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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.
Linden Lab explanation alienates educators
When news broke about Linden Lab sending a takedown notice to the core Second Life education community Web-site, our colleagues over at the Metaverse Journal put a number of questions about the matter to Linden Lab. The Linden Lab response to those questions yesterday seems to have generated a reaction among educators akin to pouring gasoline on a blaze, coupled with a vigorous fish-slapping. While there's a undeniably a spectrum of reaction to the Lab's response, most of what we've seen seems to cluster around the livid end.
Updates to Second Life volunteer programs
Linden Lab has finally finished processing the results of the Second Life new mentor renewal program. Starting with approximately 3,700 mentors, roughly 1,700 went through the renewal process. This far exceeded Linden Lab's expectations for renewals, which were anticipated to only range from about 350 to a little under a thousand, based on observations of volunteer activity. The renewal process was officially advertised through the (admittedly unreliable) group notices system, in-world mentor meetings, and on the V-Team Web-site. Keeping up-to-date with one or more of these channels is now, apparently an ongoing requirement for group membership. Additionally many mentors and new-resident-support groups advertised the renewal program within groups and among friends, which appears to have led to the unexpectedly high renewal rate.
Inside The Lab podcast on education
The latest Inside Linden Lab podcast is out from Linden Lab (although this one is called Inside The Lab instead of the usual name -- perhaps an oversight). Unfortunately, the audio quality of this podcast is quite poor and it is difficult to listen to, and some of the speech feels as if it might have been cut a bit tightly together. This time around, the topic is education. If you're at all involved in education in Second Life there's not really anything that you won't have heard before, though there's some meat here if you're interested but haven't done your research. The participants this time around are Pathfinder Linden and Claudia Linden. Katt Linden sounds a little over-scripted, but this is her first time around - Catherine sounded a little awkward too on her first cast. The MP3 is 17.43MB and is hosted on Amazon's S3 service. Get it here.
