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Second Life 2.0 goes live today
As we previously predicted, the Second Life 2.0 viewer is going live today, meeting the originally slated release target of Q1 2010, if only by a few hours. The 2.0 viewer has been in public beta since 23 February. In addition to the new viewer, its rearranged user-interface, slate color scheme and slick Shared Media implementation, today sees the launch of two new Orientation experiences and a selection of new starter avatars to select from (we wonder if any of them are blue).
A red-letter day for Second Life, Second Life 2.0 viewer and more
Over about the last 60-90 minutes, Tom Hale's been delivering a keynote at the SL Pro! conference held in Second Life. There are multiple hefty announcements from Linden Lab involved, and some of that should be reaching the official Second Life blogs as you read this. Golly, what do we have among all of this? We've got the Second Life 2.0 viewer public beta, which should be available right now. We've got the new third-party viewer registry and third-party policies being announced today; We've got changes in the names of content-ratings. We've got the official release of open source viewer Snowglobe and the announcement of Snowglobe 2; and all capped off with a slew of supporting FAQs, guides, video tutorials, wiki pages and what-have-you!
Registrations open for SL Pro! conference, February
Registrations are presently open for SL Pro! a two day conference being run by Linden Lab for 'serious' professional Second Life content-creators to take place in late February this year, in Second Life itself, with a bit of help from NMC (the New Media Consortium). Unfortunately, it's a conference with more than one track, where the two tracks generally have a fair bit of overlap, so that's a bit of an issue. The two tracks are building and scripting, each with eight sessions.
Leaked test feedback offers insights into Linden Lab design processes
Back, just before Halloween, a Linden Lab staffer accidentally sent an email intended for internal circulation to a mailing list containing quite a number of Second Life users. We were sent a copy a few minutes later, and the email was widely circulated among developers of third-party Second Life viewers by Halloween. What caught people's eye about the email was how harsh it was when it came to describing aspects of the upcoming Second Life Viewer 2.0 user-interface (the key feature of that software). It certainly didn't pull many punches leveling criticism at various design choices that were obviously in evidence in the evaluation version that had come up for testing. And for just that reason we are, after a little thought, rather heartened by it.
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.
Linden Lab says Second Life huge, shows numbers
Generally, operators of MMOGs and virtual environments don't show their numbers unless they feel they've got something to crow about, and Linden Lab's crowing today, releasing a selection of figures that give you an idea of the scale of Second Life. Approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second in Second Life. That's 108 million messages per day and more than 600 million words are typed on an average day. That's a whole of messages for any architecture, quite honestly.
Linden Lab launches updated Second Life Web-site
Linden Lab have launched the promised revamp of the secondlife.com Web-site rather sooner than expected, with the new site having gone live today. Our takeaway from the presentation at the recent Second Life Community Convention was that the new site wasn't due for a little while yet, during which time it would receive additional features. Nevertheless, the new site and dashboard have launched, and look pretty much like what was previewed by Tom Hale just recently. Hale described the site revamp as a beginning, rather than as an end, so there's still a ways to go yet.
Philip Rosedale: "Try to work with us. Let go a bit"
It seems these days that you can't have a Linden Lab employee give a speech to Second Life users without some included warning label of rough times ahead for them. It's almost relentlessly axiomatic nowadays. At this year's Second Life Community Convention, Rosedale gently urged users and Lindens to support some necessary changes to come: "Try to work with us. Let go a bit." Ironically, he has encapsulated the same core message that Second Life users have been trying to get Linden Lab to hear for the last several years.
Linden Lab's Tom Hale announces Second Life support for media plug-ins
As a part of his keynote presentation today at this year's Second Life Community Convention, Linden Lab's Tom Hale has unveiled a new plug-in framework for the Second Life viewer. The Second Life viewer has hitherto been restricted to rendering media content that was supported either by its browser component or by the use of Apple's Quicktime. Quicktime is certainly quite workable, but only provides a subset of the extensive range of potentially viewable media that's out there. The introduction of the LLMedia API looks to change all that, by allowing a straightforward plug-in system to extend the viewer's ability to render various arbitrary kinds of parcel media.
Linden Lab publishes Second Life second quarter metrics
Linden Lab's Tom Hale has published the Quarterly report for Second Life for Q2 2009: "Economy grows 94% year to year, hits new all time high in Q2; World expands and voice usage hits all time high; Bot policy affects user hours and logins" We beg to differ in some key respects. From the figures presented, we see quite a different picture (go on, tell us you're astonished by that). Allow us to touch on a few of the high points as we walk through the report, and we'll lay it out for you.
Linden Lab's Tom Hale clarifies Q1 results
You may recall that when we looked at the published Q1 metrics for Second Life, we were struck by the fuzziness of some of the material. It was clear that there was growth, but many of the figures lacked the sorts of definitions that would give them any apprehensible meaning. Graphs that show upward trends are nice -- well, usually, unless they're recording bad things. Thankfully after our grumbling along that line, Tom Hale, Linden Lab's Chief Product Officer took note of the issues we and others had with the reporting and set out to add some necessary clarifications, quite a pleasant departure for this historically secretive company.
Taser International vs Linden Lab: Crack Den crackdown
Taser International Inc have filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab (and others, including some present and some departed) staff. We got a hold of the April 17 complaint yesterday, and have been going through it since then. We've got a summary of the complaint and issues for you, but we won't be linking to the complaint due to the presence of what may be considered to be pornographic images in Exhibit 2. The "crack den" reference in the headline is a recurring phrase in the legal complaint. You'll see why. If you want the one-sentence summary, Taser seem to have failed to do their homework and basic research, but their case doesn't seem to be entirely without merit either.
Tom Hale talks Second Life premium accounts
Back in September, when we first noticed the hiring of Tom Hale (T Linden) as Linden Lab's new Chief Product Officer, we had a little difficulty envisioning quite what Hale's role would even be, given that Linden Lab and Second Life was very platform-oriented and had very little product-focus. Apparently, adding that focus as an extra consideration throughout the business seems to be the thing. Initially, we were more or less expecting Hale to be more focused on, well, the sort of thing that Rivers Run Red's Immersive Workspaces is providing. Perhaps there's some of that in there too. Right now, Hale's looking at Second Life premium accounts and stipends and how they can be improved; a topic which has been much on the Lab's mind of late.
Kingdon's Second Life updates: What's missing?
New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon is still making irregular postings to the official Second Life blog. It's all heady and exciting stuff, to be sure. Growth, focus on improvement of the new user experience, simplified registration, and so on. Yet something seems to be missing. What's missing is anything that excites you if you're already a Second Life user. There's plenty here to entice those who aren't already users, but if you're already one, there doesn't seem to be anything much in them for you to get excited about. Put together with some other pieces, however, it certainly creates an interesting picture about future direction for Second Life. 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 hires another from Adobe Systems
Tom Hale, formerly Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems has been hired to fill what is apparently a new role at Linden Lab: Chief Product Officer. Hale, as CPO will be reporting to new Lab CEO, Mark Kingdon. Hale isn't the actually first to be poached away from Adobe Systems to the Lab recently. Clare Rees, a Senior Group Manager there was recently hired as the Lab's new European Marketing Director. Marketing what and marketing to whom -- this is not yet clear. 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.
