Dwell On It » Second Life

Second Life to help educate rural Indian farmers on climate trends

Tateru Nino — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:06:29 +0000

The team of experts from the University of Southern Queensland’s Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments (ACSC) may work diligently at predicting future climate changes but how do you get that information to regional farmers throughout the world?

The ACSC has recently completed a successful trial of a web-based discussion-support for climate information for regional Indian farmers in Hyderabad and are hoping to extend the program to the rest of India and then to other nations.

The way it works is deceptively simple— using the ACSC’s research, staff and students from Toowoomba’s University of Southern Queensland (USQ) campus hold a casual discussion about upcoming climate trends over the online virtual world program Second Life.

The llGiveInventory throttles

Tateru Nino — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:05:15 +0000

Roblem Hogarth has dug out the information for when and how the S Read more ...

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Stuck trying to log into Second Life? You’re not alone

Tateru Nino — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:23:35 +0000

At present there seems to be a moderately serious problem with the central “presence” service in Second Life. Either some user logouts are not being properly recorded, or the serialising and storing of their attached assets or scripts is not working as it is supposed to.

This is leaving quite a few Second Life user accounts in a Limbo state, where the system “cannot log you in” until some future date, that never actually arrives.


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Second Life’s greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses

Tateru Nino — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:02:03 +0000

If I were to make a list of the top three things that are responsible for Second Life being as great as it is – and that is exactly what I’m doing today – it would read equally well as a list of things that hold Second Life back.


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2ndMe Launches Final Version and Offers Free SL Export

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:07:11 +0000

2ndMe, a fast growing service for Second Life residents, changed its status from beta to final on 16th of January 2012. All promised features like Adobe Flash 11-based core, animation and hardware acceleration support were successfully released. Also, from now on 2ndMe users enjoy free export of their avatars to Second Life.


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Fangs or GTFO

Tateru Nino — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:30:47 +0000

What do you think when you see an ad banner for Second Life? More to the point, what would you think if you were one of the many millions of people who knew nothing about Second Life?

Mostly, something like Vampire Wars, mixed with Farmville.


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Convalescence

Tateru Nino — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:57:15 +0000

I’m too sick to read, or write or do much of anything right now. Running a fever.

So, more on the parametric mesh deformer.

Lab requests feedback on Read more ...

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Qarl turns back on Lab rejection, “the code is open”

Tateru Nino — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:34:03 +0000

Following the seemingly specious rejection of the contributed prim-alignment tool earlier in the week, Qarl has declined to make the changes suggested by the Lab.

In the past, when code contributions have been made, the Lab has been willing to pull out all the stops to make its own contribution to the code in some cases, even going so far as to rewrite a contribution’s code from the ground up to meet its requirements or to overcome stylistic or technical objections.

The Lab has not chosen to do that this time and, while I cannot reasonably speculate on what the Lab is thinking and why – in this instance, the temptation is so very great.


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Linden Lab rejects Qarl’s prim-alignment tool

Tateru Nino — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:57:36 +0000

At least partly because it only really works with standard prims, you know, being a prim-alignment tool.

Actually, the Lab’s argument here seems to be that the alignment tool is incomplete (though I’d say it is more complete than a number of features I’ve seen the Lab ship over the last few years), and that since it provides assistance to only one set of fiddly, annoying tasks that it should not be included.


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You’ve got squat

Tateru Nino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:27:39 +0000

I don’t normally give a hoot about domain squatters, and they normally would not hold my attention for more than a second or so, but this is a rather amusing one.

Back on the fourth of October last year, one Steven Harrison of 15 Bilsdale Way, Bradford, West Yorkshire, DB17 5DG (information from the public domain-registrar records) registered the domain name lindenlabs.co.uk (sharp-eyed readers will immediately note that that isn’t the correct company name for Linden Lab).

Now, a UK Fetlife (Fetlife is a social network for kinksters and the proudly perverted) user by the name of OneSadisticBastard (who may or may not be Steven Harrison) is claiming to be… well, the domain owner (and thus, essentially, claiming to be Harrison), and trying to sell the domain name to other Fetlife users, apparently with the intent of harming Linden Lab, if I read his messages correctly.


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American Library Association scales back Second Life presence

Tateru Nino — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:04:48 +0000

The American Library Association (ALA) is closing down its island estate in favour of a more modest and affordable Second Life presence.


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Second Life viewer 1.23 disappears due to upcoming incompatible inventory protocol change

Tateru Nino — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:22:57 +0000

The venerable Second Life 1.23 viewer has disappeared from the list of official viewer downloads, as a part of an upcoming, incompatible change to the inventory transfer protocol.


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Qarl contributes alignment tool to Linden Lab

Tateru Nino — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:10:44 +0000

One of Karl Stiefvater’s more popular tools is his prim alignment tool. This tool has only ever appeared i Read more ...

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How to send Qarl money

Tateru Nino — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:17:32 +0000

There seems to be a little confusion about who is involved in the parametric deformer project. For the record, it isn’t me – for those of you that might have gotten a little confused. If you’re eager to donate money by way of saying thanks, then the person to send it to is Karl Stiefvater, perhaps better known as Qarl.

Inara’s excellent viewer frame-rate comparison

Tateru Nino — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:46:18 +0000

Just a quick note to get your year in Second Life rolling along nicely. Inara Pey – who is both an excellent and informative Second Life blogger, among her many talents – has a side-by-side frame-rate comparison of 8 different viewers under specific test conditions.

If you’re wondering how each viewer stacks up for raw performance for a given configuration, you’ll want to check out her results.

Qarl’s parametric mesh deformer on display, feedback sought

Tateru Nino — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:20:17 +0000

Yesterday (and I nearly missed it), Karl Stiefvater put up a preliminary look at the crowd-funded parametric mesh deformer. “I should specify immediately that it’s not done,” said Stiefvater, “but the heavy-lifting part of it is.”

“I’m giving it to you in this form now, so that you can give me feedback. There are decisions to be made which we should make together.”


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A good year

Tateru Nino — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:12:12 +0000

I’ve been reflecting back on how 2011 has been for Second Life. I didn’t make any predictions for the year, but on reflection, I believe it was a good year for Second Life. Perhaps the best year for Second Life that I can recall for quite some time.


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Searching versus ranking

Tateru Nino — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:59:23 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Second Life search, and the complaints that are made about it. That most say that it isn’t as good as Google Web-search, that some complain that the new-new system has them ranked lower down than the old-new system did, that they can’t figure out how to boost their rankings and so on.

I’ll start off with two maxims:

1. The goal of a search-engine is to produce search results ranked by relevancy.

2. The goal of SEO (so-called Search-Engine Optimisation) is to reduce or eliminate relevancy in search results.

It’s time for a change

Tateru Nino — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 07:49:44 +0000

I’m going to talk about expectation management and Second Life, so it is only fitting that I first talk about Star Wars, in 1977.

That Star Wars film (Episode IV, the first one made) was the most spoilerific effort that I have ever seen. For months before the premiere of the film the media was saturated with character-bios, plot summaries, clips of the film, and making-of featurettes.


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A marketing push

Tateru Nino — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:04:36 +0000

Someone recently asked me to check with the Lab and ask about the “Big Marketing Push” that the Lab said at SLCC that it was gearing up for. If I recall rightly, the question was along the lines of “Has it happened yet? Or is it still to come?”

I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten who it was who asked me – but I did ask the Lab and get an answer.