OpenSim
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Apple's carrier ranking patent application hints at global iPhone
Apple may be hard at work creating the one phone to rule them all (around the world), if this latest patent application is any indication. The filing, first submitted in April of last year, describes a software-based method of determining carrier rankings, allowing owners to browse through a database of network-specific features, such as voice and data, to determine their best fit and sign-up for service. Ideally, this future iPhone set-up would come courtesy of a truly global phone, packing all the necessary radios and software to surf along the globe's wireless frequencies sans extra SIM cards. Rumors of an open handset have been circling Cupertino for a bit, much to the dismay of operators who fear the move would diminish their function as the industry's gatekeeper, shifting power to consumers. Certainly, Jobs and co. have a high hurdle to overcome if this purported world phone is to ever become a reality. In the meantime, why not just snag an unlocked device? [Thanks, Neil]
The Virtual Whirl: The secret sauce
Virtual environments evince a significant lack of mainstream adoption. Relatively tiny percentages of the world population are involved in them in any way online. There's something clearly missing. At the present time, virtual environments simply lack any compelling reason to exist that motivates mainstream users and might drive mainstream adoption. There's no killer app, or secret sauce that gets large numbers of people thinking "I want to get me some of that!"
The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis
A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do. With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses. The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"
The Virtual Whirl: News of the Whirl
This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're having our monthly roundup of news items. Things that got missed, things that didn't make the cut, things that got buried, and things that really should have gotten your attention anyway.
Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon
Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it's been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we've got a lot of ground to cover.
Rezzable moves on from Second Life
Rezzable Productions, developers and maintainers of a set of among the most successful public art and entertainment areas in Second Life have announced that after months of planning, they're shutting down their Second Life operations this month and moving their operations to Heritage Key. Heritage Key brings history to life on Rezzable's own OpenSim-derived installation, and custom viewer. It's all Second Life-derived tech, but that's what Rezzable knows best.
Over 100 Opensim regions wiped in weekend virtualization exploit
Hypergrid Business is reporting that an unknown person or persons destroyed a large number of OpenSim regions over the weekend, by exploiting a weakness in LxLabs' Linux-based HyperVM management software. OpenSim is a popular third-party reverse-engineered implementation of Linden Lab's Second Life server software used in a variety of commercial, non-commercial and educational virtual-environment grids. More than 100 regions are reported lost, along with any data that wasn't backed up off-site. Apparently more than just the simulators were taken down, Web-pages and other ancillary data and files on the affected servers were also lost in the attack. OpenSim regions using virtualization software other than LxLabs' HyperVM were unaffected. The attack hit more than just third-party Second Life compatible grids, however, as more than 100,000 other websites and servers were wiped over the weekend using the software exploit. In the wake of the attacks and massive data-loss, LxLabs' founder, K T Ligesh (32) allegedly committed suicide in his Bangalore home on Monday. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Second Life sparkles on the iPhone
Tokyo startup Genkii has released a new text communication app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, called Sparkle IM that allows messaging with Second Life (and opensim style) virtual environments. Essentially the application appears to be a lightweight viewer application not unlike SLeek (currently on hold, development-wise), AjaxLife, and similar, in that it essentially logs your avatar in, and gives you a non-graphical interface to communicate with others. Genkii are also working on a lightweight graphical 3D environment for the iPhone, also part of the Sparkle umbrella brand, called (rather simply) Sparkle 3D, that may in future be integrated with other virtual environments. Sparkle IM is priced variously, depending on where you are, but at about 4-5 dollars (for the special, introductory price) might be a little expensive compared to many of your existing apps. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Second Life alternative Litesim shuts down
Well, out of the boost that various third-party opensim grids appear to have had since Linden Lab's announced Second Life void simulator pricing and specification changes, you'd expect them all to be doing well. Not apparently so with Litesim, a UK-based grid that launched earlier this year. On Wednesday 10 December, Litesim unexpectedly shuttered its operation. It is not presently known whether this is due to financial difficulties, to poor publicity associated with the infamous Lalinda Lovell (the focus of two Sky News 'Wonderland' artificial child sex scandals) who promoted Litesim in Second Life, or the result of unsubstantiated rumors of UK police investigations into activities on the Litesim grid. Just prior to the shutdown Litesim's CEO Gareth Nelson hinted at a possible future relaunch, but has been otherwise unreachable for comment. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Linden Lab creates Blake Sea to satisfy sailors
Up until recently, because of the new pricing and terms on void simulator packages in Second Life, the USS (United Sailing Sims), a collection of sailing groups that hold a large amount of Second Life territory were planning to ... well ... "jump ship" as some of them put it, and move their operations out of Linden Lab's virtual world. Linden Lab has now announced the creation of a set of ocean sims (called the Blake Sea), connected to the mainland, and cost-free relocation for the rather large number of USS simulators to connect to that. Several USS members (who declined to be named) made us aware of the impending announcement two weeks ago, telling us that Linden Lab were going to make these changes in order to prevent the combined groups from defecting to alternatives such as opensim. Linden Lab has not responded to inquiries about the matter. A number of people consider it rank favoritism. Perhaps it is -- but is it important if it is or not?
