virtual world economy is a capsule microcosm full of lessons about real economies.
Second Life, short notice planned maintenance tomorrow
Rheya Linden reports that Second Life will be undergoing some short-notice scheduled maintenance for an unspecified period tomorrow morning, Thursday 15 November starting at 7AM (US Pacific). The work being undertaken isn't specified but it is very likely related to the recent network problems. Linden Lab does not expect Second Life to go offline during the maintenance maintenance, just a general degrading of performance during the work.
Second Life login failure
At 3:50AM SLT (US Pacific) with 31,509 users online something serious went wrong with Second Life's backbone or web-services. Statistical data feeds ceased functioning and the login servers stopped responding to requests entirely. At present the cause is unknown and there is no word from Linden Lab about the problems. [Update: 4:05AM SLT - Statistical feeds have started reporting again. Apparently approximately 20,000 users were disconnected.] [Update: 4:15AM SLT - Linden Lab has acknowledged the problem] [Update: 4:40AM SLT - Logins are now functioning again] [Update: 4:50AM SLT - That was very short-lived. Apparently they've gone off again] [Update: 5:25AM SLT - Service has been restored. Linden Lab has identified the problem as a network failure]
New search reveals new Second Life web-services
Linden Lab have unveiled their new search with the availability of the first 1.18.5 release candidate. The search system doesn't appear to have a form where you can just browse away on the Web without getting into Second Life, so I've made one for you that you can use to check it out if you can't get inworld right now. The new search system exposes a number of web-services where you can examine groups, sims, parcels, textures and more.
New Second Life release candidate 1.18.5
Linden Lab have just released a new release candidate view for Second Life, the first in the 1.18.5 series. This one primarily incorporates the new search system, about which you'll be hearing plenty more shortly. This release fixes Korean language support issues under Leopard, some appearance editing problems, fixes for lag-calculations outside the USA, and the source bundle has some assorted build fixes. The viewer is available from the optional downloads page as usual, and we recommend the use of a download manager to grab it faster - without one, you're in for a bit of a wait.
Linden Lab: China makes sense
RedlineChina is reporting the opening of a Linden Lab office in Beijing. We contacted Linden Lab who did not specifically confirm or deny a Chinese office, though they admitted that "[I]t makes sense for us to consider a potential presence in China, along with other markets where there is a high broadband penetration and active Internet user base." "While there's nothing more we can confirm at the moment, we'll be sure to update on those plans in due course," said Linden Lab today, in response to our inquiries. It implies that there is something planned or something going on that they're not quite ready to talk about - sort of a no-comment, with icing.
Joshua Linden's post-1.18.5 server deployment post-mortem
Joshua Linden of Linden Lab has posted a comprehensive post-mortem of the issues involving the 1.18.5 server release on the Second Life grid. Yes, the viewer itself is only up to version 1.18.4. A previous effort called 'Message Liberation' has provided the first steps in allowing different server and viewer versions to coexist with each-other. For those people who've ever managed or been involved with large-scale grid deployments, you'll probably sit back and chuckle ruefully, having experienced similar things first-hand yourself, or even accidentally caused them.
Dazzle preview updated
Dazzle (the Linden Lab project for updating the appearance of the Second Life viewer, and not the fashion brand) just got a fresh update, minutes ago. Benjamin Linden has just announced that fresh preview files are now available, and that they are looking for additional feedback on the proposed changes in progress. A description of the project, links to the preview files and so forth can be found on the Second Life wiki, along with a space for feedback on the visual update.
Object pricing showstopper
In the last few days, Second Life JIRA issue SVC-930 has attracted more and more attention. Linden Lab now calls it a showstopper - which pretty much means that nothing else that interferes with correcting it should be taking place. First noted late on Thursday night after Thursday's rolling restart the bug relates to how objects are taken into inventory, and how they are re-rezzed in-world.
Metanomics discussion with David Karsbol
On Monday, 12 November at 11AM SLT (US Pacific), Professor Robert J Bloomfield, JGSM, director of the Business Simulation Lab at Cornell's prestigious Johnson Business School will be speaking with David Karsbol macroeconomics expert, and Market Strategist for Saxo Bank, as part of a post-analysis of the session with Linden Lab's Gene Yoon, earlier this week. Saxo Bank are a progressive investment bank, specializing in online trading, founded in Denmark in 1992 and have an evolving presence in Second Life. With his strong background in macroeconomics and metals pricing you can expect Karsbol to have quite the contrasting opinion of the metaverse economy from Yoon.
Postcards from the future
A second round of network issues today in Second Life is announced with a blog post that is (once again) timestamped in the future. Forget the network problems between the Dallas and San Francisco colocation facilities. Forget that it's taken some simulators offline. Forget that about 10,000 people have been knocked offline. It's timestamped in the future! Is it possible for them to post Lotto numbers or something? [UPDATE: 6:50PM SLT - All in all, approximately 28,000 users were knocked off (or disconnected from) the Second Life grid during the network difficulties. Linden Lab now reports the issue as being resolved, and the numbers we are seeing from the live feeds reflect that.]
Intellectual property: If it's not nailed down ...
A person who operates under the name Guide Hawk or guidehawk_ltd has been marketing Second Life related goods on eBay by using an array of images taken from other users. But here's the kicker ... he has watermarked these images and defends them as his own! Some examples include Khamindie by Arahan Claveau and an image by Lena Kennedy. Not the least of this person's victims is Linden Lab itself, whose trademark logo is used to promote the products without the "No infringement is intended" notice required of any website or blog that uses the logo which might cause brand confusion. A simple misunderstanding? Well Lena Kennedy contacted Guide Hawk and by his response it would seem Guide is sticking to his guns. Here is what he had to say:
