I agree with your sentiments that SLE will not be a success. I think it is 3 years behind its competitors in a very niche market. It lacks comparable workspace integration with other software, and a proven track record. I also don’t see anyone currently using OLIVE or Protosphere “upgrading” to SLE. I certainly hope the Lab has priced this “solution” toward the bottom end of its alternatives. It’s going to be a VERY hard sell otherwise.

@Dusan: I agree that there needs to be more app integration with the SLE offering. However, I don’t think that’s a strategy for taking the #1 position in its market. Adding app integration seems to just be playing catch up with the veteran 3D solutions. My strategy for SLE would be to create a brand new vertical market, create something people don’t know they want yet, rather than building what we think they are asking for. Sounds crazy right? I know. But this is exactly how the “web” came to be with Netscape, how search came to be with Google, how auctions came to be with eBay, how buying books came to be with Amazon, how social media came to be with MySpace and Facebook, and how maybe, augmented reality will come to be with 3D immersive “solutions”.

As if they don”t make enough with their 295 for 1/4 of a server, and then premium accounts where I have to pay for the right to pay them.

Their greediness and their inability to understand that the more they siphon and the more they kick dirt on the people, their future is going to be a dead end. Eventually Opensim will be secure and people will go where the prices are realistic.

Its the perfect scheme, they charge 1200 to setup the 1/4 of a server, you pay for several months buying into the dream, you cant afford the sim, you default it back to SL or sell it on the cheap if your lucky, and wash rinse the process continues. What the lab fails to realize is that they are not main stream and they will one day run out of customers to put through the ringer.

SLEEK is going to fail so really those of us excluded are just having a favor done for us.

Sure, it’s possible to rip off content on the Web. But if you’re a company, you don’t want to be violating other peoples’ copyrights. And if you’re an individual, there is plenty of free material available to use on your blog or Website.

When it comes to consumer goods, once Second Life and OpenSim have full mesh support then all the free content available from places like Google’s 3D Warehouse is going to flood the market for simple objects. The folks making money from content will either be selling branded content or highly functional content (tied into back-end databases, for example), making it impractical to copy. And a decent search function will make it easier for copyright holders to track down instances of infringement — the same way that Google now makes it impractical to steal text on any significant scale to reuse on other websites. (Though consumer infringement of, say, e-books, is widespread.)

The whole issue of digital rights management for virtual goods seems doomed — just as digital rights management seems a complete failure when it comes to DVDs, music and ebooks.

In addition, there’s a certain degree of artificial price inflation in Second Life due to the fact that store owners need to pay rent. Once users are able to teleport to the hypergrid, where rents for entire regions already start at $25 a month — and will probably only go down over time — it will make it easier to distribute free and low cost consumer content.

But yes, copyright holders will have to learn how to protect their content. This is what content producers currently have to in the real world and on the Web. You can’t just rely on your distribution channel to do it for you.

ProtonMedia: 3 years
no developers listed.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this, but lets be real.

As someone working in the silicon valley methodology of “just do this right, and quit screwing around”, it’s both sad and amusing at the same time watching the amateur hour antics going on regarding third party viewers and the negatives they’ve brought. They really need to grow a backbone and just chop everyone off.