The spirit of 1776: Second Life's second revolution?
Second Life users are already calling it Second Life's second revolution. Outside of Linden Lab's in-world Land Team offices, capacity crowds of users have been gathered through much of the day, though there's been nary a Linden Lab staffer in sight. People are cursing, newcomers are asking for protest signs, and there's angry chatter in over a dozen languages. There are a lot of Europeans here, which is not unexpected. They have to pay VAT on top of any additional costs. There is talk about switching the signs and banners for flaming torches and pitchforks, because, if nothing else Second Life users find value in tradition. There are even discussions about picketing Linden Lab's Battery Street office in San Francisco. All of this started yesterday at 6PM SLT (US Pacific time) when Jack Linden, head of Linden Lab's land team, announced a price-rise to void simulators (known to Linden Lab as Openspace sims). The reaction since then has been ... robust.
Peering Inside: Disconnected advantages
It seems likely that inter-grid teleportation will become a commonly-available and trivially-usable feature within the next twelve months. While there are efforts underway to establish and implement underlying supporting protocols, it really doesn't much matter if those efforts go ahead or not. Functional inter-grid teleportation can be implemented solely in the Second Life viewer with or without the cooperation of the servers -- if not by Linden Lab, then by a third-party. That makes the lingering promise of a broad range of other relatively ubiquitous virtual environments seem tantalizingly within reach. While Opensimulator currently offers hobby-level performance rather than the sort of heavy-duty production-level performance that many are looking for, the ability of Opensimulator to handle server-side tasks is still not to be lightly dismissed. Simple to set up and configure, and modest on hardware requirements, anyone capable of installing and configuring a simple network would be skilled and knowledgeable enough to install the software and set up a simulator or two or twelve. Even Microsoft is jumping on that bandwagon, working on integrating a number of features that don't necessarily advantage the platform. Whether we're talking integrated grids, or micro-grids (groups of simulators running as a standalone group), Linden Lab believes that the basic limitations of transport to external grids (no connection to Second Life assets or inventory, and no connection to the Linden Dollar) will keep 99% or more users on the Second Life grid. It seems quite possible that somewhere among future business models, Linden Lab is planning to monetize interconnection fees, to bring third-party simulators within the main-grid fold under the Linden Dollar and the provenance of main grid asset and inventory servers. However, for many users, communities and organizations the disconnection from that currency and those services is an attractive advantage, and we believe that the number of users and organizations who might partially or wholly migrate from the main Second Life grid may be much, much larger.
RealXtend 0.3 released
The RealXtend team has released the latest version of their extended, viewer and opensim-based system code. This brings realXtend up to version 0.3. The viewer sports new basic avatars (three), attachments direct to the avatar (rather than to a bone-based attachment point), prim sizes increased to 128 metres in any dimension, fixed assorted crash bugs and more. The server code handles the support for these features, along with a bunch of bug-fixes, Skype support, inverse kinematics and variable avatar walk-speeds.
Historic teleportation: One small step for Ruth
According to Zha Ewry, at 11AM SLT (US Pacific time), Zha Ewry, Layla Linden and Tess Linden completed a successful cross domain teleport from the Second Life Aditi (preview) grid to an OpenSim simulator, essentially a teleport of the agents from one virtual world to another, and the first demonstrable step in cross-virtual-world interoperability. No avatars or assets were transferred, so everyone arrived as Ruth (the generic, default avatar). Only the agents made the cross-grid jump as there is no current support for transferring anything else, but this is a huge step forward in the Agent Domain login prototypes. In a sense, it's the virtual world equivalent of the first Moon landing.
RealXtend releases updated software
Barely a fortnight after their initial version 0.1 software, Finnish developer RealXtend (in conjunction with OpenSim, Admino Technologies and LudoCraft - I think we might have to just start calling it the 'RealXtend Project' in future to save on typing) has released the next version of their software. An avatar portability system that allows your avatar to be transferred to any compatible world where you have an account is definitely a handy feature now that additional Second Life style grids are starting to spring up all over. "We have been testing and fixing bugs as much as possible and we have a few new major features. One of the new features is the Avatar system, under RealXtend your avatar has been completely redesigned to support transfer between virtual worlds. Earlier avatar systems used by other virtual worlds have been tied to one world or grid only and could not travel with the user," said RealXtend project manager Jani Pirkola. RealXtend's viewer is licensed under the GNU GPLv2 (sans quicktime components), and all the server-side code as a part of OpenSim is under the BSD license, which is a very broadly permissive open source license.
